fact, was the eldest child of an ennobled family of no little import whose marriage had been arranged to formalize alliances between Don Almonester and an aristocratic family transitioning from France to Nouvelle-France to French Louisiana, and then to Spanish Louisiana. Louise was the well-connected eldest child of French-Canadian Naval Officer Pierre Denys de La Ronde (1726-1772), who had been re-assigned from Nouvelle-France to Nouvelle-Orleans by his godfather, future French Louisiana Governor, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial, and was distinguished in the French and Indian Wars. Through her father, Louise was the great-granddaughter of Judge and celebrated French poet René-Louis Chartier de Lotbinière of Maison Lotbinière; great-great niece of Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure; and a great-niece, through his wife, Charlotte Denys de La Ronde, of Claude de Ramezay, Governor of Trois-Rivières, then of Montreal. Louise's only brother, Pierre Denis de La Ronde (1762 - 1824), was, like his predecessor, enabled to wealth when he succeeded Almonester on the Cabildo, becoming the wealthiest of Louisiana plantation owners. He would later distinguish himself in the Battle of New Orleans, and is now remembered for his since misnamed Versailles, Louisiana plantation's legacy: a magnificent allée of Southern live oaks, still leading from the Mississippi River to the ruins of his former mansion. Through her mother, Louise was also the granddaughter of a powerful military officer best remembered for his years as Louisiana's esteemed royal architect and engineer, Ignace François Broutin. Louise's mother's sister, the similarly named Marie-Marguerite Madeleine Broutin, had, most unfortunately, married, in 1754, the Baron Jean-Joseph François Delfau de Pontalba; their son, Joseph-Xavier Delfau de Pontalba would later solicit the Denys family to join his only son, Célestin, in marriage to Louise and Almonester's only daughter, the future Micaela Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba. The unstable Baron would exert himself tormenting young Micaela for her fortune. Decades of misery later– despite many efforts made to separate her from his control –in the wake of her protective mother's demise, he finally attempted to murder Micaela, but succeeded only in taking his own misspent life and thus, with the tragic twist of irony, transferring the title Baroness to the indomitable daughter-in-law whose riches he had so diligently sought for his own. The murderous Baron Pontalba was wed to Louise Marie-Anne Françoise Le Breton des Chapelles, first cousin of the notorious Marie-Delphine de Macarty, better known today as Delphine LaLaurie. Following the death of