Felix Grima was born in New Orleans in 1798. Having studied law, he was later appointed to be a notary public, a lucrative position because all legal documents had to be notarized and there were only a dozen or so notaries in the City. In 1831, he married Marie Sophie Adelaide Montegut (b. 1811), whose family had been in Louisiana for several generations.
The Grima Family, which consisted of Felix and Adelaide, one of Felix’s unmarried sisters and his mother, and Felix and Adelaide’s five children, moved into the house in 1844. They subsequently had four more children after moving into the house. The nine children were named Felix Jr., Victor, Alfred, Louise, Paul, Marie, Edgar, George and Adelaide.
Portrait of Adelaide Grima
The Grimas briefly left the house when Felix, a staunch Southern Nationalist, refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States, and they were forced to leave the City. During that time, the house was occupied by Union troops. They returned after the Civil War ended in 1865 and Felix signed the oath.
Only three of the Grima children married (Alfred, Louise and George) and the other six remained in the house. One of the married daughters, Louise, returned after her husband’s death. The last Grima in the house, Edgar, moved uptown in 1921, and the house was sold to the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.