According to the Laveau legend, Marie became a hairdresser after the assumed death of her husband, Jacques Paris. Long (2006) reports that there are no records on file confirming this rumor to be true; however, it was a common occupation among Creole women at the time, so it is not a far-fetched assumption. There were also people interviewed from the Louisiana Writers' Project who remembered her in that capacity.
For example, Theresa Kavanaugh, born around 1860, said, “Marie Laveau called herself a hairdresser, and that’s how she got in the good graces of fine people.” Another woman, Mary Washington, born in 1863, remembered Marie as “some kind of hairdresser and seamster, but she did all that in her early days . . . Her associating with white people made her know how to fool them."
As hairdresser, Marie had the opportunity to network among the city’s bourgeoisie as she was invited into their homes to fix their hair. She reportedly paid off poor black servants, effectively turning them into moles, in exchange for inside information. The information she gleaned from the impromptu confessions of wealthy white women gave her an edge in her Voudou and conjure work. Using these types of
natural and manufactured methods of gathering intel, she gained inside knowledge of who was who in the upper echelons of society—who cheated on who, who was whose real baby daddy, and who was interracial but passe blanc. She held the secrets close in heart and mind; no doubt filed away for a rainy day when someone approached her for help in the future. Even so, the community perception was such that no matter how big or potentially scurrilous the secret, they knew she held the keys to
the closets that held everyone’s scandalous skeletons. And that type of public perception is powerful, whether or not it is true!
