Noisette family to gather

There's a special kind of reunion that is occurring more and more. It's the kind where blacks and whites reach across the racial divide to explore a shared history, no matter what the relationships among their ancestors were.

They meet on plantations, at houses of worship and in urban settings for long weekends to share their pieces of the stories that illuminate who they are and how they came to be.

Over the past 30 years such gatherings have taken place in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and elsewhere. Each occurrence was a little miraculous.

This weekend, the descendants of 18th century French botanist Philippe Noisette (1773-1835) and Celestine, the mulatto wife he brought to Charleston when he fled the Haitian Revolution, will meet in North Charleston with Noisettes from France, Haiti and the United States.

Noisette is the botanist who developed the Noisette class of roses. Experts say they are the only variety or roses that originated in the United States.

As genealogical inquiries go, discovering even a partial answer to a long-held question can bring a tremendous amount of satisfaction. The Noisettes have a couple of big questions to consider while gathering.

Those hosting the reunion can document their kinship with those in France, but don't know how they are connected to other Noisettes in this country, including another local branch.

In addition, they want to know if Noisette, who purchased Celestine 15 years after they came to Charleston to protect her, bought others as well.

Lately, many Noisettes in different branches of the family have been working on the family history, and encountered each other via the Internet. But as far back as the 1930s, Noisettes here and ones in France wrote several letters of inquiry trying to reconnect.

The hosts reached out to as many Noisettes as possible and are expecting 159 people to attend the reunion, which has been two years in the making.

About six of them will represent the French line and three will represent those from Haiti. They eventually want to get those in Australia involved in the genealogical search.

Louise Noisette Merrell, the family's main genealogist, died in 1997. Her daughter Peggy Clement, reunion co-chairwoman, said the gathering is something her mother wanted, and the family is just trying to follow through.

Clement visited Noisettes in France earlier this year to prepare for the reunion.

While most of the reunion is private, the public is invited to attend a rose garden dedication in Philippe Noisette's honor at 11:30 a.m. today, at the Charleston Navy Base, near the dead house at North Charleston Riverfront Park.