Charles Patton Dimitry (July 31, 1837 – November 10, 1910) was a mixed race Creole author, poet, journalist, inventor, and historian. He was the second son of Greek Creole author and diplomat Alexander Dimitry and also the grandson of Marianne Celeste Dragon. His catalog features a massive amount of literary publications one of his most notable works was The House in Balfour Street published in 1868. The author used two pseudonyms Tobias Guarnerius Jr. or Braddock Field his father Alexander used the pseudonym Tobias Guarnerius in some of his works. Charles worked for newspaper publications across the country including New Orleans, New York City, and Washington DC.
Charles was born in Washington D.C. along with his brother Creole author John Bull Smith Dimitry and sister Virginia Dimitry Ruth. They were educated in New Orleans by their father Alexander. Charles and his brother John eventually attended Georgetown University. Their father was the first person of color to attend the same institution. Charles wrote fictional and non-fictional works throughout his life. Toward the end of his life, he published historical content about New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.
Charles was a member of the Louisiana Society of the Sons of the American Revolution and became the state historian of the society. On January 16, 1888, he filed for a patent for the improvement to indelible ink which he invented. Charles won many awards for his writing. In June 1863, The Magnolia Weekly awarded Charles the $500 prize for best original serial story entitled Guilty or Not Guilty. In another instance, the Committee on Prose Compositions of the Press Convention on February 26, 1884, in New Orleans awarded Charles a prize of $50 for his essay The Massacre of St. Andre. He died in New Orleans at 73 years old.
Early life
Charles was born in Washington D.C. on July 31, 1837, to Creole diplomat Alexander Dimitry and Mary Powell Mills daughter of prominent architect Robert Mills. Charles and several of his siblings were born in Washington while their father Alexander was the principal clerk for the Southwest postal department. The family moved back to New Orleans where Charles and his siblings were educated at College Hill, Mississippi at Saint Charles Parish. Their father Alexander established the school and he was also the dean. Charles' father was the first person of color appointed superintendent of public education in the state of Louisiana from 1847 to 1854.
Two incidents publicly threatened the family's prominent social status. Because of abusive racism and the disqualification of interracial marriages in the late 1700s and early 1800s in New Orleans Charles' grandmother Marianne Céleste Dragon passed as a white person on public records. Marriage records list her as a white woman. Two legal incidents almost identified her as a person of color, which would destabilize her legal status. The first incident occurred in the 1830s with the Forstall sisters Pauline and Josephine. Property was given to Marianne by the Frostall family and Pauline and Josephine sued to have the property returned. The Forstall sisters claimed she was pretending to be white, and the property was left to a woman of color. The white Marianne had to return the property. The court sided with Marianne allowing her to keep her property and her white status, ruling that the family had been in possession of the right to be categorized as a person not born of Negro extraction.