perhaps it is safe to say that with the death of 'monsieur juhen ' ( who was in fact half irish ) the house on first street lost the very last of its french or creole character julien 's sister , katherine , and his brother , remy , had already preceded him to the grave , and so had his daughter , jeannette thereafter - in spite of the huge family gatherings which included french-speaking cousins by the hundreds - the core family was an irish-american catholic family as the years passed , the french-speaking branches lost their creole identity as well , as have so many other louisiana creole families the french language has all but died out in every known branch and as we move towards the last decade of the twentieth century , it is difficult to find a true french-speaking mayfair descendant anywhere this brings us to one other crucial observation - which is all too easily overlooked when proceeding with this narrative with the death of juhen , the mayfair family may have lost the last member who really knew its history we can not know but it seems more than likely and as we converse more with descendants and gather more of their preposterous legends about the plantation days , it seems a certainty as a consequence , from 1914 on , any member of the talamasca investigating the mayfair family could not help but be aware that he or she knew more about the family than the family appeared to know about itself and this has led to considerable confusion and stress on the part of our investigators .