The charter of the city of New Orleans, passed in 1852, included among the executive officers of the city four Recorders to be elected to two year terms, one from each of the four municipal districts. The Recorder for the Third District, therefore, served that portion of the city to the east of Esplanade Ave.

The qualifications for this office were the same as those of the members of the state's general assembly. The Recorders were to serve as ex- officio justices of the peace and were to exercise all of the duties previously invested in the Recorders of the separate municipalities of the city. Each Recorder was to keep a record book with the different criminal cases brought before him.

Subsequent legislation specified additional duties of the office. Ordinance #1537 (1854) directed them to commit to the workhouse all runaway slaves and free persons of color found to be illegally in the state. In the following year, ordinance #2324 made it the duty of each Recorder to "hear and determine all complaints which may be brought before them, for the violation of every ordinance of the city;" persons found guilty of such offenses were to pay the appropriate fine or be imprisoned for up to thirty days in the parish prison.

In 1856 they were authorized (by ordinance #3174) to grant permits for the opening of tombs in the city cemeteries. Ordinance #3267 (1857) called for the appearance before the appropriate Recorder of all women arrested for violation of the ordinance concerning "lewd and abandoned women."