Laura Plantation near New Orleans
.
A slave sugar cane plantation along the Mississippi River Louisiana.
Laura Plantation. Today we visit two very different plantations; Laura was run by Creoles and has a Creole style of architecture; Oak Alley was also run by a Creole family but it adopted the Greek Revival style favoured by the Anglo-Americans for their slave plantations. Oak Alley is the picture book, Gone with the Wind style of plantation. Both plantations grew “white gold” – sugar cane. They boiled it down in large cast iron vats and made molasses to be sold in the molasses, rum, cotton, and slave trade between Africa, American and Europe. Sugar made the Creole planters along the banks of the Mississippi River rich. Both plantations depended on their slaves for economic success and the Creole families treated their slaves no better, and probably a little worse than Anglo-American plantation owners elsewhere. To avoid confusion remember that Laura Plantation began as DuParc Plantation. Its name was changed to Laura in the late 19th century. Guillaume DuParc bought a small plantation from some French Cajuns (those who escaped from French Canada (Arcadia) to Louisiana) in 1804. DuParc had assisted the French Navy in their support of the Americans during the War of Independence so he wheedled a large land grant out of President Jefferson to add to his small plantation. Slaves made bricks on site to build the piers to support the house and keep it safe from river floods. Like many Creole families the control of the plantation was bestowed upon the most able person, not the elder son, and after some years the plantation was run by a succession of DuParc women. The men also tended to die early of Yellow Fever or malaria. At its peak the plantation comprised over 12,000 acres. For most of the Antebellum period it had around 300 slaves, with a long line of 69 slave cabins. The regulation size for a cabin was 16 feet by 16 feet. The last of Laura’s slave cabins was occupied by a sharecropper until 1977. Laura Locoul who was born in the plantation in 1861 at the start of the Civil War was the last Creole owner. Her slave nanny stayed with her until she married and went to the North in 1892. The other former slaves stayed on, as did most slaves in the South, and became sharecroppers after emancipation. They were then economic slaves, bound to their former slave masters by debt. As a business Laura plantation declined and the profits of earlier years were gone for the Locoul family after the civil War. The former slaves they were allotted a parcel of land to farm with hogs, a little sugar, corn etc. They were compelled to buy their seed grain from their former masters, the interest rates on these loans in advance were high and uncontrolled. Black Americans were always in debt to the white land owners, never able to leave their sharecropping property and they were hungry and destitute if crops failed and they did not make enough money to repay the white land owner for the fertilizers and seeds bought on hire purchase. Sharecropping only died out in the South in the mid 1960s with the Civil Rights movement. Laura Locoul says that she hated slavery and was determined to leave Laura Plantation when she discovered that one of the old black Americans on the plantation in the late 1860s had branded scars on his face. He had been a runaway slave and branding slaves, like cattle, assisted with their return to their “rightful owner” in Antebellum times. Laura left the plantation in 1876 to attend boarding school in New Orleans. Following her grandmother, Elizabeth Lacoul’s death in 1882 the plantation was divided between two families. By this time Laura Locoul was living in a French Quarter house in New Orleans. In 1892 she made an unthinkable marriage- to a Northern Anglo-American who lived in St. Louis. Laura Plantation was sold just before her marriage in 1891.Laura Locoul Gore died in 1963. The current owners of Laura have only recently discovered the DuParc and Locoul family records in St. Louis and in France. Alcée Fortier, a French language professor in New Orleans published stories based on African folklore like Joel Chandler Harris of Eatonton. Harris first published Uncle Remus stories in 1880, and Fortier first published folklore stories in French in 1894 supposedly from visits to Laura.
Laura Plantation near New Orleans
.
A slave sugar cane plantation along the Mississippi River Louisiana.
Laura Plantation. Today we visit two very different plantations; Laura was run by Creoles and has a Creole style of architecture; Oak Alley was also run by a Creole family but it adopted the Greek Revival style favoured by the Anglo-Americans for their slave plantations. Oak Alley is the picture book, Gone with the Wind style of plantation. Both plantations grew “white gold” – sugar cane. They boiled it down in large cast iron vats and made molasses to be sold in the molasses, rum, cotton, and slave trade between Africa, American and Europe. Sugar made the Creole planters along the banks of the Mississippi River rich. Both plantations depended on their slaves for economic success and the Creole families treated their slaves no better, and probably a little worse than Anglo-American plantation owners elsewhere. To avoid confusion remember that Laura Plantation began as DuParc Plantation. Its name was changed to Laura in the late 19th century. Guillaume DuParc bought a small plantation from some French Cajuns (those who escaped from French Canada (Arcadia) to Louisiana) in 1804. DuParc had assisted the French Navy in their support of the Americans during the War of Independence so he wheedled a large land grant out of President Jefferson to add to his small plantation. Slaves made bricks on site to build the piers to support the house and keep it safe from river floods. Like many Creole families the control of the plantation was bestowed upon the most able person, not the elder son, and after some years the plantation was run by a succession of DuParc women. The men also tended to die early of Yellow Fever or malaria. At its peak the plantation comprised over 12,000 acres. For most of the Antebellum period it had around 300 slaves, with a long line of 69 slave cabins. The regulation size for a cabin was 16 feet by 16 feet. The last of Laura’s slave cabins was occupied by a sharecropper until 1977. Laura Locoul who was born in the plantation in 1861 at the start of the Civil War was the last Creole owner. Her slave nanny stayed with her until she married and went to the North in 1892. The other former slaves stayed on, as did most slaves in the South, and became sharecroppers after emancipation. They were then economic slaves, bound to their former slave masters by debt. As a business Laura plantation declined and the profits of earlier years were gone for the Locoul family after the civil War. The former slaves they were allotted a parcel of land to farm with hogs, a little sugar, corn etc. They were compelled to buy their seed grain from their former masters, the interest rates on these loans in advance were high and uncontrolled. Black Americans were always in debt to the white land owners, never able to leave their sharecropping property and they were hungry and destitute if crops failed and they did not make enough money to repay the white land owner for the fertilizers and seeds bought on hire purchase. Sharecropping only died out in the South in the mid 1960s with the Civil Rights movement. Laura Locoul says that she hated slavery and was determined to leave Laura Plantation when she discovered that one of the old black Americans on the plantation in the late 1860s had branded scars on his face. He had been a runaway slave and branding slaves, like cattle, assisted with their return to their “rightful owner” in Antebellum times. Laura left the plantation in 1876 to attend boarding school in New Orleans. Following her grandmother, Elizabeth Lacoul’s death in 1882 the plantation was divided between two families. By this time Laura Locoul was living in a French Quarter house in New Orleans. In 1892 she made an unthinkable marriage- to a Northern Anglo-American who lived in St. Louis. Laura Plantation was sold just before her marriage in 1891.Laura Locoul Gore died in 1963. The current owners of Laura have only recently discovered the DuParc and Locoul family records in St. Louis and in France. Alcée Fortier, a French language professor in New Orleans published stories based on African folklore like Joel Chandler Harris of Eatonton. Harris first published Uncle Remus stories in 1880, and Fortier first published folklore stories in French in 1894 supposedly from visits to Laura.