1991 Chapter 5 Historic Setting

The Project Area on the Eve of The Civil War

On the eve of the Civil War, most of the planters in the project vicinity were prosperous and well established. The locations of the main plantations are depicted in Figure 8. The Civil War bought disruption and even death to the planters’ families, disorder to their labor supply, and devastation to their homes, sugar houses, plantation outbuildings, bridges, and vessels. The locality was shortly to be both a campground and a battlefield for opposing armies.

Most of the planters within the project vicinity converted from horse to steam powered sugar houses. By 1860, only 69 of the 170 mills in St. Mary Parish processed sugar in mills powered by horses (De Grummond 1949:44). The harvest was measured in hogsheads, although as the contemporary chronicler of the sugar crop, Champomier, noted: "It is well known that our planters do not make hogsheads of the same size, and there is a wide margin in some of them" (Champomier 1857:43). Nevertheless, he reckoned a hogshead to be 1,150 pounds of sugar.

The present project area includes a portion of Section 58, T15S, R11E, which in the 1850s was a swampy segment situated on the left descending bank of Fairfax Plantation. For most of the decade, the planting establishment was home for Judge Joshua Baker, a leading figure in the parish, community, and state. Ironically, Fairfax Plantation became a battlefield of the Civil War, despite the fact that Judge Baker was among the leading opponents of secession in Louisiana and never leant his support to the Confederacy. Baker was born in Kentucky in 1799, but moved with his parents in 1810 to St. Mary Parish. There, they settled on land which later became Oak Lawn Plantation. Senator Alexander Porter, the builder of Oak Lawn, took as his first wife Joshua Baker’s sister (Conrad 1988).

Joshua Baker was educated at West Point, one of the few institutions of the time to offer courses in engineering. After graduation in 1819, he studied law at Litchfield, Connecticut, then the foremost training ground for the legal profession in America. Returning to Louisiana, he became an engineer and builder, as well as a member of the bar and a judge of St. Mary Parish. He constructed the St. Mary Parish courthouse in 1850, although some complained that his bid of $12,000.00 was too high (De Grummond 1949:56). He also served in the state senate and on the State Board of Public Works (Conrad 1988:31). Actively interested in the construction of bridges and railroads, Baker was a member of the original board of directors of the New Orleans, Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad. By the Civil War, the tracks of this railroad reached from New Orleans only as far as Brashear (now Morgan) City; however, the roadbed had been completed through the right bank of Judge Baker’s property on the Bayou Teche (SP Bulletin 1952:16-17). A telegraph line also ran along the same path.

Judge Baker was an established sugar planter along the lower Teche. According to Champomier, the judge "suffered a good deal" from the severe winter of 1850-1851 (Champomier 1851:34). By 1854, however, Fairfax Plantation produced 495 hogsheads of sugar; in the following season, 510 were produced (Champomier 1854:34; 1855:32-33). Judge Baker’s yield of more than 500 hogsheads of sugar per season put him in the top 25 per cent of the sugar producers in the state (Roland 1957:3).

After the hurricane of 1856, however, Fairfax Plantation produced only 37 hogsheads of sugar (Champomier 1857:32). Furthermore, Judge Baker’s railroad interests were affected adversely by the Panic of 1857. Perhaps for these reasons. Baker sold Fairfax Plantation in 1858 for $112,000.00 to Dr. Thomas Bisland, a planter from Concordia Parish. Included in the sale was Baker’s steamboat, the T.S. Archer, and two flatboats (COB M, Folio 318, Act 9439 St. Mary Parish Courthouse).

Dr. Bisland, a Mississippian by birth, came from a planting family with widespread holdings in Louisiana. At 27 (1860), Bisland was married, the father of a baby girl, and owned 120 slaves; he had accumulated $90,000.00 in personal and $120,000.00 in real property (Menn 1964:380; Businelle 1986:62). By law, slaves were considered real rather than personal property, but census enumerators often did not observe this distinction. The enumerators also were careless about recording slave dwellings. Although the number of such structures was supposed to be entered, the 1860 census taker failed to record this statistic for the project area.

Dr. Bisland made a success of Fairfax Plantation before the Federal invasion of the Teche. Final production during the 1862 season was 565 hogsheads (Champomier 1862:32).

Situated directly below Fairfax Plantation on the right descending bank of Bayou Teche was Ricohoc Plantation, the establishment of William Taylor Palfrey. Palfrey and his seafaring family migrated from Massachusetts to Louisiana very early in the nineteenth century. His father established a sugar plantation. Forlorn Hope, on the banks of Bayou Teche near Opelousas, Louisiana. In spite of his father’s wry sense of humor, William T. Palfrey prospered in Louisiana and was among the leading planters of St. Mary Parish. He served as sheriff, parish judge, state senator, and founder and cashier of a bank in Franklin (Edmunds 1979:27). Palfrey not only possessed 170 slaves of his own but he also maintained 147 slaves that belonged to his father’s estate (Menn 1964:384). Among the heirs to Palfrey’s estate was a brother, John Gorham Palfrey, who remained behind in Massachusetts, where he worked as editor of North American Review, a leading periodical of the time. J. G. Palfrey failed to mention to his Boston readers that he was part owner of a large slaveholding establishment located in the canefields of Louisiana (Phillips 1929:300).

Ricohoc Plantation is not part of the present project area. Nevertheless, William T. Palfrey’s plantation diary is an important unpublished source of information for the lower Teche. Furthermore, there is a rare and unusual published source from Ricohoc Plantation. Ellen Betts, a former slave of Palfrey’s, contributed her memories of slavery at Ricohoc to a Works Project Administration project (Botkin 1945:125-130). The importance of Palfrey’s diary and Betts’ reminiscences make them indispensable to discussion of the plantations of the lower bayou.

Below Ricohoc was the upper tract of the plantation of Mrs. David E. Meade, a young widow with one son. Mrs. Meade lived on the right descending bank of the bayou, but contemporary sugar reports indicate that cane planting at her upper tract was confined to the left bank in Section 56, T15S, R11E. A part of her holdings in Section 56 is included within the present project area.

Mrs. Meade was the youngest daughter of David Weeks, the builder of the handsome plantation house, Shadows on the Teche, in New Iberia. After the death of David Weeks, his widow married Judge John Moore, also a man of consequence in the Teche country. Harriet Meade, Allie to her family, was, at one time, a plantation belle much sought after because of her beauty and her dowry. She married Dr. David E. Meade of St. Louis, but he died in 1854 (Webb 1983:277-278). The young widow, 28- years-old at the time of her husband’s death, was left in charge of a plantation. Reporting to her mother early in 1855, Allie Meade wrote:

I would come up but it would be very inconvenient for me to leave home now. I have a great deal to attend to and still if I were to try I could not tell you what it was. It is time to commence a spring garden. Shipping sugar attending to my fowl getting things fixed on both places to commence another year, you know the overseers want ploughs axes ... and many things which I have to buy. These and many other little household business keep me always employed. Things that would not be done right or perhaps not done at all if 1 were absent (Sitterson 1953:70-71).

Mrs. Meade had much in common with Judge Baker, Dr. Bisland, and Judge Palfrey. All were children of American settlers in Louisiana who arrived early and obtained capital to enter the sugar industry. This group of planters had long known, and married into, each other's families. Joshua Baker’s daughter, for example, married Judge Palfrey’s son, and Judge Baker built a handsome Greek Revival house for the couple. The house still stands in the town of Franklin (Lower Bayou Teche Tourist Commission 1986:6). Judge Palfrey’s first wife was a member of the Conrad family, as was Mrs. Meade’s mother. Furthermore, the Palfreys married their cousins of the Weeks family, thus providing another family tie between Judge Palfrey and Harriet Weeks Meade (Webb 1983:xvl, 277-278). Because of these extensive family connections, large sugar planters of American extraction appeared to have a unity which set them slightly apart from their neighbors in the lower parishes of Louisiana.

Mrs. Meade’s planting interests were never so extensively developed as those of her family or her neighbors, but she did have an overseer who lived on the place (Businelle 1986:60). She also was the owner of 141 slaves, 75 at one tract and 66 at the other (Menn 1964:384). At her upper tract, she used horse rather than steam power for her sugar house, and the antebellum output never exceeded 100 hogsheads. Mrs. Meade’s assumption of duties on the death of Dr. Meade had no adverse effect on production. She managed a slight increase in the output of the upper tract. During the planting season of the hurricane, however, Meade managed only six hogsheads (Champomier 1857:32).

A series of holdings stretched below Mrs. Meade’s establishment. These were consolidated on both sides of the Teche by Pinckney Q. Bethel, another sugar planter of American origin. Immediately downstream from Mrs. Meade’s place in 1860 was Bethel’s Grandwood, situated on both the left and right banks of Bayou Teche. This establishment was sometimes referred to as Bethel’s upper plantation. The present project area includes a part of the left bank of Bethel’s upper plantation (Sections 54 and 55, T15S, R11E).

The principal structures of Grandwood Plantation were located on the right descending bank in 1860, but a wooden bridge across the Teche connected the two segments of the plantation. This bridge was located within the project area near the center of Section 54, T15S, R11E.

Between Bethel’s upper and lower holdings on the right bank of the Teche, but not within the project area, was Pecan Grove Plantation, which occupied a pie shaped wedge. Section 12, T15S, R1 IE. This holding is of interest because it operated a steam powered sugar house on the right descending bank of the Teche and almost directly across from the sugar house on Bethel’s lower tract on the left bank of the Teche. The two sugar houses were depicted facing each other across the bayou on Jekyll’s map of Bisland battlefield in 1863 (Figure 9). Pecan Grove Plantation was sometimes under Bethel’s proprietorship and sometimes not. From 1857 to 1862, that tract was not under Bethel’s supervision. Nevertheless, Pecan Grove Plantation provides the answer to why Pinckney C. Bethel is often credited with having three sugar houses during the invasion of the Teche. The first of Bethel’s sugar houses was on the right bank at Grandwood (Bethel’s upper plantation); the second of Bethel’s sugar houses was on the left bank at Live Oak Grove (Bethel’s lower plantation); the third sugar house was that of Pecan Grove Plantation, between Bethel’s holdings on the right bank.

Bethel’s lower holdings, which after 1858 he called Live Oak Grove Plantation, also extended along both banks of the bayou, but contemporary sugar accounts describe the planting operation as confined to the left bank. Also on the left bank of Live Oak Plantation was a steam powered sugar house which was destroyed during the Civil War (Champomier 1860:33' Until 1858, Bethel referred to this holding as Sawmill Plantation, and contemporary legal documents indicate that there was indeed an antebellum sawmill on this tract (COB M 13:628, Line 7774 St. Mary Parish Courthouse). The project area occupies a portion of Sections 51 and 52, T15S, R11E, on the left bank of Bethel’s Live Oak Plantation.

Bethel was not listed in the 1860 census of either St. Mary Parish or Louisiana. He may have been the only absentee planter in the project vicinity. W. T. Palfrey’s diary mentions that Bethel had a house "in town," presumably Franklin. Since the Pinckneys and Bethels were prominent planting families in South Carolina, Bethel may have been South Carolinian by birth. In 1839, he married Elizabeth Smith, the daughter of a sugar planter, in St. Mary Parish; part of his project area holdings originated from his wife’s family (DAR 1931:5).

The combined operations of Bethel’s upper and lower plantations made him by far the largest sugar producer in the project area. One student of the period estimated that Bethel and his 266 slaves were among the top 12 sugar producers in Louisiana in 1860 (Menn 1964:114, 380). His yields in 1854, 1855, and 1856 each exceeded 1000 hogsheads, and his productions of 1859 and 1862 were equally large (Champomier 1854:34; 1855:39; 1856:33; 1859:30; 1862:32-33). The hurricane of 1856 reduced his yield to 283 hogsheads (Champomier 1857:32).

Below the Bethel plantations were the holdings of two brothers. Octave and Numa Cornay. Known in the 1850s as Radiville Plantation, this establishment extended across Bayou Teche and included Sections 49 and 50, T15S, R11E. These sections encompass part of the project area on the left bank of the Cornay establishment. Cornay’s bridge crossed the bayou near the lower margin of Sections 15 and 50, T15S, R11E.

Unlike the Bakers, Bislands, Palfreys, Meades, and Bethels, the Cornays were descended from French colonists of Louisiana, although the spelling of their surname was corrupted. The older brother. Octave Cornay, was 54-years-old in 1860 and had personal property worth $50,000.00 and real property of the same value. The younger brother, Numa, 50-years-old, had no listed property. He and his wife, who was 35-years-old, had numerous children. The brothers owned 140 slaves (Menn 1964:380). There also were many relatives of all ages who seemed to be living with the Cornays, including F. O. Cornay, a parish surveyor. In the household also was Ernest Haydie, a civil engineer, who was the only person in residence who could not read and write (Businelle 1986:34).

Production of sugar seemed to fluctuate erratically at Radiville Plantation during the antebellum era. At no time did the Cornays produce more than 500 hogsheads from their holdings. In the last season before their land was invaded, however, they produced their best crop of 455 hogsheads (Champomier 1862:33). Their smallest output occurred during the season of the hurricane when production dropped to 15 hogsheads (Champomier 1857:32).

Confined to the right bank of the Teche below Radiville and not included within the project area was the establishment of Mrs. A. M. Stanley, a 35-year-old North Carolina born widow with several very young children (Businelle 1986:64). Her plantation is mentioned simply because after the Civil War it was consolidated with the Fuselier holdings across the bayou to create Avalon Plantation. Furthermore, Mrs. Stanley’s steam powered sugar house stood on the right bank of Bayou Teche directly opposite the Fuselier sugar house on the left bank. Rather than the sugar houses of Pecan Grove and Live Oak Grove, these sugar houses may represent the structures depicted in Jekyll’s map of Bisland battlefield in 1863 (Figure 9).

Opposite Mrs. Stanley on the left bank of the Teche was the plantation of Alfred A. Fuselier, which occupied Sections [45?,] 46, 47, and 48, T15S, R11E. The part of the Fuselier plantation that fronted the bayou was within the project area. A 27-year-old with a wife and baby daughter, Fuselier was new to the project vicinity but not to St. Mary Parish. Of French origin, the Fuseliers were numerous, and could be found throughout the region. Better off financially than his immediate neighbors, in 1860, Fuselier owned 85 slaves (Menn 1964:382). He held personal property valued at $75,000.00 and real property of the same amount (Businelle 1986:65). He also owned a residence and a steam powered sugar house within the project area, and he produced annual yields from his holdings of 113, 63, and 218 hogsheads before invasion disrupted production (Champomier 1860:33; 1861:33; 1862:33).

Below the Fuselier Plantation on the left bank in 1860 was the establishment of the Baskervilles and the Duguys. These families planted together there and on land across the bayou. The project area occupies a part of Section [45?], T15S, R11E, on the left bank of this plantation.

William Baskerville was an elderly, Virginia-born planter who died before the invasion of the Teche. He and his wife, Josephine, had no children living with them. Nevertheless, they shared a household with Armand Duguy and his wife, both of whom were in their thirties, and who had six small children. Baskerville had personal and real property valued at $40,000.00 in each category. Duguy had no property listed. An overseer and a white carpenter also lived on the property (Businelle 1986:63). The plantation contained a steam powered sugar house, probably on the right bank; the output of this establishment was small, often less than 100 hogsheads. This plantation produced only 175 hogsheads in 1862 (Champomier 1862:33).

Below the Duguy and Baskerville plantation was the establishment of Joseph M. Charpentier. According to contemporary sugar reports, his planting was confined to the left bank, but the location of his steam powered sugar house is not apparent. This structure seems to have survived the Civil War more or less intact, but whether it was on the right or left bank of the bayou is unclear. -r

Born in Louisiana of French descent, Charpentier was 38-years-old in 1860 and held personal property valued at $2,000 and real property valued at $6,000.00. He had an overseer with personal property valued at $1,500.00, almost as much as that of the planter himself (Businelle 1986:45). Charpentier’s family planted the same tract as early as the 1840s, but production ' r'S at a peak on the eve of the Civil War. His best year occurred just before the invasion in 1862, when 382 hogsheads of sugar were produced (Champomier 1862:33).

Below the Baskerville establishment on the left bank only was another tract owned by Mrs. David Meade. It occupied Section 43, T15S, R11E, and its bayou frontage included the present project area. Mrs. Meade’s residence probably was located at her upper tract. Nevertheless, on her lower left bank plantation a triangle of buildings was present that was depicted on the captured Confederate map of 1863 (Figure 10). At her upper tract, Mrs. Meade used horses to power her sugar house; on this downstream property, she had a steam powered mill within the project area. In 1869, Dr. H. N. Sanders was operating a brick sugar house at approximately the same site, but whether this was Mrs. Meade’s antebellum mill or a new structure is not known.

Mrs. Meade’s lower holdings were more profitable than her upper tracts. Her best yield also was the year the invasion began. In 1862, this left bank tract produced 330 hogsheads of sugar (Champomier 1862:33).

Encompassing both the right and left banks of Bayou Teche, the sugar plantation situated downstream from Meade’s lower tract establishment was that of Thomas Wilcoxon. This plantation occupied Section 42, T15S, R11E, and included a part of the project area.

Born in Louisiana, Wilcoxon was 60-years-old in 1860 and had personal property valued at $50,000.00 and real property at $60,000.00 (Businelle 1986:63). According to the captured Confederate map of St. Mary Parish (Figure 10), Wilcoxon had structures on both sides of the bayou. His residence was probably on one side; his sugar house on the other. Both were destroyed during the Civil War.

Wilcoxon continued to use horse rather than steam power in his sugar house, and his output had always been minimal. For several years in the 1850s, he produced no sugar at all. Nevertheless, on the eve of invasion in 1862 he had by far his best harvest with 220 hogsheads (Champomier 1862:33).

In the 1850s, the plantation of Richard Lynch was at the junction of Bayou Teche with the Atchafalaya River. Lynch planted cane on both sides of the river rather than along the bayou. His establishment, sometimes known as Lynch’s Point, occupied Section 41, T15S, R11E, a pie shaped wedge with its narrow point extending into the right bank of the bayou and encompassing the confluence of the Teche and the Atchafalaya. Part of the project area is included in this section. The captured Confederate map of 1863 (Figure 10), and Howell’s map of 1870 (Figures 11 and 12), indicate that Lynch’s steam powered sugar house was situated on the left bank of the bayou at the point where it joins the river.

A Virginian by birth. Lynch was 50-years-old in 1860 and had a much younger wife and four very young children. An overseer also lived on this plantation. Lynch’s real estate was a valued at $75,000.00; his personal property was worth $70,000.00 (Businelle 1986:45). The yield on his plantation never exceeded 500 hogsheads. In 1862, he produced 249 hogsheads (L. Bouchereau 1862:33).

To summarize the antebellum buildings identified in the project area, on the left bank on the eve of the invasion, structures present included; 1) a bridge across Bayou Teche at Bethel’s upper plantation, Grandwood; 2) a sugar house at Bethel’s lower plantation. Live Oak Grove; 3) a sawmill at Live Oak Grove; 4) Cornays bridge across the bayou at Radiville Plantation; 5) the residence of Alfred A. Fuselier; 6) the sugar house of Alfred Fuselier; 7) the sugar house of Mrs. Meade’s lower tract; 8) a triangle of buildings at Mrs. Meade’s lower tract; 9) a large structure belonging to Thomas Wilcoxon, either his residence or a sugar house; and, 10) the sugar house of Richard Lynch. The sugar house of Joseph Charpentier probably was situated on the left bank since his planting was confined to that area.

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Extracted 24 Jun 2020 by Norma Hass from "Historical and Archeological Investigations of Fort Bisland and Lower Bayou Teche, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana" by Defense Technical Information Center, published 02 Jun 1991, pages 45-105.

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