Acadia Plantation

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The Acadia Plantation was a historic plantation house in Thibodaux, Louisiana, U.S.. It was the plantation of James Bowie, who served in the Battle of the Alamo.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 29, 1987. It was demolished in 2010.

In 2010 Acadia Plantation was demolished and a plaque was placed on Hwy 1 next to Nicholls State University in memory of the plantation. Construction crews worked from the inside out as they dismantled portions of the historic plantation home. The land and home was purchased by Jake Giardina and partner Ron Adams in 2003 from the Plater family as part of a 3,000-arce transaction. The home's future has been a topic of local debate since that time, although there have been no organized attempts to save it. It was listed on the National Register of Historical Places. The 3,400-acre plot of land is now a subdivision which includes a mix of stores, restaurants and homes to the people of Thibodaux. The 132-arces of Acadia Plantation is residential homes and businesses. The style and arrangement is similar to those found in the New Orleans French Quarter. A grammar school, children museum, doctors office are among the developments of the subdivision.
History

Acadia Plantation, with its gables, dormer windows, and ornate gallery, is located south of Bayou Lafourche, along the crest of the natural levee. Highway 1 now approximately 50 meters to the north, and Nicholls State University is approximately 500 meters to the west-northwest. The home is now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Plater, Jr. The long history of this plantation is a colorful tale of Louisiana's past. Acadia plantation was first owned by the Bowie brothers, Jim Bowie, Rezin Bowie, and Stephen Bowie who had a lucrative business that involved buying slaves from Jean Lafitte in Galveston, Spanish Texas, and bringing them overland to Opelousas to be sold. Indian trouble made this a dangerous route, however, so in 1819 operations were moved to Houma, Louisiana. In 1827 a flood drove the brothers from Houma, leaving them in need of new headquarters. It was Lafitte who suggested Bayou Lafourche for the Bowie brother's new establishment.

In 1828 the brothers began buying several adjoining plantations naming the land Acadia. Separate homes were built only yards apart for Jim, Rezin, and the brothers' mother. On this land the Bowies built Louisiana's first steam-powered sugar mill. In 1830 the brothers purchased the back land totaling the size of the plantation to about twenty-one hundred acres. Jim's restlessness soon had him packing off to Texas, where he later became one of the many heroes of the Battle of the Alamo.

In 1831 Acadia Plantation was sold to Duncan, Robert Walker and James Wilkins. During this time the Union Bank of Louisiana opened a branch in Thibodaux and invited landowners to mortgage their land to buy shares in the bank. The owners of the plantation lost everything to the bank in 1842 because of a depression and two years of crop failure. In 1845 Philip Barton Key, nephew of Francis Scott Key, and mother Anne Plater Key bought the land from the bank. This included all the land of Acadia, the growing crops, every slave, and shares in the bank. He added three other sizable tracts of land to the estate before his death in 1856.

The land was then purchased by John Nelson and his son-in-law, Andrew Jackson Donelson, (a nephew of Mrs. Andrew Jackson) until he died in 1858, and the war and postwar years saw several mortgages and lawsuits developed from Nelson's attempts to hold the plantation together. When Acadia was seized in lieu of taxes for 1871 and '72, Edward J. Gay, paid the debt, and operations of the plantation were resumed by Gay and Nelson. When Edward J. Gay died the Prices formed one spacious home by joining the three original homes of Jim, Rezin, and Mrs. Bowie. The Prices also ran the sugar mill on the land from 1850 until 1926, and continued to farm cane. In the late 1900s a dairy farm was set behind the main home and operated until the 1940s.