Two more plantations

New Orleans, LA

Today I had a rather slow start but I did get to see a couple more of the plantations along the Great River Road north west of New Orleans and along the Mississippi.

I don’t have too many pictures today and the family stories of the two plantations are too convoluted for me to get straight. Coincidentally, both of these plantations are quite vividly painted on the exteriors. I have no pictures of the inside of the Laura Plantation as my camera was acting up during the tour and the guide was moving along at a good pace and I was engrossed in his information.

The first I visited is the San Francisco Plantation which is listed as a National Historic Landmark and which has been classified as “Steamboat Gothic”. It claims to be one of the most authentically restored plantations along the river which you can especially see in the ceilings which have been re-done based on the original designs uncovered under the soot from lard oil which they used for to burn in their oil lights. It’s vivid colors are something to see.

It features an above ground water cistern that used gravity to feed water into the cistern from the eaves and then again back into the house where it was filtered and used for household water. It also included an example of a shower that would have been used by the men only and which required a servant to assist by pulling open the stopper on the tank mounted above the shower making bathing a not-too-private affair. But they did heat the water before pumping it into the top of the shower.

There was also a recreation of slaves quarters and a school house from the same era which was donated by the parish (think county).

Just down the river and on the south side this time is Laura Plantation built in 1805. It is near Oak Alley which I visited the other day. It’s distinction is that it was owned by a Creole family and although not that unique, it was run primarily by a woman. Louisiana’s laws allowing women to own property (based on French law) made it quite common for women to own and run plantations. They struck gold doing research on this property in uncovering over 5000 pages of French ancestral documents and a first hand account of one of the family members “Laura”.

The matriarch of this property didn’t sound like a very nice individual driving her family to take over the plantation despite their wishes and her cruelty to the slaves was well documented. (Ie. Physical branding and selling families to different other plantations). Slaves at this plantation were originally from Senegal and one of their folk tales characters ended up being written into a North American children’s stories about Br’er Rabbit and there maybe some connection to this plantation through the documentation in writing of the oral stories from this area.