Laura Plantation facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Laura Plantation
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Laura Plantation house in 2011 after restoration
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| Nearest city | Vacherie, Louisiana |
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| Area | 37 acres (15 ha) |
| Built | 1805 |
| Architectural style | Stick/eastlake, French Creole |
| MPS | Louisiana's French Creole architecture MPS |
| NRHP reference No. | 92001842 |
| Added to NRHP | February 3, 1993 |
Laura Plantation is a special old house and farm in Vacherie, Louisiana, that you can visit. It's on the west side of the Mississippi River. This historic place used to be called Duparc Plantation. It's famous for its unique Créole-style main house, built in the early 1800s. It also has several other old buildings, including two cabins where enslaved people lived.
Laura Plantation is one of only 15 old farm complexes in Louisiana that still have so many of their original buildings. Because it's so important to history, it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's also part of the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
A famous professor named Alcée Fortier collected Louisiana Creole versions of the West African Br'er Rabbit stories here in the 1870s. These stories are about a clever rabbit and a silly fool. Also, the family of the famous American singer-songwriter Fats Domino once lived on this plantation.
Contents
Exploring Laura Plantation's Past
In the early 1700s, a large Acolapissa Native American village called Tabiscanja was located on this land. Its name meant "long river view." Later, in 1785, people called Acadian refugees settled here.
In 1804, a French veteran named Guillaume Duparc asked then-President Thomas Jefferson for land. Jefferson gave him land along the Mississippi River. The native people, the Colapissa, continued to live on the back part of the land until 1915.
Building the Plantation Home
Enslaved people built Duparc's main house between 1804 and 1805. The house was shaped like a "U" with two wings around a central courtyard. A separate kitchen building was placed behind the main house. This kept the main house safe from fire and cooler in the summer.
Over the years, the Duparc family bought more land. The sugarcane farm grew to be over 12,000 acres (about 4,856 hectares). The main house and other buildings changed over time too.
The sugar mill was about 1 mile (1.6 km) behind the main house, surrounded by sugarcane fields. A long dirt road stretched 3.5 miles (5.6 km) behind the house. This road was lined with cabins where the enslaved workers lived.
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Life on the Farm
Before the American Civil War, the area where enslaved people lived had an infirmary (a small hospital), 69 cabins, shared kitchens, and water wells. Each cabin was home to two families. They had separate doors and shared a central fireplace. Near each cabin, families often had a small vegetable garden and kept chickens or pigs.
By the time of the Civil War, 186 enslaved people worked on the farm. The Duparc Plantation grew and sold crops like indigo, rice, pecans, and sugarcane.
The plantation continued to operate into the 1900s. Some parts of the main house were changed. Today, the complex includes the "big house," six original cabins where enslaved people lived, and a maison de reprise (a second house). The fact that the cabins where farm workers lived until 1977 still exist makes this place very important historically. It helps us understand the past.
The Unique Architecture
The main house at Laura Plantation is almost hidden by the low branches of large oak trees. It was built in 1804–1805. The "big house" has a raised brick basement and an upper floor made with bricks between wooden posts. Much of the house was built using parts that were cut off-site and then put together. It is one of only 30 large Créole-style raised houses in Louisiana. The inside of the house has special woodwork and a unique roof structure.
The house has two rows of five rooms. All the rooms open directly into each other, so there are no hallways. The inside of the "big house" has original old furniture. Some pieces were given to the plantation by the families who used to own it. Some parts of the house have been left unrestored. This helps visitors see how the walls were built long ago.
You can see many family treasures and old clothes on display. These items help you imagine what daily life was like. A book called Memories of the Old Plantation Home by Laura Locoul Gore tells us a lot about life at Laura Plantation.
Fire of 2004
On August 9, 2004, an electrical fire badly damaged the main house. About 80% of the house was destroyed, including the kitchen wing behind it. The left side of the house survived, but the right side's foundation was burned.
Restoration work finished in 2006, even with Hurricane Katrina interrupting in 2005. The ashes of the kitchen wing were cleared, but it was not rebuilt. Instead, the back corners of the house were covered with old gray boards. This shows where the two back wings of the house used to be when Laura Locoul, the last Duparc family owner, sold the plantation in 1891.
People of Laura Plantation
The first owner, Guillaume Benjamin Demézière Duparc, lived at the plantation for four years. He died in 1808, three years after the house was finished. His daughter Elisabeth married into the Locoul family.
Many years later, Laura Locoul Gore, who was born in the main house in 1861, inherited the plantation. She later moved to New Orleans. Her book about her memories was published in 2000.
Laura Locoul Gore became the fourth woman to manage the plantation. She ran it as a sugarcane business until 1891. Then, she sold it to Aubert Florian Waguespack. The Waguespack family lived and worked on the plantation for almost another century, until 1984.
The Br'er Rabbit Stories
The famous Brer Rabbit and Br'er Fox stories told in Louisiana and the South came from traditional tales in Senegal. Enslaved people brought these stories to America around the 1720s as part of their culture.
According to the plantation's history, Alcée Fortier, a neighbor and student of folklore, visited in the 1870s. He listened to the freedmen (formerly enslaved people) tell stories to their children. These stories were in the Louisiana Creole language, which was a mix of French and African languages. The tales were about Compair Lapin (the clever rabbit) and Compair Bouki (the silly fool). The rabbit often played tricks on others.
In 1894, Fortier published these stories in a book called Louisiana Folk Tales: In French Dialect and English Translation. He may have collected some of these tales at Laura Plantation and his own family's plantation.
In the late 1900s, the connection between Laura Plantation and Fortier's Br'er Rabbit tales caught the attention of a preservationist named Norman Marmillion. He worked to get investors to help restore the plantation over ten years. Some of these investors are descendants of the original owners.
See also
- Whitney Plantation
- Rural African American Museum, Opelousas
- List of plantations in Louisiana
- National Register of Historic Places listings in St. James Parish, Louisiana
Images for kids
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Front of the big house, painted in multiple colors.
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Dining room
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