Byways & Historic Trails Great Drives in America, Soldiers and Officers in American History, Easy Travel Organization Tips You Will Love, Bidwell-Bartleson Party Blazing the California Trail. Established circa 1815, Frogmore Plantation has a steam-powered cotton gin. Practicing archaeology, historic or prehistoric, in Louisiana is challenging given the states geology. During the Civil War just before Union Troops took New Orleans the banks there gave some of the confederate soldiers about $6 million in gold bullion and coins for them to keep safe from the Union troops. The Last Voyage of El Nuevo Constante: The Wreck and Recovery of an Eighteenth-Century Spanish Ship off the Louisiana Coast. Myrtles Plantation Grounds, Louisiana by Kathy Alexander. But Chloes plan went horribly wrong. The Napoleonic Wars and the Embargo Act of 1807 restricted European trade, which did not recover until the end of the War of 1812 in 1815. In 1808, after Bradfords death, Clark and Sarah moved their family into the Myrtles home. Visible Anyone can find this group. Cotton prices were particularly depressed.[14]. During the 1700s Louisiana had plantations scattered all over the state. None of which has been recovered. Melrose Plantation, Melrose, LA This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. The associated church is long gone. What the general, along with several other future owners did not know was that before the land had been seized by the Spanish, it belonged to a local Indian tribe known as the Tunica. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. Over the years treasure seekers have found large amounts of gold and silver coins that date from 1802 to 1809 on the beaches there. Known as the "Louis XIV of Louisiana," he was reputedly the wealthiest person in the South. Although Lafitte was headquartered in Louisiana he also visited other states that he supposedly buried treasures including Texas and Alabama. Archaeology revealed that the cribs, normally built of logs and filled with stones, were actually constructed of hewn timbers from nearby buildings and filled with clayey sand, capped with stone, brick, and part of at least one sugar kettle. One of the tales of Lafittes buried treasure in Louisiana states that Lafitte spent a considerable amount of time Sabine River. It was intentionally burned in 1862 to prevent it from falling into Federal hands. The numerous artifacts recovered from these features illustrate the commercial and domestic activities of a remote sawmill community. Phase I and II Cultural Resource Investigations of the Proposed Flopam Inc. Chemical Plant Site, Iberville Parish, Louisiana. Although searching for the lost wooden chest of treasure has been done by the family the chest just might still be there in the garden waiting for discovery. Ryan, Joanne and Thurston H.G. Church, R., D. Warren, R. Cullimore, L. Johnston, W. Schroeder, W. Patterson, T. Shirley, M. Kilgour, N. Morris, and J. Moore. New Orleans: Earth Search, Inc., 1995. Shipwrecks Near Fort Livingston Hold Treasures, Wreck of the Oregon and John Adams Treasure, Miners Buried Gold Near The Ruins of Lincecum, Buried Gold on The Walter C. Flowers Estate, Ghost Town of Lafitte Villiage, 21 miles south of Marrero, Louisiana. Not all plantations fed off of slavery, but all of them did run on grueling work. Historic Exploration (15411803) and the Colonial Period. A wealthy judge and businessman from Washington County, Pennsylvania, Bradford showed interest in the area before the conclusion of the unsuccessful Whisky Rebellion forced him to settle there. The Thibodeaux plantation is located near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana off of County Road 31 in St. Martin Parish. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1995. After the war, many planters, having lost access to enslaved labor and the capital their ownership represented, lost their land. My goal is to showcase the obscure, sometimes historic, forgotten places I have visited across the Southeast. The Parlange plantation is located near New Roads Louisiana in Pointe Coupee Parish. This is a list of plantations and/or plantation houses in the U.S. state of Louisiana that are National Historic Landmarks, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, listed on a heritage register; or are otherwise significant for their history, their association with significant events or people, or their architecture and design.[1][2][3]. However, the archaeological remains of others have been identified on Nina Plantation in Pointe Coupe Parish, Westwood Plantation in Catahoula Parish, Helvetia Plantation in St. James Parish, and elsewhere. The latter may be found at Evergreen (St. John the Baptist Parish), Laurel Valley (Lafourche Parish), and Magnolia (Natchitoches Parish) Plantations. This plantation is one of the largest plantations in the United States built by and for free people of color. In the area where the islands that are known only as #82 and #83 on the Mississippi river just below New Orleans, two steamships sank here in February and March of 1871. Smith, Steven D. and George J. Castille III. Most of the artifacts from this site consisted of metal ship fittings and fasteners and cabin accouterments, but tools, engine parts, and armaments, including solid and canister shot for the ships single thirty-two-pounder cannon, were also recovered. In Lost Plantations of the South, Marc R. Matrana weaves together photographs, diaries and letters, architectural renderings, and other rare documents to tell the story of sixty of these vanquished estates and the people who once called them home.From plantations that were . Preserved below ground were two brick-lined privies and a brick-lined well. Angola: Plantation to Penitentiary. It is believed that she and Clark were having an affair. By the time the Civil War came to Louisiana, the once-tiny plantation had grown to a massive 2,640 acres. The plantation was once the center of a 900-acre operation not far from the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. This ghost town lies 21 miles south of Marrero, Louisiana. These treasures could have been buried by Lafitte or another pirate who frequented the area because a knife typically used by Caribbean Pirates was found in the area with the treasure. Archaeologists have identified the remains of several others. The two standing sugarhouses are at Avery Island in Iberia Parish (built circa 1830), and Rosalie in Rapides Parish (built circa 1845). In antebellum Louisiana the average sugar plantation had a value of $200,000, whereas even the largest cotton plantations were worth only half that. Once stretching over 6,000 acres to the shores ofLake Pontchartrain, Destrehan was actually a small community that supported several households. Check out these nine stories of buried treasure throughout the state. Archaeological and Biological Analysis of World War II Shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico: Artificial Reef Effect in Deep Water. The cabins were located behind the plantation main house, in two rows paralleling the road to the plantations sugarhouse. Taensas avoyel-taensa.org The Taensa, indigenous people to Louisiana, supposedly buried their treasures when the Spanish invaded. This plantation is particularly interesting to me since it is: This industry declined once major forest tracts had been cut. Built in the late 18th century in what then was outside of the city, home to Mayor, Former sugar plantation from the 1820s, manor house built in 1884 for the 1884. In 1864, a Union naval squadron, in retreat after the battle of Mansfield, was trapped in low water above rocky rapids on Red River at Alexandria. In 1883, grading for construction of a segment of the New Orleans, Mobile, and Texas Railroad in the site area had exposed three burials and one possible mound. [citation needed]. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and metal detecting and digging is probably forbidden but it wouldnt hurt to ask. One of these house servants was a young woman named Chloe. New Orleans: US Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, 2007. Around the turn of the 20th-century, Monsieur Richarde was said to have buried his fortune in his garden, which was never fully recovered. The first oil in the state was discovered in 1901, and pipelines, natural gas plants, and refineries built to process it. On Honey Island on the Pearl River close to the town of Pearl River, Louisiana. Whitney Plantation: Archaeology on the German Coast. $37.22 - $101.80 5 Used from $37.22 1 New from $101.80. House destroyed by fire in 1963. The mansion was moved in 1961 to Jeanerette, Louisiana but the old gardens there might still be visible. While prehistoric archaeologists have only archaeological artifacts, objects made and used by people, to examine, historical archaeologists use both historical records (documents, photographs, letters, newspapers, etc.) Rees, Mark A., Ed. The clay soil settled farther away from the rivers and being less stable, it slumped to muddy back-swamps. Two occupational strata were identified. 1 (2012): 5-23. This Fort was used as a defense in the early 19th century. Locations best suited to habitation were often repeatedly occupied, so that most of Louisianas historic sites have components dating to several of these time periods. The Pirate Jean Lafitte lived here at one time. The present-day plantation serves as a memorial to the slaves who lost their lives, and the brutal labor responsible for the plantation's success. Lost Plantations of the South By Marc R. Matrana Hardcover : 9781578069422, 336 pages, August 2009 Hardcover $40.00 Request Desk or Examination Copy Request a Media Review Copy Ebook available An illustrated history of the grand southern plantation homes lost to war, disaster, neglect, and progress Description All rights reserved. There are a huge number of beautiful buildings, luscious gardens, and historic artifacts that also represent some of the darker chapters of Louisianas historysuch as chattel slavery. During the colonial period, Canadian, European, African, and Anglo-American immigrants established frontier settlements among the indigenous Native Americans. The location of the shot indicated where and how the gun was mounted, and an embossed copper alloy plate that the engine was likely manufactured in Britain. " SANKOFA is an Akan word meaning "go back and take.". Fort Livingston has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places so you will want to ask permission before doing any metal detecting or digging in the area. Near New Roads Louisiana in Pointe Coupee Parish. To contact Reference staff in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room, please use our Ask A Librarian service or call the reading room between 8:30 and 5:00 at 202-707-6394, and Press 3. The petrochemical industry soon followed. The award-winning tour at Laura Plantation transports visitors into the Creole world of Laura Locoul (4th generation of the Laura Plantation family), exploring the complex relationships of four generations of one family, both free and enslaved. Belle Grove, also known as Belle Grove Plantation, was a plantation and elaborate Greek Revival and Italianate-style plantation mansion near White Castle in Iberville Parish, Louisiana.Completed in 1857, it was one of the largest mansions ever built in the Southern United States, surpassing that of the neighboring Nottoway, today cited as the largest antebellum plantation house remaining in . As the Goodland mill was not close to a navigable waterway, railroads were used to haul logs and lumber to and from the mill. In the 1800s the slaves of the plantation rose up against the white owners and killed all of them. Its located two miles southwest of Sunset Louisiana on the Bayou Bourdeaux. Both wooded and open, agricultural land. Another location near Monroe, LA, where treasure was supposedly buried at the old Limerick Plantation. Sometimes called the most opulent plantation in America, San Francisco plantation attracts visitors for its amazing architectural details. Sankofagen Wiki run by Karmella Haynes has a list of Louisiana Plantations and Slave Names listed by county, for counties formed prior to 1865. Archaeology is the study of past human activity through its surviving material remains. 2023 Louisiana Office of Tourism. At Nina, a thick deposit of alluvium from an 1851 flood separated earlier trash deposits from later ones. This town was notably used by pirates and many treasures have been unearthed in this area. The layout of these house lots, and the artifacts they contained, were compared to those of the African American workers at Goodland to look for differences in social and economic class and ethnicity. North of Cheniere Ridge, Louisiana near a shell bank on Lake Misere, Gold and silver coins that date from 1802 to 1809, $100,000 to $500,000 worth of gold and silver coins and jewelry. But that's just one of at least 17 plantation cemeteries Martin has documented. After the Civil War, railroads took over most of the hauling of goods. and fortunes were hard to come by and easily lost. We love to hear your memories of these Only in Louisiana trips! To see this page as it is meant to appear, please enable your Javascript! After the war, many planters, having lost access to enslaved labor and the capital their ownership represented, lost their land. Several items, including a pierced 1793 Spanish real, glass beads, pierced shells, buttons, and smoothed stones, most often found near the cabin hearths, may have been used as charms or amulets. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. My photographs have been featured all over the world including on CBS Inside Edition, CNN Travel, Houston Chronicle, The Weather Channel, MSN, Yahoo News, NPR, the UK Sun, the Daily Mail, NOLA.com, AL.com, and many others. [citation needed] Cloth, shoes, and clothing were imported from Europe and from the Northeast U.S.[citation needed], The self-sufficiency of plantations and cheap slave labor hindered economic development of the South. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. As any ghost hunter or supernatural historian will tell you, this type of sacrilege is a breeding ground for supernatural activity, and not usually friendly activity at that, as the spirits of the dead are never happy about being rudely disturbed. Leon C. Vial, Sr. (1878-1939) - Image Leon C. Vial, Sr. (1878-1939) - Image Leon C. Vial, Sr. (1878-1939). All these structures survived until the mid-twentieth century, by which time Angola and six adjacent plantations had become part of todays Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. In our blog we encourage people to find and share their family histories to make meaningful connections with other peoplepast, present, and future. The surrounding wooded areas provided game for food and furs, wood for fuel and lumber, raw materials . It is said that many of those outlaws buried their loot here. At least one cabin had a fenced-in yard for a garden and/or livestock. Agriculture and industry improved during the World Wars but suffered during the intervening Depression. The Gulf of Mexico contains one of the greatest concentrations of Allied vessels lost to German U-boats worldwide. The slaves then buried all the treasure that they took from the plantation house somewhere on the plantation. This is a well-preserved plantation that still stands today and is owned by the American Oil Company. Aillet House Plantation. You'll receive your first newsletter soon! Artifacts and coins from this wreck have been washing ashore at Profit Island ever since. Agricultural commodity prices remained depressed for many years, but their eventual recovery resulted in a new wave of land clearing, which in turn triggered another depression in the late 1830s. But she could only find two of the three wooden chests. These vessels were manufactured in New Orleans between 1900 and 1916. Many planters were good businessmen, buying and . The grinder was originally horse powered, but later converted to steam. Ravaged by. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Many of them still stand as a testament to the interesting agricultural history that dotted the state. Baton Rouge: Coastal Environments, Inc., 1984. The main house was moved and is now located in Sherevport, and the plantation store is now located in Natchitoches. 7. The second occupation at this site was a prehistoric mound site buried under four to five feet of sediment that had been rapidly deposited by the Mississippi River through a crevasse, or break, in the rivers natural levee, several hundred years before the French settlement during the Coles Creek period (7001200 CE). It is said that one of the owners Hippolyte Chretien buried many large chests containing $650,000 in gold and silver coins on the property. Many planters were good businessmen, buying and . Your email address will not be published. This would create an arsenic-like liquid she planned to pour in the batter for a birthday cake she was making for one of the children. As waterways cover almost a fifth of the state, shipwrecks are an important component of Louisianas historical archaeological record. Sometime during the Civil War Confederate soldiers were being pursued by Union troops and they buried $20,000 in gold and silver coins close to a spot named Old Camp Place. The other story suggests that a Frenchman by the name of Pierre Rameau buried $450,000 in gold bullion on the island. Jean Dorville Landry. AtFrogmore Plantation and Ginsin east-central Louisiana, cotton is the focus.