Built approx. 1825–1830 by Antoine Gosserand. Raised plantation home along False River representing the early Creole Greek Revival period. Privately owned by descendents of the Gosserand
Completed in 1790, the site of a tribunal after1811 German Coast Uprising, the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. Restored by a nonprofit organization and open to the public.
Plantation heiress and manager Laura Lacoul Gore's (1861–1963) autobiography tells the family's history and her experience living at the plantation. Open to the public.
Located at Patterson Street and Merrill Street, and noted for its productive truck gardens. Ravaged byHurricane Betsy in 1965 and dismantled several years later. Also known as Webert Plantation.
Upland or green seeded cotton was not a commercially important crop until the invention of an improvedcotton gin in 1793. With an inexpensive cotton gin a man could remove seed from as much cotton in one day as a woman could de-seed in two months working at a rate of about one pound per day.[12] The newly mechanized cotton industry in England during theIndustrial Revolution absorbed the tremendous supply of cheap cotton that became a major crop in the Southern United States.
At the time of the cotton gin's invention, the sub tropical soils in the Eastern United States were becoming depleted, and the fertilizer deposits of guano deposits of South America and the Pacific Islands along with the nitrate deposits in the Chilean deserts were not yet being exploited, meaning that there were fertilizer shortages, leading to a decline in agriculture in the Southeast and a westward expansion to new land.[citation needed]
Transportation at the time was extremely limited. There were almost no improved roads in the U.S. or in the Louisiana Territory and the first railroads were not built until the 1830s.[13] The only practical means for shipping agricultural products more than a few miles without exceeding their value was by water. This made much of the land in the U.S. unsuitable for growing crops other than for local consumption.[citation needed]
TheNapoleonic Wars and theEmbargo Act of 1807 restricted European trade, which did not recover until the end of theWar of 1812 in 1815.[citation needed] TheYear without a summer of 1816 resulted infamine in Europe and a wave of immigration to the U.S., with New Orleans being the destination of manyrefugees.[citation needed] The return of good harvests in Europe along, with the newly cleared and planted land in theMidwest andMississippi River Valley and improvements in transportation, resulted in a collapse in agricultural prices that caused the 1818–19depression. Agriculturalcommodity 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.Cotton prices were particularly depressed.[14]
Until the development of thesteamboat, transportation of goods on major rivers was generally accomplished either withbarges orflatboats, floated downstream or pushed upstream with poles or by hand using overhanging tree limbs. On the Mississippi River, most shipping was down river on lografts or wooden boats that were dismantled and sold as lumber in the vicinity of New Orleans.Steam-powered rivernavigation began in 1811–12, betweenPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New Orleans. Inland steam navigation rapidly expanded in the following decades.Railroads appeared before theCivil War, though at first were used to linkwaterways. After the Civil War, railroads took over most of the hauling of goods.
It was during the period of expanding steam transportation thatplantation agriculture dominated the Southern economy, with two-thirds of themillionaires in the U.S. living in Louisiana, mostly betweenNatchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans. The surviving plantation homes range from relatively modest dwellings to opulentmansions, some containing original furnishings and many with period furniture.[citation needed]
Due to poor transportation and slow industrialization, plantations tended to be somewhat self-sufficient, growing most of their own food, harvesting their owntimber and firewood, repairing farm implements, and constructing their own buildings. Many slaves were skilledblacksmiths,masons, andcarpenters who were often contracted out.[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.[citation needed] Contemporary descriptions cite the lack of towns, commerce, and economic development.[citation needed]
Besides the necessity of river transportation, the ground near the rivers and oldriver channels contained the best agricultural land, where thesandy andsilty soil settled, increasing the height of the naturallevees. Theclay soil settled farther away from the rivers and being less stable, it slumped to muddy back-swamps.[15] The plantations in the vicinity ofSt. Francisville, Louisiana, are on a highbluff on the east side of the Mississippi River withloess soil, which was not as fertile as the riveralluvium, but was relatively well-suited to plantation agriculture.
Examples of slave housing can be found on many of the extantplantation complexes. Historically housing for enslaved people on Louisiana plantations (prior to thereconstruction era), featured cabins consisting of two rooms, with one family in each room.[16] After the American Civil War in 1865, the United States of America hadabolished slavery, and the architecture changed for laborers on plantations to include more space, one example of this is found at theAllendale Plantation inPort Allen.[16]
^"Evergreen Plantation".National Historic Landmarks Program. National Park Service. Archived fromthe original on March 8, 2011. RetrievedFebruary 18, 2010.
^"Evergreen Plantation".National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary. National Park Service. Archived fromthe original on September 10, 2007. RetrievedFebruary 18, 2010.
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