New Orleans, LA – This morning we played the waiting game for a few hours. We had asked to extend our stay at the KOA here because there was more we wanted to see, and the management said yes, but it would mean changing sites. So we had to wait until checkout time for the party in our new spot to leave, as well as batten everything down for the move 10 sites down the way. We also took the car out to get it washed, which it sorely needed, and picked up a few groceries on the way back. So we put our time to good use!
With all that accomplished, we had a bite of lunch and then headed out for a visit to one of the plantations in the area. This one was about 40 miles west of New Orleans, and on the other side of the Mississippi River, but it was a lovely day and the drive didn’t take long.
The Laura Plantation belonged to a Creole family that raised sugar cane on the banks of the Mississippi starting in 1805. The succession of ownership of the plantation went through the women of the family, and Laura’s detailed memoirs, discovered in the national archives in France, have provided a full account of the family business, the life of the enslaved people who kept it going, and events and customs of the time.
The grounds are lovely, with ancient live oaks shading the big house, and flower and vegetable gardens adding colour beside it. The house itself is a restoration because it was partially destroyed by fire only a few years ago, but when it was done, they reverted back to its original appearance based on early watercolour paintings. Creole homes were always brightly painted and in its last iteration prior to the fire, it had been painted white, so the new old house is now yellow with red and blue trim.
Elmore, our guide, explained the architecture of the house, which followed the construction method of the Senegal slaves who built it – pillars of brick extending eight feet into the ground and the same height above ground, on which the house rested, to allow it to withstand seasonal flooding from the river. The rooms opened into one another without hallways, each with a set of French doors to the outside to allow breezes to flow through in the hot weather.
Up to 180 slaves lived on the plantation in wooden houses with only one or two rooms. Several of these houses were still standing. The slaves worked the fields from age 13 onward, while the younger ones helped in the kitchens. Elmore said one job of the youngest slaves was to ring the large bell that woke everyone in the morning; sometimes it rang at 3 am.
In the 1870s a professor of romance languages from New Orleans collected folklore stories from the slaves at the plantation, which became known as the Br’er Rabbit tales. I remember the stories of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby from my childhood, and this is where they came from!
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