Historic Louisiana

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Above: Castagnos Cane Loaders
being shipped down Bayou Lafourche
near Donaldsonville.
COURTESY OF ARTHUR LEMANN .
Below: Castagnos Cane Loader in early
stage of production.
COURTESY OF PAUL MILANO.
HISTORIC LOUISIANA
140
THE CASTAGNOS FAMILY
Joseph Benjamin Castagnos came to
Louisiana from France in 1889. He was a
small man by today’s standards and stood
only five feet four inches in height. But
Castagnos was a man with big dreams, and his
invention of a cane loader would bring great
changes to sugarcane growers.
Born in Mirande Defarment, France, on
October 16, 1864, he emigrated from Lyon
aboard the vessel Marseilles in December of
1889. He moved to Port Barrow, near
Donaldsonville, with his father Dr. Pierre
Jacques Castagnos, a veterinarian and a
blacksmith, and his mother, Jeanne
Couloumet. Other family members from
France joined them in the area.
Castagnos married a native of Smoke Bend,
Louisiana, Laura Martha Richard. They
raised a family of four: Blanche, Edmund,
Leonce, and Lee. Descendants of Leonce still
live in Donaldsonville.
While today’s Louisiana sugarcane industry
continues to provide meaningful economic
contributions, it was “the Industry” in the
early 1900’s. In those early years, sugarcane
was loaded by field hands onto wagons,
which then transported it to sugar refineries.
It was slow, heavy, dirty work. Joseph, a man
full of ideas, decided that there had to be a
better way to harvest the area’s labor-intensive
crop. On July 22, l908, he applied for a patent
for a “new and useful improvement in
automatic grab or grapple.” With this grab,
and a cart of lightweight design that didn’t
bog down in muddy fields, the cane loader
became a sweet success. While other attempts
at mechanical devices were made, in the end,
they were too heavy and of no use in the mud.
Joseph’s loaders were soon equipped with
Fairbanks-Morse engines, a large, slow
turning eight-horsepower engine with big
flywheels. This was coupled by a chain drive
to a draw-works mechanism, which would lift
the load, hold it in place, and open and close
the grab. Old-timers today still talk about the
barking sound the engine made when lifting
the load of cane.
Joseph had no money to manufacture his
“dream machine” himself, but he soon found
a financial backer in New Orleans. In October
of l908, he assigned the patent rights to
Castagnos Cane Loader Company Limited for
the sum of $5. He retained forty-nine percent
of the company.
Joseph traveled widely, marketing his
invention. Sales extended to South America,
Cuba, and other sugar growing regions.
Through the years many improvements were
made and today, a Louisiana company,
Cameco Industries, manufactures a loader
that stands nearly two stories high, sits on
four wheels that are over six feet high, and has
an air-conditioned cab for the operator.
All of his descendants are proud of the
contribution this invention made to the
economy and lifestyle of South Louisiana.