Historic Louisiana

Edmond Forstall hired Rillieux to install the
system on his plantation, but a longstanding
feud between the Rillieux family and Forstall
ended the engagement. Rillieux first
demonstrated the effectiveness of the steam
train on the plantation of Theodore Packwood
in 1843. The Rillieux system used a copper
tubing system to pipe exhaust steam from the
grinding mill to a jacket under the first kettle.
It was called a train because the four kettles
were hooked together by copper steam pipes.
The heat released by the boiling liquid in the
first kettle then traveled in the copper tube to
the second kettle, and so on. This system
consumed much less energy than the open
pan system, for the same steam was used three
times to heat the kettles, while the vacuum
pan used a lower temperature for the final
boiling. The Rillieux system cut the energy
consumption of sugar making in half while
simultaneously increasing the efficiency of the
process. His machinery remains the
foundation of sugar making today.
In 1860, slaves made up forty-six percent
of Louisiana’s population. Nearly all worked
on sugar or cotton plantations. On Houmas
Plantation available information shows that,
compared to inner cities today, these rural
workers lived within a strong family structure
that carried over from generation to
generation. Families grew large, sent out
young shoots, and other families started,
formed of marriages between the large oldline
families. From about one hundred slaves
in 1815, Houmas steadily increased in
numbers. By 1844, Houmas had 526 slaves
serving in more than two dozen occupations.
Though most did field work, a substantial
minority practiced a variety of professions.
They erected the largest structures and the
smallest. Black carpenters and masons such as
Peter Nott built the various sugar houses, as
well as the fences and barrels.
Besides its size, the Houmas had another
remarkable characteristic. The slaves lived in
families headed by both a mother and father. In
1848 there were 584 individuals on Houmas,
of which 518 (eighty-nine percent) lived in
family groups and only 66 were unrelated
individuals. Most remarkable of all is that 105
of the 127 family groups contained both the
man and woman or father and mother as the
case may be. Of everyone on the Houmas, 444
or seventy-six percent lived in families headed
by both a man and a woman. Only twenty-two
of the family groups were single-parent
families. There was thus a remarkably strong
family structure amongst the slave workers of
Houmas plantation.
The families continued right up to the Civil
War. Eighteen of the families had six or more
members. Marcellas and Kitty Haines had nine
✧
Left: Norbert Rillieux was the natural son of
Vincent Rillieux, a merchant and inventor,
and of free woman of color Constance
Vivant. His scientific mind led him to
address the most useful and useless
questions of the day, from how to refine
sugar to how to decode the Rosetta Stone.
Trained, like many Creoles, in Paris schools
as an engineer, he developed a multiple
effect evaporator that replaced the antique
system of open kettles with ladles used in
the manufacture of sugar. By 1850, fourteen
major plantations employed the Rillieux
process and his ideas remain the basis for
sugar making today.
COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM.
Below: An aerial view of the modern town
of Monroe facing the Ouchita River.
CHAPTER IV
43