Historic Louisiana

✧
January 10, 1844. Daily Report of…employment on the Houmas.
Field work ....................293
Wood cutters ..................9
Brass founders.................-
Cooper ...........................3
Bricklayers......................2
Cook ..............................3
Seamstresses ...................1
Grist mill .................10 on Sat.
Stock minders.................5
Collar makers .................2
Nursing children............19
Midwife ..........................2
Child under 7 ...............130
Light workers ......5(convalescent)
Total 526
Above: A slave inventory for Houmas
Plantation in the mid-1800s.
Bottom, left: The sugar district was just
below Canal Street.
COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM.
Bottom, right: Plantation workers
harvesting sugarcane.
COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM.
Ostlers............................9
Blacksmith ......................4
Wheelwright...................5
Carpenters ......................5
Saw mill .........................5
Laundresses ....................3
Barn house .....................9
Gap minders ...................1
Harness makers ..............1
Foremen .........................1
Hospital nurses...............4
Pregnant .........................5
children by 1858, ranging from Caroline, age
twenty, down to Joseph, just born. Their boys
were named Isaac, Gabriel, Luke, John, Mark,
and Joseph. Notice the old Gospel nature of
the names they gave their boys. Part of the
family, perhaps a large part, stayed in
Ascension Parish after the Civil War. Their
second youngest son, Mark, presided over a
large family in 1890, with his wife, Charlotte,
and eight children. Tom and Rose Milan had
eight children, ranging from seventeen-yearold
Lott to newly born Patuner. Included
was a set of twins, age ten. Archy and Dido
Davis also had eight children, ranging in age
from twelve-year-old John to one-year-old
Milford. Archy Junior was two. There were
many sons with the same name as their father
and the appellation “Junior.” These included
George Whitesides, Jr., Toby Ward, Jr., and
Dandridge Claiborne, Jr.
Billy Easy had been born in Africa. He and
his wife Sally had brought fourteen children
into the world. When journalist William
Russell met him in 1862, he was living by the
river’s edge, engaged in the work of a “porter.”
Typically the porter lived in a finely ornamented
“porter’s lodge,” such as is still found at
Manresa in Convent, Louisiana. At Houmas,
he was called “Boatswain.” He lived with his
old wife, Sally Bartley, in a wooden hut close
by the margin of the Mississippi. They were
both born in 1788. His business was to go to
Donaldsonville for letters, meat, or ice for the
house. “Boatswain” told Russell that though he
was born in Africa, he had no desire to return.
“I’m getting very old, massa. Massa Burnside
very good to Boatswain…. Golla Mighty gave
me fourteen children, but he took them all
away again from Sally and me.”
In the 1840s the United States consumed
about 550 million pounds of sugar annually,
with 300 million pounds coming from
Louisiana and Texas. Cuba supplied the
difference. American expansionism in the
1840s occasionally looked Cuba’s way. Small
armies of adventurers occasionally organized
in New Orleans to invade Cuba, a phenomena
that continued into the 1960s. But many of
Louisiana sugar planters opposed any effort to
annex Cuba for the good reason that it would
lead to the wholesale importation of Cuban
sugar without benefit of tariff. Why, they
reasoned, should Louisiana sugar planters be
put out of business to help Cuban planters?
HISTORIC LOUISIANA
44