Winter Quarters State Historic Site

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Winter Quarters
Winter Quarters, Photo 2 IMG 1260.JPG
Front of Winter Quarters
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Nearest city Newellton, Louisiana
Coordinates 32°0′46.368″N91°10′33.96″W / 32.01288000°N 91.1761000°W / 32.01288000; -91.1761000
Area7 acres (2.8 ha) [1]
Built1803
NRHP reference No. 78001437 [2]
Added to NRHPNovember 21, 1978

Winter Quarters in Tensas Parish, Louisiana, United States, is a surviving example of an antebellum cotton plantation. It is located south of Newellton on Lake St. Joseph, an ox-bow lake, or former bend in the Mississippi River.

Contents

History

The main plantation house began as a hunting lodge in 1805 built by Job Routh, grandfather of Julia Augusta (Williams) Nutt, but was soon enlarged and became a residence. The plantation was so named because the residents lived elsewhere during most of the year but came south for the winter. [3] Before the Vicksburg Campaign of 1863 during the American Civil War, there were fifteen plantations along Lake St. Joseph. However, Union troops destroyed all of them except Winter Quarters, where the soldiers were housed during the winter of 1863–1864. The plantation belonged to the wife of Haller Nutt, a planter who was pro-Union. [4] As a result, General Ulysses S. Grant ensured the plantation would not be damaged. [4]

Wade A. Netterville, brother of the plantation manager J. H. Netterville of Newellton, managed the store at Winter Quarters in the early years of the 20th century, employed in that capacity by the then plantation owner Dr. J. M. Gillespie. Netterville then ran the store at Panola Plantation prior to becoming the manager for two years of the Wyoming Plantation. He subsequently assumed the management of the 1,000-acre Panda Plantation near the parish seat of government in St. Joseph. [5]

During the 1950s, the James and Bea Doyle family lived at Winter Quarters. Their daughter, Barbara Sue Doyle Hage (1949-2016), was the 1962 March of Dimes poster child and at the time of her death at the age of sixty-six the oldest known survivor of spina bifida. Barbara Hage graduated in 1969 from Newellton High School and worked for a quarter century for the Louisiana State University Extension Service in St. Joseph. She was also a church pianist and vocalist, seamstress, and gardener. She and her husband, David C. Hage, had a daughter and two grandsons. [6]

In 1978, Winter Quarters was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and was previously open for public tours.

Plantations in the vicinity of Lake St. Joseph circa 1866 including Hard Times and Winter Quarters Plantations in the vicinity of Lake St. Joseph circa 1866.jpg
Plantations in the vicinity of Lake St. Joseph circa 1866 including Hard Times and Winter Quarters

The site was critically damaged in a tornado on April 4, 2011. As of February 2022, the site remains closed indefinitely and the State of Louisiana currently has no plans or a set date for reopening the site for public use. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tensas Parish, Louisiana</span> Parish in Louisiana, United States

Tensas Parish is a parish located in the northeastern section of the State of Louisiana; its eastern border is the Mississippi River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,147. It is the least populated parish in Louisiana. The parish seat is St. Joseph. The name Tensas is derived from the historic indigenous Taensa people. The parish was founded in 1843 following Indian Removal.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newellton, Louisiana</span> Village in Louisiana, United States

Newellton is a town in northern Tensas Parish in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana. The population is 1,187 in the 2010 census, a decline of 255 persons, or 17 percent, from the 2000 tabulation of 1,482. The average age of the population there is 41 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Joseph, Louisiana</span> Town in Louisiana, United States

St. Joseph, often called St. Joe, is a town in, and the parish seat of, rural Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana, United States, in the delta of the Mississippi River. The population was 1,176 at the 2010 census. The town had an African-American majority of 77.4 percent in 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tensas River</span> River

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The Hard Times Plantation is located in Tensas Parish, Louisiana and was used as a staging area by the Union Army in the Vicksburg Campaign. At the time of the Vicksburg campaign, Hard Times was owned by Dr. Hollingsworth.

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Routh Mounds is a Plaquemine culture archaeological site in Tensas Parish, Louisiana. It is the type site for the Routh Phase(1200 to 1350 CE) of the Tensas Basin Plaquemine Mississippian chronology. It is located approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) northwest of the Winter Quarters State Historic Site.

Samuel Winter Martien was a wealthy cotton planter who served as a Democrat from 1906 to 1920 in the Louisiana House of Representatives from his adopted Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana.

Thomas Magruder Wade, I, was an educator, politician, and civic leader from Newellton in Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana.

Clifford Cleveland Brooks, also known as C. C. Brooks, was a Georgia native who served as a Democrat from 1924 to 1932 in the Louisiana State Senate. Brooks represented the delta parishes: Tensas, Madison, East Carroll, and Concordia, a rich farming region along the Mississippi River in eastern Louisiana ranging from Vidalia to Tallulah to Lake Providence. At the time, two state senators served from the four-parish district.

Clyde Vernon Ratcliff, Sr., was an American cotton planter and politician from Newellton, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat from 1944 to 1948 in the Louisiana State Senate. He represented the delta parishes: Tensas, Madison, East Carroll, and Concordia, a rich farming region along the Mississippi River in eastern Louisiana ranging from Vidalia to Lake Providence. The four parishes elected two senators at the time, and Ratcliff's seat-mate was Andrew L. Sevier of Tallulah in Madison Parish.

George Henry Clinton was a chemist, lawyer, and Democratic politician from St. Joseph in Tensas Parish in the northeastern Mississippi River delta of the U.S. state of Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Felicity Plantation</span> Human settlement in United States of America

Felicity Plantation is a historic sugarcane plantation on the banks of the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is located along Louisiana Highway 18 in Vacherie, St. James Parish. Felicity is a sister plantation to St. Joseph Plantation, and was built around 1846 by Valcour Aime as a wedding gift to his daughter, Felicite Emma, and her spouse, Septime Fortier, who was also her cousin. Acquired by a bank in 1873, the plantation was purchased by Saturnine Waguespack in 1890, who merged it with the St. Joseph Plantation to form the St. Joseph Plantation and Manufacturing Company. The house still remains in the Waguespack family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lansdowne (Natchez, Mississippi)</span> Historic house in Mississippi, United States

Lansdowne is a historic estate that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi. The mansion was originally built as the owner's residence on a 727-acre, antebellum, hunting estate - like the estates of the landed gentry in England. The home and one hundred and twenty acres of the original estate are still owned and occupied by the descendants of the builder, who open it periodically for tours.

References

  1. Wertz, Jay (1997). Smithsonian's great battles and battlefields of the Civil War. William Morrow & Co. p. 316. ISBN   978-0-688-17024-0.
  2. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  3. "Forty-Year-Old Progress Report of Tensas Parish". The Tensas Gazette. April 28, 1993. p. 33. Retrieved August 14, 2024.
  4. 1 2 "The Haller Nutt Claim. The Findings of the Court Reported to Congress". The Evening Times. Washington, D.C. December 20, 1899. p. 4. Retrieved December 28, 2015 via Newspapers.com. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  5. Henry E. Chambers, Chicago: A History of Louisiana, 1925), p. 372
  6. "Barbara Sue Doyle Hage". The Monroe News-Star . Retrieved June 17, 2016.
  7. "Winter Quarters State Historic Site, closure notice on side menu" . Retrieved February 7, 2022.