Melrose Plantation, also known as Yucca Plantation, is a National Historic Landmark located in the unincorporated community of Melrose in Natchitoches Parish in north central Louisiana. This is one of the largest plantations in the United States built by and for free people of color. The land was granted to Louis Metoyer, who had the "Big House" built beginning about 1832. He was a son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, a former slave who became a wealthy businesswoman in the area, and Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer. The house was completed in 1833 after Louis' death by his son Jean Baptiste Louis Metoyer. The Metoyers were free people of color for four generations before the American Civil War.
The Association for Preservation of Historic Natchitoches owns the plantation and provides guided tours. Some early twentieth-century traditions associated with the plantation, such as its first owner and origins of architectural style, have been disproved by historic research since the 1970s. An archaeological excavation begun in 2001 has revealed more evidence about the early history of the site, its owners and construction. In 2008, the state included Melrose Plantation among the first 26 sites on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
History
In 1974, the National Park Service described the site as follows, based on historical knowledge at the time:
Established in the late 18th century by Marie Therese Coincoin, a former slave who became a wealthy businesswoman, the grounds of Yucca Plantation (now known as Melrose Plantation) contain what may well be the oldest buildings of African design built by Blacks, for the use of Blacks, in the country. The Africa House, a unique, nearly square structure with an umbrella-like roof which extends some 10 feet beyond the exterior walls on all four sides, may be of direct African derivation.[2]
Buildings include the main house, the Yucca House, the Ghana House, and the Africa House, plus some outbuildings. The plantation was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.[2]
Since the 1970s, additional documentary evidence has been found that disproves the asserted identity of the founder. In addition, no evidence has been found to support the tradition that the property was originally named Yucca Plantation. Early twentieth-century owners named the extant buildings as part of promoting the plantation as a cultural center. A 2002 study of Creole building practices showed that there was no evidence of African traditions in the architecture. The so-called Ghana House is a simple log cabin type common in the area. Similarly, Africa House has been shown to be of design and building techniques similar to French rural structures of the time.[3]
Historical investigations from the 1970s, together with an archaeological investigation that began at Melrose Plantation in 2001, have uncovered evidence that both confirm some aspects and challenge other elements of local tradition about the complex. Research shows conclusively, through original contemporary records, that the core tract of 911 acres was granted in 1796 to Coincoin's second son, Louis Metoyer, not to Coincoin.
As the children of a French-American father and African mother, Louis and his siblings were considered multiracial "Créoles of color." Similar to the Metoyer siblings, many multiracial Creoles became educated property owners, particularly in New Orleans, Opelousas, and the Cane River and Campti areas of Natchitoches. Although not legally freed by his white father until 1802, Metoyer evaded Louisiana's Code Noir that prohibited enslaved men from being granted land. This was probably due to his father's wealth and standing.[4][5][6][7][8]
Contrary to the 1970s-era assessment of the property, which dated the construction of Louis Metoyer's first residence (Yucca House) to the mid-1790s, review of three land surveys of 1813 show that Louis Metoyer's residence was then south of the Red River (and south of the center of the Melrose complex). It was at the eastern edge of the plantation settled by his elder brother Augustin Metoyer.[3][9] The archeology study of European ceramic ware at the Yucca House site south of the river suggests it was first occupied after 1810.[10] Augustin Metoyer and his brother Louis were notable for founding and building the St. Augustine Parish (Isle Brevelle) Church in Natchez, Louisiana, the first in the state built by free people of color.
A glimpse of Melrose from the rear of the plantation building
The plantation is significant for its long occupancy by the Metoyer family, which was prominent in Isle Brevelle, a strong center of the "Creoles of color" community. Construction began on the "Big House" at Melrose before the 11 March 1832 death of Louis Metoyer.[11] His son Jean Baptiste Louis Metoyer completed the construction in 1833. At J. B. L.'s death in 1838,[12] his $112,761 estate (roughly $2,600,000 in 2007 purchasing power [13]) was divided between his young widow Marie-Susanne "Susette" Metoyer [14] and a minor son, neither with any experience in financial matters. Amid the financial depression that followed the Panic of 1837, the mother and son fell heavily into debt. After the mother emancipated the teenaged Théophile Louis Metoyer from the disabilities of minority, creditors filed a series of lawsuits. The Louis Metoyer Plantation went on the auction block.
On 22 March 1847, the Louis Metoyer plantation was struck off at $8,340 (~$231,232 in 2023) to the highest bidder, the French Créole brothers Hypolite Hertzog and Henry Hertzog—with the latter acting as agent for his sister Jeanne Fanny (Widow Dassize) Bossier.[15] The Hertzogs and Bossier then operated a cottonplantation, in partnership, until 1880. Like most planters of the region in the wake of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, they struggled financially and were able to do little to improve or maintain the property. (The debtors who sued them included the widow of J. B. L. Metoyer.)
Huge oak tree on the grounds of Melrose Plantation
In December 1881, the Metoyer-Hertzog-Bossier Plantation (still unnamed at this point) was sold at auction to satisfy an 1879 judgment rendered against Hertzog-Bossier in Louisiana's Fifth District Circuit. The purchaser, F. R. Cauranneau of New Orleans, held the land and houses as an absentee owner until April 1884, when he found a buyer willing to pay $4,500 (~$128,555 in 2023) cash. The new owner, an Irishimmigrant merchant named Joseph Henry, had married into a prominent local family. He gave the property the name Melrose, by which it is still known.[16]
Analysis of glass and nails from the site confirms three major periods of occupancy of Yucca House, c. 1807–1821, c. 1874-1888 (renovation likely after the 1884 purchase by Joseph Henry), and c. 1916-1930 (renovation by Henry's son John and his wife Carmelite "Miss Cammie" Henry). Assessment of remains of European ceramic ware indicates initial occupancy of Yucca House was post-1810, contrary to the 1796 date that historians earlier had proposed.[10]
Real estate broker Robert Andrew Wolf, Jr. (1930–2016) of Alexandria, Louisiana, and his partner, John Wasson designed the current Melrose Plantation structure. They sold the building in 1970. Wolf was a past president of the Alexandria-Pineville Board of Realtors and in 1984 was named "Realtor of the Year".[17][18]
Because of its strong association with the Metoyer family, Melrose Plantation is the major regional site for National Park Service interpretation of the history of Creoles of color in the region.[19] In 2008, the state included Melrose Plantation among the first twenty-six sites on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Natchitoches Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,515. The parish seat and most populous municipality is Natchitoches, the largest by land area is Ashland, and the most density populated area is Campti. The parish was formed in 1805.
Natchez is a village in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 597 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Natchitoches Micropolitan Statistical Area. The village and parish are part of the Cane River National Heritage Area and located on Isle Brevelle.
Established in 1994, the Cane River Creole National Historical Park serves to preserve the resources and cultural landscapes of the Cane River region in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Located along the Cane River Lake, the park is approximately 63 acres and includes two French Creole cotton plantations, Oakland and Magnolia. Both plantations are complete in their historic settings, including landscapes, outbuildings, structures, furnishings, and artifacts; and they are the most intact French Creole cotton plantations in the United States. In total, 65 historic structures and over a million artifacts enhance the National Park Service mission as it strives to tell the story of the evolution of plantation agriculture through the perspective of the land owners, enslaved workers, overseers, skilled workers, and tenant farmers who resided along the Cane River for over two hundred years. This park is included as a site on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Plaçage was a recognized extralegal system in French and Spanish slave colonies of North America by which ethnic European men entered into civil unions with non-Europeans of African, Native American and mixed-race descent. The term comes from the French placer meaning "to place with". The women were not legally recognized as wives but were known as placées; their relationships were recognized among the free people of color as mariages de la main gauche or left-handed marriages. They became institutionalized with contracts or negotiations that settled property on the woman and her children and, in some cases, gave them freedom if they were enslaved. The system flourished throughout the French and Spanish colonial periods, reaching its zenith during the latter, between 1769 and 1803.
The Cane River is a 30-mile-long (48 km) river in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, originating from a portion of the Red River. Historically, in the 19th and 20th centuries, it gained prominence as the locus of a notable Creole de couleur (multiracial) culture, centered around the National Historic Landmark, Melrose Plantation, and the adjacent St. Augustine Parish Church.
Marie Thérèse Coincoin, born as Coincoin, also known as Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin, and Marie Thérèse Métoyer, was a planter, slave owner, and businesswoman at the colonial Louisiana outpost of Natchitoches.
The Cane River National Heritage Area is a United States National Heritage Area in the state of Louisiana. The heritage area is known for plantations featuring Creole architecture, as well as numerous other sites that preserve the multi-cultural history of the area. The heritage area includes the town of Natchitoches, Louisiana and its national historic district. Founded in 1714, it is the oldest community in the territory covered by the Louisiana Purchase. Cane River Creole National Historical Park, including areas of Magnolia and Oakland plantations, also is within the heritage area.
Isle of Canes (ISBN 1-59331-306-3), an American historical novel from 2004 by Elizabeth Shown Mills and first published by Ancestry, the book division of Ancestry.com. This book follows an African family from their enslavement in 1735, through four generations of freedom in Creole Louisiana to its re-subjugation by Jim Crow at the close of the nineteenth century. Mills explores the family's "struggle to find a place in [a] tightly defined world of black and white" — a world made more complex by the larger struggle of Louisiana's native ancien regime to preserve its culture amid the Anglo-Protestant "invasion" that followed the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the resulting battle for political and social hegemony. Isle's central theme is the ambiguous lives of those who escaped colonial slavery only to find they could not survive as free without complicity in the slave regime. Mills conducted research for this book for 35 years.
Oakland Plantation, originally known as the Jean Pierre Emmanuel Prud'homme Plantation, and also known as Bermuda, is a historic plantation in an unincorporated area of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Founded as a forced-labor farm worked by enslaved Black people for White owners, it is one of the nation's best and most intact examples of a French Creole cotton plantation complex. The Oakland Plantation is now owned by the National Park Service as part of the Cane River Creole National Historical Park.
Louisiana African American Heritage Trail is a cultural heritage trail with 38 sites designated by the state of Louisiana, from New Orleans along the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge and Shreveport, with sites in small towns and plantations also included. In New Orleans several sites are within a walking area. Auto travel is required to reach sites outside the city.
St. Augustine Catholic Church and Cemetery, or the Isle Brevelle Church, is a historic Catholic parish property founded in 1829 near Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. It is the cultural center of the Cane River area's historic French, Spanish, Native American and Black Creole community. It is also the oldest surviving Black Catholic church in the United States.
Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site in Natchitoches, Louisiana, US, is a replica of an early French fort based upon the original 1716 blueprints by Sieur Du Tisné with the improvements made in 1731 by Boutin. The French called the original fort: Fort Saint Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches. In the 1970's, the State of Louisiana anglicized the name to Fort Saint Jean Baptiste.
Isle Brevelle is an ethnically and culturally diverse community, which began as a Native American and Louisiana Creole settlement and is located in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. For many years this area was known as Côte Joyeuse. It is considered the birthplace of Creole culture and remains the epicenter of Creole art and literature blending European, African, and Native American cultures. It is home to the Cane River Creole National Historical Park and part of the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Anne des Cadeaux (unknown—1754), was a Native American active in early colonial Louisiana, and was from one of the early Louisiana Creole families. She was a devout Catholic, and was enslaved but later gained her freedom.
Bayou Brevelle is a series of interconnected, natural waterways totaling over 18 miles in length in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Its main channel is at Old River and Kisatchie Bayou at Montrose to Natchez near the Cane River. During heavy rains or floods, Bayou Brevelle joins the Cane River. The bayou is flanked by Interstate 49 on the west and the Cane River on the east, and is one of the many waterways on Isle Brevelle.
St. Anne Chapel at Old River is a historic Catholic chapel founded in the 1800s along the banks of Old River near Cypress and Isle Brevelle in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, serving the Old River community. It is the cultural and religious center of the area's Louisiana Creole people, predominantly of French descent.
St. Charles Chapel at Bermuda is a historic Catholic chapel founded in the early 1900s along the banks of the Cane River on Isle Brevelle in Natchitoches Parish serving the unincorporated community of Bermuda, Louisiana. It is the cultural and religious center of the area's Louisiana Creole people, predominantly of French descent.
St. Joseph's Catholic Mission at Bayou Derbonne is a historic Catholic mission founded in the 1800s along the banks of Bayou Derbonne near Montrose and Isle Brevelle in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, serving the Montrose and Cloutierville Creole community. It was the cultural and religious center of the area's Louisiana Creole people, predominantly of French descent.
Jean Baptiste Brevelle was a Parisian-born trader, explorer, and one of the first soldiers garrisoned at Fort St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches in present-day Natchitoches, Louisiana and Le Poste des Cadodaquious in Texas.
Jean Baptiste Brevelle II was a French and Native American explorer, translator and soldier of the militia at Fort St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches in present-day Natchitoches, Louisiana and Le Poste des Cadodaquious in Texas.
1 2 3 "Yucca Plantation". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on January 14, 2009. Retrieved January 31, 2008.
↑ Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Marie Thérèse Coincoin (1742–1816): Slave, Slave Owner, and Paradox," Chapter 1 in Janet Allred and Judy Gentry, ed., Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2009).
↑ Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Documenting a Slave's Birth, Parentage, and Origins (Marie Thérèse Coincoin, 1742–1816): A Test of 'Oral History'," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 96 (December 2008): 246-66. .
↑ Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Marie Therese Coincoin: 1742-1816." 64 Parishes [formerly KnowLA: Encyclopedia of Louisiana.
↑ Louis Metoyer Private Land Claim Certificate B1953 (sections 17 and 94, Township 7 North, Range 6 West), Record Group 49, General Land Office, National Archives; Louis Mettoyer claim for 883.60 acres, OPEL: May 1796, File B1953, Louis Metoyer, Opelousas Notarial Records, Louisiana State Land Office, Baton Rouge; Boissier et al. v. Metayer, 5 Mart. (O.S.), 678 (1818)
↑ Gary B. Mills, "Louis Metoyer," in Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Glenn R. Conrad, ed., 3 vols. (New Orleans: Louisiana Historical Association, 1988),1:565.
↑ Gary B. Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills, Melrose (Natchitoches, Association of Natchitoches Women or the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches), 45
↑ "Enterrements, 1793-1796 [Etc.]," Section "Annee 1830---," burial date 12 March 1832; Register 15, Church of St. François (present Immaculate Conception), Natchitoches.
↑ "Enterrements, 1793-1796 [Etc.], burial date 1 October 1838
↑ St. François parish (Natchitoches), Book 11: entry 1821-#20; published in E. S. Mills, Natchitoches Church Marriages, 1818–1850: Translated Abstracts from the Registers of St. François des Natchitoches, Louisiana (Tuscaloosa, AL: Mills Historical Press, 1985), 21.
↑ Natchitoches Parish, La., Deed Book 33:133, recorded 22 March 1847.
↑ "Melrose Title Abstract" (source-cited typescripts of original deeds tracing chain of title), compiled by the legal firm Watson, Murchison, Crews, and Arthur, Natchitoches in 1972 for Elizabeth Shown Mills and Gary B. Mills as a starting point for their historic site documentation of the property, commissioned by the Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches; copy held today by E. S. Mills.
↑ "Robert Andrew Wolf". The Alexandria Town Talk. April 15, 2016. Retrieved April 16, 2016.
↑ MacDonald et al. (2006), p.140. Its history and lore is also explored in E. S. Mills's Isle of Canes (Provo, Utah: The Generations Network, 2004); and Gary B. Mills, The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976); also Gary B. Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills, The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color, revised edition (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2013).
MacDonald, Kevin; Morgan, David W.; Handley, Fiona J.L.; Lee, Aubra L. (2006). "The archaeology of local myths and heritage tourism: the case of Cane River's Melrose Plantation". In Robert Layton; Stephen Shennan; Peter Stone (eds.). A Future for Archaeology: the Past in the Present. London: UCL Press. pp.127–142. ISBN1-84472-126-4.
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