New Orleans jazz Funerals from Susan Grissom on Vimeo.

Driving around there for the most part felt like time had come to a standstill. I became lost in the rich layers of history. It is still lush and the sugar cane was high and swaying in the breeze. Its far from perfect, but it is real, and it has retained its unique culture, which is as rich as its fertile soil.

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Night Shooting in Louisiana photographed by susan Grissom

more Night Shooting photographed by Susan Grissom

I hope this blog has given you a glimpse of how magical and charming Louisiana is. I haven’t even begin to cover all there is to tell you about this place, but I have found my point of view in this discovery, and it is interesting to see how one little thing leads you to completely different direction. I have a crush on Louisiana,; it is a special place and although this blog was a project for a Public History Program, I will be continuing the project, I will be returning there in the near future for more photographs and more conversations with people there.

I actually planned to do the Louisiana photography tour thirty years ago when I got my first 35mm. camera, but life took me elsewhere until last year. Going back down to New Orleans this time took me back full circle, where I started, like a bookmark. I have always had a desire to record Southern Culture,to grab hold of it one more time before it disappears and became like everything else, homogenized. Just looking at what happened when the tornado destroyed Toscaloosa, Alabama, makes me feel the urgency as I did after Hurricane Katrina.

Clarence John Laughlin in the 1940′s would often refer to places that caught on fire or would have some disaster and be lost to us forever, leaving only the ruins to remember it by. My clock is ticking…….

photograph by Susan Grissom

Please Adopt Me........

Notes From Sea Level | | jonbowermaster.com.

Laura Plantation is a Creole Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana. The Creole culture is a blending of three different influences; the French, West African and Native American. It was class and not race that determined social status in Creole Louisiana. Creole Women were very independent and successful as Plantation managers. The Creoles of this time period spoke French and maintained their own separate existence from the White Anglo Protestant. The Plantation was originally owned by Laura’s great great grandfather, Guillaume Duparc, whom was a French Naval officer during the American Revolution and was awarded the land by Thomas Jefferson. Duparc bought more of the surrounding land from the Acadians. It was originally an Indian village of the Colapissa Indians. The Manor House was built-in 1804 in the West Indies style with long porches, both upstairs and down, by highly skilled slave labor from French Senegal These slaves were the main influence for music, cuisine and architecture and lifestyle for the Creole Culture. The Mississippi River is 600 feet from the house, the levies had to be built up to prevent flooding in the 1920′s by the Corps of Engineers under the Hoover administration.

Four generations of the Duparc women ran the plantation after Guillaume Duparc’s death in 1808. When it came into Laura’s hands, she had to sell the plantation during an economic downturn. She married a protestant man from St.Louis where she lived out her life, she had become an American housewife. She had sold the plantation to an Alsatian family, the Waguespack’s and stipulated in the sale that the name of the plantation had to remain, The Laura Plantation. The Waguespack’s kept it as a sugar plantation until 1981. Descendants of the slaves from Laura Plantation still live in this area. Laura had written a 5,000 page memoir with all the documentation of the property’s history and it found its way to the current owners through all their efforts and research which led them to find more about the family. They have created a Creole Cultural Center at laura Plantation,that is wonderful and educational with the most entertaining guides who know their Louisiana history well. It is down to 13 acres and 27 buildings on the property, with 1,500 acres of sugar cane growing around it. Br’er Rabbit was written on the property by a visitor who overhead the workers telling the stories to the children in Creole French.

Code Noir was a Creole set of rules to follow with slaveowners.
You had to be Catholic to own slaves.
The slave had to be brought up Catholic.
Sex with a slave was prohibited.
They had to be provided with adequate food, shelter and clothing.
Slaves could not be tortured, but could be punished.
Slaves could chose who they wanted to marry.
If a slave injured a free person he could be executed.

There are many more rules if you look up Code Noir.

The slaves there lived into their 80′s and 90′s, free persons there lived to be over a hundred.

Laura’s grandmother bought 30 teenage girls and had them impregnated so she could have a crop of children on the far. She built 65 cabins for them, now only four are left. I have a feeling she would be really mad if she knew that.

Was in one of the slave quarters on the wall (date unknown)

Two families would have lived here photographed by Susan Grissom

On the wall in the slave quarters

photograph by Susan Grissom

photographed by Susan Grissom

photographed by Susan Grissom

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photographed by Susan Grissom

photograph by Susan Grissom

photographed by Susan Grissom

photographed by susan Grissom

photographed by Susan Grissom

In the bedroom of Laura Plantation

This portrait is behind a mirror and a ceiling cord turns a light on that makes her appear on the wall, but no one, seemed to notice it on the tour. The story behind the portrait is that the young lady in this painting died young, because her parents wanted her to be perfect,but she had a skin condition. They took her to Paris to be treated, the doctors in Paris gave her a series of poisons to clear up the condition, but it killed her instead. They made a death mask of her face, so they could have an exact portrait of her and they brought her back to Vacherie to be buried. The room this portrait was in, was the room where her Mother locked herself in and did not come out for thirty years, until her own death, she suffered such guilt.

More information on the cemetery is here

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photograph by Susan Grissom

photograph by Susan Grissom

photograph

photograph by Susan Grissom

photograph by Susan Grissom

photograph by Susan Grissom

photograph by Susan Grissom

photograph by Susan Grissom

As I was touring the River Road Plantations of Louisiana, I came upon this unexpected treasure that was not listed anywhere. It was the best surprise of my day.

Palo Alto has six thousands acres of sugar cane still being grown annually. It is a beautiful site. The old slave quarters are dilapidated but still there as a shell. I found this place by accident as I was lost after my visit to Vacherie, which you will read about in my next post, and this discovery was not on the map. I was so taken with the place I wandered around photographing until dark. I felt like I had found a beautiful, but forgotten world surrounded by live oaks and magnolias.

Vachaalo Alto Plantation, whose name means “tall trees,” was once a wedding gift from the wealthy Spanish plantation owner, Oscar Ayraud to his daughter Rosalie. The property was later purchased by Jacob Lemann. Since his purchase in 1865, the plantation has been home to every crop native to Louisiana’s rich soil. The plantation has grown considerably in its 150-year existence to encompass more than 6000 acres of sugarcane, pasture land, wooded land, and ponds.

Since its existence, the lands have been hunted and managed privately by its owners. Today, the lands have been opened to the public for guided hunting on its tradition rich land. The “Log Cabin” lodge was built by Jacob’s great grandson, Arthur Lemann Jr., and was constructed with materials from one of pirate Jean Lafitte’’ hideouts. The lodge is nestled in a pristine oak and cypress grove overlooking picturesque Bayou Tomare. Relics surround the rustic, yet comfortable, log cabin and antiques of the plantation’s past steeped in the bayou culture. The house is not on a plantation tour,unfortunately.

photographed by Susan Grissom

You can take the tour yourself here for now.