Fri (2 Jan) morning we three went to Magnolia Mound plantation. It's a Creole (French mixed with the local Indian or Caribbean) cottage, which means it's a house raised up on (brick) posts. The San Francisco plantation was too, but had a lower story of rooms down there. In the case of that one, those rooms might flood, but the real living space was upstairs.


Magnolia Mound is just north of the LSU campus and it and its outlying buildings are built on a mound, so out of the Mississippi flood danger zone. The original part was built in 1791, so pre-dates the fancy plantation houses. It originally had a gallery, veranda or porch, all the way around, but the house was expanded into the side galleries at the turn of the century, 19th that is, so no more side galleries. It was all constructed from cypress, of course. The plantation was originally about 900 acres around it, where they grew sugar cane, indigo, and some cotton. The woman on the left was the tour guide. She is wearing an Empire-waist dress instead of a hoop skirt because this house represents the Georgian and Regency periods, not Victorian. Part of the kitchen building can be seen behind and to the left of the house. In those days kitchens were a separate building due to the fire risk and the heat of the wood-burning stove.

The original owner was John Joyce, but his family lived in Mobile, MS and died on a trip to there. His widow inherited the land. She remarried a Frenchman, Du Plantier, and that family name is attached to some areas and apartment buildings around here. The couple is buried in the small, old cemetery near the in-laws.


The Magnolia sitting room.


One half of a bedroom. The man in the painting is Du Plantier's father. The house is decorated for the holidays, so there are evergreen branches and fruit around. At Oak Alley the guide told us about a pineapple tradition. When guests arrived that were staying on for a period, they were presented with a cut-up pineapple in their room. If they overstayed their welcome and the host was ready for them to leave, another uncut pineapple would be found in their bedroom. The idea being that they are supposed to take it and cut it somewhere else. The pineapple on the mantle is just for decoration.


The other view of that bedroom. The white sheet at the head of the bed is a mosquito net that extends out to cover the bed. The cradle at the foot of the bed has holes at the top of the posts for mounting support rods for a net as well. If you haven't been to an old house before, one thing that you might notice is how short the beds were. People were shorter then. Another thing is the lack of hallways. In French architecture from this period and into other plantation houses, there are no hallways, the doorways lead from room to room.


Thurs afternoon we drove south of the LSU campus to find the ruins of a plantation we knew of. All that's left is the columns. We asked about it at the Mound and were told it was called the Cottage and appears as such on the 1858 big map of plantations that all the plantation gift shops sell. I looked it up when we returned home. It was built in 1824 by Colonel Abner Duncan as a wedding gift for his daughter and her husband, Frederick Conrad. It was considered one of the finest in the Baton Rouge area. The Union army took it over during the Civil War and the troops occupied the plantation. In the 1920s the Conrad family started restoring the house and it was open to the public in the 1950s. It was used for the filming of "Band of Angels" (1957) with Clark Gable, Yvonne De Carlo, and Sidney Poitier. It burned to the ground in 1960.