Whitney Plantation

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The Whitney Plantation Map

The Whitney Plantation Museum is the only museum in Louisiana dedicated to the lives of enslaved people. During your visit, you will learn about the history of slavery in sugarcane plantations in southern Louisiana by visiting a memorial built to commemorate slavery; as well as primitive slave huts, a free men’s church, independent kitchen and a 1790 master’s houses.[1]

The museum is located on a winding river in Louisiana and is called a "plantation." The restored pre-war mansions along this route attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. This latest attraction provides visitors with a realistic understanding of pre-war life in the South. The Whitney Plantation was built in secret under absolutely non-traditional circumstances, and later turned into a museum telling stories about slavery, on the land where slaves worked for more than a century. This is the first in the United States.[2]

"Plantation tours are almost equally ubiquitous. At most properties, the visitor experience includes a guided exploration of the plantation home and grounds led by a living historian clad in period garb."[3]

History

The Whitney Plantation opened to the public as a museum on December 7, 2014. The restoration of the plantation was funded by the founder of the museum, John Cummings. Mr. Cummings was a trial lawyer in New Orleans and owned and operated the property for 20 years from 1999 to 2019. He restored it during the 15 years before artificial planting. In 2019, John Cummings donated the museum, which is now 501(c)(3) managed by the board of directors. In the first five years, the museum received more than 375,000 visitors from all over the world.

Today, Whitney Plantation educates the public about the history and legacy of slavery.[4]

Collection

Big House at Whitney Plantation

The following collection aims to learn more about the enslaved people who worked in the sugar, rice and indigo fields here, and the plantation owners who made their fortune from their labor.

Slavery

In this part, the museum tells all things about slavery. They are plantations (indigo, sugar cane), slavery workers, trade slavery, slave auctions, etc.

Louisiana Slave Trade :

Most of the slaves imported in Louisiana were shipped from ports in three main areas along the coast of Africa: Senegambia, the Gulf of Benin and Midwest Africa. Throughout the colonial period, most of the slave power came from Senegambia.

Skills and Pricing :

The price of each enslaved person is determined by a variety of factors, such as age, ethnicity, health status, personal behavior and skills. Adult individuals between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five and belonging to the same sex are generally more expensive than young and old. But in the same age group, prices for women are usually lower. Illness or maroon significantly reduced the value of slaves. Alexandre from Bambara State is a carpenter, cooper and good domestic helper. He is only thirty years old, but due to illness, it is estimated that there are fifty Piats. Manuel is a 23-year-old Creole, described as voleur et maronneur (thief and maroon), priced at 400 piasts. Most of the labor in the plantation is made up of field hands, some of whom are also known as "bons domestiques" (good servants) or "habilesà la garde des troupeaux" (good herders). These two sugar producers (su producers) belong to the Bambara country in West Africa: Alexis, 50, is estimated to have 250 Piasts; Barnabe, 30, is estimated to have 1,000 Piardi. The latter is also a long-term society (Sawtooth) and a good house for blacks. François is a fifty-year-old "lion riff" (African-Indian). Although he is old, he is estimated to be 900 Piadis. In addition to being an excellent domestic helper and carpenter, he is more important as a tanner (cooper), which is a trade urgently needed by the refinery to produce sugar cans (bull head). Skills make a difference between two people of the same age and gender, and there is no default setting.

Plantation Ownership

In this section, the museum tells about the history of plantation ownership and the list of owners Until 1752: Widow Bernard Vickner.

  • 1752-1770: Ambroise Haydel.
  • 1770-1774: Widow Ambroise Haydel and children.
  • 1774-1776: Louis Girard Pellerin then Antoine Albert.
  • 1776-1820: Jean Jacques Haydel Sr.
  • 1820-1839: Jean Jacques Haydel Jr. and Marcellin Haydel.
  • 1840-1860: Marie Azélie Haydel.
  • 1860-1867: Succession Marie Azélie Haydel.
  • 1867-1880: Bradish Johnson
  • 1880-1909: Pierre Edouard St. Martin and Théophile Perret.
  • 1909-1928: St. Martin and Perret’s heirs.
  • 1928-1946: Mathilde Louise Perret and George Henri Tassin.
  • 1946-1990: Alfred Mason Barnes of New Orleans.
  • 1990-1999: Formosa Chemicals and Fiber Corporation.
  • 1999-2019: John Cummings
  • 2019 – present: The Whitney Institute, 501(c)(3)
The Field of Angels

Building and Memorials

There are many historical buildings and memorials inside. The Whitney Plantation tells the story of the buildings, including big houses, churches, walls of honor, and so on.

The Big House

Charles E. Peterson, a senior landscape architect at the U.S. Department of the Interior, described the large house in the plantation as "one of the most interesting houses in the entire South." This is the duty of domestic slaves. They perform multiple tasks, such as cleaning, providing food and drinks, fanning the master while eating, fetching water from ponds and outdoor water tanks and even from the river to meet family needs, washing and ironing clothes, Male slaves also performed other tasks, such as gardening, raising poultry, and taking family members in a carriage. Female slaves also served as cooks, spinning mills, weavers, tailors, and midwives. During the day, young slaves could always meet the needs of every member of the master’s family. At night, they slept on a tray next to the master’s bed or in a nearby room.

The Antioch Baptist Church

The church is not the original building of the Whitney Plantation. The building was erected on Paulina on the east bank of the Mississippi River in St. James Parish after the Civil War. For many years, this was the only African-American church in the nearby area, and some former slaves from the river plantation also attended the church. When the community built the new church in 1999, the church donated this historic building to Whitney.

The Field of Angels

The Land of Angels is a memorial dedicated to 2,200 enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish between the 1820s and 1860s. Their deaths are recorded in the sacrament records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Their names are engraved on granite slabs and written on them are WPA slave narratives describing the daily lives of enslaved children in the south. Compared with cotton or tobacco plantations, sugarcane plantations in Louisiana have a higher mortality rate. Many of the children respected in this memorial died of disease, but some of them died under tragic circumstances, such as being struck by lightning, drowning or burning. The sacrament records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans also reveal the prevalence of young mothers and the high mortality rate of their children. This is also evident in documents related to the Whitney Plantation, which show that some enslaved women gave birth to their first children at the age of 14. Thirty-nine children died in Whitney during the period 1823-1863 depicted in this memorial. Plantation, almost once a year. Only six to five years old.[5]

External Link

Another collection in whitney plantation, click here

Reference

  1. Whitney Plantation.Whitneyplantation. Retrieved January 26, 2021
  2. Polly Rider. A History Of The Whitney Plantation, America’s First Slavery Museum. December 20, 2016. Theculturetrip. Retrieved January 26, 2021
  3. HEATHER GREENWOOD DAVIS. Plantations are a dark chapter in American history—here’s why to visit.Nationalgeographic. Retrieved January 26, 2021
  4. Whitney Plantation.Whitneyplantation. Retrieved January 26, 2021
  5. Whitney Plantation.Whitneyplantation. Retrieved January 26, 2021