National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior FINDING AID CARI 0003: Oakland Plantation Records and Prud'homme Family Papers 1809-1993, undated (bulk dates: 1890-1982) Prepared by History Associates Incorporated 2013 National Park Service Catalog Number: CARI 35005 CARI 35005 i TABLE OF CONTENTS Copyright and Restrictions ……………………………………………………………ii History ………………………………………………………………………………….1 Scope and Content ……………………………………………………………………...7 Hierarchy ………………………………………………………………………………..10 Series Descriptions …………………………………………………………………….. 18 File Unit Descriptions ………………………………………………………………….. 51 Container List ………………………………………………………………………….. 55 CARI 35005 ii COPYRIGHT AND RESTRICTIONS The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. The various state privacy acts govern the use of materials that document private individuals, groups, and corporations. 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The National Park Service is not legally liable for copyright, privacy, or publicity infringement when materials are wrongfully used after being provided to researchers for "fair use." This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if fulfillment of the order is judged in violation of copyright or federal or state privacy or publicity law. CARI 35005 1 HISTORY Oakland Plantation is an agricultural complex located south of Natchitoches, Louisiana on Cane River Lake, an oxbow lake of the Red River system. The Prud'homme family's nearly 200-year history as the owners of Oakland Plantation began with Jean Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme (1762- 1845), the son of Jean Baptiste Prud'homme (1735-1786), a physician and planter, and the grandson of Jean Pierre Philippe Prud'homme (circa 1673-1739), a merchant and trader who emigrated from France as a soldier in the French military and who had settled in the newly- established post of Natchitoches, Louisiana on the Red River by 1726. Jean Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme married Marie Catherine Lambre (1763-1848) in 1782. Around 1792, he purchased land that straddled the Red River, thirteen miles south of Natchitoches, which would eventually become Oakland Plantation. By 1795, Jean Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme owned thirty-eight slaves, who helped him farm indigo and tobacco crops. After Eli Whitney's cotton gin revolutionized Southern agriculture, Jean Pierre Emanuel introduced cotton to the region in 1797, becoming the first planter to grow cotton on a large scale west of the Mississippi River in the Louisiana Purchase Territory. The plantation system was common in the South until the mid-twentieth century, and was a significant element of American agricultural production. The system revolved around a cash crop, primarily cotton, grown on a large scale for profit. The most successful plantations required large units of fertile land, abundant, and cheap labor, on-site preliminary processing techniques, and methods of transport to and from a network of factors and factoring houses to market cash crops. All of these were present in Louisiana during the antebellum period. In the typical system for processing the cotton crop for market, cotton was hand-picked and ginned on the plantation and then compressed into four or five hundred pound bales for ease of transport. As a prominent member of the Natchitoches community, Jean Pierre Emanuel witnessed Louisiana's admission to the Union in 1812, and was a representative at the Louisiana constitutional convention in New Orleans in 1812. Jean Pierre Emanuel expanded the plantation in the early nineteenth century, and by 1820 he owned seventy-four slaves. In 1818, he began building a plantation house, and in 1821, the family moved in. The house and plantation would be called "Bermuda" until 1870 when the plantation was partitioned by the family. The house and land on the west bank of the Red River thereafter became known as "Oakland." By 1830, the estate had ninety-six slaves, and Jean Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme's youngest son Pierre Phanor (1807-1865) began assuming the responsibilities of running Bermuda Plantation. In 1835, Pierre Phanor married Susanne Lise Metoyer (1818-1852). Pierre Phanor and Susanne Lise had five children: Catherine Adeline (1836-1878), who married Winter Wood Breazeale in 1856; Jacques Alphonse (1838-1919), who married Elisa Elizabeth "Lisa" LeComte in 1864; Marie Emma (1839-1854), who died unmarried; Marie Therese Henriette "Harriet" (1842-1922), CARI 35005 2 who married Dr. Blount Baker Breazeale, Jr. in 1865; and Pierre Emanuel (1844-1934), who married Marie Julie Buard (1845-1933) in 1866. After Susanne Lise died in 1852, Pierre Phanor married her sister, Marianne Cephalide Metoyer Archinard (1817-1857), who had two daughters by her first marriage: Irene Archinard Buard and Louise Desiree Archinard Locoul (1836-1911). An 1862 assessment of Bermuda Plantation showed that Pierre Phanor Prud'homme's property included 900 acres in cultivation, 1200 woodland acres, 100 acres directly fronting the Red River, 1000 acres of pine woods, a lot and townhouse in Natchitoches, and one hundred forty-six slaves. The Civil War broke out in April 1861, and Pierre Phanor's sons, Jacques Alphonse and Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme, had both enlisted in the Confederate army by May 1861. Both sons survived the war, and although Bermuda Plantation's cotton gin and press were burned during the Federal campaign up the Red River in the Spring of 1864, the Main House, many outbuildings, supplies, and livestock escaped virtually unscathed. The plantation system underwent changes after the Civil War, with the use of sharecroppers and tenant labor instead of enslaved workers. In this modified form, the plantation system continued to dominate Southern agriculture from the Reconstruction period until the early twentieth century, when the invasion of the boll weevil, the departure of laborers for urban jobs, and the mechanization of agriculture led to its decline. With Pierre Phanor Prud'homme's death in 1865, his sons Jacques Alphonse and Pierre Emanuel took over Bermuda Plantation. By 1866, a new gin and press were under construction. In 1870, Jacques Alphonse and Pierre Emanuel divided the plantation into two parts, with Jacques Alphonse taking 893 acres of the west bank property, which he rechristened "Oakland," and Pierre Emanuel taking 837 acres of the east bank, which he named "Atahoe." Jacques Alphonse Prud'homme (1838-1919) married Elisa Elizabeth "Lisa" LeComte (1840- 1923) in September 1864, and they had eight children: Pierre Phanor (1865-1948), who married Marie Laure Cloutier in 1891; Jules LeComte (1867-1916), who died unmarried; Edward Carrington (1869-1941), who married Emma Laura Buard Prud'homme in 1894; Marie Cora (1871-1952), who married Edward G. Lawton in 1894; Marie Atala "Lallah" (1875-1958), who married Samuel Hyams Hill in 1898; Julia Eleanore (1878-1933), who died unmarried; Marie Maie (1880-1964), who married Robert A. Hunter in 1903; and Marie Noelie (1883-1978), who married Dr. Leroy Cockfield in 1917. Like his father and grandfather, Jacques Alphonse Prud'homme was a leader in the Natchitoches community, while also maintaining one of the region's most prosperous cotton plantations. Sometime between 1873 and 1874, Jacques Alphonse established the plantation store, which was similar to a commissary, and served both the public and the plantation's tenants. While one of its functions was to provide supplies for the plantation, it also contributed to the social aspects of the community. The store also housed the new Bermuda post office, which opened in 1877, the same year that Reconstruction formally ended in Louisiana. By 1885, all three of the Prud'hommes' sons, Pierre Phanor, Edward Carrington, and Jules LeComte, were enrolled in secondary and post-secondary programs at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, while their eldest daughter, Marie Cora, was attending the primary and secondary school, St. Mary's Academy, in