01/30/2018
The photos on this post reveal the source reference for the Cane River historical map recently produced by several people locally.
The first photo is a close-up of the area of Murphy Barn on the land owned by JB Cloutier Jr. during the late antebellum era. Murphy Barn is the only surviving building from the cluster of antebellum buildings in the area of the first photo. The barn is the highest-upriver icon in the line of buildings on Cloutier's tract across the river road from the Cane River. The long stable between the road and the river on Cloutier's land is gone, but was replaced many decades ago by a (now deteriorated) 20th century stable.
The photo from Google maps shows the area of Murphy Barn in the green square cluster of trees along the river road.
The remaining photos are from a map housed by the US Archives. I found a photo copy of the map in a drawer in the Old Natchitoches Courthouse. The President was unaware of it. It was a great find showing the exact roadbed of the West Bank Cane River dirt road and major plantations with the big houses and all dependent buildings from each plantation from during the antebellum and Civil War era. The dating of the map is as follows: Mrs. Plauche's first husband, JJA Plauche Sr., bought her plantation from her father in 1839, after getting married and living there since 1835, but after 5 kids, he died on the plantation in 1848. She married his younger brother JB Plauche Jr. in 1856, but after having another child, she was widowed again when he died in 1861 (just before the Civil War began.) This map was clearly created after she was twice widowed, as the plantation was in her name, so, it was drawn likely during the early Civil War, or was created by the Union as part of the Union's Red River campaign in 1864. Not every building is shown, it can be seen that the Coincoin House (built 1788-1828) is not shown. The first pic on this post from the Civil War map shows Natchitoches and the Convent just below the city along the river road. After Mrs. Plauche was widowed the first time, her 15 year old daughter, Emma, was living at the Convent for several years after her father's death. Young Emma was known as one of the "Belles of the Joyous Coast" (as the west shore of the Cane River was called down from Natchitoches to her great-uncle Old Ben Metoyer's plantation just below Oakland Plantation,) along with her many female cousins, but in 1852, she contracted an illness, and she died at the Plauche plantation within just a couple of days spanning her decline from complete health to death, likely from a fever. The tragedy of her sudden and unexpected death is quite emotionally detailed in the 1849-1852 diary of her second-cousin, Lestan Prudhomme Jr. Lestan always referred to his elder family members as aunts and uncles, except for Ophelia (Mrs. JB) Plauche, the widow, although they were both from the same Prudhomme family, he always referred to her formally as Mrs. Plauche, because she had twice married into the powerful New Orleans cotton brokerage Plauche family, and her father-in-law, General JB Plauche, Sr., was a celebrated hero of the Battle of New Orleans, the most famous French Creole in the state, best friend of President Jackson, and the sitting Lt. Gov. of LA. Her marriages bonded the Prudhommme cotton producers of Natchitoches with athe New Orleans Plauche cotton brokers.
The map is striking because it details all plantations from Alex to Natch on the West Bank, including the rows of slave cabins. Notably, many slaves left the plantations, forever, in the closing days of March 1864 as the Union forces marched through.
I was called several months ago by a team-member creating the new map, because they wanted to photo the Plauche and Coincoin buildings on our lands, so I gave them photos of the houses, a copy of Mrs. Plauche's 1800s portrait, and I told them of this old antebellum river road map (and forwarded her a copy.) Clearly, they used it all.
In the area of Murphy Barn the current and severely potholed asphalt roadbed of Fish Hatchery Lane is exactly on top of the antebellum roadbed. You can see that the creators of the 2016-17 historical Cane River map essentially reproduced the antebellum river road and all local buildings from that time from the old map to the new map. In the area of Murphy Barn, we see it as one of several in a row that was capped upriver by the Big House. A stable is on the river bank across the road. Of these buildings on Cloutier's plantation, only the barn remains. The current wooden red house near the barn dates likely to 1920-40 era. The string of buildings on this old map would have included barns, cotton gin, grist mill, blacksmith and carpenter shops, several slave cabins and the overseers house. The last pic is also from this same map but 3 miles down the Cane River at the antebellum plantation of Mrs. JB Plauche. Mrs. Plauche was granddaughter of Pierre Metoyer who was granted the land in 1782 upon which her plantation stood. Metoyer's brother-in-law was Louis Buard who was granted Section 60 c 1790 where Murphy Barn's PSP portion was erected before 1830s and still stands. It is planned to move Murphy Barn to the former land of Metoyer (and later Plauche) on a spot within eyesight of 5 other still-standing antebellum buildings.
Of note, in the Spring of 1864, the Union troops, 25,000 of them, marched from Alexandria to Natchitoches. The Union column included Calvary that led the infantry and had 1,000 wagons and canon (and stretched 20-miles long) and the officers likely used this map as they took this river road (which this map detailed all the way from Alexandria to Natchitoches.) The military column entered Mrs. Plauche's plantation at daybreak on the last day of March. She had burned her baled cotton and both her cotton gins the day before as requested by the retreating Confederates. All but 3 of her 60-plus slaves left with the Union troops that day. The former slaves said that the Union troops took all farm animals and anything that was moveable and that the military column exited the upriver border of the Plauche plantation by dusk. It took all day for the military column to pass through this one plantation on the Cane River's West Bank. The Union field records state they camped overnight 6 miles south of Natchitoches (this would be site of Murphy Barn on Cloutier's plantation which was 2 miles upriver of the Plauche plantation) and that they entered Natchitoches on April 1st, which promptly surrendered. The Union forces met up with the Union Navy fleet that was arriving from Alexandria at Grand Ecore (a mile or so north of Natchitoches) and the Union established themselves there on the high fortified bluff overlooking the Red River (after the Confederates had just abandoned the site in retreat.) Within 2 weeks, these Union troops suffered the last major Union defeats of the Civil War. These battlefields are located 35 miles north of Natchitoches at Pleasant Hill and Mansfield, where 1 in 5 of the Union troops were wounded or died. By mid-April, immediately after the second defeat, the fleeing Union forces left Grand Ecore and used the (lesser) east bank river road of the Cane River on a quick retreat back to Alexandria (with Confederates hot in pursuit) and they burned every building on the east bank except for Melrose Plantation and the dependent buildings at Magnolia Plantation (they burned the Big House at Magnolia and killed the overseer.) The buildings on the West Bank of the Cane River, including Murphy Barn, only escaped the vast fiery destruction because the angry and defeated Union troops had retreated on the east bank.
