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Coordinates: 31°38′32″N 92°59′52″W 31.642087, -92.997628000000006

Melrose Plantation

• Location & Contact Information
  • Address: Melrose LA USA
  • Telephone Number: +1-318-379-0055
  • Official Website: [1]
• Overview

Melrose Plantation, also known as Yucca Plantation, is a National Historic Landmark in Marie Therese Coincoin , a former slave who became a wealthy businesswoman, the grounds of Yucca Plantation (now known as Melrose Plantation) contain what may well be the oldest buildings of African design built by Blacks, for the use of Blacks, in the country. The African House, a unique, nearly square structure with an umbrella-like roof which extends some 10 beyond the exterior walls on all four sides, may be of direct African derivation. Buildings include the main house, the Yucca House, the Ghana House, and the African House, plus some outbuildings. The plantation was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974. In 2008, it was included among the first 26 sites on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.As with many historic sites steeped in lore, evidence disproves the asserted identity of the founder and no evidence has been found or presented to support the claim that the property was originally named Yucca Plantation. The names attributed to the extant buildings date to early twentieth century promotion of the plantation as a cultural center by its then owners.Historical investigations from the 1970s and archaeological investigation that began at Melrose Plantation in 2001 have uncovered evidence that both confirm and challenge local tradition about the complex. Research shows conclusively, through original contemporary records, that the several hundred acres of land were, in fact, granted in 1796 to Coincoins second son, Louis Metoyer, who would not be freed by his white father until 1802. Under Louisianas Code Noir, enslaved men were not supposed to be granted land.Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Marie Thérèse Coincoin (1742–1816): Slave, Slave Owner, and Paradox, Chapter 1 in Janet Allred and Judy Gentry, ed., Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, at press). Louis Metoyer Private Land Claim Certificate B1953 (sections 17 and 94, Township 7 North, Range 6 West), Record Group 49, General Land Office, National Archives; Louis Mettoyer claim for 883.60 acres, OPEL: May 1796, File B1953, Louis Metoyer, Opelousas Notarial Records, Louisiana State Land Office, Baton Rouge; Boissier et al v. Metayer, 5 Mart. (O.S.), 678 (1818) Gary B. Mills, Louis Metoyer, in Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Glenn R. Conrad, ed., 3 vols. (New Orleans: Louisiana Historical Association, 1988),1:565. Contrary to the 1970s-era assessment, which dated the construction of Louis Metoyers first home (Yucca House) to the mid-1790s, a land survey of 1813 places Louis Metoyers residence south of the Red River (and south of the center of the Melrose complex). It was at the eastern edge of the plantation settled by his elder brother Augustin Metoyer.Gary B. Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills, Melrose (Natchitoches, Association of Natchitoches Women or the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches), 45; reconfirmed by the work of Kevin McDonald et al., The Archaeology of Local Myths and Heritage Tourism, in Peter J. Ucko et al., editors, A Future for Archaeology: The Past in the Present, New York: Routledge Cavendish, p.133. The question of early occupancy must still be settled. These were the two brothers who built the St. Augustine Parish (Isle Brevelle) Church in Natchez, Louisiana, the first built by free people of color.Nonetheless, the plantation is important for its association with the Metoyer family, which was prominent in Isle Brevelle and a strong center of the Creoles of color community. Construction began on the Big House at Melrose before the 11 March 1832 death of Louis Metoyer.Enterrements, 1793-1796 Etc., Section Annee 1830---, burial date 12 March 1832; Register 15, Church of St. François (present Immaculate Conception), Natchitoches. His son Jean Baptiste Louis Metoyer completed the construction in 1833. At J. B. L.s death in 1838,Enterrements, 1793-1796 Etc., burial date 1 October 1838 his $112,761 estate (roughly $2,600,000 in 2007 purchasing power Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to 1907, Measuring Worth, was divided between a minor son and a young widow with no experience in financial matters. Amid the financial depression that followed the Panic of 1837, the mother and son fell heavily in debt. After the mother emancipated the teenaged Théophile Louis Metoyer from the disabilities of minority, creditors launched a series of lawsuits. The Louis Metoyer Plantation went on the auction block. On 22 March 1847, it was struck off at $8,340 to the highest bidder, the French Créole brothers Henry and Hypolite Hertzog, on behalf of their sister Jeanne Fanny (Widow Dassize) Bossier. Hertzog and Bossier then operated a cotton plantation, in partnership, until 1880. Like most planters of the region in the wake of Civil War and Reconstruction, they struggled financially and did little to improve or maintain the property. (In a twist of irony, the debtors who sued them included J. B. L. Metoyers widow.) In December 1881, the Metoyer-Hertzog-Bossier Plantation (still unnamed at this point) was sold again at auction to satisfy an 1879 judgment rendered against them in Louisianas Fifth District Circuit. The purchaser, F. R. Cauranneau of New Orleans, held the land and houses as an absentee owner until April 1884, when he found a buyer willing to pay $4,500 cash. The new owner, an Irish immigrant merchant named Joseph Henry who had married into a prominent local family, gave the property the name Melrose, by which it remains known today.Melrose Title Abstract (source-cited typescripts of original deeds tracing chain of title), compiled by the legal firm Watson, Murchison, Crews, and Arthur, Natchitoches in 1972 for Elizabeth Shown Mills and Gary B. Mills as a starting point for their historic site documentation of the property, commissioned by the Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches; copy held today by E.S. Mills.Analysis of glass at the site confirms three major periods of occupancy of Yucca House, c.1807-1821, c.1874-1888 (renovation likely after the 1884 purchase by Joseph Henry), and c.1916-1930, renovation by Henrys son John and his wife Carmelite Miss Cammie Henry. Remains of European ceramic ware also indicate post-1810 initial occupancy of Yucca House, contrary to the 1796 date that had been earlier proposed. Because of its strong association with the Coincoin-Metoyer family, Melrose Plantation is the major site where the history of Creoles in the region is physically interpreted for tourists.Ibid., p.140^[1]

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