Stop #11 (Avoyelles) Avoyelles Parish Courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed

 (pg. 33) AVOYELLES PARISH COURTHOUSE - It was here that the principals met to free Solomon Northup, and it was here that Henry B. Northup of Glen Falls, New York, and the freed slave left to return home after the session in the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse.

Stop #10 (Avoyelles) Historic Marksville, parish seat of Avoyelles

(pg. 32) MARKSVILLE, LOUISIANA - Marksville was the parish seat of Avoyelles where Solomon at last secured his freedom. It was here that Solomon's New York friend, Henry B. Northup, arrived on a Red River boat. The lawyer employed by Henry B. Northup was John P. Watdill, a lawyer of considerable prominence in the state. Waddill was a state senator in 1848 and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1852. It was Samuel Bass, a carpenter living near Marksville with a free woman of color, who sent Solomon's letter to his wife, Anne, in New York, describing his whereabouts after an absence of twelve years. Bass' role in freeing Northup cannot be overlooked; he risked possible death from irate planters who were extremely sensitive regarding "the peculiar institution" during this last decade before the Civil War. Bass died two months after Northup's release from slavery, and the same lawyer, Waddill, left a note in his diary is a brief note regarding the Northup case in which he obviously considered nothing more than a routine case.
Ralph Cushman was the presiding judge, a man doomed to die within the next months of a yellow fever epidemic which swept the river towns, including Marksville.
It was from Marksville that the sheriff set out to locale Platt, the slave, whose identity was not established as Solomon Northup. The following day necessary proceedings took place in the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse, Marksville, which freed the kidnapped slave.
The names Waddill (a street) and Cushman (a cemetery) survive in Marksville.
It was a slave, identity unknown, who was kept at the Avoyelles Sheriff's office to help locate slave. It was he who was responsible for providing information leading to the Epps Place and Platt.

Stop #9 (Avoyelles) Lone Pine, home of Alanson Pearce

(pg. 31) Retrace your path from Lone Pine back down Goudeau Road towards Evergreen. Turn left, and this will return you to Evergreen Main Street. Turn left again and proceed back towards Bunkie. You will turn right to Marksville on Highway #115, turning at a four-way crossing: the Avoyelles Center, a school is on your left. Turn right.
The road leads through the long Town of Hessmer. You will come to Highway 1 at Marksville and a stop light. Go across Highway 1 and follow this street. Main Street, to the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse where Northup was freed in January, 1853. The offices of the Clerk of Court contain Northup papers which you will find in the basement of the Courthouse.

Stop #8 (Avoyelles) Historic Evergreen

(pg. 29) EVERGREEN, LOUISIANA - Once in Evergreen, you will drive alongside Little Bayou Rouge. On your right, as you near the bridge over Bayou Rouge, is the Church of the Little Flower. Continue on the highway-Main Street past the Evergreen Elementary School. Turn right at the corner of the school grounds. Drive about one block, turning left. At the end of this section, to the left, in the middle of a psture, lies the grave of Roger Marshall, the planter who lived across the Bayou Boeuf from the Epps Place. The small family cemetery is at the highest point in a small hill, enclosed by a fence. Continue your drive along the street until you come to Bayou Rouge Baptist Church where Peter Tanner and his wife are buried (across the street in front of the church, straight towards the back of the old cemetery). When you leave the church, turn right, and after a brief distance, turn left on Goudeau Road. Continue until you find Northup Marker #9 on your right. This is Lone Pine Plantation house, home  of Dr. and Mrs. John Lemoine.
The Village of Evergreen grew along the Bayou Rouge in the early years of the 19th century. Within Evergreen, named for the greenery on its rolling hills, is Bayou Rouge Baptist Church which was founded in 1841 with Peter Tanner as one of its founders. Peter Tanner, brother of Mrs. William Ford, hired Northup from his owner, the itinerant carpenter, Tibeats, to work under Tanner's carpenter named Myers. Tanner was one of the most extensive planters on Bayou Boeuf and had sugar interest in Cuba as well. Tanner moved from Bayou Boeuf to the Evergreen area sometime around 1850. He was an ardent Baptist and is famous for the passage in Northup where Tanner was pictured reading to his slaves from the Bible to prove they were meant to be slaves.

Stop #7 and 7.5 (Avoyelles) The Burns House and Hillcrest, rented plantation of Epps, 1843-44

(pg. 27) The Stephen Samuel Pearce Family - S.S. Pearce have been the initials of four generations of planters who established a reputation for raising sugar cane and manufacturing sugar in the Evergreen area. Stephen Samuel (his father was Stephen Pearce) was born at Cheneyville on October 18, 1833, two days after his father died. Educated at Centenary College, Jackson, La., he and his wife, Mary Ellen Bennett, were married when the bride was 15. She was the daughter of Ezra Bennett of nearby Bennettsville and brother Maunsel Bennett, another prominent citizen of Evergreen. S.S. Pearce served in the Louisiana Legislature, 1880-1882. During the Civil War he moved his family to Texas, and from there hauled salt for the Confederacy from the Jefferson Island site. He was presented a portrait of Robert E. Lee by the Confederate Cabinet for this effort. He was, however, a conscientious objector to war, a Baptist minister, who testified before the military committee at Shreveport in the regard. He and Mary Ellen had eight living children, and they lost nearly as many in this period of heavy infant mortality. One child was severely burned at a campfire as they fled to Texas, and at least two other infants died during their stay there.

(pg. 28) OAKWOLD, another old plantation house, is on the left of Highway 29 just before the railroad crossing. William Pearce, Jr., a Georgia migrant to the state, built the house beginning in 1833. It was first occupied by the family Christmas, 1835. Descendants of the original owner, the Wrights, have lived in Oakwold for decades, as do the present descendants, the Porter Wright family.
Oakwold has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The first year of Epps' residence on Bayou Boeuf, 1845, the caterpillars almost totally destroyed the cotton crop throughout that region. There was little work to be done so that the slaves were necessarily idle most of the time. However, there came a rumor to Bayou Boeuf that wages were high and laborers in demand on sugar plantations in St. Mary's Parish along Bayou de Salle. Epps, Henry Toler, Alanson Pearce, and Addison Roberts were the white men who took a drove of slaves to St. Mary's Parish that winter of 1845 to cut cane. Alanson Pierce (Pearce) was the only son of William Pearce of Oakwold Plantation, which is still standing on Bayou Rouge, home of the Porter Wrights.
Northup was hired to repair the sugar house of Judge Turner and then put to cutting cane. Northup's "Sunday money" and contributions for his violin playing produced seventeen dollars with which Northup tried to secure passage up the famous Teche.

Stop #6 (Avoyelles) P.L. Shaw House

(pg. 26) Continue to your right along the bayou to the Harper House, originally the home of P.L. SHAW and built around 1852. It is about one mile from the site of the Epps' House.

This story and a half house is of identical construction to the Epps house. The setting of ancient crepe myrtle trees, gardenias, palmetto palms and ferns on the Bayou Boeuf is highly reminiscent of the Epps house as it was originally constructed.

Chickens, ducks, hogs, cows, barns, and corn cribs are usually in immediate proximity to the main house. Cypress cisterns held rain water drained from shingled roofs.

Stop #5 (Avoyelles) Edwin Epps plantation site (home removed)

(pg. 25) Edwin Epps Plantation - The land immediately before you after you cross the bridge is the EPPS PLANTATION. This is the place where the Avoyelles Sheriff with Henry B. Northup came to locate Platt, the kidnapped Solomon Northup.
Edwin Epps' House on which Solomon worked in 1852 stood at the point now marked by the tree that stood in the Epps' front yard. The house itself was moved to Bunkie in 1976 for restoration as a museum.

Stop #3 (Avoyelles) Home of Mary McCoy as bride in 1854

(pg. 23) Mary McCoy's House: This home (now the property of Mr. & Mrs. H.K. Bubenzer, Jr.) was owned by Mary McCoy who was described by Northup as "the beauty and glory of Bayou Boeuf." Mary Dunwoody McCoy was married three times, her full name being Mary Dunwoody McCoy Rhodes Burgess Cooper. Given to her as a wedding gift in 1854, she lived here until her death in 1913.
At the McCoy house, turn and drive back towards the Bayou Boeuf on Highway 71. Just before getting to the bridge, turn right on Shirley Road. On your right: Ashland Plantation, beautiful ante bellum home of the Allums Family.

(pg. 24) After crossing the railroad, to the left, now marked only by a surviving tree from the big grove that once shaded the house of Silas Talbert, was the site of the famous slave feast recounted in Solomon Northup's book. The fine old house burned sometime in the early years of the twentieth century.
Continue along Shirley Road to a right turn on Highway 71. Turn right at first stop light. Continue down Lexington Street its entire length to its juncture with Hwy. 29. Turn right and continue south. Just outside town, on the right, is the antebellum home of the Ward Nash family. Magnificent old oak trees stand on the lawn. It was built 1833-1835 by Lovatt Burges on his 702 acre plantation.

Stop #4.5 (Avoyelles) Fogleman Cemetery

(pg. 25) The old bayou road follows the Boeuf, and you now reach Highway 1176. Turn right, cross the Bayou Boeuf and continue straight along this road, crossing Highway 29 and continuing towards the site of the famous Epps Plantation. Among the old planatations located along Highway 1176 was the old Irion Plantation, home of Judge Alfred Briggs Irion, a social center of the Beouf society.
After you cross a railroad, immediately to your right is the abandoned site of the Fogleman Cemetery where Edwin Epps, died 1866, and his wife, 1867, and a number of other persons are buried. There were no markers that survived.

Courtesy of historyhunts

 Courtesy of historyhunts

Turn to the right on Harpers' Lane which may be easily identified by the white frame Haasville Baptist Church on the left of Harpers' Lane just off the highway.

Drive past the church, turn right across the bridge spanning the Boeuf. Solomon Northup undoubtedly did considerable fishing along these very banks.

Stop #4. (Avoyelles) Small Port of Holmesville on Bayou Boeuf

 (pg. 24, cont'd) HOLMESVILLE, PORT ON BAYOU BOEUF - Note Marker #4 just before reaching the bridge over Bayou Boeuf. Turn left and continue along the bayou. The Marchive home, on the left, is an ante bellum structure that may have been a boarding house at the Port of Holmesville, according to local tradition.
Holmesville was a bustling port in the time of Northup's enslavement to Epps. Lumber, cotton, and raw sugar were shipped from Holmesville, and it was the scene of shooting matches and other sports. Dr. Windes, the doctor to whom Epps once sent Northup, lived near Holmesville on Watermelon Bayou.
Holmesville was the last major port going south where the Boeuf flows into Courtableu Bayou some fifty miles below. The historic inland port of Washington was the center of commerce which connected the inland plantations on the Boeuf and elsewhere with New Orleans markets.

Stop #2. (Avoyelles) Bayou Boeuf: Boundary between Rapides and Avoyelles Parishes

(pg. 22) BAYOU BOEUF - Bayou Boeuf was so name for the cattle that came to water at its banks. "Boeuf" means "ox" in French, a small wild cattle drinking from its waters. The name applies to the thousands of acres of fertile delta soil on both sides of the hundred or so miles of the meandering stream. The land was cultivated in cotton and sugar cane by many planters and thousands of slaves who labored along its banks.
In the time of Northup, gum and cypress trees grew along the bayou banks, inhabited by coons and possums. Northup writes of the size and quality of the fish he trapped in Bayou Boeuf and of the importance of these to the diet of the slaves.
The long chain of plantations along both sides of the bayou formed a community whose unity was based on a plantation culture and dependence on the Bayou Boeuf for transportation and communications. The plantation culture of the area was not one of the white-columned mansion and manifestations of great wealth of the Southern myth, but a land of dedicated farmers with impressive contributions to agriculture.
Routes to New Orleans were either down the Boeuf to the Inland Port of Washington, or upstream to Smith's Landing to "Catch the Cars" for Alexandria - then down Red River to Old River to the Mississippi and south to New Orleans.

Stop #1. (Avoyelles) Edwin Epps House Museum at Bunkie, La.

(pg. 21) Epps House - Opening Day on July 4, 1963 of the Epps House Museum, Bunkie, La.

(No Stop Number) Indians on Indian Creek

Indians on Indian Creek

Indian Creek, in its whole length, flows through a magnificent forest. There dwells on its shore a tribe of Indians, a remnant of the Chickasaws or Chickopees, if I remember rightly. (The name Chickasaw derives thus). They live in simple huts, ten or twelve feet square, constructed of pine poles and covered with bark. They subside principally on the flesh of the deer, the coon, and the opossom, all of which are plentiful in these woods. Sometimes they exchange venison for a little corn and whiskey with the planters on the bayous. Their usual dress is buckskin breeches and calico hunting shirts of fantastic colors, buttoned from belt to chin. They wear brass rings on their wrists, and in their ears and noses. The dress of the squaw is very similar. They are fond of dogs and horses - owning many of the latter, of a small, tough breed - and are skillful riders. Their bridles, girths and saddles were made of raw skins of animals, their stirrups of a certain kind of wood. Mounted astride their ponies, men and women, I have seen then dash out into the woods at the utmost of their speed, following narrow winding paths, and dodging trees in a manner that eclipsed the most miraculous feats of civilized equestrianism. Circling away in various directions, the forest echoing and re-echoing with their whoops, they would presently return at the same dashing, headlong speed with which they started. Their village was on Indian Creek, known as Indian Castle, but their range extended to the Sabine River. Occasionally a tribe from Texas would come over on a visit, and then there was a carnival in the "Great Pine Woods." Chief of the tribe was John Cascalla; second in rank was John Baltese, his "son-in-law..."

Stop #8. (Rapides) Bennettville - bend of bayou store of Ezra Bennett, New York school teacher who migrated to area in 1820's, neighbor to Ford on adjacent plantation.

(pg. 17) WALNUT GROVE - Drive past Walnut Grove about a mile, and on your right is the site of Peter Tanner's plantation which adjoined his brother's. There is a white frame house of Peter Tanner's descendants on the right and a day lily farm of Tanner descendants.
Continue along the old bayou road as it curves past Edgefield Church No. 2 and on to another bridge over Bayou Boeuf. Cross the bayou, drive to Highway 71; turn right to Bennett's Store.

(pg. 18) While Bennett's Store as been known by this name for a century, the store originally was the property of Joseph B. Robert and this part of Bayou Boeuf was called Eldred's Bend. The 200 acres of land in the tract stretching away from the bayou from the site of the store belonged to Randall Eldred, pioneer planter from South Carolina. He was in a later wave than those who came in 1813 but married to a niece of William Prince Ford's first wife, Martha Tanner Ford, who owned land adjacent to the Eldred property. Ford's plantation was actually a small one.
Turn around at Bennett's Store and return south, driving on Highway 71 over another bridge over Bayou Boeuf. This marks the boundary line between Rapides and Avoyelles Parishes. Continue to the Epps House Museum on Highway 71, to your left, just past Johnson's Chevrolet.

Stop #7. (Rapides) Historic Cheneyville, locale of William Prince Ford, Mary McCoy, and Ralph Smith, Smith buried here; house remaining of Mary McCoy's slave.

(pg 14 cont'd) Here on the bayou, at this point, you are in the midst of Old Cheneyville, founded in 1813. Here the keelboats and barges floated downstream to the Inland Port of Washington, or were pulled, usually by oxen, along the bayou upstream with supplies sent from New Orleans via Washington. Cheneyville was originally settled by a man named William Fendon Cheney from South Carolina in 1811; two years later friends and probably relatives from the same South Carolina area came into the site from Woodville, Miss. where they had originally marked out their plantations. These were followed by wave after wave of migrants from the same location in South Carolina.

(pg. 15) Crossing the bridge, turning left along the bayou, you come to the Trinity Episcopal Church constructed in 1860. To the left 30 years is the grave of Mary Dunwoody McCoy Burgess(nic.) Rhodes Cooper. Mary McCoy married three times, not an unusual circumstance in the period due to the mortality rate. All three of Mary's husbands died. She had three children, two of whom survived until adulthood.

Ralph Smith's grave will be found to the rear of the church.

As you walk or ride along the bayou road bordering the cemetery, you will see four columns which are what remains of the Campbellite Church erected here in the 1840's. A schism developed in Beulah Baptist, and William Prince Ford was "churched" from his Baptist Church because he officiated at the induction of officers for the Campbellite Church. Thomas Campbell himself visited this church from his home in Kentucky.

Stop #6. (Rapides) William Prince Ford Home.

(pg. 12) You will return to Highway 112 and head towards Lecompte. As you continue about 9 miles to Lecompte, you will pass Dentley Springs, site of Dentley Plantation belonging to Thomas Jefferson Wells, owner of the race horse, Lecompte, for which the town was named. Lecompte became famous in a race at Metairie Race Track in 1854 when he beat his half-brother, Lexington, internationally famous horse, for the crown.

An awesome blog entry at Lend Me Your Ear contains additional information about Thomas Jefferson Wells and his racehorse, Lecompte.

(pg. 13) At Lecompte, continue along the Bayou Boeuf, veering right in town along Water Street, continuing along the bayou road with the bayou on your right. At the end of the long block on Water Street, you will see to your left an ante bellum building that was once a ware house for the Red River (Ralph Smith) Railroad. Opposite the building was the bayou landing, called over the decades, White's Landing and Smith's Landing. The Holy Comforter Episcopal Church is off to your right on a street joining Water Street. Continue to your right down the highway which is the old bayou road leading to Meeker, La., an old plantation community. You will pass Chaseland Plantation (about 1/2 mile), and at the Meeker crossroads, you will see to your left the buildings of the old Meeker Sugar Refinery (1.2 miles). Plantations of Compton and Meeker extended to your left. Continue and you pass ancient oaks which once were part of an immense oak grove to WELLSWOOD Plantation, one of the fine places of the Boeuf (about 1 mile).
You will reach Highway La.#13 and U.S. #167, the Ville Platte Highway. Turn right. Continue past a bridge over Bayou Boeuf and watch a Northup marker for a turn left down a country road toward Loyd Hall, a three-story show place built around 1857.

(pg. 14) Drive past Loyd Hall along the bayou road. Old plantations stretched out from the bayou on both sides. You go under the trestle and turn right, south, on Highway 71. In Cheneyville, turn right at the first stop light. On your left of the street you are on is the modern Beulah Baptist Church (1816) among whose member were William Prince Ford and Peter Tanner. Drive to the bridge and cross Bayou Boeuf.