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.