Christmas at Nottoway Plantation

A few weeks before Christmas, the Nottoway plantation lights up and welcome visitors for a Christmas celebration: tree lighting, carolers, fireworks, etc... Nottoway is the largest Antebellum plantation in the South. The word antebellum refers to the separatist movement time period, which led to the Civil War. The plantation is located on the west bank of the Mississippi, south of Baton Rouge. John Hampden Randolph, a very rich plantation owner had it built in 1857. He lived there with his wife and eleven children. There was up to 155 slaves working there, which made for the biggest plantation in the South (most plantation owners owned around twenty slaves). Nowadays, there is still sugar canes field around, but the slaves' cabins did not survive. The slaves that worked inside the house lived in the servant's section of the house. Those that worked in the fields lived outside in small wooden houses in the slaves quarters. The slaves quarters included a bathhouse, a hospital, a meeting house, and a gathering place that served as a nursery during the week (older women watched after the youngest children while everyone else worked in the fields), and a church on sundays. After the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, most of Randolph's slaves decided to stay and work for him, but finally as compensated free men and women. After that, the sugar cane business was not that profitable anymore. Randolph's finances dimished and the size of the plantation was reduced as well. He died in 1883 but his wife remained on the plantation until she was 70 years old, in 1889, when she decided, reluctantly to give up her home. It is said that on the last day in her home, she slowly walked  around the rooms, dressed in black as if mourning, and lovingly closed the shutters of the 200 mansion's windows. Nottoway was sold for $50,000. 
Sugar extraction and refining is still an important activity nowadays in the area. The Port of Greater Baton Rouge is surrounded, among others, with molasses factories, which are used in many products like deserts, candies, rhum, etc...

 

 

 

Little anecdote: Women had to use the stairs on the right while men used the left ones. Indeed if a man was to catch a glimpse of those ladies' ankles, it was considered so scandalous that he had the right to marry this woman without her consent!