Joshua S. Hall
White Hall required eleven years of severe restoration to bring it back to its current state of grandeur (pictured above in Christmas regalia).
A house with nine lives on Pointe Coupee's lost Atchafalaya River Road
To search for antebellum relics in modern-day Louisiana, all you’d need to find is an old road near a river, where dozens of plantation homes in various states of existence still dot the landscape. Tourists and residents alike have discovered these treasures of history by simply wandering too far past any given parish line—and that, perhaps, is why the obscurity of Pointe Coupee’s White Hall Plantation is somewhat surprising.
Nothing but a fairly hidden right turn separates the 165-year-old home from the old town of Lettsworth; but over the years, the turn has been enough of a barrier to keep its story out of history’s eye. Completed in 1849 at the peak of Southern decadence, White Hall had only a decade or so to serve her purpose before taking seven cannonballs in her side at the hands of Union ships.
Carolyn Prator, a descendant of the Norwood family who first built the house, said that White Hall was nearly torn down in 1975 due to its state of disrepair. “Before that, the flood of 1921 hit the house pretty hard,” she said. “There were snakes on the second floor.”
The home wasn’t torn down in 1975, but it wasn’t promised any future upkeep either. In fact, when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, White Hall wasn’t given a historic plaque and wouldn’t have one for another quarter of a century.
“AND A BEAUTIFUL PLACE IT IS…”
Commissioned by a wealthy planter named Elias Norwood as the future home of one of his children, the plantation ended up in the hands of his son, Captain Samuel J. Norwood. Three years later, the Captain sold the estate to one Bennett Barton Simmes—a state senator, steamboat captain, general, and founder of nearby Simmesport—who helped author Louisiana’s Articles of Secession prior to the Civil War.
Just over a decade later in 1863, Union General Nathaniel P. Banks, along with his army battalion, took up residence in Simmes’ family home. From there, he launched two strategies: the first was a campaign that would fail at Red River Landing; the second, which took place during the late spring and summer of 1863, was a great success and took its place in history as the Siege of Port Hudson, the campaign that opened the entire Mississippi River to Union navigation.
During that time, a now-defunct New Orleans newspaper printed the following account, entitled “From General Banks’ Army”: “White Hall Plantation, the property of General B. B. Simmes, is occupied by General Banks and staff as headquarters, and a beautiful place it is…”
After the war, the cannonball-riddled house became the property of Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, and remained as such until Captain Norwood’s son, Sam Norwood, bought it back in 1880. Like many other things in the post-bellum South, it was never quite the same; but in the case of White Hall Plantation, the enduring change had less to do with the Civil War and much more to do with the river that flowed through its front yard.
THE OLD ATCHAFALAYA RIVER ROAD
Carolyn Prator is lucky enough to have photos of herself with her great-grandfather, Sam Norwood, who lived to be 103. His daughter Irene, Carolyn’s grandmother, was known to tell colorful tales of her family’s life at White Hall. “Grandma used to go to the house every summer,” said Carolyn, “and she’d tell us all these little stories about how the steamboats used to take them up to St. Francisville and back. She said you could tell which ship was coming up the river because they all had different whistles.”
When Sam Norwood and his family lived in White Hall—and even when General Simmes lived there before the Civil War—Pointe Coupee Parish was divided by a language and culture barrier: the New Roads area had been settled by the French and did not consort much with the English-speaking north end of the parish. The Atchafalaya River served as a connecting route for social and commercial exchange in the northern part of Pointe Coupee, as not too far upriver from Lettsworth was Shreve’s Cut—the famous man-made channel that provided a shortcut for Mississippi River-borne traffic.
Socially, the Simmes and the Norwoods were far more involved with St. Francisville than Pointe Coupee—partly because of the language barrier and partly due to White Hall’s proximity to the preferred mode of travel in the later half of the 1800s, the humble steamboat. The families who inhabited the forty-six plantations along the Atchafalaya River Road looked to the river transit system for social stimulation. In fact, the Simmes were such a presence on one civilian steamboat route that the family who ran the shuttle named their last boat after B. B.’s daughter Nina.
“TAKEN BY THE RIVER”
Prior to November of last year, White Hall Plantation had never been open for public viewing, and probably for good reason. After a string of neglectful owners and caretakers, the home’s cypress and pine skeleton was warped beyond structural integrity; parts of its hardwood floors had been covered up by a newer and cheaper imitation; and the front gardens had returned to the wild chaos of nature.
The view from the front porch of White Hall today is quite a different picture from the one General Banks had—mostly due to the levee across the road. The plantation was originally built on the bank of the Atchafalaya River, but due to the ever-changing nature of both river and man, the river grew much wider over the next fifty years, and White Hall found itself in a dangerous flood zone.
As the Mississippi River threatened to wash out the Atchafalaya River, the preferred steamboat shuttle routes gradually changed course as well. The next half-century was not kind to the old river highway, nor to the other forty-something plantations that dotted its banks.
Twice—in 1912 and 1939—White Hall was physically moved back from the riverbank, via mule power, to prevent massive water damage. The 1912 move wasn’t enough to prevent the second-floor snake invasion of 1921, and the 1939 relocation was the first time anyone had thought to remove the seven Union cannonballs from the house’s side. The latter explains why the plantation’s recent restoration involved prying a veritable load of spent bullets from the walls—according to the current owners, Sam Norwood had simply found it easier to plaster over the damage.
RESTORED
Today, White Hall appears to be one of only two viable destinations left on that stretch of the old Atchafalaya River Road. As one of the plantation’s current owners said, all that once flourished there was, in some ephemeral sense, “taken by the river.”
For the past eleven years, finally in the care of two historically conscious owners (who wish to remain anonymous), White Hall has undergone severe and necessary restorations under the guidelines of the National Register of Historic Places. The plantation’s original gardens have been meticulously recreated with historically accurate flora and explicit attention to detail, and the Greek and Italianate nuances were re-carved from materials salvaged from demolished plantation homes. The walls are decorated with photos of White Hall’s past—Elias, Captain Samuel, and Sam Norwood; General B. B. Simmes; General Nathaniel P. Banks; and all documented daughters and sons. At long last, the house has modern plumbing, electricity, and the long-deserved historic marker, which it had never enjoyed before.
Carolyn Prator and her family still retain all the original furnishings of the Norwood family home, including 1850s-era beds, mirrors, and even clothing; but the great-granddaughter of Sam Norwood is happy to see her family’s history returned to its former glory. “I’m so grateful that they have taken such care in restoring the place,” Carolyn Prator said. “I took my nieces there this past weekend, and we got dressed in all the old clothes we have from the time period. It’s an important place, and it makes me so happy that others will be able to know it.”
Though the restorers have taken the effort to put all the pieces of White Hall’s mostly-undocumented history back together, their plan was always to turn the house into a home that a family could live in; so they’ve put the house on the real estate market. If someone is looking for a piece of antebellum history to call home, White Hall Plantation and all its stories might be just what they have in mind.
Details. Details. Details.
White Hall Plantation & Gardens
17523 La. Highway 418
Lettsworth, La. (just north of Simmesport)
For more detailed information, call (225) 492-2110.
