Strange True Stories of my Louisiana Ancestors Part IV
Following P.A. Champomier down River Road, through Louisiana's 19th century sugar industry
Read first:
Part I of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our April 2023 issue.
Part II of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our May 2023 issue.
Part III of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our September 2023 issue.
I got lost. Again. Coasting on a dark stretch of Highway 182 through Franklin, in November 2020, I turned up a long driveway under a canopy of oak limbs before my headlights shone on the three-story, white-columned house—the Alice C. Plantation. Gaslights punctuated the front staircase leading to a wide porch, where my hosts Stephie and Gary Blum waved.
“So, Nina, what brings you down to Franklin during a worldwide pandemic?” Gary laughed.
Good question. I explained how the shutdown afforded me time to research my family history. So, that morning I had flown in from Dallas and spent the day driving through the “sugar parishes”—touring one relative’s historic plantation in Patterson, and walking land settled by other ancestors in the 1790s. (See Part III) But, I admitted, besides a successful first day, the rest of my trip might be fruitless, as I had few leads in the area and knew most places were closed. With that, Gary offered me exactly what I needed: a cocktail and the name of a local historian. My luck was running.
The next morning I watched the sun burn off mist over the Bayou Teche. Coffee cup in hand, I strolled the grassy lawn, passing a black cast iron sugar kettle. Skirting the bayou’s bank, I stepped onto a pier and leaned out, peering into the brown water, thrilled at the prospect of glimpsing an alligator.
Retrieving a small silver Virgin Mary medal from my pocket, I kissed it and threw it into the bayou to acknowledge the Teche’s place in my family history. The gesture was a nod to my deep French Catholic roots in Franklin Parish—from my grandmother, Bonnie May Walters Planchard, all the way back to my sixth great-grandmother Marie Francois Cellier dit Normand Mayeaux, who immigrated here from France in 1720. I also meant to honor my fourth great-grandmother, Marie Adelaide Guerne de Tavane, whose mysterious story prompted my journey to Louisiana in the first place. (See Parts I and II)
Per my hosts’ tip, I called the Young-Sanders Center—a research library and Louisiana history museum operated by historian Roland R. Stansbury. Knowing the center was likely closed, I was surprised when Stansbury himself answered. However, he apologized that he couldn’t open the facility due to the pandemic.
“Of course, understandable,” I explained my interest in a few plantation land records and any history concerning two planter families in my line: the Charpantiers and the Roussels.
“Roussel? I knew a Roussel,” he said, noting the family’s foothold in sugarcane. “They go way back in the parish—related to founding families, like the Cornays. Yeah, so, that means you’re related to the Cornays. Ever hear of the Battle of Fort Bisland?”
“No, but that’s the kind of information I’m looking for,” I replied.
He paused, “How soon can you get here?”
Ten minutes later, I met Stansbury at the corner of Commercial and Teche Streets, outside of an unremarkable one-story building that gave no indication of the treasures inside. Unlocking a series of gates and doors, he led me through a back entrance to an exhibit space with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and glass cases displaying Civil War-era muskets, pistols, uniforms, antebellum artifacts, Confederate money, and crumbling papers.
A gray-haired gentleman with an unbridled enthusiasm for local history, Stansbury proudly showed off the prized collection, hidden too long from public view. Not only had the pandemic shuttered the doors, but an economic slow-down had kept the facility in mothballs for about two years. Stansbury easily located relevant books, flipping to passages about Judge Cornay, his sugarcane plantation, and the role Cornay Bridge played in the Battle of Fort Bisland, 1863, when Union troops defeated the Confederates. An excerpt from "General Mouton's Regiment, the 18th Louisiana Infantry" states, “The intermittent firing continued until 4 o’clock when a furious artillery duel commenced by the two contending forces. Cornay, with St. Mary's Artillery, maddened at the sight of the enemy standing upon his own homestead with their batteries planted upon the playground of his children, sent forth shell after shell, filling the air with their peculiar and indescribable music."
I confessed I wasn’t a Civil War buff, and my focus had been on my family’s sugarcane plantations, primarily owned by my Charpantier ancestors, whose identity in France had me stumped. I didn’t expect to find clues in South Louisiana about their lives in France, but I hoped to learn what became of them after settling in the Attakapas area where they established a plantation. “I haven’t found much information, but I ran across this old sugarcane trade journal by a guy named P.A. Champomier,” I said, botching the pronunciation. “Heard of him?”
At the mention of Champomier, Stansbury’s eyebrows lifted above his mask. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Turns out Stansbury had published a study of Champomier’s obscure sugar report several years before. Judging by his reaction, few have acknowledged the work of this French immigrant who almost single-handedly chronicled Louisiana’s foray into sugarcane.
Here we were, two history nerds from different generations, crossing paths during a pandemic at a closed-down museum in South Louisiana, discovering a shared fascination with a little-known chronicler of the antebellum sugar trade. “Call me nuts,” I confided, “but this isn’t the first time my ancestors have pulled strings to help me with my project.” He didn’t argue the point and commenced loading my flash drive with his 100-page paper: “Statement of Sugar Made in Louisiana, 1844, 1845-1846.”
I noted that Champomier’s dry statistics, jotted between ledger columns, had been the closest I had come to stepping onto my ancestors’ land—that is, up until the day before when I walked their former plantation. After I described pinpointing the property by comparing a Google map with a faded online map from 1810, Stansbury promptly slid open a wide drawer containing well-preserved maps from the National Archives. Among them was a rare South Louisiana map that backed up my theory about the location of the Charpantier land, owned today by the Hymel family.
Here we were, two history nerds from different generations, crossing paths during a pandemic at a closed-down museum in South Louisiana, discovering a shared fascination with a little-known chronicler of the antebellum sugar trade.
“Yes!” I explained that Joseph M. Charpantier and his wife Marie Adelaide, my fourth great-grandparents, acquired the land fronting Bayou Teche around 1795, some fifteen years before the map was drawn. After fleeing the Palace of Versailles during the French Revolution, and/or the slave uprisings in Saint-Domingue’s sugar plantations, their well-timed immigration to Louisiana situated them in an economic sweet spot that sustained itself for decades.
I only learned about their sugarcane plantation from perusing the no-frills lists contained in Champomier’s obscure booklet. In it, he cataloged every sugar plantation, giving the amount of sugar each produced during the years 1844–62, from the wealthiest to those with just a few acres. Although the numbers indicated that my relatives’ plantation had fared well during that period, it was Stansbury, a preeminent scholar on Champomier’s work, who showed me how to use those statistics to find the bigger story, hidden in plain sight.
The drab ledger listing sugar farmers in each parish provides the geographic location of their plantation, the number of laborers (enslaved and otherwise), and how many “hogsheads” of sugar were burnt that year out of their total crop. (A hogshead roughly equals 1,000 pounds.) Beside the planters’ names, Champomier occasionally added an asterisk with personal observations, such as losses due to fire, flood, or drought. He concluded each report with an overview of the state’s sugar production—crop fluctuations due to hurricanes, disease, pests, and floods from rivers, or “crevasses” (from the French word crever, which means 'to burst'). Although he set out to provide nothing more than a statistical report, Champomier’s ledger reveals multi-layered, poignant glimpses into old Louisiana for anyone who takes a closer look.
It's not clear what prompted the French-born New Orleans commodities merchant to begin compiling these reports, but his work became revered by local planters as well as national and international traders with an eye on the country’s most valuable agricultural segment—sugarcane. And his was the only close-up, methodical, yet personal, report of its kind.
Champomier’s annual survey took three months to conduct. Leaving his Vieux Carre residence, he boarded La Belle Creole, a luxury steamboat that traveled up and down the Mississippi, docking at each sugarcane plantation, where workers layed out long gangplanks to allow him to cross the muddy banks. Other days, he traveled on horseback through rural, often marshy land, conversing with each sugar planter, taking down details of their operations, observing the crops, mills, and laborers.
Having visited the former Charpantier land the day before, I could envision his horse trotting up the road, a cloud of dirt trailing behind as he hitched the reigns to a post in front of the Charpantier’s house. Tromping through rows of towering, green cane stalks rustling in the breeze, “le vieux Champomier,” as everyone called him, scribbled observations in a journal, which he published every spring.
Because the first report came out in 1844, eight years after Joseph Charpentier died, the plantation is listed under the direction of his only son, Charles Michel Charpantier. Charles produced thirteen children with his wife Clarisse Verret. The first “Sugar Crop” places the property fifteen miles south of Franklin with 109 hands (mostly enslaved laborers) working the land. That year they brought in 128 hogsheads (128,000 pounds) of sugar, just above average compared to other producers in the same parish. In 1845, the report listed the Charpantier’s plantation with 180 hands, bringing in 205 hogsheads (205,000 pounds), also above average.
Champomier ordered his list by location, like the census, in succession from one plantation to the next. As such, it provided something rarely found in historic documents—a bird’s eye view of rural south Louisiana.
Scanning statistics, land details, and names, one can chart the location of each plantation, and who lived next to whom. Considering travel limitations across miles of sugarcane fields, it’s no surprise the offspring of planters tended to marry their neighbors or cousins, or conduct arranged marriages.
Tracing my relatives’ connection to each sugarcane plantation lining the river and bayous is tantamount to a genealogical breadcrumb trail. As marriages enjoined nearby plantations, my extended family spread throughout the “sugar parishes” like a fiefdom. The few names I started with in 2015 had exploded. Now my list of planter relatives included Trosclair, Carlin, Corney, Aime, Theriot, Haydel, Bringier, LeBlanc, Rillieux, Tregre, Choppin, Schexnayder, Becnel, Roman, Poirier, Waguespack, Hymel, Tureaud, Fortier, Brou, Tassin, Webers (Webre), Perret, Laurent, Marmillion, Labranche, Pouche, Trepagnier, Melancon, Darensbourg, Landry, Villere, Como, Daigle, Gaudet, Martin, Comeaux, Dugas, Boudreau, Perilloux, Toups, Thibodeaux, Burguiere, Olivier, Tarlton, Grevenberg, Provost, Broussard, Delahoussaye, Sigur, Fuselier, and more.
As French, Spanish, and German families merged, growing in wealth and influence, their extended families held political sway in the Attakapas region—the wealthiest sugar-growing land in Louisiana, producing more sugar than any other parish by a long shot. However, even the most lucrative yields couldn’t totally insulate privileged planter families from the harsh realities of their times.
In 1845, one of the most successful years for the Charpantier’s sugar crop, tragedy struck when their daughters, Nelia Josephine and Marie Aglae, died within a few months of each other. This kicked off a string of tragic illnesses in the family, as wave after wave of yellow fever spread throughout Louisiana and beyond.
The mysterious virus killed thousands across the Deep South from 1800 to 1900, but during the 1850s, yellow fever was particularly brutal. New Orleans felt the brunt. Epidemics cropped up every two or three years in the city, reaching a peak in 1853, when the city’s worst yellow fever outbreak claimed about 12,000 lives, roughly one-tenth of the city’s population.
Amidst rampant finger-pointing and far-out conspiracy theories, most laid the blame on new immigrants, polluted water, or unsanitary conditions in the humid, crowded city. However, rural areas also recorded dramatic death rates. Confusion, misinformation, and mystery around the causes and cures bred panic, controversy, and political division—much like the chaos swirling around the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Yellow fever would hit the Charpantier family with staggering force in 1855, killing seven of the remaining ten family members that year. It claimed their patriarch, Charles (age sixty), and six of his children, all in one house.
Harrowing stories played out across the state, as evidenced in New Orleans newspapers, which posted yellow fever death statistics almost daily. It wasn’t until 1900 that researchers discerned the culprit—the common mosquito.
Champomier noted the devastating impact on planter families in the rural parishes, even as he routinely reported his sugar crop findings. Despite the personal losses of my relatives, the sugar report indicated their operations remained intact under the direction of Charles’s son, Joseph M. Charpantier, named for his grandfather. Their business thrived through 1862, the same year P.A. Champomier stopped publishing his findings—too dangerous, as the Civil War arrived in south Louisiana.
Champomier’s last report shows that the Charpantiers raked in their highest yield ever in the winter of 1862, with 382 hogsheads of sugar. That same spring, the Union army marched in and “ransacked the region,” according to one document. Stansbury marveled at the odd convergence of glorious and devastating events in the cane fields: “Even as the fighting closed in around here, the 1862 harvest was the best on record.”
An unusually strong growing season in 1861 brought the record-breaking yield in 1862. Keeping one eye on the Civil War situation and another on their flourishing cane fields, Louisiana planters filled their mills to capacity that spring with sugar ready to be shipped to market. And as families in the north and south sent their sons off to fight in remote Virginia or Tennessee battlefields, Louisiana's cane planters brought in a bumper crop of 460,000 hogsheads—the largest the state had ever produced. It was the last sugar crop grown and harvested by slave labor.
Weeks later, when Union troops captured New Orleans, military blockades cut off river, ocean, and railroad routes, leaving planters scrambling to sell their bounty. Most efforts to sell off their sugar failed and the historic harvest of 1861-1862 turned into a financial bust. “It was the crowning moment of Louisiana's antebellum sugar industry, but one that reflected a half-century of economic growth and labor exploitation in the cane fields,” wrote historian Richard Follett in, “Champomier, Statement of Sugar Made in Louisiana.”
Stansbury’s paper described Champomier as an “ardent confederate,” who never weighed in on slavery or Southern nationalism in his reports. Even so, Champomier’s sympathy for the plantation owners' plight comes through in one of the last comments of his final report, noting that due to Union Army destruction in the sugar parishes, "some of the plantations are left almost entirely bare of working hands."
After taking New Orleans, federal troops targeted the sugar parishes. Following ground and naval battles in and around Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish, Union officers and soldiers occupied several plantations. While some reports say the Charpentier’s plantation was pillaged and possibly burned by the Union Army, others list it among the few to survive the invasion intact. Reality falls somewhere in between, as I found a petition brought by Joseph Charpantier’s grandson Felix during Reconstruction, requesting reparations for damages to their plantation by the Union Army. His request was denied.
On the way, I passed several large, black, sugar kettles squatting on front lawns, converted into planters or garden fountains—relics of sugarcane’s heyday, as ubiquitous in the region as ancient moss-draped oaks.
The family sold the property shortly after the war ended, but the U.S. census for St. Mary Parish lists Joseph Charpentier as a planter until he died in 1884 at age 62. Others in my line also remained listed as planters in the region after the war, though I’ve yet to track down their situations.
Standing in the vacated museum, cupping a musket ball in both hands, I pictured the Charpantiers the night before Union soldiers arrived, dining at a long table inside their grand house, flanked by acres of cane fields, and rows of slave quarters. And I wondered who among them—these third-generation sugar planters who had never known war—sensed they were on the brink of such radical change?
After a few hours at the museum, Stansbury escorted me out, flipping off light switches and locking doors echoing behind us. As I fished for car keys in my purse, he encouraged me to keep at it and pointed in the direction of the Franklin Library.
On the way, I passed several large, black, sugar kettles squatting on front lawns, converted into planters or garden fountains—relics of sugarcane’s heyday, as ubiquitous in the region as ancient moss-draped oaks.
Though many of this region’s established planter families left for the city after the War, letting their cast iron sugar kettles go to rust—sugar continues to fuel the local economy to this day, with more than 44,000 acres of planted sugar cane fields in St. Mary Parish alone.
Stansbury opened my eyes to the impact of the Civil War on the planters in my family. But more significantly, he had nudged me to the edge, daring me to deep-dive into a subject I had hardly given a thought to—sugar. Sugarcane changed everything for Louisiana and the South. And in this pocket of Louisiana, it changed everything for my family.