Hi, my name is ashley rogers, im the director of Museum Operations at the whitney plantation and were beginning our today in a historic freedmans church which was built circa 1870 by people who lived on the opposite side of the river in paulina, louisiana. This structure was donated to us by the descendants of the founders of the congregation. They bought the land in 1870. Two parcels of land for the purpose of building a house of worship and in the sale document which we have from the courthouse they named their congregation the antiyoke, or against slavery is important to our story here. And this is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it is really important here in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. So we like to start our tour of the whitney plantation here in this building so we could kind of see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after the freedom came. Whitne
Lived on the opposite side of the river in paulina, louisiana. This structure was donated to us about 10 years ago by the descendants of the original founders of that congregation. They bought the land in 1870. Two parcels of land for the express purpose of building a house of worship. In the sale document, which we have from the courthouse, they named their structure the anti they named their congregation the antiyoke baptist congregation. That message, being against the yoke or against slavery, is something thats important to our story here. And this is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it is really important here in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. So we like to start our tour of the whitney plantation here in this building so we could kind of see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after the freedom came. Whitney plantation is the only Plantation Museum in t
Is that all of these people, we can see that most of them are born in africa and thats listed here. Their places of origin and yet their names are european names. In this case theyre french. We also see in the early years a few spanish names as well. And so we know that these people who have these european derived names were not born in africa with those names so that tells us something about that cultural annihilati annihilation. Slave traders often renamed people and its something that continued to happen throughout the course of slavery in the United States over the course of the 19th century when people were sold from one plantation to another, their new owner could choose to rename them and here in louisiana, we use the example of solomon northup. He was sold as a slave for years and then the movie that was recently made about it. The reason he was lost for that time is he was never sold under the name of solomon. The first slave trader called him plat and so he was living for 12
And so right around the same time that that first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo was not really a viable crop anymore. So this plantation transitioned at some point after that by about 1805. It was planted in sugar and it remains planted in sugar till today. Sugar is still a Huge Industry in south louisiana and all around us our historic cane fields still planted in cane that is still sent off to the domino sugar refineries. So three generations in this plantation. Over the course of the 100 plus years that they owned this land, there were many successful generations of people who were enslaved here and so the population would have shifted over time with Market Forces. The highest number that we ever have recorded at one single time of enslaved people in this land is 101, but we believe that thats a little low. We think there were perhaps as many as 200 people enslaved at the highest point. We have record of people that weve found, 357 over the course of that 100 plus years, b
Dedicating his flag to all the other men who are still missing in action or prisoners of war in vietnam. A lot of times veterans, if they want to come see the things that they left, we are always willing to give them a tour and show them around. It also helps us because we can connect specific names, donors to what they left. We have a big barrel that was left. I think it was left in 2002. I am too young to know what it was. But i have been told that in vietnam they used it as a letrine. An unfortunate soldier was given the job of burning it. But they came and they gave us a bit of context about what it was and when they left it and why. So thats really cool. Theres some donors who are still really active and want to see the things that they left. So this, as you may or may not know, is a roll of toilet paper. You may wonder why we have it in our collection. But toilet paper was as good as gold in vietnam, because if you were out in the field and you didnt have any toilet paper, you ha