Large Sugar Cane Plantation in LA

Southdown Plantation, Houma Louisiana

Date added: June 04, 2024 Categories:

Southdown Plantation reflects a noteworthy part of the settlement and unique economic and social development of south Louisiana by Spanish, English, and American settlers in a basically French section of the United States from the eighteenth into the twentieth centuries. The history of Southdown is a microcosm of the agricultural, social, financial, scientific and industrial elements which have been associated with the sugar planters of Louisiana. More personally, it is the story of William J. Minor and his descendants in Louisiana.

The land on which the present Southdown Plantation house stands first belonged to Jose Llano and Miguel Saturino. Two adjoining tracts were given to these two men as land grants from Charles IV, King of Spain, through Governor Gayoso de Lemos, in 1790 and 1798, respectively. In 1821 and 1826, the legendary James ("Jim") Bowie acquired the two land grants for $250.00. He subsequently sold the land to William Wilson, who, in turn, sold it to William Minor of Natchez, Mississippi, and James Dinsmore in 1828. Dinsmore and Minor were friends, having known one another in Philadelphia where Minor received part of his education in 1827-1828. In 1841, Dinsmore sold his interest in the property with Minor to Van Perkins Winder. Dinsmore was apparently a resident of Boone County, Kentucky.

Van Perkins Winder was a descendant of the Winder family of Lorton, Cumberland, England. He had settled in lower Bayou Black, which also washes the Southdown property, with his wife and two daughters in 1832. By 1844, Winder was prominent enough in the business and social life of Terrebonne Parish to be elected to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1844-45.

Entries in the William J. Minor plantation Ledger, 1834-1883, suggest that he began to acquire full ownership of all the property in the partnership as early as May 1846. Correspondence in the William J. Minor Letter Books, 1834-1848 and 1848-1855, suggests that he began to acquire his partner's interest in 1847. The death of Winder from Yellow Fever in the Fall of 1847 lends credence to the belief that before the end of that year, Minor owned all the property in the partnership. Thus, from 1846-47 until the property passed into the hands of Realty Corporation in October 1932, Southdown Plantation belonged wholly to William J. Minor and his heirs.

William John Minor was the great, great grandson of Thomas Miner, the first member of that family to come to America. Thomas was born in 1608. He debarked in Salem, Massachusetts, from the ship "Arabella" in 1630, having left Somerset County, England. Four years later, he married Grace Palmer and settled in New London, Connecticut. His grandson William changed the "-er" ending in the spelling of the surname to "-or", Minor. William's son, Stephen, born Mapletown, Pennsylvania (then a part of Virginia), on February 6^th, 1760, was the progenitor of the Minor family in the lower Mississippi Valley.

Stephen descended the Mississippi River in 1779 bound for New Orleans with a load of merchandise. The trip apparently involved more than personal business. It appears to have been a screen for obtaining some of the war materials being secretly supplied by Spain through New Orleans for American Revolutionaries in the West. On the return trip northward, Minor became ill. His party and the war materials which they received in New Orleans continued on their journey and into ambush. Minor returned to New Orleans and joined the royal Spanish army being assembled by the Governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, for attacks on English Manchac and Baton Rouge (1779). Minor apparently also participated in the conquest of Pensacola (1781) and perhaps Mobile (1780) by the Spanish and American forces commanded by Governor Galvez. In return for his military services under Galvez, Minor was accorded the rank of Captain and granted the land on which the city of Natchez was built. In 1781, Galvez appointed Minor adjutant of the military post at Natchez commanded by Gayoso de Lemos. Thereafter, Natchez was the home of Stephen Minor and he continued true to the interest of the Spanish until Spain was forced out of West Florida in late 1810. In 1797, Stephen Minor acquired Concord Plantation (built in 1794, and burned 1901) from Gayoso de Lemos. Concord was the ancestral home of William J. Minor, who formally made Southdown his home in Louisiana in November 1867.

William John Minor, who built the first floor of the present Southdown house (1859-61), was the first son born to Katherine Lintot and Stephen Minor (Stephen Minor was preceded in death by two previous wives: 1) A Miss Bingaman, no issue; and 2) Mary Ellis, one daughter, Martha, who married William Kenner, father of Duncan F. Kenner and Rosella Kenner Brent).

Katherine Lintot was the daughter of Bernard Lintot, commissary at English Manchac and later a resident of Natchez. Bernard Lintot is reputed to have studied at the Inner Temple, London. Another daughter, Fanny, married Philip Nolan, Sr., who lost his life while on an illegal horse hunting expedition at the site of present-day Waco, Texas, in 1797. His infant son, Philip, Jr., was reared by Stephen Minor. Philip Nolan, Jr., apparently lived out his Life using the surname of his Uncle Stephen Minor. It was Philip, Jr., who built Linwood Plantation (circa 1840 to 1939) near Ashland (1841- ), the plantation home of Duncan F. Kenner in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.

The other surviving children of the Katherine Lintot and Stephen Miner marriage were: Frances, married Henry Chotard of Somerset Plantation in South Louisiana; Katherine Lintot, married James Wilkins of Mississippi; and Stephen, Jr., married Charlotte Walker, daughter of Charles Walker, territorial governor of Arkansas.

William J., or W.J. as the owner of Southdown signed most of his correspondence, married Rebecca Gustine, daughter of Dr. Samuel Gustine of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1829. The two had met in Philadelphia when W.J. was a student there. Rebecca was in Philadelphia when she received and accepted W.J.'s marriage proposal by letter in 1828. The issue of the W.J. Minor and Rebecca Gustine marriage were: John, married to Katherine Surget; Stephen, unmarried; William J., Jr., married Amenafde Chaplain; Duncan, unmarried, James, unmarried; Henry Chotard, married Ann Louisa Butler; Frank O., married Odile Larue; and Katherine Lintot, unmarried. Of these children Stephen, Duncan, William J., Jr., Henry C. and Katherine L. were associated with Southdown and the other W.J. Minor properties in Louisiana; Waterloo, sixty miles above New Orleans on the Mississippi River, and Hollywood, adjacent to Southdown on Bayou Black in Terrebonne Parish.

The origins of the name Southdown are unknown, but like the name Somerset given to the Henry Chotard plantation the name Southdown harmonizes more with the English background of the Minors than it does with the French settlers who were the first Europeans in Terrebonne Parish.

The French began displacing the relatively peaceful and agriculturally based Houmas Indians along Bayou Black about the middle of the eighteenth century. Despite the predominance of the French settlers and the uncertainty of obtaining clear land titles in the older settled part of Louisiana in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the number of Anglo-Saxon sugar planters was greater in Terrebonne than in any other south central Louisiana parish. Interestingly, many of the Anglo-Saxon settlers were from along the Mississippi River between Natchez, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A few of the property owners along Bayou Black by the mid-1840's, in addition to W.J. Minor, were: R.R. Barrow, Thomas Butler, Tobias Gibson, Richard Ellis, E. Ogden and William A. Shaffer. Whether they were from Louisiana and Mississippi or somewhere else, by 1858 there were 59 American planters to 20 French planters. In 1831, there had been 11 French and 10 American sugar planters. Virtually all of these men, including Minor, usually began by acquiring land from the small farmers in the area and gradually assembled sugar plantations of 1,000 acres and larger.

William J. Minor and James Dinsmore acquired the fertile land in Terrebonne Parish because of its immunity from the overflow waters of the Mississippi River and its accessibility via Bayou Black and Bayou Lafourche. Although most knowledgeable persons have traditionally associated Southdown with sugar production, the principal crop grown on the land was indigo prior to 1830. It proved to be unprofitable and in 1831, Minor and Dinsmore are recorded as having produced 36 hogsheads of sugar. Thereafter, the years when Terrebonne Parish experienced its greatest influx of Anglo-Saxons before the Civil War, sugar cane was the staple of this and adjacent properties in the heart of south Louisiana. What sparked the switch from indigo to sugar cane was the market demand for sugar and acceptance of the domesticated purple and blue striped "ribbon" cane introduced from Java about 1820. This very hardy variety of cane replaced the old "Malabar," or "Creole", variety introduced from Santo Domingo in 1751 (or 1733?) and the "Tahiti" variety introduced in 1797. The growth of sugar cane in south Louisiana was further encouraged after 1830 by the introduction of steam driven mills and by improvements in the manufacture of granulated sugar made commercially feasible by Etienne de Bore in 1795. Statistics on the rise of the sugar industry in Louisiana reflect these improvements. Sugar production in Louisiana increased from 75,000 hogsheads in 1833 to 449,000 hogsheads in 1853, the peak production year before 1860. In the latter year, production fell to 220,000 hogsheads, reflecting the downward turn production had taken in 1856 (A hogshead was equivalent to 1,000 to 1,200 lbs. until about 1840. In the late 1850's, a hogshead was equivalent to 1,100 to 1,500 lbs. Approximately 40 gallons of molasses equaled 1 hogshead of sugar.)

The peak years of production for Southdown in the pre-Civil War years were 1852, 1853 and 1854, when the output was, respectively, 831, 937 and 775 hogsheads. The annual average yield at Southdown in these years was 650 hogsheads. Thus, the 570 hogsheads produced at Southdown in 1856 were significantly below normal and reflected a decline in the hardiness of the "ribbon" variety of cane then in use. There was an effort made in 1856 to have the state government bring in new cane stock, but nothing came of the discussions. Despite the low yield at Southdown in 1856, W.J. Minor received a good price for his crop. On November 1^st, 1856, he wrote his wife, "L (everich) & Co have sold the Southdown sugar at 9 cents all round." Leverich and Company were W.J. Minor's business agents in New Orleans and his brothers-in-law. Two of Rebecca Gustine Minor's sisters had married Leverich men. Matilda D. married Charles P. Leverich and Margarita D. married Henry S. Leverich. In addition to these ties to the Gustine sisters, W.J. Minor served as executor of the estate of Dr. Samuel Gustine, who had died in July 1845. The responsibility was a large one. Dr. Gustine owned property in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Annuities from railroad stock and other sources were paid to the Gustine heirs from 1853 into 1862.

The first sugar mill at Southdown was built in 1846. Alterations or repairs were made on the mill in 1847, 1848, 1849, 1852, 1853, and 1854. The timber used in the construction of the mill very likely came from Southdown land. This was certainly true after May 1857, when Minor set up his own sawmill at Southdown, and employed Andrew Douglas, a carpenter who had first worked at Southdown in 1852, to operate the mill. Later, Minor served as legal guardian for Douglas's children.

The steam engine installed in the sugar mill by Messrs. Leeds & Co. of New Orleans in 1846 was still in use in 1869 by the Henry C. Minor Estate Partnership, which then expected the steam engine to be in use for at least twenty years more. J.B. Dunn, the foremost brick mason in Houma in the decade before and after the Civil War, was employed to work on the sugar mill in 1852, 1853, 1854, 1858-1860 and 1869. It seems quite likely that the brick kiln built at Southdown in 1858 was used to manufacture brick not only for the large bagasse chimney built in 1860, but also to manufacture brick used in the interrupted construction of the incomplete Southdown house begun about 1859 and roofed in 1861 or early 1862. J. B. Dunn very likely was the brick mason who did the work on the foundation and walls of the first floor, the only floor Southdown had until about 1893.

Entries in the personal diaries of W.J. Minor and the plantation ledgers for Southdown seem to imply that advice for the construction of the brick kiln came from John C. Potts, husband of Sarah Gustine, another sister of Rebecca Gustine Minor. John C. Potts moved to Louisiana in the 1840s. He was the brother of Nelson Potts, the well-known brick mason in Baton Rouge who built the Potts House, the Stewart-Dougherty-Prescott House, Goodwood Plantation and possibly the Old State Capitol. John C. Potts apparently began his business career in Louisiana as a brick mason, but moved into the more encompassing profession of a developer.

William J. Minor's chief concern was sugar production at a profit, but he had other interests. Like his cousin Duncan F. Kenner, W. J. Minor contributed to Louisiana's reputation as a center of American horse racing in the pre-Civil War era. Most of the horses which Minor owned were kept at Southdown in the stables which he had built there in the 1840s and considerably enlarged in 1858. In 1846-47, Minor's racehorse winnings totaled $4,225.00. Among the horses from his stables winning races in these two years were: "Warwick," "Verifier," "Jenny Lind," "Black Deck," and "S. Maggie." 'The horse named "Verifier" was kept in Baton Rouge in 1850-51. All these horses were raced at Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Natchez. They and others belonging to W.J. Minor ("Post Oak", sold in 1840; "Britannia", referred to in 1842; and "Lecompte," raced in 1855) undoubtedly raced at Mobile, Alabama, also. During the years from 1848 through 1852, Minor employed Thomas Alderson as a horse trainer. The costly stables built in 1858 burned in 1861, but were re-built sometime after the Civil War.

During and after the Civil War, W. J. Minor's problems were felt more acutely because his properties were in three separate locations in Louisiana and in one in Mississippi, and because he and his wife strongly opposed the war. Politically, Minor was a Whig. His 1859 Diary (entry for January 22th,) reveals that he owned 399 slaves: 176 at Southdown, 165 at Waterloo, and 58 at Hollywood. His wife was opposed to slavery, but often remarked that she did not know how to resolve the economic and social problems which were an inevitable part of emancipation. Their son Duncan lost his life fighting for the Confederacy in Virginia. Their son Stephen's health was so badly impaired by the typhoid fever he contracted while in the Confederate camp at Bowling Green, Kentucky, that he died in young manhood. William J. Minor's wealthy cousin Duncan F. Kenner was a high official in the Confederate government. Ironically, when Kenner and his family fled Ashland and Federal troops who raided several plantations along the Mississippi River in the summer of 1862, they took shelter at Southdown for about three months. Kenner was not there, however, for all that time.

Even though his Union sympathies were known in the North and Union generals sought him out for advice after portions of Louisiana and Mississippi were occupied in 1862-63, W.J. Minor still suffered at the hands of the occupying Federal troops. Most of the movable property (horses, cattle, etc.) seized at Concord was returned. Several hundred hogsheads of sugar and molasses taken from Waterloo by Federal troops were never returned, nor was the family ever compensated for the theft of their property.

Following the death of W.J. Minor on September 18^th, 1869, Henry Chotard Minor and Katherine Lintot Minor bought the interest of the other heirs in Southdown and operated the plantation as a partnership. Henry was the active manager of the property, but family and local tradition establish that Katherine took a keen interest in every phase of the sugar business. Henry often said that he would rather consult with his sister than almost any other planter in the state. Katherine is described as combining the sweetness and charm characteristic of Southern women with an able, analytical mind that was masculine in its approach to business problems. Miss Kate, as she was affectionately known, was born at Waterloo on December 5^th, 1849, and died in New Orleans on December 1^st, 1923. Her brother Henry pre-deceased her in 1898.

After the death of Henry C. Minor, Southdown was run under the name of H.C. Minor Estate Partnership. Katherine retained her interest in the property with the three children of H.C. Minor and Ann Louisa Butler. The children were John D., Mary, and Margaret. The active administration of affairs was under Mr. Walter Suthon and Miss Kate Minor. About 1904, John D. Minor assumed management of Southdown and operated it until 1912. In that year, John sold his interest to his sisters, who had by then married: Mary to David W. Pipes, Jr., and Margaret to Charles Conrad Krumbhaar. Thereafter, Pipes and Krumbhaar were associate managers of Southdown. In 1920, they began acquiring an interest in the property in lieu of salary.

Under the administration of Pipes and Krumbhaar, Elliott Jones was retained as General Field Manager in 1918, extensive improvements were made to the sugar mill in 1920 and additional plantations were added to the partnership land holdings. Added to the Southdown holdings before 1920 were Concord (the home of John Minor, brother of Henry C.), Mandalay, Greenwood, and Oak Forest. In 1920, Crescent Farm and Waterproof were acquired, bringing the total acreage in the business to 22,000 of which 9,000 either were or could be cultivated. In 1928, the Fulton Iron Works Company of St. Louis, Missouri, installed a modern sugar mill with a capacity production of 2,000 tons of sugar per day. Unfortunately for Pipes and Krumbhaar, as they assumed the reins at Southdown the Louisiana sugar industry was entering the most troubled period in its history.

Since the late 1890s, the cane grown in Louisiana was the Demarara variety known as D. 74 and D. 95. They were a variety imported from Cuba and domesticated at the Louisiana Experiment Station by Dr. W.C. Stubbs. It was discovered and reported by Dr. E.W. Brandeis, Senior Pathologist, Sugar Plant Investigations Section, U. S. Department of Agriculture in 1919 the D. 74 and D. 95 canes were subject to mosaic disease, root rot, and other diseases of cane grasses. Indeed, Dr. Brandeis said that the mosaic disease was then in Louisiana and had been the cause of severe crop losses in parts of Puerto Rico during the previous four years. The prospects were not rector of the government experiment station in Tucuman, Argentina, reported in the International Sugar Journal that there were a number of promising varieties of sugar cane under trial at the Tucuman Experiment Station. The soil and climate in Argentina where sugar cane is grown are quite similar to those in Louisiana. In addition, the same varieties of cane were then being grown in both Argentina and Louisiana. However, Louisianians were reluctant to recognize the seriousness of the problem facing them. As industry and farmers began to feel the business decline after World War I, the mosaic disease began to hit the sugar planters in Louisiana. It only aggravated their mental state to have Dr. Brandis, a Washington "bureaucrat", tell them the:eause of their problems and to tell them he also had a solution.

A combination of forward looking management and the taking on of heavy responsibilities caused Pipes, Krumbhaar and Jones to be receptive to the idea of introducing new cane stock. It was Jones, however, who actually introduced the new cane into Louisiana. He and Krumbhaar had become convinced of the necessity for good seed selection in 1920 during the visit to Southdown of A.D. Shamel, then with the USDA.

The first step in the direction which Jones's action was later to carry the sugar planters in Louisiana was taken by Krumbhaar. He obtained some seedlings from Edward McIlhenny of Avery Island, Louisiana, very similar to "Cayana" No. 10, the cane variety which had saved the sugar industry in Georgia. Neither the variety obtained from McIlhenny nor the "Cayana" used in Georgia were as hardy or as productive as the P.O.J. (Proefstation Ost Java) variety introduced by Jones in the Spring of 1922.

On his way back from vacation in the North in 1921, Jones visited Dr. Brandeis at his office in Washington. The following April, 1922, Jones again called upon Brandeis in Washington. On this visit, Jones learned that the USDA was about to give up its work on several promising varieties of P.O.J. cane. The result of this meeting was that Jones carried from the Washington greenhouse some 21 eyes of P.O.J. No. 234. The following year, 1923, the triumvirate at Southdown obtained seedlings of P.O.J. 213 and 36. The four acres planted in these canes at Southdown in 1924 represented nearly the total supply in the United States. Neither the federal nor the state governments had propagated these varieties.

By 1924, the gravity of the mosaic disease was recognized in Louisiana. The H.C. Minor Estate Partnership offered to give one-fourth of its P.O.J. canes back to the federal government, but the national government refused the gift. Instead, they bought a half dozen tons from Southdown at a reduced price. From this supply, about 4,000 four-pound packages were sent to all farmers who applied for the cane. Twenty-six tons, or one-fourth of all that Southdown had were given to the American Sugar Cane League, a cooperative body of sugar planters organized at Southdown on September 25^th, 1924, for the scientific study of sugar cane and maintenance of the protective tariff on sugar produced in Louisiana. As a result of the action taken at the September 1924, meeting at Southdown, the federal government opened an experiment station on 50 acres of land rented from Southdown in 1925. It was a propitious re-beginning. Nineteen-twenty-five was "one of the most disastrous years ever known" to the sugar industry in Louisiana (David W. Pipes, Jr., to J. P. Butler, President, Canal Bank & Trust Co., March 24^th, 1926.)

Despite the toll taken by mosaic disease, root rot, the Mississippi River flood of 1927 and the hurricane which hit south Louisiana in August 1926, the experiments with new varieties of cane conducted at Southdown began to induce optimism about the future of the cane industry in Louisiana. In 1927, just under 73,000 acres of land were planted in sugar cane, as compared to 28,000 in 1926. More importantly, the sugar produced per acre in 1927 was more than two and one-half times the 47,000 tons produced in 1926. By the late 1920s, Southdown had 3,143 acres of land planted in cane and was averaging 20.21 tons of sugar cane per acre.

Southdown also aided the sugar industry in Louisiana by demonstrating that it was possible to bale and store bagasse, the pulpy residue left after the juice has been squeezed from sugar cane. As a result, Southdown was the first sugar plantation to sell bagasse to the Celotex Company founded by the Chicago entrepreneur Charles Dahlberg with the financial support of English investors. Another first for Southdown in the 1920s was the use of Suchar carbon filtration process to purify and whiten sugar liquors.

Despite the yeoman work and leadership of Pipes, Krumbhaar, and Jones, the crop losses proved to be too much for many planters as the 'twenties worn on. In time, Southdown itself began to feel the heavy obligations that the crop losses early in the decade placed on the plantation. The economic crash of October 1929, and the severe business depression that followed in the 1930s proved to be more than the partnership could adequately handle. In the Fall of 1932, Southdown passed into the hands of Realty Operators, Inc. The visits of family and friends, such as Zachary Taylor in the nineteenth century to the first house at Southdown; Dr. and Mrs. William J. Mayo of Rochester, New York, in the twentieth century; young Allen Ellender, then in the Louisiana Legislature and with a long career in the U. S. Congress before him; and many more were now memories to be treasured by those who knew them.

Site Description

The present Southdown Plantation house is the second one built on the Southdown land. The first house stood less than one mile from the present structure. Only circumstantial evidence survives to assist in dating the construction of the present house.

The first floor of the present Southdown house was built between 1858 and 1862 of brick made in the brick kiln constructed at Southdown in 1858. William Minor, Jr., to W. J. Minor, April 13^th, 1860, wrote his father; "We will have by Saturday night two 100 thousand brick (sic) made so you see that we are making youse (sic) of the dry weather. The tower (bagasse tower) is getting on but slow. Mr. D (J.B. Dunn, the brick mason) has to (sic) many irons in the fire." In her narrative, "The Federal Raid Upon Ashland Plantation in July 1862," Rosella Kenner Brent, the daughter of Duncan Kenner who was first cousin to W.J. minor, states that in the Kenner family's flight from the Union troops in early August 1862: "… when we reached the town of Houma, we were met by William Minor, Jr., who was then living on Southdown Plantation. He took us to his house which was newly built, large & comfortable & gave us a hearty & cousinly welcome."

The one-foot-thick brick walls of the first floor stand on a brick foundation two feet thick which begins almost two feet below the surface. The floor plan of the house is in the English tradition. The house has a central hall which runs the length of the house with two rooms on each side and a stairway leading from the hall to a similar floor plan on the second floor. The rooms flanking the hall on the first floor measure approximately 18' x 30'. One long room extends across the back of the house. This room has always been used as the dining room.

The second floor of the present house was added in 1893 by Henry C. Minor. Unfortunately, no drawings for the 1893 addition have survived and none of the descendants recall who the builder was, or whether an architect was employed.

The timber used in the construction of Southdown is cypress. It was cut from the native cypress which grows on Southdown property. The millwork on the wood used in building the first floor was in all probability done by Charles Minty, who was employed as carpenter and overseer at Southdown from December 1846, into the year 1866, and/or Andrew Douglas, the carpenter who operated the sawmill that W. J. Minor had built at Southdown in 1857.

The rounded turrets that flank the gallery entrance to Southdown were believed to have been added in 1893. A closer examination of them has led to the belief that they were a part of the original structure built between 1858 and 1862, and that the house was never completed as originally intended. Charlotte Duncan Minor Payne (Mrs. Andrew H. Payne) corroborated all of this in her April 17^th, 1973 interview. The turrets are a manifestation of the Gothic motif which, with the classical revival, was predominant in the South in the 1850s. What could have been intended at Southdown may be seen in the turrets at each end of the front gallery on Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana, or seen in the interpretation of the English Gothic octagonal towers flanking the entrance to the Harvey W. Walter Place (1855), Holly Springs, Mississippi.

The two-story structure located 50 feet from the southwest corner of Southdown house was originally attached to the house by a covered walkway. Like the house, this building has walls of brick 1 foot thick on foundations two feet thick rising from below the surface of the earth. Evidence in the W.J. Minor Letter Book, 1834-1848 (W.J. Minor to F.A. Ernest, February 22^nd, 1848), suggests that this two-story structure was originally part of the slave quarters built in 1847-1848. Each floor has three rooms which measure approximately 12' x 12'. Each room has a fireplace. The rooms were originally reached via the outside stairwell on the galleries of each floor.

The stables which W.J. Minor had built in 1846-47, 1849, and extensively enlarged in 1858 to house the large number of racehorses that he kept at Southdown for racing in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Natchez, and elsewhere burned in 1861. Sometime after Reconstruction, the stables were re-built. A separate carriage house had been built in 1858.