History of the House Cherokee Plantation, Natchez Louisiana
On 30 November 1837 Charles Emile Sompayrac, married Marie Clarisse Prudhomme, the minor child of Narcisse Prudhomme and M.T. Elisabeth Metoyer. The marriage register noted that Sompayrac had obtained his majority and was the legitimate son of Ambroise Sompayrac and Josephine Desiree Briant (Bryant). Witnesses to the wedding ceremony, which took place at St. Francois, included various family members in addition to a neighbor, Jean Joseph Alexander Plaucher. Less than two years later, in May of 1839, Narcisse Prudhomme transferred properly - 1339 arpents of land and several slaves - to his son-in-law in a transaction valued at just over $45,000. It is thought that the house, called Cherokee after the roses growing there, had been built by 1839. It is likely that Emile Sompayrac added onto the structure, enclosing various galleries, around 1850.
Also in 1839, the Bossier-Gaiennie duel was fought at the rear of the plantation; Gaiennie died as a result of his wound and Bossier, who was elected to Congress in 1842, later committed suicide (1844).
Records of the 1870 federal census reveal something of the composition of the Sompayrac household, naming Emile Sompayrac as a farmer with $14,000 in real estate and identifying his wife, Clarisse. Pamela, age fourteen, and Ernest, age nineteen, were part of the household as was a "black" woman, Quiller [sic] Jane, from Maryland. She was a cook. Also, the census noted the presence of Henry, a young "black" child of twelve years of age.
In March of 1878 an obituary notice for C. Emile Sompayrac was posted; the newspaper noted he died at 2:30 in the morning on Friday, March 8th, at sixty-four years of age. The funeral procession, the newspaper observed, would begin at Mr. A. Lecomte's house the following day. More revealing was that submitted by "a son and a daughter" remembering Sompayrac's "excellent business tact, [that he was] a first-class planter, punctual, faithful, exact in the fulfillment of every business engagement." According to this account, Sompayrac was an "old and honored citizen of the parish" who had endured "years of intense suffering" and "ended his mortal career in the midst of dutiful nurses of Cote Joyeuse and Brevelle Island."
In May of 1879, a sale notice was posted; it was to be held at the residence of the deceased on the Cane River about ten miles from town. The sale was scheduled for July 1st. Clarisse Sompayrac paid $4250 for her husband's undivided half-interest in the two tracts, "together forming the plantation on which the deceased last resided." She also bought the parcel in town, near St. Denis Fort, and another "lot of ground" measuring 102' x180' on the east side of Jefferson Street, as well as the property jointly owned by Achille Prudhomme and Emile Spompayrac known as Cha[...] Springs Place. Portable property auctioned off that day to Clarisse Sompayrac included eight mules, four horses, three mules (mares?), five colts, fifteen cows and calves, eighty head sheep, two old wagons, one old horse cart, six plows, six hoes, four bull(?) tongues, four sweeps, and six prs gears, plus one old carriage, one old buggy, six chairs, two rocking chairs, one sofa, one marble top table, one card table, one carpet cloth, two beds and bedding, two armoirs, one side board, one toilet table, [...], three [illegible] presses, six [illegible] tables, two beds."
In October of 1886, Clarisse Sompayrac sold Cherokee, the same land she bought at the July of 1879 sale prompted by the succession of her husband Emile Sompayrac's estate and the same property transferred to him from Narcisse Prudhomme, to William H. Jack. Jack was her lawyer; he later flipped the estate to Thomas Creighton and it was Creighton who sold the house and 356 acres to Robert Murphy in 1891. Cherokee has remained in the Murphy family, and a restoration of the house was undertaken in the 1970s.
