Former Cotton Plantation in Louisiana
Rosebank Plantation House, Weyanoke Louisiana
Rosebank is architecturally interesting because of its design with the continuous upper and lower front porches and enclosed stairs, and its upper and lower, three-bay rear loggias, forms a prototype for later, more refined versions of Louisiana Plantation houses such as Shadows-on-the-Tech in New Iberia, Louisiana.
Historically, the house is significant for two primary reasons, it is built on land granted by the Spanish government in 1790, and it served as a dwelling place for several generations of slave-owning cotton planters whose industry helped form the economic basis of the antebellum South.
According to legal instruments at the West Feliciana Parish courthouse showing the chain of title of the land on which the house is constructed, a man by the name of John O'Connor (this is sometimes, spelled O'Conner) received 2,932 arpents of land from the Spanish government on March 24th, 1790. O'Connor served as Alcade (magistrate) of the Feliciana District of Southern Louisiana in what was then known as West Florida during the later years of the Spanish rule of this section of the country.
The Exhibit of Private Land Claims, State of Louisiana, Greensburg District from the State Land Office shows that O'Connor and/or his heirs "cultivated and habitated several large tracts extending from Little Bayou Sara to Big Bayou Sara from 1789 to 1814." The report, dated in 1814, indicates the tract, later Rosebank, was originally granted by Estevan Miro, the Spanish governor of Louisiana in 1789.
According to the abstract, or chain of title to the property, as recorded in the West Feliciana Parish Courthouse, the plantation, 37 slaves "and all improvements" were sold on August 22nd, 1818 by Ann O'Connor "et al" to Bennett Barrow, who had recently arrived in West Feliciana from Tarboro, North Carolina. The act of sale was made in Philadelphia, in 1818, witnessed by Robert Wharton, mayor of Philadelphia, and was recorded in the West Feliciana Parish Courthouse in March 1819. Barrow paid the O'Connor heirs $76,525.00 for the land, slaves, and "improvements".
Following the initial sale of the property on which Rosebank is located, the land has been sold 13 times.
The exact date of the construction of the house is difficult to determine because the acts of sales recorded between the O'Connor heirs and Bennett Barrow, and those recorded in the 1840s and 1850s fail to describe what is referred to as "improvements" on the plantation. However, four books written about plantation homes in Louisiana place the date of construction between the years 1790 and 1808, although the authors fail to give specific documentation as to the reason these dates are mentioned other than to say the building design has a "Spanish influence". An architectural examination of the house indicates that the house may have been constructed in the 1830s or even as late as the 1840s.
The most complete information concerning the early history of the plantation house and those who lived there is a genealogy book written about the Barrow family, one of Louisiana's most prominent agricultural families of the 19th century. The book was written in 1963 by a Barrow descendant, William Barrow Floyd of Lexington, Kentucky.
Mr. Floyd contends the house was constructed in 1808, basing his assertion on the fact that Bennett Barrow bought his property between Big Bayou Sara and Little Bayou Sara immediately after his arrival in West Feliciana in 1818 from the heirs of O'Connor (as shown in the West Feliciana Parish Courthouse records). A reference in a travel book by an Englishman visiting West Feliciana in 1808 stated that he visited with O'Connor and that O'Connor was at the time "Building a very large and commodious house." Mr. Floyd contends that the house under construction in 1808 by O'Connor is the same house purchased ten years later by Bennett Barrow.
Mr. Floyd cites the reference to O'Connor from a book by Fortescue Cuming entitled Cuming's Tour to the Western Country (1807-1809), which was republished by a Cleveland, Ohio publisher in 1904 as a part of a series of volumes on early American travel.
The exact date of construction notwithstanding, it is obvious that the house was built as the dwelling place for the family who owned and operated the large plantation, and that the land was used for farming purposes by the Bennett Barrow family. Barrow made a partition of Rosebank and his other holdings in 1831, two years before his death, naming his youngest son, Robert J. Barrow as heir to Rosebank and its lands.
After Robert Barrow's marriage to Mary Eleanor Crabb, they made their home at Rosebank. It is she who, according to Barrow family tradition as cited in Floyd's book, gave the home its name of Rosebank, and who planted the grounds with shrubs and flowers, some of which still grow on the grounds surrounding the house.
The U.S. census of 1850 reveals that the Robert J. Barrows were living at Rosebank, a plantation of 550 improved and 300 unimproved acres. This place was farmed in conjunction with Bay Wood Plantation by Robert Barrow. His real estate was valued at $129,000.00, and he owned 57 slaves. However, Robert suffered financial reverses in 1885 and his wealthy cousins came to his assistance so that he could buy a plantation near Livonia in Pointe Coupee Parish.
The property changed hands within the family several times during the early 1850s, possibly as a result of Robert J. Barrow's unsettled financial situation, but remained in the ownership of Bennett J. Barrow from 1856 until 1869 when it was sold at a sheriff's sale, according to the West Feliciana Parish Courthouse records.
The 1869 purchaser was Dr. R. H. Ryland, who was connected with the Barrow family, and Rosebank remained in the hands of his descendants and their heirs until the present owner acquired the house in August 1972. The house was used as a residence during most of the 20th century, and portions of what was once a part of the plantation are still under cultivation.
Mr. Floyd states that a number of legends surround the early days of Rosebank. The most persistent one states that the house once served as an inn, but no documentary evidence of this has been found. If the place ever was a hotel there is no record as to whether this transpired during the O'Connor ownership or during the period after the death of Bennett Barrow's wife, Martha in 1845.
In addition to the ravages of time, the house was seriously damaged when its upper floors were flooded as part of a scene in the Hollywood motion picture "Blood Kin" filmed on location by Sidney Lumit Productions in 1969.
The restoration work performed in the fall of 1972 was of an emergency nature to stabilize the structure and to prevent further deterioration.
Building Description
Rosebank Plantation House is a two-story structure with an attic, composed of brick walls on the lower floor and frame construction on the upper story and attic. The brick walls on the lower floor are covered with plaster and are approximately 12 inches thick in some places. The upper level of the house is constructed of cypress with cypress weatherboarding.
The roof has straight lines across the front and rear without dormer windows; the original cypress shingles were replaced with natural-colored cedar shakes in 1972. The house faces a southeasterly direction, and the rear is in the northwesterly direction.
The edifice is built directly on the ground and the lower front porch is paved in a herringbone brick pattern, part of which was restored in 1972. The central room on the lower floor, approximately a step higher than the front porch, is floored with cypress. It is believed that the four rooms on either side of the central room originally had brick floors.
The house contains ten rooms, five on the lower floor and five on the second floor. The attic is one large room with cypress flooring and two windows each on the side walls. The roof beams and flooring in the attic and second story are of tea and the interior walls are either lathe and plaster or cypress boards.
Two brick chimneys of red clay are located in the interior of the house, and another chimney is located in the rear portion of the exterior wall on the Northeastern side of the house. Six fireplaces are attached to the two interior chimneys, three on each floor, the exterior side chimney affords fireplaces for the upper and lower Northeastern corner rooms. Fireplaces in the upper and lower central rooms are made of iron.
The house contains lower and upper front porches, with fat, modified Doric brick columns covered with plaster on large pedestals on the lower level supporting the upper porch. An outside stair at the Eastern corner of the house connects the lower front porch with the upper, and is protected by a brick wall on the lower level and wooden louvers (replaced in 1972) that extend from the floor to the ceiling on the Eastern corner of the second-floor porch.
A wrought iron railing topped by a wooden handrail along with slim iron columns on the second-floor front porch are believed to have been placed there during a renovation of the residence in the 1880s. There was probably a wooden railing and wooden columns or shafts on the second floor porch originally.
In the rear, the house has a three-bay loggia with fat plastered brick columns similar to the front columns on the lower level, and slim cypress shafts on the upper loggia.
Aside from the new shingle roof, several brick walls that were restored in 1972, and the 1880 wrought iron balustrade on the second-level front porch, much of the structure is believed to be original. Many of the glass window panes, iron mantles in the upper and lower central rooms, moldings and interior and exterior door facings are believed to be original.
The house contains no plumbing. The electric wiring installed in 1940 which furnished light to the upper and lower central rooms has been removed, and the house contains no electricity.
The main house is part of a complex that included a well house made of latticework with a hexagon-shaped shingled roof (replaced in 1972) on the eastern side of the house; a large water cistern near the rear of the house; a large farm worker's cabin several hundred yards to the rear of the house; and a 6 x 6 foot outhouse to the rear.
As in the case of the main dwelling, the exact construction dates of these outbuildings are unknown, however, Miss Roberta Towles, a native of St. Francisville who has resided in New Orleans for many years, and who was born in 1880, stated on March 1st, 1973, that the cabin and cistern have been at the site for as long as she can recall. Miss Towles is related to Rosebank's former owners and spent much time there on visits during her lifetime.
In addition, the cistern is partially composed of bricks and cypress similar to that used in the main house and the construction of the farm worker's cabin has many antebellum characteristics such as hand-hewn beams under the cypress flooring, random-width cypress flooring, extensive use of pegs and chimney bricks of soft, red clay with sandy mortar, similar to those found in the main house.
The cabin is occupied by a farm family.
Rosebank is in the center of several acres surrounded by old live oak trees and many shrubs and annuals planted by early inhabitants.
Rosebank from the Southeast (1972)
Rear of the house showing the deteriorated condition of the bricks, wooden exterior, and roof (1972)
Front of house showing brick wall construction enclosing the outside staircase and columns (1972)
Southwest side of Rosebank showing the 2 1/2 story construction (1972)
Slave or share-cropper's cabin approximately 100 feet North of the main house (1972)
Outside staircase leading from the ground level to second level on the Southeast side of the house (1972)
Northside and rear of the house showing the location of the wellhouse and cistern in relation to the main house (1972)
Rosebank taken in the 1920s furnished by Frank B. Wood, who got the picture from his aunt, Miss Belle Lidall Brandon, a one time owner of Rosebank (1920)
Large century old live oak tree on the grounds of Rosebank on the Southeast side of the main house (1972)
Staircase leading from rear of second level to attic on the Northwest side of the house (1972)
Although Rosebank was inhabited until 1962, at no time did it have modern plumbing. This photo shows the Eastern view of the outhouse. The outhouse is approximately 50 feet West of the main house (1972)
