“Old buildings appear
to be particularly attractive to ghosts. These
last are often alleged to be souls of former
residents, whose earthly mission was tragically
cut short, leaving a frustrated spirit grasping
at bizarre means to capture the attention
and support of the living in order to resolve
personal unfinished business. Of course, the
older the building, the longer the list of
resident souls and the greater the possibility
of drama. No antebellum plantation home is
without at least one ghost, running the gamut
from wispy shadows to an assortment of aggressive,
howling poltergeists.
Oak Alley is no exception.”
-- Joanne Amort,
We came to Oak Alley Plantation, with its
“avenue” of live oaks so famous
that it is easily recognizable as the quintessential
image of the Southern plantation home, on
a humid day in mid-September to discover the
truth behind the stories of hauntings and,
maybe, the identity of the famous Black Lady
of Oak Alley.
The first thing any visitor to Oak Alley wants
to do upon arrival near the gates of the plantation
is to pull aside off the great River Road
and trudge up the grassy river levee to take
in the full view of this majestic jewel of
the old sugar country. With the river at your
back you stand enthralled by the majesty of
the Avenue of Oaks that stand between the
plantation big house and the mighty Mississippi
River. And as the literature and the tour
guides at Oak Alley will tell you, “In
the beginning there were the trees!”
This is a favorite spot for perfect photos
of Oak Alley plantation framed between the
ancient trees that have made it famous all
over the world.
A Brief History
of Oak Alley Plantation
“The story of Oak Alley begins with
the trees. Early records suggest that sometime
in the early 1700’s a settler built
a small house on the site of the present mansion.
It was he who planted the twenty-eight live
oak trees in two well-spaced rows, stretching
from his home to the Mississippi River. The
present day mansion was built in 1837-1839
by a wealthy Creole sugar planter, Jacques
Telesphore Roman. Although spared during the
Civil War, post war difficulties forced the
sale of Oak Alley at auction in 1866 for $32,800.
A succession of owners followed until 1925
when Andrew and Josephine Stewart purchased
the stately old River Road plantation and
converted her into [one of] the finest remaining
examples of adaptive restoration. Their efforts
also initiated the move toward restoring many
of the area’s historic buildings. After
serving once again as a comfortable and happy
home, Oak Alley was left by Josephine Stewart
as a non-profit foundation so that others
might continue to enjoy her beauty and dream
of her rich past. Oak Alley remains today
as an enduring monument to the grandeur of
the golden age of Louisiana Creole Society.
Nowhere in the Mississippi Valley is there
a more spectacular setting. Picture wide galleries
and cool halls, mellowed by the winds of time.
Picture a quarter-mile alley of sheltering
live oak trees nearly three hundred years
old. Better yet, picture yourself enjoying
the beautiful National Historic Landmark in
the opulence and splendor of the 1840’s
and 50’s along the Great River Road,
when sugar was king.” -- Joanne Amort,
Oak Alley Plantation
Having arrived between tour times (there are
tours conducted on every hour while the house
is open), we decided to stroll the grounds
and then take in lunch at the beautiful Oak
Alley Plantation Restaurant specializing in
Cajun and Creole dishes.
OAK ALLEY
PLANTATION RESTAURANT
If you are planning a ghost hunting adventure
or pleasure trip to Oak Alley, don’t
miss the opportunity to dine in this beautiful
little cottage restaurant located right on
the grounds.
There is a choice selection of familiar favorites
such as Red Beans and Rice, Jambalaya, Chicken
and Andouille Sausage Gumbo and Po-Boys, each
full of the historic flavor of the Louisiana
river region. This day we dined on the gumbo
and a delicious Chicken Fricassee of stewed
chicken with mushrooms in a homemade brown
gravy. After the excellent meal, we decided
to have dessert and have to say, if there
is ONE single menu item you order at the Oak
Alley restaurant, DO NOT miss the Bread Pudding
and Whiskey Sauce! We laughingly decided that
if there were indeed ghosts at Oak Alley,
very likely they were hanging around for the
fantastic food!
“At this point it seems appropriate
to explain that the name CREOLE is a derivative
of the Spanish ‘Criollo,’ meaning
‘native born,’ and was used to
denote children of European parentage born
in the New World. French Creoles, such as
the Romans [the owners of Oak Alley at the
height of its history], viewed their new countrymen
with disdain, claiming they had no refinement
at all, and withdrew into the Vieux Carre
(or Old Square) [French Quarter] where the
French language and old ways prevailed.”
-- Joanne Amort, Oak Alley Plantation.
At four o’clock on the dot we met our
tour guide, a warm, friendly Cajun woman named
Gilda, in the grand foyer of the beautiful
old home. With some introduction and guidelines
out of the way (for instance, no photography
is allowed inside the home), Gilda escorted
us through the beautiful home and into another
age.
Oak Alley has a long and interesting history
that was wrought right along with the fortunes
of the sugar cane trade. The land and house
passed through the hands of several families
but when it came into the possession of Jacques
T. Roman and his beautiful young wife, Celina
Pilie Roman.
As our guide Gilda describes, it was for Celina
that Jacques labored so hard to make Oak Alley
into a palatial manor suitable for the wife
of the man known far and wide as “the
Sugar King of Louisiana.”
Oak Alley – it received it’s name
from the riverboat captains who viewed the
great house from their river passages –
was a labor of love throughout: It is believed
that Celina’s father, Gilbert Pilie,
was actually the architect who designed the
home; in its construction, no expense was
spared. As Gilda so aptly points out, the
treasures preserved inside the home today
are a bare sampling of the wealth that flowed
throughout the house at the height of the
Roman fortunes. Every conceivable convenience
– including 113 slaves – was enjoyed
by the Romans in their heyday.
Unfortunately, as happened to many of the
landed families along the river, the tide
of the Roman fortunes eventually turned. Celina’s
unchecked spending, the loss of several children
in infancy, Jacques’ declining health
and ultimate death, and the outbreak of the
Civil War all intruded upon the fantasy-like
existence of those at Oak Alley. This was
the beginning of a period of long decline
in the plantation’s fortunes, and, oddly
enough, as Gilda related these sad events
in detail, the atmosphere throughout the house
became heavy, the mood entirely changed; a
shadow seemed to pass over us all.
DARKNESS FALLS
There is always a darker side to the story
of each plantation and Gilda touched on this
regularly throughout our tour. It is obvious
that there is more to Oak Alley than meets
the naked eye.
It quickly became obvious to us that there
were unseen members in our tour group from
the start. At the outset, when Gilda first
mentioned the change in fortunes of the Roman
family and their ultimate loss of the plantation,
we noticed the lights in the foyer area flicker.
Again, in the dining room, when Gilda described
the mourning room located on the upper floor
and the infant crib (the only original furnishing
in the home to have been used by Jacques and
Celina Roman) where several of the family
babies had died, the lights dimmed noticeably.
Jacques Roman died at the age of 48 leaving
young Celina a melancholy and repentant widow.
It is said that Celina had no idea how ill
her husband had been before his death and
this fact, combined with the realization that
without him she would lose her beloved home,
made her inconsolable. For the next eleven
years, all that remained of her life, she
wore black in memory of Jacques and wandered
the halls in perpetual grief, sighing and
often weeping softly. When she died, she was
laid out in the mourning room, which stands
to the left at the top of the main staircase;
the room is preserved with examples of Victorian-era
mourning practices, including black netting
draped over the room’s large mirror.
Examples of Victorian mourning wear lie over
the room’s fainting couch and also adorn
a mannequin in this room; the room also contains
the dreaded infant crib.
At this point Gilda directly addressed the
hauntings associated with Oak Alley, most
especially that of the ghostly Black Lady.
She stated that, although there are several
popular theories concerning who exactly the
Black Lady might be, she and the entire plantation
staff feel strongly that this is the ghost
of the widowed Celina. She also stated that
another “definite” presence in
the house was that of the last owner, Mrs.
Josephine Stewart, who, with her husband Andrew,
purchased the long-abandoned plantation home
in 1925 and lovingly restored Oak Alley to
a model of its former beauty.
Both women, said Gilda, had died in the house
and had been laid out on the second floor:
Celina Roman in the Victorian mourning room
and Josephine Stewart in her favorite Lavender
Room nearby.
Saying that Mrs. Stewart’s presence
had a definite “comforting” feel,
Gilda added, “there are several ghosts
associated with this house, just as there
are with many other plantation homes –
there are at least two other female ghosts
in the house besides Mrs. Stewart –
and there has been a lot of speculation about
who these others are. But we [the staff] really
feel strongly that the Black Lady is the ghost
of Celina Roman because there is such a sadness
associated with her appearances.”
As Gilda opened the great veranda doors and
directed the group outside to enjoy and photograph
the view, we took her aside and asked her
directly about the legend of the Black Lady,
specifically that it is often publicized that
the ghost is that of a daughter or family
member of a later owner of the home, Antoine
Sobral.
“There is that story,” Gilda told
us, “of the daughter who fell down the
stairs to get away from an aggressive suitor.
She did injure her leg and her leg was amputated
when it went gangrene. But she went to New
Orleans, became a nun and spent her life there.
When she died, she was originally buried in
New Orleans but her body was moved to the
graveyard here.
“But as far as the Black Lady is concerned,”
Gilda went on, “we fell, I mean the
tour guides all feel, that this is Celina.
She wandered the halls for years after Jacques
died and her life ended in such sadness, we
don’t doubt it’s her.”
At this very moment, with no one else nearby
in the upper foyer, the lights above us dimmed
and almost went out. When we pointed this
out to Gilda she smiled and said, “Oh,
that happens all the time, especially when
we talk about the babies and Jacques’
death.”
Just at this moment, the plantation’s
yellow cat ran by and out on the veranda,
giving us a little shock. Gilda laughed and
said, “No, that was a real cat! But
I’ll tell you this: when I first came
here I didn’t believe all that business
about ghosts and everything. I thought it
was just stories they made up. But one afternoon
I was in the downstairs hall, waiting for
the tour to get together, and it was a little
cool outside, so I had put a shawl over my
shoulders. And as I was standing in the downstairs
foyer, right in front of me, from my left,
I saw a dog run out of the dining room and
pass behind me – it even moved my skirt
when it passed! I spun around and that’s
when I realized that where the dog had run
to was the wall and the closed door. I mean,
no dog could have gotten out of the foyer
and not run past me again!
“When I told the other guides about
this, they laughed and said that I had finally
met the ‘family pet’,” Gilda
laughed, “and I’ll tell you I’ve
seen it several times since then!”
Gilda also happily shared an experience she
had had just a week before. “Well, it
gets spooky around here at closing time, I
can tell you that, and I was shutting up last
Saturday in a hurry trying to get to church.
One other guide was here with me and I went
around locking up and turning off lights,
and when I got downstairs she called to me
from the alarm box that the motion detector
was going off upstairs. So,” she hesitated
with relish, “I went upstairs and checked
every room, even up to the attic floor and
there was no one around. I came down and went
to the front door and the other lady called
out again!” Gilda laughed. “I
guess I was anxious to get on to church or
something, but finally I just shouted out,
‘I really need to shut up early tonight!
I have to get to church! Will you please let
me lock up?’ Well, don’t you know
that the other guide stuck her head out and
looked at me and said, ‘It stopped as
soon as you said you had to get to church!’”
We laughed with her, and Gilda seems to take
it all in stride, but, she added, “I
will say this, I get a little scared myself
whenever I do a tour in French.” (Gilda
is a native Cajun and speaks perfect French;
as such she is always asked to accompany French-speaking
tourists. She went on, “Because you
know, French is all the Roman family spoke.
Whenever I do a tour in French, or translate
for French visitors, I get the feeling more
than other times that I’m being watched,
like Celina is right nearby listening.
Almost as if on cue – and one might
say it was on cue if there had been a whole
group nearby, but it was just Gilda and the
two of us – the lights above us dimmed
again. Gilda looked at us knowingly.
GO AND SEE
OAK ALLEY
For the sheer beauty of the home and surroundings,
and the delicious restaurant fare, a visit
to Oak Alley would be a delight. But for the
ghost hunter or fan of the paranormal, the
unexpected appearances of the home’s
ghostly residents – which we are told
intensify as night descends on the old house
– Oak Alley is a don’t miss stop
on any tour of the Great River Road plantations.
Oak Alley also offers accommodations for overnight
stays in little bungalows set back from the
home on the edge of the picturesque sugar
cane fields.
But be warned: the dappled beauty and rich
delights of the daylight hours easily begin
to take on a gloomy aspect as the sun descends.
Night at Oak Alley is probably very dark –
and very busy – indeed!
Madewood Plantation
Madewood Plantation, one of Louisiana's
majestic antebellum plantations,
operates a Bed and Breakfast, allowing
visitors to sleep in the plantation
home on genuine antiques. Open for
tours daily:
10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.(last tour).
For information, please call 1-800-375-7151,
daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or
write to us at 4250 Hwy. 308, Napoleonville,
LA 70390.
Our fax # is 985-369-9848. Official
Web Site www.madewood.com
Oak Alley Plantation
Truly the quintessential Greek Revival
Antebellum Plantation, it is one
of the most visited of the plantations
and antebellum homes along the river.
Oak Alley Plantation, Restaurant
& Inn
3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road)
•- Vacherie, Louisiana USA
70090
Phone: (225) 265-2151 or 1-800-44ALLEY
•Fax: (225) 265-7035
E-mail:
ContactUs@OakAlleyPlantation.com
Nottoway Plantation
Home
Nottoway Plantation is a great bed
& breakfast, and its grand white
ballroom is a favorite for weddings.
At the edge of sugar cane fields,
Nottoway stands overlooking the
Mississippi River. This enormous
mansion, completed in 1859, reflects
an unusual combination. Greek revival
architectural elements blend with
innovations that were the fanciful
desires of the original owner. Not
only is the floor plan irregular,
but the house contained many elements
that were innovative and rare in
the mid-19th century, such as indoor
plumbing and hot and cold running
water.
Today Nottoway is open daily to
the public.
Take a guided tour, stay overnight,
have dinner,
perhaps even get married in this
magnificent plantation!
Beauregard House
at Chalmette Battlefield
Site of the Battle of New Orleans
in 1814–1815, (the last battle
of the War of 1812), the Civil War
Chalmette National Cemetery, and
Beauregard House.
Also located on the Chalmette Battlefield
grounds, and serving as a museum
and visitor center, is the Beauregard
House. Beauregard House was never
used as a plantation, and was built
in 1830. It is named for René
Beauregard, its last owner, the
son of the Civil War Confederate
General, P. G. T. Beauregard (whose
monument is at the entrance to City
Park, at the north end of Esplanade
Avenue). While many visitors arrive
by automobile, many also arrive
by riverboat, the Chalmette Battlefield
being part of the tour.
Destrehan Plantation
Destrehan Plantation was built
in 1787, originally of West Indies
architecture, but later renovated
to the then popular Greek Revival
Style. It is the oldest documented
plantation house left intact in
the lower Mississippi Valley.
The plantation bears the name of
its builder, Jean Noel Destrehan,
who acquired the estate from his
father-in-law, Robin de Longy. It
was here that the process of producing
granulated sugar was perfected,
and helped to establish sugar cane
as the major crop of the area, replacing
indigo. After years of neglect,
restoration is now continuing. Today,
the house is open for guided tours,
and is available for dinner parties,
wedding receptions and special events.
Phone:
(985) 764-9315 (Local from New Orleans)
Fax: (985) 725-1929 E-mail: DestPlan@aol.com
Ormond Plantations
Two historic Antebellum Plantation
Homes within 30 minutes of New Orleans
are Destrehan and Ormond Plantations.
Claiming to be the oldest French
West Indies style plantation in
the lower Mississippi valley, Ormond
was also built in the late 1700's.
Like most of the early plantations
of the area, it began as a farm
for indigo, but later switched to
the more profitable sugar cane crop.
Originally acquired as a French
land grant, the plantation stretched
from the Mississippi River to Lake
Pontchartrain. During its long history,
it was the focal point for parties
and celebrations, a prize to be
captured during the Civil War, makeshift
housing for troops heading to the
Battle of New Orleans, and more.
Today the estate is but a mere
16 acres, but is restored, as closely
as possible, to the way it was during
its prime. It is privately owned,
and the owner lives in the house.
Several rooms are available to guests
as a Bed and Breakfast, allowing
visitors to savor the atmosphere
of the 19th century, with a view
of the mighty Mississippi River
from the upper gallery. It is becoming
quite a popular place to have weddings
and honeymoons. For added intrigue,
Ormond, also, has its own ghost
story. Listed on the National Register
of Historic Places, Circa 1787
13786 River Road, Destrehan, Louisiana
70047
Phone 985-764-8544 | Fax 985-764-0691
or
info@plantation.com
Laura Plantation
Home
Laura, a French Creole Plantation
Home, claims to be the American
Home of Br'er Rabbit. Despite a
devastating fire on August 9, 2004,
Laura Plantation has continued to
offer visitors
what Lonely Planet calls "The
Best History Tour in the U.S."
The morning following the fire,
guests continued to come. And they
still do.
La Branche Plantation
Dependency House
La Branche Plantation Dependency
House on the River Road in St. Rose,
LA is what we call a Garconniere.
La Branche Plantation Dependency
House, on the River Road in St.
Rose, LA, is an interesting stop
on the Southeastern Louisiana Plantation
tour, because it is a visit to a
plantation home that no longer exists.
All that remains is the Dependency
House, which had a function that
is pretty much what the name implies.
It is what we usually call a Garconniere
(French for bachelor quarters).
La Branche is now listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
The Zweig family, of Germany, built
the plantation in 1792. Because
of neglect, the effects of the Civil
War, the economics during and after
Reconstruction, and the division
of the property among heirs, there
is little left to indicate what
was once there, save for "an
alley" of Oaks. The site of
the main house is on private land,
and is not accessible to anyone,
without the permission of the owners.
The Dependency House is on land
currently owned by the Lentini family,
and is open to the public. Included
in the inventory is the actual bathtub
of Zachery Taylor.
Houmas House Plantation
One of the most visited Antebellum
Plantation Homes near New Orleans.
It was used as the filming location
for the film "Hush, Hush, Sweet
Charolette," starring Bette
Davis.
Not only do tourists come by the
busloads, but locals may make the
drive to spend a couple of hours
on the grounds, followed by lunch
in nearby restaurants, before returning
home. Houmas is a home with the
architectural style that most people
envision when they think of the
old plantations. It was used as
the filming location for the film
"Hush, Hush, Sweet Charolette,"
starring Bette Davis.
Located in the small river community
of Darrow, LA, it sits on a few
acres on
the Mississippi River, much smaller
than the 20,000 acres that it once
had. The present Houmas House was
built in 1840 by Col. John Smith
Preston, on land originally owned
by the Houmas Indians, hence the
name.
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