A once magnificent past

When we think of Louisiana plantations, we think first of the stately antebellum homes on the Mississippi River. Here in Acadiana, we might also think of the sugar estates along Bayou Teche. But there were also some pretty impressive holdings on the Vermilion River once upon a time.
One of those was Rose Hill Plantation, which was about 15 miles downriver from Abbeville. It was begun in 1833 by Thomas Fletcher and Bernard McDermott, two veterans of the War of 1812 who were given slightly more than 1,000 acres on the river as a bonus for their service. Their land was later acquired by Adam Griffin, who sold it in 1848 to D.C. Rose and Thomas Winston.
The $30,800 purchase price included the 1,000-acre estate plus 27 slaves, 6 American mules, 3 Spanish mules, 8 American horses, 2 Creole horses, and an unspecified number of “Spanish mules running wild on the prairie.” Also, two ox carts, plows, harnesses, axes, hoes, spades, yokes, farming tools and implements, and a new cypress skiff.
Lorraine Breaux Sirmon compiled the plantation’s history in a paper written for the Abbeville Woman’s Club in 1974. She notes that most people assume that the plantation was given the name “Rose Hill” because of its association with the Rose family.
Not so, she says. “Older people who remember the place well say it got its name from the Cherokee hedge fence which completely surrounded the plantation,” she writes. “The Cherokee hedge is evergreen with a single white rose that blooms almost continuously. ... The thick hedge was used extensively for fencing ... [and] even cattle cannot penetrate it.”
According to her research, the plantation belonged to the Rose and Winston families, jointly, for nearly 50 years and was first operated as a cotton plantation.
“There was a cotton gin in Abbeville ...and the cotton was brought there by wagon. The road from Rose Hill to Abbeville ...was a crooked, boggy lane — almost impassable during rainy seasons,” she wrote. “This road still exists [in 1974] and has the beautiful... Cherokee hedge on both sides for long stretches. It’s a beautiful drive, especially during the spring. ...This road started in Abbeville [from] Guegon and Sixth Street ... [and] came on down by ...the Lutring farm and then wound on through the woods to Rose Hill.”
In 1895, Rose Hill was sold to O.M. Nilson, who converted it to a sugar estate.
Mrs. Sirmon talked to George Plowden, who was 86 years old in 1974. He worked on the plantation and remembered where practically every building was — including a commissary, small church, boarding house, blacksmith shop, machine shop, and about 50 small frame houses where the field hands lived. According to Mrs. Sirmon’s account, “The ... houses ...were all white-washed and were built in neat rows on either side of the road and along the edge of the woods. The commissary took care of all their needs — groceries, medicine, hardware, piece goods, a little bit of everything. The workers were paid off in tokens with the name of the place engraved on them, rather than with money, and these were redeemable only at the commissary in exchange for supplies.”
Running the place was hard work, but there were also lighter moments, such as barge parties, “where a crowd of young people would get together in Abbeville and come down the river on a barge with a band playing all the way and dock in front of the big house. They would dance all day and into the night as the barge was towed back to the city wharf in Abbeville.”
The good times came to an end in 1899, when Cuban competition undercut the Louisiana sugar industry. Rose Hill’s owners went broke and New Orleans banks took over the operation. Then, one night in 1921, fire destroyed the Rose Hill sugar refinery and, as Mrs. Sirmon put it, by the morning after the fire, “nothing was left but grim reminders of a magnificent past.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.,O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.