Album: Magnolia Plantation: Cabin 3

Cane River Creole National Historical Park

The first recorded history of the lands where Magnolia Plantation lies are from a 1753 French land grant to Jean Baptiste LeComte II for which he was granted land on both sides of the Red River. Although LeComte’s land was initially used for tobacco cultivation, there were no enslaved people listed under his ownership on the 1765 Spanish census. A year later, one adult woman and two female children were listed as slaves in his household. In 1787, LeComte acquired additional land under a Spanish land grant. His son, Ambrose LeCompte established Magnolia Plantation with the first associated structures constructed under his ownership. Before the Civil War, Ambrose’s plantation included 70 slave cabins that housed nearly 300 enslaved people. These individuals labored cultivated and harvested cotton as the plantation’s stable crop by 1860. The plantation’s original raised Creole Cottage-style “Big House”, circa-1840s, is said to have burned during the Civil War and rebuilt in the 1890s by Matthew Hertzog. Included in the 20 historic buildings remaining on the property are eight slave and tenant farmer cabins, a blacksmith shop, and overseer’s house.