Notes from the Jeanerette Office
As chance has provided, I've recently had the privilege of receiving an overwhelming amount of historical information from more than a few sources. Information has always trickled in as one or two sentences which I inserted as added information into the writes, when I remembered. Too, often, the e-mails would linger and then I'd clean house and lose them. I am now trying to be a better caretaker of these personal treasures. Now to the "overwhelming" part. Previously, I would pick up on the information and ride out to get a first hand look at the location of the historical place. With my new found wealth, there's no way I can spend it fast enough. My immediate solution is to hide it under the mattress. I know, that's a cop out way of handling projects, but it can't be helped. Before these notes make a lump in the bed, I want to post them. Now you know more than you ever needed to know or cared to know about my situation. Sorry, I had to share.
Here is a first installment. They are not edited, they are just as I got them:
Notes from the Jeanerette Office:
Steve, are you familiar with Sandborn Maps? Sandborn, was a company that mapped towns for insurance companies and showed everything an insurance company would be interested in if they insured anything in the town. I have copies of their maps of Jeanerette dating from the 1880's until the late 1920's. They show every fire hydrant, the water lines, the locations of buildings and what they were used for, even dwellings. The ones I have copies of seem to be very accurate. They even state if a watchman was on duty at a lumber/sugar/rice mill at night.
The ones I have show my grandfather's/great-grandfather's blacksmith shop in Jeanerette. It also shows the M.P.[Missoui Pacific RR], S.P.[Southern Pacific] and all the spurs that used to be in town. The copies I have are larger than a legal sized sheet but I'll see if I can get my computer expert son, who just finished 8th grade to scan a piece if not all of a sheet to send to you as an example if you haven't run across this company's maps already.
About ten years ago when a friend and local amateur historian gave me copies of these Jeanerette maps I spent a lot of time going over them and found out why a road jogged a little to the left or turned this way or that, in town. I've tried to find more maps from this company on the internet but they cost money. I think Sandborn is no longer in existence but some libraries still have their maps. I've only seen the Jeanerette Sandborn maps and a few big city maps on the net as examples. I don't know if they mapped unincorporated areas. A Washington, La Sandborn map would show a R.R. depot and if it was old enough, maybe a steamboat landing.
Now you've got me thinking...maybe Sandborn mapped the Frog & Alligator R.R.!
More:
This little trip [his vacation to Texas] reminds me of something Papa told me when I was little. He said that during the early and mid 1930's a lot of people here moved to Texas to work in the oil fields. It was the custom to leave a sign on your house or in your yard when you left that read, "GTT". It meant, "Gone To Texas!". It was to let friends, or maybe the landlord, know what happened to you, and to let them know not to wait around for your return.
More:
Steve, thanks for the treasure trove of information you sent me. I'll have to get the maps out. Papa told me that on some old, may 1940's or a little older, U.S. Corps of Engineer maps he had that were later lost in a fire in 1969 showed the F&A...not the name but the old track outside Jeanerette.
BTW, the sawmill/museum in Long Leaf...did you go there? If you haven't, it's a must. It's pretty country too. I took my family there on a chilly Mardi Gras day a few years ago to escape the Mardi Gras' and see something different. In the museum which was the old company commissary or company store we meet a very nice gentleman who showed us around. We got to talking lumber mills and I told him a little about the two big cypress saw mills that were in Jeanerette. Later I sent him to display at the museum a chain dog.
They're still finding them in Bayou Teche. It's 2 flattened spikes held together with about a foot of heavy chain that loggers used to chain logs together to make a raft. The fellow at Long Leaf said he'd put it on display with a note of what it was and where it came from in their museum. He put me on their newsletter list for about a year in thanks. There's too much to tell about that place if you haven't been there yet...go see it if you haven't. They've got some vintage steam engines.
The Lydia Plantation store is still there and is opened in the warmer months to the public. It's well worth the stop. It's owned by my good friend
[Speaking of the Olivier Plantation Store near Lydia]
Gregory deKeyzer. Jules Olivier was his great-grandfather. Greg sells all kinds of old time stuff that you can't find anywhere else. I just used something from his store yesterday. It's a galvanized 1 gal coal oil can. I use it for weedeater gas. It's brand new. I don't know where he gets this stuff.
More:
Jeanerette's first big sawmill was built in the 1800s. It was sold, made bigger and then another mill was built. Jeanerette's boom began in the late 880s or early 1890s with another big mill being built. The town flourished for about 30 years after that. There were many small sugar mills within a few miles of town, an iron works capable of building bridges and an iron foundry, able to cast the large rollers used in sugar houses.
More:
I went to a party at Avery Island about 2 months ago and I was looking at the tracks and a curved roadbed. I would have gotten down to get a better look but it was getting dark and my wife and I were running late for the crawfish boil.
I knew a fellow by the name of Garber. He live(d) in Lydia. He was on that line that ran out to Weeks Island, I think. He told me that he started with the R.R. in the '50s at the end of steam. He said that the engines he first started on were of the 600 series. I didn't know what he was talking about until later when I got as a gift from my parents the big Southern Pacific RR book. Mr. Garber told me that they had a peculiar way to get an empty derailed car back on the track, if no one was looking, and they were near a switch. They'd pull the car to the switch and the Y or "Frog" at the switch would force the wheels of the car back on the track if they did it right and had a little luck. Anyway, that's what I understood. He was a nice fellow.
In cooler weather, that would make a nice trek out to the Island again.
More
Steve, a lot of those old abandoned filling stations remind me of when we went for a, "ride", to find the place where Bonnie & Clyde were killed in north Louisiana. I don't remember the name of the place but it's way up there. I must have been about ten years old, a little younger than my father was when Bonnie & Clyde were killed. Papa told us that it was a popular pass time to keep up with their exploits and to plot their trail of crime on the maps that the newspapers provided.
It was a long day trip and Papa would keep us froming becoming too bored with the scenery by saying things to keep our interest up and our imaginations going. Whenever we'd start to complain he'd say something like, "look at that old filling station...I bet that was here during Bonnie & Clyde's time..they might even have stopped for gas there or maybe it was one that they robbed!". It got so that he had us all looking for, "Bonnie & Clyde Filling Stations", like we began calling them. We knew what Papa was doing and we played along and had a lot of fun trying to be the first in the car to spot the next one.Using maps we finally found the spot on the road where the two criminals were killed. I think that there's a marker there now but we didn't see one back then. There was a little house set back from the road near that spot and Papa and my brother walked to the house to see if they could find out anything. There was an old couple living there and Papa told them what he was looking for and they said yes that was the spot where, "some bad people were killed". We stayed there a little walking on the side of the road and looking around. All was quiet while we imagined what it must have been like there thirty some odd years earlier.I still think of a, "Bonnie & Clyde filling station", sometimes when I run across an old gas station and remember the trip to that famous spot in the road.
A few times since then I thought about taking my family up there but it wouldn't be the same. I'll be content with the memory of that trip and looking for more, "Bonnie & Clyde filling stations".
And my favorite:
Concerning my question about the old railroad tracks that crossed Irish Bend from Franklin and continued across the Teche to recross the Teche at Charenton and return to the main line was this. "The only thing that I think is still there is a hump in the road about a half mile from Medrick Martin's store, heading towards Adeline. That must be where the track crossed. It's been a long time since I was in the bayou in Charenton but I think the approaches for the rail bridge and maybe the foundation for the turntable in the bayou are still there. When I was in school in the early or mid seventies an engine went into the bayou at that bridge. The bridge was open. Papa told me he had heard that the engineer had been drinking. A classmate who lived near the M.P. & S.P. tracks in Jeanerette told me that he saw what must have been that engine being pulled through town by another engine. He said that it sounded like something was dragging and hitting the cross ties as the engines passed and that the engine was covered in mud. I didn't believe him since he used to like to spin a few tales pretty often. A little later on we were walking along the track and we saw that on every cross tie there was a big fresh gouge almost in the center of the ties. My friend said, "That's where that thing that was hanging from the bottom of that engine must have been hitting". We looked at each other and started running down the track to see where the gouges ended. After a while, not seeing an end to the marks on the crossties we stopped running, all out of breath and sat down and started laughing. I told him that I believed him...now. We walked back to town and got a pop at Miss Lu Lu's store right by the track and sat on the store steps and watched another train go by".
Then he went on to tell me about Lulu's and who has it now by what name. That info will have to wait.
Me: I know I have more tucked away somewhere. Thankfully, I had these organized.
More from the files later.
Jacques Takes a Ride on the Gondola ExpressI had passed on some information to Jacques that Mike had sent describing a "drop", a process for moving a car from one end of an engine to another where only one side track was available. He responded with a story of his own. The ping pong effect has been working nicely with contributors counter contributing to the benefit of us all. I love these personal stories. They're the stuff. Here's Jacque's latest.
"Steve, that was an interesting bit about the, "Drop", and a sad one about Gerald. [Gerald had been killed in an accident] Papa once told me that if you saw a man in town missing an arm, he probably had worked at the foundry, if he was missing an eye, he probably had worked in the oil field, and so on. Such are the dangers of working with machinery.
The only time I, worked on the railroad, so to speak, was when I was 18 or 19 years old and worked at a fabrication shop after high school. The shop had a railroad spur that ran right across the middle of the two long metal buildings that housed the shop. About two hundred feet from the shop was another company's loading dock for bulk material. That outfit was built on a sort of rise in the landscape. Once after working from six in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon the call came out for any helpers who wanted to work overtime. I jumped at the chance and quickly volunteered after finding out that we'd be moving a railroad car called a, "Gondola", into the shop and unloading it. It was loaded with big I-beams almost as long as the Gondola itself. It was sitting on the track on the hump at the neighboring company's loading dock. I asked the foreman how we'd move the car into the shop and he said they'd loosen the brake on the car and give it a push with the outrigger of a cherry picker, a sort of self-propelled crane. The time came for the move and I asked how we'd stop the car. The foreman said that he'd have someone ride on the end of the car and turn the big brake wheel to stop the car in the shop. Before I could ask to be the, "Brakeman", on this short run, another helper, a big boy, from Franklin, volunteered and was picked for the job. Not wanting to be left behind I asked if I could ride the car into the shop and was granted permission by the foreman.
The time came for the move, the big boy was hanging on the corner of the car, I was in the car, the cherrypicker gave us a push and off we went. The car started down the little hill towards the shop and started going faster and faster, little by little, and as we entered the shop the waiting foreman called out to the fellow at the brake wheel to start turning it to slow the car down. He did and the car just kept going. The foreman jumped on the ladder on the car next to the helper trying to turn the brake wheel and they both put all of their weight on that wheel trying to turn it to get the car stopped. The car rumbled through the shop all the way to the end of the track in the sandblasting yard.
There was a curved arrow on the side of the car above that wheel indicating which way to turn the brake wheel to apply the brakes. The big boy had been trying to turn the brake wheel the wrong way. The foreman didn't see the arrow and when he jumped on the car he just naturally thought the wheel was stuck and put his weight along with the helper's to turn the wheel the wrong way!
The other helper and I called that big boy from Franklin, "Casey Jones", from then on.
We then hooked the cherry picker to the car and pulled it back into the shop and unloaded it with the big crane in the shop. We didn't finish unloading the car and moving the I-beams to where they were needed in the shop until about 8 o'clock that evening. Boy, was I tired, but we had a good laugh and someone had a new nickname at the shop.
When the MoPac Jumped the Tracks
Jacques continues with more recollections of his childhood in Jeanerette, La. I had sent him some information on the Missouri Pacific and this is his note back.
Steve, thanks for the info. With two great grandfathers that worked for Southern Pacific, I never paid too much attention to the old, "Frisco" [M.P.]. It was in pretty bad shape when I was a kid. The best thing about the Frisco was every so often the train would, "jump the tracks", and we'd all get to watch the crews put the train back on the rails. I remember watching the crew struggle to get the locomotive back on the rails. They were using those great big winch trucks with long gin poles. The same kind used in the oilfield. To a little boy it looked like half the town was out there that summer evening. There was a kind of "carnival-like" atmosphere there among the people. Some people sat on the ground with their elbows resting on there knees, some of the men stood there with hands on hips shifting their weight from one leg to the other while telling a neighbor what the rail crew was doing wrong. Kids ran and played in yards near the tracks, boys showed off to the girls and there seemed to be an endless line of cars coming up Glover St and going down D'albor St filled with sightseers.
My brother and I had come after supper and now it was getting dark so now we had to go home. I walked backwards behind my brother down D'albor St. until I couldn't see the train anymore.
The next time I went to the track and the train was gone, of course. The only signs left of all that happened were big ruts left by those winch trucks. I think I took home the head of a broken bolt as a keepsake.
Jacques
Abania Sugar Mill
This is another installment in the Notes from Larroque Series. A table of contents is being developed on the front page. These are his experiences at and knowledge of the Albania Sugar Mill, part of the Albania Plantation, east of Jeanerette, Louisiana.
Jacques Larroque:
I was lucky enough to go through the Albania sugar house during grinding when I was a kid. [I went]Each grinding [season] for 3 or 4 years starting when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Papa took my brother Robert and me to one of the sugar mills around town, once a year, at night after he got off work. We'd get a tour from top to bottom.
The Albania mill had a huge Corliss engine that ran the mill with some smaller steam engines running other equipment. The flywheel was so big that a hole was cut in the floor to fit it in. You could see only half of the flywheel on the engine floor with the bottom half showing below on the next floor. The mill was so old that its frame was built with huge, probably cypress timbers that I remember seeing sagging in the middle of a long span.
I can kind of get an idea of how steam engineers came to love their engines with each engine probably having its own personality and quirks. The Albania mill was right before the Albania Mansion on 182, old 90 just east of the city limits of Jeanerette. It closed around '71 and burned down one night when the mill was being torn down.
Papa took us to look at the ruins on the way to school the morning after the fire and I could see one of the little steam engines on its concrete foundation. The cast iron cylinder had broken and the side of it fell away showing the piston. I remember the fellow running that engine and oiling it like it was a baby, smiling all the time, when we went in that mill during grinding. Papa seemed to have known everyone there by their first name. I hated to see that old mill with its engines go.
If you ever go to the museum in Jeanerette, you'll see lots of good photos of the Albania mill. When I was a kid it seemed that there was a sort of an unusual amount of pride among the people that worked at Albania, compared to the other mills around town. Maybe it was because the mill was the oldest...I don't know. Maybe because it was so old and that it took so much to keep that mill running, there was a kind of, "Esprit de Corps", among the people there...or maybe it was because those old folks enjoyed talking about their mill and how they made their living and that a 12 year old boy wanted to know all about it. I was so lucky to have been able to listen to them.
More Industry in Jeanerette
Jeanerette's first big sawmill was built in the 1800s. It was sold, made bigger and then another mill was built. Jeanerette's boom began in the late 1880s or early 1890s with another big mill being built. The town flourished for about 30 years after that. There were many small sugar mills within a few miles of town, an iron works capable of building bridges and an iron foundry, able to cast the large rollers used in sugar houses.
ME:
After my Albania ride, one which I had not prepared for that much, Jacques filled in the information void. The Snowballing to Albania write should have all of this inserted. I'll try to fill in what he is responding to. My comments will be in brackets.
The [Albania] mill was on the bayou side. I think the scale house, a little bitty affair, may still be there. It's about 50 feet or less from 182. The three [railroad] spurs or sidings did cross 182 to the mill.
[I think I'd sent a link to Carencro High School's fine local history site]
About Carencro, one of my mother's grandfathers was the Southern Pacific station agent in Carencro around 1900, for a few years. He later on was the station agent in Jeanerette when my mother's mother was about ten years old, around 1905 or so. His last name was Dimitry. His family was from Greece.
[I had gone out to Albania. I knew of Albania Road and supposed it to be the approximate location of the water tank used to feed the steam engines. I sent the pictures from my visit to Jacques and he elaborated on what I saw but didn't see completely.] That explanation follows:
Steve, the tank and [hobo] jungle were behind you when you took this picture. I think the spot is where 182 and the S.P. track are closest together. What you have marked as "Shell Rd." in the picture is one of the curved siding roadbeds. [Your] Missouri Pacific line arrow is right on. [That] shell road, which was behind you, may have been marked, Albania Rd, unless the sign is gone now. It's a parish road, shell or limestone that runs from 182 south across the track into the fields.
[it does]
The two tracks that crossed near where you where may have actually been one track that split at a switch between the main line and 182. The rails were there probably there until the 1970's. The third crossing was behind where you're standing to take the picture. I'm surprised the farmer hasn't broken up the roadbed in your pic yet. It must have been an SP siding. It's at too sharp an angle to have come from the M.P. It must have crossed the M.P.
[This was added later]
There's also a curved line [a rail or patch, I suppose] in the Hwy. 182 pavement that indicates a third siding to the mill. The S.P. tracks must have crossed the M.P. tracks since the roadbeds run up to the S.P. line. The siding from around where the water tank was may have been M.P. It was gone when I was a kid but the two sidings in the foreground of your photo were still there and being used back then. I didn't know about the third siding until one day an old lady that was in the store told me, "Did you know that there were three tracks at Albania?" She's a local character. She lived just east of Albania on her family's farm. She then started to tell me about how when she was a little girl she was riding in the back seat of her father's car, leaning against the door. When the car went over the third track the door opened and she fell out onto the gravel road and landed on her head. She told me this story a couple of times and said that's why she's as crazy as she is, because of the bump on the head. She ended this story with a big laugh.
Up until the early 70's the MP, also called the Frisco around here, was still running short trains of gondolas filled with baggasse from the mills and boxcars loaded with sugar. They'd load it with some type of blower that would blow the sugar into the boxcars and men would shovel it around. It may be hard to believe that they'd ship it that way, but, I remember seeing it done like that at Jeanerette Sugar Mill. I don't see how they could have loaded the boxcar completely through an open door in the car side.
Molasses was shipped, of course, in tank cars. The M.P. trains went under 10 mph. The track was in really bad shape. I was always too scared to do this but some of my friends would, "hop the Frisco" for a ride, then jump off. I always thought that just as I'd try to grab on to the train it would derail like it did every so often.
I wasn't scared enough not to hop a ride on the back of a swinging, two-wheeled loaded cane cart a few times on my way home from school. I remember holding on to the back of the cart with one hand and holding my books with the other. We couldn't ride long like this since eventually someone in a car behind us would start blowing the horn for us to get off. My friends and I had a lot of fingers wagged at us back then.
The mansion, Albania, is now owned by a painter by the name of Hunt Slonem, from N.Y.. I met him once but I don't see him around town. He also bought one or two other antebellum homes in La.
In the Loisel part [my visit to the Loisel mill on my exit from Jeanerette], the house there pre-dates the Civil War but the mill itself and the concrete smokestack are newer. The stack and the mill ruins are probably from the 1930's or later. There's been a mill there since at least the early 1900's but probably earlier.
[Read Snowballing to Albania to put all of this in context.]
The Steamboat
Picture and information found HERE
Larroque wrote:
Steve, here's a picture of a steamboat that would ply the waters of Bayou Teche. It was the, "Interstate", a stern wheeler that would push a wooden barge that had an enclosed warehouse-like structure on it to house the freight. My grandfather's younger brother, Vincent, was the agent for the boat in Jeanerette. The little tin-clad, "steamboat warehouse", as it was called, is still there at the foot of St. Peter St. in Jeanerette. There was a wharf or gang plank from the warehouse built out to several feet from the bayou bank to reach the boat to unload freight.
The boat carried freight here up until the 1930's. Papa told me the fireman was a man named, "Tom Sealy", who was from Jeanerette and that when the boat passed, Papa could see Mr. Sealy, sometimes, in the doorway of the boiler room, covered in grease and soot, smoking a cigarette, if he was taking a break. He'd give Papa a wave of the hand as the boat passed.
The Interurban
ME first:
Newly added: pictures of the trolley barn near New Iberia at bottom of page.
After leaving Jeanerette, I rode to where I thought Jacques had told me to find the old trolley line barn. I sent him back the pictures of where I'd ended up. The following is his immediate reply followed by my collection of his notes back to me concerning the mysteries surrounding the streetcar line and further information. I've been holding this article until I had pictures of the car barn and the mysteries were solved. I've decided to make this Chapter I, the solutions and pictures will be Chapter II.
This postcard was taken, with permission, from Bert Berry's fine collection. To visit that site, CLICK HERE. For more towns in his collection, CLICK HERE.
Here's Jacques:
I think you missed the car barn in New Iberia....Instead, it looks like you went to the old "Orange Grove Plantation" in Olivier, which was originally the "Olivier Plantation". Instead of heading east after crossing the bridge at Darnell Road, you should have gone west towards N.I. to see the car barn. Look for Big Chief Liquidators and it's behind that, right near the bayou.
The "Interurban Line", as it was called, was named the, "Southwestern Traction Company". The line lasted fewer that 10 years. I think it was part of a larger outfit that owned other types of businesses. The car barn is a brick building, painted white the last time I saw it, and is only wide enough to house maybe two streetcars, side by side. It's long enough to hold maybe four cars.
I'll have to find those Sanborn maps. They may hold the key. When I was a kid, the roadbed where the poles are, was the M.P. track. I've been told that that's where the streetcar ran.
Me: Below are the poles that he is referring to. I have shown these pictures to several experts and historians. They verify, with unbiased certainty, and are in complete agreement, that they are vertical poles or rail ties.
I, likewise, am almost certain that they are what's left of vertical ties or poles, but did not think to absolutely, positively, make sure of that. There are several opinions concerning their origin and purpose. One is that they shored up the rail bed. This one is extremely popular. Another is that they were once fence made from the ties, also an extremely popular view. These poles are on the LSU Experimental Farm, a highly secretive installation which has spawned rumors on the level of those emanating from Area 51. Any incursion on that property for the purposes of historical clarity regarding the evidence of multiple rail crossings must be done at the incurer's risk.
Jacques thoughts on the poles:
I'm not sure but I think those, "poles', are pilings, probably cross ties driven into the ground to support the track. They started to remove the gravel that made up the roadbed several years ago and stopped when they found those, "poles". The work started again and they removed the gravel and left the poles, or pilings, there. I'm just guessing about their purpose.
ME: I see these poles/ties as our local Stonehenge. I'm not letting this one go away.
Jacques goes on:
My father had a home built at the corner of Main St. (old US 90, 182 now) and what is now Doll St at the West end of Jeanerette. The house was built in 1949 right after my parents married. Papa told me that there was a pile of railroad spikes and the plates that go on top of the ties and under the rails, near the road in what was to become Papa's front yard. He said he was told that stuff came from the streetcar line. Just South of his home the M.P. line ran about two hundred yards away, parallel with the S.P. track. So, there, about 1/8 of a mile away from Loisel the streetcar line was still right next to old 90 and the M.P. track was about 2 or 3 hundred yards South. I don't know if the poles were for the M.P. or the streetcar track. Southwestern Traction ran from 1912 to 1918. M.P. R.R. came to town a little earlier, around 1906 or so.
Jacques:
Someone gave me some letters written by Dr. M.B. Tarleton who owned the drug store where my great uncle worked before becoming a pharmacist. Dr. T wrote in one letter to a relative in Gibson, La., about the M.P. coming to Jeanerette and that there was great consternation among the people as M.P. wanted to run the track right down Church St. As it ended up, it was built one block south of Church St through town right along the S.P. track. I'd bet that there are traces of both tracks (street car and MP] are on the experimental farm.
Jacques
Jacques' next note:
Steve, they used the overhead wire suspended by wooden poles. In town where the rails ran down the middle of Main St. there were poles on each side of the street with a cable strung across and above the road. The wire that carried the electricity was suspended over the tracks by these cross wires.
The streetcar used to stop at many spots between Jeanerette and New Iberia. An old friend who was born in 1899 and has since passed away told me about riding the streetcar to and from New Iberia. He said that there were, "stations", built every so often along the route. They were little raised, open sided platforms with a roof.
He said that you could hail the car as it approached and it would stop for you if you we're too close to a, "station". The, "stations", I gathered were usually built where the line passed a store, intersection of the track with a road or some other gathering place. My grandfather told me that there was a conductor on the streetcar from New Iberia. His last name was Armentor.
In Jeanerette the line ended at the city limits which is also the St. Mary/Iberia parish line. The parish line runs down the middle of St. Peter St.. My great-grandfather's Blacksmith and wagon shop was on the corner of Main & St. Peter Sts. where the streetcar line ended. The car would wait, maybe an hour or so there before making the return trip through town back to New Iberia.
Below is his great grandfather's shop.
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He goes on:
Steve, this must have been taken right before the streetcar line was built. I saw where the line was started in 1912. I think I remember Grandpere telling me it was actually built in 1913.
In the photo, from left to right, is Grandpere's younger brothers, Aime and Vincent Jr., unknown, Adolph (Grandpere), and my great grandfather Vincent. Vincent was born in, Tarbes, France in the 1850's. He is standing right in front of the post with the horseshoe on it. Those signs all across the front are ads for, "Autocrat Whiskey". Autocrat was a house brand of Consolidated Foods, a grocery wholesaler from Plaquemines. Their local agent was the, "Jeanerette Wholesale". They operated a steamboat that pushed a covered barge loaded with non-perishable groceries up bayou Teche to the warehouses of their agents in different towns. The boat was the, "V.J. Kursweg". This company is now Conco. Maybe you've noticed their trucks before.
The sign on the front of the shop all the way to the right is a speed limit sign. It say, "Notice, Speed Limit at 6 Miles an Hour in Corporation Limits".
Those carts in front of the shop are what were called, "Three Mule Carts". You guessed it, three mules were hitched sided by side to pull the cart. It was used to haul cane to the mills.
Jacques
Below are bits and pieces of an article describing a lawsuit against the streetcar company.
Front of the barn:
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Side:
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Back:
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Wide view:
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Larroque: Baldwin, the Roads to Weeks Is. and the Narrow Gauge RR.
The following are excerpts from notes Jacques Larroque has sent in response to stories he's seen on History Hunts or in response to questions I had for him. Consider the following to be quotes from those notes unless otherwise stated.
A new Table of Contents of Larroque's notes is being developed on the front page. Accompanying pictures to follow.
Baldwin and the Bridge
It was probably a good idea to avoid the Baldwin Bridge on such a windy day. I remember when I was in school there were two children, a brother and sister, a few years younger than me, who lost their parents on that bridge in an auto wreck. It's not often that I cross that bridge but sometimes when I do I think of those two children. Their grandmother raised them after the death of their parents. I was warned more than once to be careful crossing that bridge.
Jacques reflecting on Baldwin
The summer after I graduated from high school, I got a job as a helper at Superior Fabricators under that bridge. Even with all the noise from the work being done in the shop you could hear, once in a while, something hitting the metal roof of the shop. There were a lot of bottles and other trash people would throw out of their cars when going over the bridge, littering the area around Superior. We'd always have to go out there a pick up trash when things were slow in the shop.
An interesting note about that bridge is that my father told me that the bridge was built before the waterway was dug. He told me that one time he was riding the bus back to Jeanerette from New Orleans soon after that bridge was built. The Baldwin Cut, the canal which the bridge spans, hadn't been dug yet. Papa told me that a woman seated next to him said, "As if there aren't enough bridges to cross in Louisiana...now they've built a bridge over dry land!" Papa got a kick out of that since he knew that a canal would be dug under the bridge connecting Bayou Teche with the Intercoastal Canal, later. That must have been in the early 1940's since Papa joined the army and went to Europe in late 1943.
If you want to see the old road coming out of Baldwin, there's not much there, by the way...veer left by the old Sager Brown school/Methodist charity center, instead of going up the approach to the bridge. You'll see that the road is at grade level and it ends in weeds at the canal next to Superior Fabricators.
There's an island in the bayou where the canal meets it. It's a triangular spot of land left when the canal was dug. Before the canal meets the bayou the canal splits into two gentle curves...one heading towards Franklin and the other heading towards Baldwin. I guess it was done that way rather than having a corner for tugboats to go around with their barges. It's in the same shape as a railroad,"Y". There's nothing that I know of on that island but when I was a kid I wanted to explore it since it had been land cut off for a long time. My oldest brother told me that he and a friend went by that island once in a boat and saw a goat on it. We wondered if it swam the bayou to get there or if its owner had put it there for being bad...sort of a, "goat prison island"...ha ha.
The Roads to Weeks Island
The road between Lydia [near present US 90 east of New Iberia] and, "The Island', like Weeks is called around there, wasn't built until the 1950s. It is Darnall road. I've seen it spelled Darnell, also. Up until that road was built the only way to get to Weeks Island was on Hwy 318 through Louisa.
I went to Cypremort Point two Sundays ago and we crossed the tracks at Louisa. That's where they end now. They're taking the rails up.
Papa graduated from pharmacy school in 1943, went into the army, served as a medic in the 70th Infantry Division in France and Germany and came back home in 1946. Mama graduated from SLI and became a school teacher while living with her parents in New Iberia, where she grew up. She started teaching at Weeks Island in a one room school house. It really was. She taught the children of the miners there...all grades in one classroom. Anyway, the point of all of this is that Mama used to ride to Weeks Island in an old school bus from New.Iberia through Jeanerette. [the long way round] It would turn onto hwy 318 at Sorrel, go through Louisa and then onto the Island.
The bus would stop to pick up some students and other teachers on the way. The other teachers and students were dropped off at a school in Glencoe [between Sorrel and Louisa].
Mama said that after she met Papa and they'd been on a few dates, she'd see Papa waiting for her to pass early in the mornings on her way to Weeks Island. Papa would wait on the sidewalk in front of his uncle's store for Mama's bus to pass so that he could give here a big wave. They got married in June, 1949.
That must have been a long trip from N.I. to Weeks Island, and back each day in that old wooden-bodied school bus.
Jacques
The Cane Railroad?
Steve, I'll let you get back to your work but I just have to tell you about a little R.R. search of my own...Papa told me about this when I was little but I haven't really tried too hard to search for it.
Once when I was about eleven or twelve years old, Papa took one of my brothers and me fishing in a pipeline canal south of Jeanerette. The canal, I think, ends up near Ivanhoe, near Louisa. Anyway, Papa showed us what he said was the roadbed of a narrow-gauge railroad in the swamp used to haul cypress logs out of there. I've never heard of this since then and I've wondered if what Papa showed us was a spoils bank left by the canal diggers? Papa knew a lot about local history, so I'm sure there must have been a line there somewhere.
Maybe this winter, after the deer slayers are back home, I'll take my boys for a look. I should have done this years ago before I'd seen wild hogs in the woods and I didn't worry much about things. Those hogs are something.
I know a land owner...maybe I'll start the search with him.
Albania Again?
This is another installment in the Notes from Larroque Series. A table of contents is being developed on the front page. These are his experiences at and knowledge of the Albania Sugar Mill, part of the Albania Plantation, east of Jeanerette, Louisiana.
Jacques Larroque:
I was lucky enough to go through the Albania sugar house during grinding when I was a kid. [I went]Each grinding [season] for 3 or 4 years starting when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Papa took my brother Robert and me to one of the sugar mills around town, once a year, at night after he got off work. We'd get a tour from top to bottom.
The Albania mill had a huge Corliss engine that ran the mill with some smaller steam engines running other equipment. The flywheel was so big that a hole was cut in the floor to fit it in. You could see only half of the flywheel on the engine floor with the bottom half showing below on the next floor. The mill was so old that its frame was built with huge, probably cypress timbers that I remember seeing sagging in the middle of a long span.
I can kind of get an idea of how steam engineers came to love their engines with each engine probably having its own personality and quirks. The Albania mill was right before the Albania Mansion on 182, old 90 just east of the city limits of Jeanerette. It closed around '71 and burned down one night when the mill was being torn down.
Papa took us to look at the ruins on the way to school the morning after the fire and I could see one of the little steam engines on its concrete foundation. The cast iron cylinder had broken and the side of it fell away showing the piston. I remember the fellow running that engine and oiling it like it was a baby, smiling all the time, when we went in that mill during grinding. Papa seemed to have known everyone there by their first name. I hated to see that old mill with its engines go.
If you ever go to the museum in Jeanerette, you'll see lots of good photos of the Albania mill. When I was a kid it seemed that there was a sort of an unusual amount of pride among the people that worked at Albania, compared to the other mills around town. Maybe it was because the mill was the oldest...I don't know. Maybe because it was so old and that it took so much to keep that mill running, there was a kind of, "Esprit de Corps", among the people there...or maybe it was because those old folks enjoyed talking about their mill and how they made their living and that a 12 year old boy wanted to know all about it. I was so lucky to have been able to listen to them.
More Industry in Jeanerette
Jeanerette's first big sawmill was built in the 1800s. It was sold, made bigger and then another mill was built. Jeanerette's boom began in the late 1880s or early 1890s with another big mill being built. The town flourished for about 30 years after that. There were many small sugar mills within a few miles of town, an iron works capable of building bridges and an iron foundry, able to cast the large rollers used in sugar houses.
ME:
After my Albania ride, one which I had not prepared for that much, Jacques filled in the information void. The Snowballing to Albania write should have all of this inserted. I'll try to fill in what he is responding to. My comments will be in brackets.
The [Albania] mill was on the bayou side. I think the scale house, a little bitty affair, may still be there. It's about 50 feet or less from 182. The three [railroad] spurs or sidings did cross 182 to the mill.
[I think I'd sent a link to Carencro High School's fine local history site]
About Carencro, one of my mother's grandfathers was the Southern Pacific station agent in Carencro around 1900, for a few years. He later on was the station agent in Jeanerette when my mother's mother was about ten years old, around 1905 or so. His last name was Dimitry. His family was from Greece.
[I had gone out to Albania. I knew of Albania Road and supposed it to be the approximate location of the water tank used to feed the steam engines. I sent the pictures from my visit to Jacques and he elaborated on what I saw but didn't see completely.] That explanation follows:
Steve, the tank and [hobo] jungle were behind you when you took this picture. I think the spot is where 182 and the S.P. track are closest together. What you have marked as "Shell Rd." in the picture is one of the curved siding roadbeds. [Your] Missouri Pacific line arrow is right on. [That] shell road, which was behind you, may have been marked, Albania Rd, unless the sign is gone now. It's a parish road, shell or limestone that runs from 182 south across the track into the fields.
[it does]
The two tracks that crossed near where you where may have actually been one track that split at a switch between the main line and 182. The rails were there probably there until the 1970's. The third crossing was behind where you're standing to take the picture. I'm surprised the farmer hasn't broken up the roadbed in your pic yet. It must have been an SP siding. It's at too sharp an angle to have come from the M.P. It must have crossed the M.P.
[This was added later]
There's also a curved line [a rail or patch, I suppose] in the Hwy. 182 pavement that indicates a third siding to the mill. The S.P. tracks must have crossed the M.P. tracks since the roadbeds run up to the S.P. line. The siding from around where the water tank was may have been M.P. It was gone when I was a kid but the two sidings in the foreground of your photo were still there and being used back then. I didn't know about the third siding until one day an old lady that was in the store told me, "Did you know that there were three tracks at Albania?" She's a local character. She lived just east of Albania on her family's farm. She then started to tell me about how when she was a little girl she was riding in the back seat of her father's car, leaning against the door. When the car went over the third track the door opened and she fell out onto the gravel road and landed on her head. She told me this story a couple of times and said that's why she's as crazy as she is, because of the bump on the head. She ended this story with a big laugh.
Up until the early 70's the MP, also called the Frisco around here, was still running short trains of gondolas filled with baggasse from the mills and boxcars loaded with sugar. They'd load it with some type of blower that would blow the sugar into the boxcars and men would shovel it around. It may be hard to believe that they'd ship it that way, but, I remember seeing it done like that at Jeanerette Sugar Mill. I don't see how they could have loaded the boxcar completely through an open door in the car side.
Molasses was shipped, of course, in tank cars. The M.P. trains went under 10 mph. The track was in really bad shape. I was always too scared to do this but some of my friends would, "hop the Frisco" for a ride, then jump off. I always thought that just as I'd try to grab on to the train it would derail like it did every so often.
I wasn't scared enough not to hop a ride on the back of a swinging, two-wheeled loaded cane cart a few times on my way home from school. I remember holding on to the back of the cart with one hand and holding my books with the other. We couldn't ride long like this since eventually someone in a car behind us would start blowing the horn for us to get off. My friends and I had a lot of fingers wagged at us back then.
The mansion, Albania, is now owned by a painter by the name of Hunt Slonem, from N.Y.. I met him once but I don't see him around town. He also bought one or two other antebellum homes in La.
In the Loisel part [my visit to the Loisel mill on my exit from Jeanerette], the house there pre-dates the Civil War but the mill itself and the concrete smokestack are newer. The stack and the mill ruins are probably from the 1930's or later. There's been a mill there since at least the early 1900's but probably earlier.
[Read Snowballing to Albania to put all of this in context. ]