Laurel Valley Village Plantation - Thibodaux, LA (A Bloody Revolt)

595 Louisiana 308

Thibodaux, LA 70301

29.789856,-90.787078

            For centuries, sugar has been one of the most valuable commodities in Louisiana. Across the state, hundreds of thousands of acres were reserved for the harvesting of this prized staple. With the farmland, came huge plantations and adjoining structures for the property owners and their slaves. Some of these plantations grew so large they were basically a community within a community, having their own schools, churches and stores. Workers were often paid in script, a form of currency that was exclusive to the property. You were basically paid in Monopoly money that could only be used at select stores. These stores made a killing, as they could charge more than the average price for goods, as this was the only place the workers could shop from. It wasn’t like you could go down the street to another store, as they would not accept the form of script that you were paid in. 
            Long work hours in poor conditions and low pay grew tiresome by the workers. By the late 1800’s these workers banded together and demanded better pay. The tension would come to a head in November of 1887 when black workers in Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Mary and Assumption parishes went on a three-week strike. With the aid of the national Knights of Labor organization, the army of nearly ten thousand men demanded an increase in wages to one dollar and twenty-five cents a day, bi-weekly payment and the discontinuing of the previously mentioned script. The strike occurred during a crucial time in sugar cane production, which would have ruined that harvesting year. After demands fell on deaf years, Governor Samuel Douglas McEnery ordered troops to defuse the situation. By the time the three-week strike came to an end, it was estimated that as many as two hundred blacks were killed.

            One of the major plantations that felt the wrath of this strike was Laurel Valley Plantation, which still remains as one of the largest sugar cane plantations in the country. The property began as a five hundred twenty-eight acre Spanish land grant obtained in 1775 by Etienne Boudreaux. The land would remain in the Boudreaux family until it was sold in 1819 to Joseph Tucker. The plantation first developed adjacent to Bayou Lafourche. Not much is known about this early complex, the present structures in that area date from considerably later. It is known, however, that Laurel Valley's main complex was moved from the bayou site to a point inland between 1800 and 1850. Originally,

Small on-site general store, which now serves as a museum.

the complex basically consisted of the brick portion of the sugar house which was built around 1850 and a main road dividing two opposing rows of thirteen double houses also built about 1850. The "Big House” now standing was not built until about 1884, but the original plantation residence was probably in approximately the same location.
            By the time the plantation would be sold to J. Wilson Lepine in 1893, the land had grown to over three thousand acres. Several shotgun houses, servant quarters and a school were built to accommodate the growing number of people living and working at the plantation. During its largest period of growth, Laurel Valley Plantation encompassed over fifty thousand acres of land, fifty to sixty adjacent buildings and a workforce of approximately one hundred and forty slaves. The plantation would shut down in the 1930’s and would be heavily battered by Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Today, much of the land is still used to harvest sugar cane and many of the buildings are no longer standing. At the front of the property is the old general store that has been turned into a museum for visitors. Built around 1890, the store was once a beer parlor and was the site of a brawl that is said to have left one man dead.
            Whether it is the mysterious stigma associated with such a large and abandoned community, tales of haunted activity have been associated with Laurel Valley Plantation for quite some time. Those who have visited the home at late hours of the night have reported seeing the apparitions of deceased slaves walking along the long and lonely road that leads up to the plantation. Others have captured unexplainable light anomalies on camera while hearing disembodied voices, sounded like screams and cries for help echoing across the open fields. Could Laurel Valley Plantation still be home to several of the slaves who simply lived their lives or is there a more sinister tale lurking amongst the endless rows of sugar cane? The origins may remain a mystery forever in the quaint city of Thibodaux.