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St. Gabriel and the Louisiana River Road...the Early Days
Life along the River Road was unique.
It was certainly an interesting part of the world, in Louisiana during the early days.
The River, of course, was the Mississippi River, the Father of Waters, and the River Road, for many years was the only road in the area. It bordered the levee, which protected the lush lands that had been deposited by the River over a long stretch of time before the levees were built.
The particular part of the River and the River Road involved had been the home of the Houmas Indians prior to the arrival of the French to establish settlements in the area.
The settlement in which I was raised was called St. Gabriel and was reportedly founded by Bienville concurrently with establishing New Orleans. We use to always say that “one had grown faster than the other”.
Bienville had selected New Orleans as being the first relatively high point upstream from the mouth of the Mississippi. Also it had Lake Ponchartrain to the rear which provided additional water access to the location.
The Isle of Orleans, as it became known, encompassed the land from the delta of the Mississippi to Bayou Manchac on the north, an ancient arm of the Mississippi. St. Gabriel was the first settlement below the Bayou. In other words, it was the northern outpost of the Isle of Orleans.
The history of the Isle of Orleans is intriguing. It was settled and dominated by the French, who turned it over to the Spanish for a period, who reconveyed it to the French, who then sold it to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
Bayou Manchac always separated it from other sovereignties, Spanish, English and American. Everyone who settled in the area built their home along the River where the land was higher than the swamps to the rear because the deposits laid down by the River were necessarily higher closer to it. So that everyone could have River frontage, conveyances and bequests were made with so many feet along the River with a depth to say the forty arpent line in the rear.
St. Gabriel referred to a considerable area up and down the River, the boundary between the different settlements, such as between St. Gabriel and Carville was always as much a mental boundary as it was a physical one.
However, it was an exception in that it also referred to a concentrated hamlet. This probably originated with establishment of one of the first churches in Louisiana which had been originally moved from Galvez, Louisiana, an original Spanish settlement to St. Gabriel.
The Queen of Spain sent a fine bell which resonated from the church steeple. Then, after the coming of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, the train station was set up at St. Gabriel.
When I was growing up there I lived on St. Gabriel Lane, next door to the only doctor in the community who was a cousin. On the corner, fronting the levee was the St. Gabriel store owned by the family. The Lane ran from the Store to the Railway station. Also, on the Lane was the school which consisted of all eleven grades and to which the students were bussed from up and down the River Road.
So where I lived was indeed the center of the community we know as St. Gabriel.
Progeny
Progeny consisted on the maternal side of General DeSaix, of whom Napoleon said, “He could command an army,” and who saved Napoleon’s life and career, when DeSaix brought his troops into the Battle of Marengo, in which he lost his own life. I have the medal that Napoleon gave to DeSaix’s family.
On my paternal side we are referring to generations of large scale planters of rice and sugar cane. St. Gabriel, Louisiana, was settled by the French about the same time as New Orleans was.
In that superb book and cartographer’s delight, “Charting Louisiana, Five Hundred Years of Maps,” published by The Historic New Orleans Collection, one of the first maps reproduced is on page xxii. It shows St. Gabriel as a settlement when the other presently existing towns along the River, were designated as “Swamp”.
Joseph LeBlanc obtained a Spanish land grant in about 1750 confirming his ownership of a plantation there, fronting on the Mississippi River, where the Houmas Indians had formerly lived. The people in the area always lived near the River, if possible. When families divided properties, the remaining groups always retained frontage on the River. The result was that the populace was strung along the River Road for miles. My boyhood was spent there.
As a youngster, I roamed the bank of the River with my collie. With an active imagination, one dreamed of world’s to visit as the ocean-going ships, flying strange flags, plied by. One learned to swim, first in the batture ponds, and later in the River itself. The alligators were oblivious to any human beings in their domain.
Where I lived was the focus of the area, since it contained the historic church, the school house, the sole doctor’s home and office, including his own pharmacy, the railroad station and the post office, which was located in the Store, which itself had a venerable history. The Plantation was a mile down the River Road. One always referred to “up” or “down” the River Road, the reference being to the flow of the River. The large house on the Plantation had burned, but the Big House, where the family had lived for generations fronted the River, near the Store. Life in that place, at the time in which I observed it, was unique.
Plantations
Along the lower Mississippi River the plantations were social and economic enclaves. On the positive side they provided single ownership and control of rather large tracts of fertile land which permitted the effective cultivation and marketing of rice and sugar cane. For a good part of their history, all cultivation was done by the hands of the workers or the mules they drove.
Plantations largely disappeared from the scene for two reasons, one legal, removing the injustice of a slave system and the other economic, which was probably more powerful, involving the invention of tractors and mechanical harvesters.
The Civil War and its subsequent legislation, although it changed the legal status of the largely black workers, did little to improve their economic status or their educational opportunities.
However, the history of plantations is intertwined with the history of Louisiana and I had the opportunity to witness the final phases of the transition
The Big High Water
As a young boy witnessed the Big High Water when all men available, white or black, convicts and solid citizens, worked side by side, all night long, filling sandbags to increase the height of the levee. It was a close contest. The levee was constantly patrolled by armed men, to prevent a sneak incursion by potential dynamiters from the West side of the River who might seek to blow a hole in our levee, and thus relieve their side of the River from the eminent danger.
As a consequence of this High Water, which did cause floods up and down the Mississippi River, national legislation was enacted providing that the responsibility of maintaining the levees, which had originally been the responsibility of the planters themselves, then the State, was to be taken over by the U.S. Corp of Engineers.
After the high water, the levee was set back a considerable distance and homes and buildings, probably numbering thousands were rolled back. The women in the kitchens kept their fires burning even as mules pulled the houses resting on wooden rollers. My father formed a contracting company, of which it was said, “They moved more houses than anybody in history.”
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