This 250-Year-Old Mississippi River Mansion Once Housed 800 Slaves &America’s Largest Sugar Plantation

Houmas House Plantation

There’s no sugar-coating this: Houmas House was once America’s biggest sugar plantation, powered by enslaved labor.

Today it’s serving a different purpose: showing visitors both the uncomfortable truth of plantation life and how this massive property shaped Louisiana’s history.

Here are some interesting facts about the historic Houmas House Plantation.

This Place Gets Its Name From Natives

The plantation’s name comes from the Houma people who first lived here. These Native Americans were great at making baskets and pottery.

French settlers came in the early 1700s and traded with the Houma tribe. You’ll find nods to these native roots throughout the grounds.

The Houma tribe set up homes along Bayou St. John around 1682, and they were here at least 100 years before Europeans arrived.

Their red and black pottery patterns show up in the mansion’s original tilework. 12 diamond-shaped floor tiles in the entrance hall have traditional Houma symbols.

Escape Tunnels Run Under The House

Under the main house, there’s a network of passages once likely used to help enslaved people escape.

Before the Civil War, records show some house staff secretly helped people seek freedom. Elizabeth Thompson’s diary from February 1853 mentions odd nighttime activities with “movement of persons not belonging to the estate.”

Digs in 2014 found three hidden rooms about 8 feet below the wine cellar that aren’t on any original house plans. These rooms held items like a brass compass, old oil lamps, and a child’s shoe from the 1840s.

Sugar Made This Place Super Rich

Houmas House was once America’s biggest sugar plantation. At its peak in the 1850s, it covered 300,000 acres and made 20 million pounds of sugar each year.

It took over 750 enslaved people to run everything. You can still see the original sugar mill foundations and huge iron parts on the property.

Shipping records in the Houmas archives show that in 1857 alone, 437 riverboats carried sugar from here to New Orleans, with each shipment weighing about 46,000 pounds.

The owner from 1857 to 1881, John Burnside, patented four different sugar refining methods, including his “Double Vacuum Method”.

Two Identical Mansions Once Stood Here

The mansion you see today is actually the second main house built here. Records show two identical Greek Revival mansions once stood side by side.

The first house, built in the 1770s, vanished in the 1880s. Archeologists have found foundation pieces showing the first house looked almost exactly like the current one.

A photograph from 1845, found in the Louisiana State Archives in 1973, clearly shows both mansions standing about 87 feet apart. The missing mansion had unique six-sided windows on its third floor.

Tax records from 1883 show a payment of $4,200 to the Jamison Demolition Company of New Orleans, but don’t say why the house was torn down.

A Count Hid Royal Jewels In The Walls

In 1862, a European nobleman bought Houmas House and stocked it with jewels.

Besides the card table and other heirlooms, hidden compartments exist in the library woodwork. This nobleman lived here just three years before disappearing.

Count Maurice de Linseux bought the place for 75,000 gold francs in 1862, weeks after four emeralds and a diamond tiara went missing from the Belgian royal collection.

During work in 1997, workers found a hidden vault measuring 18 inches by 24 inches behind the library’s main bookcase. Inside was a leather pouch with King Leopold I’s royal seal.

Two Politicians Had A Fatal Duel Here

The oak-lined entrance was where a famous duel happened in 1832. Two well-known politicians fought to the death over comments about plantation management.

The survivor later became a state senator. When you walk the front path, you’ll see small stone markers showing where the duelists stood.

The fight took place on April 16, 1832, between James Hamilton Bradford, a state rep from Baton Rouge, and Colonel Robert Abercrombie, a planter from St. Francisville.

Bradford lived despite a shoulder shot, but Abercrombie died from a chest wound. The Baton Rouge Gazette on April 18, 1832, put the story on its entire front page.

Old Recipes Were Found Inside The Walls

Workers found a collection of pre-Civil War recipes or handwritten papers of unique dishes served at plantation events. Over 200 recipes date from 1810 to 1857.

You can see some of these pages in the mansion’s kitchen area. The recipes were inside a sealed copper box in a wall cavity found during work in 1978.

They include instructions written by Marie-Claude Forestier, the French-born head cook from 1823 to 1849. One recipe was for “Sassafras and Persimmon Pudding with Houma Spice Blend,” which uses seven native plants from the Houma tribe.

Mansion Clocks Stop At Death Time

Since the 1920s, people have reported that clocks throughout the mansion stop working at exactly 3:33 AM. Records show this is when a former owner died in 1884.

The owner who died at 3:33 AM was William Porcher Miles, a former Confederate congressman who bought Houmas House in 1879.

Maintenance logs show that even after repairs, the clocks still do this. You can see a collection of these stopped clocks in the mansion’s west wing.

His doctor’s journal, found in the Charleston Historical Society archives in 1967, says Miles died of “acute respiratory failure” on May 14, 1884.

Louisiana State University documented 17 separate times when clocks stopped and temperatures dropped by about 12.7 degrees between 3:30 and 3:35 AM.

A President Held Secret Talks In The Library

The plantation’s library hosted a secret meeting between President Zachary Taylor and several key senators in 1849.

This meeting dealt with slavery in territories gained after the Mexican-American War. The original table where they talked is still in the library.

When you visit this room, look for the hidden door to a small side room where servants could listen without being seen.

The meeting happened on August 23, 1849, and included President Taylor, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

President Taylor came by steamboat using the fake name “Colonel Thomas Woodson” according to the guest book.

A letter from Senator Clay to his wife says the talks lasted “fourteen tense hours.”

The Music Room’s Grand Old Piano

The music room is covered in deep red damask fabric, framed by ornate, hand-carved wooden moldings painted gold.

The crown molding is a delicate design, featuring scrolling acanthus leaves—a nod to classical architecture.

The centerpiece, a grand Steinway piano, was a gift to the house’s owner in the 1850s and is placed beneath a crystal chandelier, featuring over 200 hand-blown glass droplets.

The room’s oak floors are polished to a high sheen, and the antique furniture—French Louis XV chairs and settees—are upholstered in ivory silk.

Historical accounts claim that performances were often held here during grand soirées hosted by the Houmas family.

Statues Sitting in the Garden Area

Nymphs and cherubs are scattered throughout the garden, evoking a Greco-Roman aesthetic. Likely dating from the mid-19th century, the statue is thought to honor the children of the plantation era.

The little girl statue at Houmas House, crafted from white marble, is positioned near the garden’s southern edge, partially shaded by a magnolia tree. It portrays a young girl in a Victorian-era dress, holding a bouquet of roses, symbolizing innocence.

Garden Soil Uses A Secret Recipe

Plantation gardeners created new techniques in the 1830s, like a special composting method mixing Mississippi River mud with sugar processing waste.

Duncan McCollum, the Scottish head gardener from 1835 to 1862, wrote down his methods in a 127-page book called “Cultivation Methods for the Southern Estate.”

His best idea, the “Mississippi Enrichment System,” involved fermenting river mud with molasses waste for exactly 47 days before using it.

Soil tests done by Louisiana Agricultural University in 2018 found these garden plots have 314% more minerals than normal Louisiana soil.

Former Slaves Got Their Own Land

After slavery ended, Houmas House used an unusual work system different from sharecropping used by most Southern plantations. Pay records found in the 1980s show that former slaves received partial ownership of specific plots.

Edward James Gay, owner of the house in 1871, created the “Cooperative Agricultural Enterprise” system that split 5,280 acres among 126 formerly enslaved families, giving them ample estate based on their services and position.

The 1880 census shows that 37 of these families had personal property worth between $600-$1,200, much higher than what most freed people owned at that time.

Visiting Houmas House Plantation in 2025

You’ll Houmas House at Darrow, Louisiana (65 miles from New Orleans).

Opening hours: Open daily: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (Last tour starts at 4:00 PM)

Entry fee:

• Self-guided garden access only: $10
• Adults: $25
• Seniors: $15