Misc. Records
Where to Emigrate and Why - Frederick B. Goddard, Peoples Publ. Co., 1869
LOUISIANA.
THE State of Louisiana has an area of 26,461,440 acres, of which, according to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, 6,580,000 acres are yet to be disposed of as public land. About one-fifth of the total area of the State is embraced within the delta of the Mississippi, and subject to annual overflow. The other portions consist principally of level prairie, with a few hilly ranges in the north and west, and numerous depressions, or basins, in some sections. The best lands in Louisiana, are the bottom lands of the rivers where the rich surface mold is sometimes a thousand feet in depth; the swamp lands of Union Parish in the northern part of the State, which yields as well to-day as when they were first cultivated a hundred years ago; and a body of land extending along the Gulf coast for about ninety miles, and running back about seventy-five miles, embracing the parishes of St. Landry, Lafayette, Vermilion, St. Martin, and St. Mary. This tract contains about 3,000,000 acres of tillable land, nearly all of which is of inexhaustible fertility and capable of producing large crops of sugar, rice, and cotton, such fruits, as oranges, figs, grapes, &c., and garden vegetables, all the year round.
Dense forests still cover portions of this region. It is stated that there is sufficient timber in St. Mary's Parish alone to yield 10,000,000 cords of sugar wood, and that there are fifty thousand acres of swamp land capable of reclamation and of being converted into the richest rice fields. Portions of the region embraced by these parishes are also admirably adapted to grazing. Vast herds of cattle and large flocks of sheep may be pastured upon the extensive natural meadows of the Opelousas prairie, extending seventy-five miles southwest and northeast, with a width of twenty-five miles. One man is said to own 12,000 head of cattle, and it is estimated that from 75,000 to 100,000 head are now grazing upon these premises. This "Opelousas prairie" contains upward of 1,200,000 acres, and is covered with rich grass. It is said that there are half a million acres of grass land not under fence in the parish of St. Landry alone.
There is no more fertile land in the United States than the bottoms along the Mississippi. For 300 miles, they are frequently, if not generally, lower than the bed of the river, necessitating an extensive system of levees or embankments for protection from inundation. During the war these were destroyed at various points, and extensive tracts of fertile land will probably remain subject to overflow until the levees are reconstructed.
"In the parish of Concordia are numerous mounds built by a former race, of intelligence and capacity superior to the Indians. They contain human bones, pottery, and arrow-heads. These elevations being beyond the reach of the annual overflow, are much prized for gardens and orchards."
The prairie regions of Louisiana frequently possess a thin, sandy soil, and are not remarkable for fertility. The uplands of the north and west, also possessing a scanty soil, contain large forests of pitch-pine, and afford oak, elms, cypress, and honey locust.
The climate of Louisiana is very mild, and the summers somewhat enervating to northern people. The malaria that rises from the stagnant water of the overflowed districts is the occasion of more or less fever in the lowlands every year. Some portions of the State are quite healthy, and the winter climate of Louisiana is delightful and salubrious.
Before the war, Louisiana was fast increasing in population and wealth.. The population of the State in 1850, was 517,762; in 1860, 708,002. During the same ten years her acreage of cultivated land had doubled, and the value of farms and farm implements had trebled. Her crops of rice, tobacco, sugar, molasses, and some other products, had doubled. Her cotton crop expanded fourfold, and orchard products fivefold. The Land Office Commissioner says:―
"The commerce of the State, both domestic and foreign, has been very extensive, and the admirable system of internal navigation, in which Louisiana excels highly favored neighbors, will yet place the State in the front rank of the world's commercial communities. To the direct navigation of the Mississippi, extending northward to the Falls of St. Anthony, some 2,000 miles, its greatest tributary, the Missouri, adds 3,000 miles, stretching up to the Rocky Mountains, the Ohio and its tributaries, 2,500 more, reaching the heart of the Alleghanies, and tapping the rim of the northern lake basin. To these aggregates, adding the numerous large affluents farther south, with their branches, we obtain a sum total approaching in round numbers 17,000 miles, pouring the products of fourteen States into the magazines of New Orleans for foreign exportation.
"This State, not realizing any special need of artificial routes in the face of such a system of internal communication, has not engaged extensively in railroad building. Yet in 1860, there were nearly 400 miles of road in operation, and soon the State will be in perfect communication with the great northern lakes by a continuous line of railroad."
Baton Rouge is the capital of the State. It is situated on a high bluff, on the left bank of the Mississippi, 130 miles above New Orleans. It is a well-built city, and surrounded by a rich agricultural region.
New Orleans, the greatest cotton mart of the world, and the commercial center of the Southwest, is situated on the Mississippi, 105 miles from the Gulf. The city occupies a bend of the river on its east bank, the shape of which originated for New Orleans its well-known title of the "Crescent City." The streets are lower than the surface of the river, requiring to be protected from the annual floods by levees. The city and its surroundings bear witness to the good taste, the refinement, and wealth of its citizens. The public buildings, the churches and hotels, are on a scale of magnificence and extent unsurpassed in any American city. The literary and benevolent institutions of New Orleans are of the highest grade, and are most liberally sustained.
New Orleans not only enjoys an extensive inland commerce, but has a large foreign trade with Europe and other countries. Her wharves are often crowded with the products of various climes, and the flags of many nations flutter along her two miles of river front. The numerous railroads constructed within the past fifteen years, to connect the Upper Mississippi with the Atlantic, have deflected a large proportion of the trade which formerly found its only outlet via New Orleans; but the "Crescent City " must always maintain a leading position among Southern cities.
We find, in a Louisiana paper, the following statements respecting the soil, climate, productions, &c., of St. Mary's Parish. The description is applicable to several parishes in southern Louisiana.
All of the lands of St. Mary's parish have a nearly level surface, the highest—except the islands above noticed—not being fifteen feet above tide-water. There is not an acre of poor land in the parish. Fields that have been cultivated in corn and sugar-cane for nearly a century, without manure, still produce good crops. Sugar-cane is a sure crop in all lands that are properly drained and cultivated. All of the land produces cotton, corn, sweet and Irish potatoes, cow peas, pumpkins, oats, grass, castor-oil beans, indigo plant, and most all kinds of garden vegetables. Our lands produce tobacco of an excellent quality and in abundance, when properly managed. Our swamp lands produce rice equal to any lands in the world. Our hilly islands produce grapes as bountifully as the soil of the best grape countries, and the scuppernong and several other kinds yield abundantly on the banks of all our bayous. Our islands produce splendid sea-island cotton and the finest article of tobacco.
GARDENS.—Garden vegetables grow in this parish the year round. Nearly all kinds of vegetables grow the same here as in the North and West. The winter gardens contain onions, shallots, leeks, garlic, beets, cabbage, carrots, turnips, lettuce, radish, cauliflowers, celery, &c., &c. Good gardeners have an abundance of vegetables fresh from the garden the year round.
CLIMATE. Our parish is favored with a comfortable climate. Strangers from mountainous and hilly regions can not understand how this can be, but we will submit a few facts on the subject.
This parish borders on the Gulf coast. We have healthful and cooling sea-breezes during the summer and fall. Persons sleeping in rooms that are well ventilated never complain of hot or uncomfortable nights, not even in July and August. Last summer, 1856, the thermometer in New York, Philadelphia, and other Northern cities, went up to 103—in a drug store in Franklin it never went above 90 degrees, as indicated by a perfect instrument hanging in the front room on Main Street. In July and August it is usually pretty hot in the sun, but it is always pleasant in the shade.
The first and lightest frosts seldom appear till in November. We have not the statistics of the weather in this locality, but those of the neighboring parish show that in the last seventeen years the first frost appeared three years in the latter part of October, eleven years in November, three years in December. Our winters here are merely Northern autumns.
HEALTH.-Our climate is decidedly healthful. Chills and fever and. diarrhea are the principal diseases, and these are in numerous instances brought on by imprudence or carelessness, and usually yield readily to remedies if applied promptly. Congestive chills are extremely rare. Common fevers and chills yield to the simplest remedies, with which everybody is familiar. People seldom die either of fevers or diarrhea. Consumption is a rare complaint in this climate. Rheumatism and most other complaints of higher latitudes are rare in St. Mary.
SUGAR CROP AND TRADE.—Before the war our largest crop amounted to about forty-five thousand hogsheads of sugar, and sixty thousand barrels of molasses, made on about one hundred and seventy plantations. Thirteen thousand slaves were owned in this parish, valued at about six millions of dollars. Before the war, about fifteen steamers were engaged on these bayous, lakes, and bays in the busy season of the year, and as many as one hundred and twenty-five vessels have been cleared at the port of Franklin, for Northern and Southern ports, freighted with sugar, molasses and live oak, in one season.
The yield per acre is, in an ordinary season, a hogshead of sugar and fifty or sixty gallons of molasses; in a good crop year, double that amount. The sugar crop, is cultivated nearly the same as corn. In boiling the crop, it usually takes about three solid cords of wood to the hogshead. The crop, is laid by before July, and sugar making commences the latter part of October.
POPULATION.—Before the war the white population of the parish numbered about four thousand, and the largest vote ever cast was short of one thousand. Our people have always been noted for their hospitality, and for their love of law and order.
The majority of our people were decidedly opposed to secession, and were in favor of Bell and Douglas; but when Louisiana was declared out of the Union, nearly all sided strongly with the South, and as soon as the war was over they ardently desired peace, and intended to act in good faith toward the old Government and flag.
Northern people who have settled among us since the war will testify that they have been treated kindly by our people, and that they can live as securely here as anywhere in the West or North. The stranger and the freedman will be as fairly dealt with by a St. Mary judge and jury as the original citizens of the parish.
The following is extracted from the Report of the Agricultural Department for 1868:—
REAL ESTATE.—In the present unsettled condition of affairs in Louisiana, as in the other States of that section of the country, it is difficult to approximate the relative value of farm lands as compared with the census estimates of 1860. Our correspondents in no instance report the decrease in price at less than thirty-three per cent, and in some cases, give it as high as ninety per cent, the former figures being returned for Washington, and the latter for Tensas and Concordia, with no demand and few sales other than forced, and little money in the country to purchase. The average for the State, on the basis of these returns, is seventy per cent. Our Tensas correspondent writes: "Within a year two of the most valuable estates have been assessed by order of the court (the owner having deceased), and the value placed on land, with every necessary improvement, was $5 per acre for the cleared, and $10 per acre for the portion in timber. In 1859 about 400 acres of one of these places were sold at $125 per acre, and $18,000 in cash paid upon it, but within the past twelve months the purchaser obtained a release of the purchase by forfeiting this payment. During 1860, when the levees were intact, these same lands could not have been purchased for $130 per acre, and would readily have commanded that price at public sale. At this time the value of land is only nominal, and commands no stated price." Our Rapides correspondent says: "Well improved sugar and cotton plantations have no fixed price; few sales; no persons here able to buy; nearly all desiring to sell. Hundreds of thousands of well improved acres are now lying idle, there being no labor for them. The richest lands (no levees needed) are growing up in weeds, trees, &c. On my own plantation, where I have made over 1,000 hogsheads of sugar, 2,500 barrels of molasses, 15,000 bushels of corn, with hay, &c., with pastures for 500 head of horned cattle, large flocks of sheep and hogs, mares and colts, I have this year less than 200 hogsheads of sugar, and but little corn; stock of cattle, sheep, hogs, mares, and colts all gone, destroyed during the war."
Under the heavy depreciation of plantations the market value of wild and unimproved lands must be but nominal, and our correspondents estimate them at from "but little value," to $3 per acre, according to location and resources. These lands are varied in character and quality, from light sandy loam on upland to heavily timbered bottoms and cypress swamps, the alluvial or red lands being of the richest kind when protected from overflow, and the light soil susceptible of thorough cultivation, and capable of producing good crops of corn and cotton.
In the soil and timber are to be found the chief resources of this State, but few minerals, except salt, having as yet been developed or discovered, though some coal, iron, and copper are reported to exist in Union Parish. Timber is abundant in all parts of the State, embracing many varieties of oak, ash, cottonwood, cypress, gum, elm, sycamore, pecan, hackberry, pine, &c., and presenting great inducements for development, some of the pine forests capable of producing quantities of turpentine.
On one of the islands within the limits of St. Mary's Parish—Petite Anse or Salt Island―there exists an immense bed of salt. By boring, parties have proved that the bed is half a mile square, and it may extend a mile or more. They have gone thirty-eight feet into the solid salt, and find no signs of the bottom of the stratum. The surface is about on a level with tidewater, and the earth covers the salt from eleven to thirty feet. On the surface of the salt they found a soil like that of the surrounding marshes, and above this sedge or marsh grass in a good state of preservation. Above the latter the soil appears to be the workings of the hillsides above.
Cotton, sugar, corn, and potatoes are the principal crops in Louisiana, and before the war the cultivation of the first two named was very profitable, but our correspondents uniformly represent the production of cotton as ruinous to the planter during the past year. Jackson Parish reports two hundred pounds of lint cotton to the acre, fifteen bushels of corn, one hundred and fifty bushels of sweet potatoes, and twenty bushels of peas. Tensas Parish, one to one and a half bales to the acre in good season, fifty to seventy-five bushels of corn; in cultivation, nine acres of cotton allotted to one laborer, and five acres of corn. In Union Parish about six bales of cotton to the hand was expected before the war. In Carroll Parish cotton will produce six hundred pounds lint to the acre when newly cultivated, and a fair laborer can make eight bales of cotton and one hundred bushels of corn, yielding about $500 to the hand; but under the present system the average is two and a half bales cotton and twenty-five bushels corn to the hand. Prior to the war the parish of Rapides produced from 30,000 to 40,000 bales cotton, 15,000 to 18,000 hogsheads sugar, and 30,000 barrels molasses, but the production has much deteriorated, though with the labor and capital at command, the capabilities are still as great. In the southern tier of parishes sugar, rice and tobacco are made specialties, and fruits are extensively grown, with great inducements for the increase of the latter production.
Louisiana possesses great capabilities for fruit culture, and the climate and soil present strong inducements to persons desiring to engage in such production. In St. Mary's Parish they have fruits of various kinds from April to November: "The Japan plum grows all winter and. ripens in April; dewberries also ripen in April, and grow in abundance; strawberries, blackberries, and mulberries ripen in May; plums in June; peaches, quinces, and figs in July, and grapes and apples in August. The muscadine, a species of scuppernong, grows wild, and ripens in August; pears ripen in August, and grow in great perfection; oranges ripen in October, and usually remain good on the trees till December; bananas, limes, and lemons ripen in October." The yield of oranges per acre is enormous. Our correspondent writes that "it is usual to plant about one hundred trees to the acre below New Orleans on the river. Some orchards yield from $10,000 to $20,000 annually. A full-grown tree will bear 1,000 oranges, and a single tree has been known to yield 5,000 oranges. Trees commence bearing when five years old, when properly managed." What we quote in regard to the capabilities of this parish may be said, with slight variation, of most of the lower counties of the State, while in the more northern regions many of the fruits named grow in perfection, and in some localities the apple succeeds well. Our Rapides reporter writes: " I have a second crop of apples this year. They are hard, small, and poor, though they are eaten." In Washington Parish a small orchard, chiefly peaches, in one season yielded a profit of $4,000, the fruit being early and within close proximity to New Orleans markets. Our East Feliciana correspondent writes: " This is one of the finest fruit regions in the world. Apples, peaches, pears, quinces, plums, figs, grapes, berries, &c., do well, and wild blackberries grow in great abundance, from which a superior wine is made. We have, as yet, but few orchards. One man this season sold $600 worth of pears from fourteen trees." Though but little attention has heretofore been given to fruit culture, the capabilities of the State are so evident, and the inducements so strong, in a pecuniary point of view, that the production must, at an early day, become a leading interest of Louisiana.
CORRESPONDENCE.
OPELOUSAS, PARISH OF ST. LANDRY, LA.,
August 14, 1868.
FRED. B. GODDARD, Esq.:—
SIR: The character of the lands in this section of Louisiana is as follows: High prairie, gently undulating, forty feet above the highest overflow of the Mississippi River, interspersed with streams every five to seven miles, on whose banks are good bodies of most excellent timber. The soil is very fertile, producing sugarcane, cotton, corn, potatoes (both Irish and sweet), peas, beans, rice, tobacco, pumpkins, turnips, rye, oats, barley, and some kinds of wheat; garden vegetables in the greatest profusion; and, in the way of fruit, figs of several qualities, peaches, plums, nectarines, pears, and seedling apples, raspberries, strawberries, and crab apples. The price of land ranges from $25 to $1 per acre, owing to distance from town and the improvements.
2d. The price of labor is from $10 to $15 per month; but we had rather not engage for planting purposes at these rates for money, but prefer giving an interest in the crop. We desire earnestly to see small farmers come among us and buy lands, rather than to come as hirelings.
Farmers are giving one-half of all the kinds of crops made, the laborer finding himself. Teams, land, houses, and implements are furnished.
3d. The climate is most delightful. This summer the thermometer has reached 92° but one day. The average of our summer heat is about 84°, and of our winter, 40°. In point of health, this region will compare with any portion of the continent. Our diseases are very mild, and readily yield to treatment. My early life was passed on the banks of the Hudson River, and I can truthfully say that I prefer this climate.
4th. We have no coal, but have, in the way of minerals, limestone, and black marble. Our timber is oak (several species), hickory, maple, ash, beech, pine, cypress, hackberry, elm, black locust, walnut, gum, sassafras, magnolia, and. sweet bay. Mechanics pronounce this timber equal in quality to any in the whole country.
5th. The yield per acre of sugar is 1,600 pounds; cotton, 450 pounds; corn, well cultivated, 40 bushels; potatoes, from 250 to 350 bushels, and other products in proportion.
Hogs, cattle, horses, mules, and sheep are raised in abundance, and with, little cost. The prices fluctuate with the demand. The grass of our prairies is most luxuriant and nutritious, and affords food for cattle nine months out of the twelve, and when cut and cured makes good hay.
6th. We are thirty-six hours' travel from New Orleans by steam. Boats run weekly. In a short time rail will bring us near. All produce can be easily transported to market.
7th. We have a good female school, and also a boys' school, besides several primary schools. There are two churches in the town, one Episcopalian, the other Methodist. Within the county are three or four others.
8th. Nearly the entire population are native-born. The majority are descendants of the original French settlers. Society is very good, and there is an average of intelligence.
In conclusion, I would say that God has made this the true poor man's land. He can labor the entire year, and, with much less than elsewhere, make more.
We have a large amount of public land yet vacant, which can be had for $20 per eighty acres. This includes the land, surveying, and all incidental expenses.
With a rich soil, an abundance of water, timber, and grass, a mild and genial climate, healthfulness, and a good market, we invite investigation.
I am, with respect,
Your obedient servant,
THOMAS MULLETT,
Cor. Sec. St. Landry Immigration Society.
From Plaquemine, lberville, August 10, 1868, Mr. O. A. PEIRCE writes:—
* * We have the richest lands in the country; price, from $5 to $50 per acre. We need white labor, at from $12 to $25 per month. Our climate is very healthy. Population mostly French, Americans, and Germans.
A good blacksmith and a wheelwright, a tinner and a plumber, and a good physician, would find lucrative employment here. All parties and persons are at liberty to be what they please, but democrats are welcomed above all others.
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.