Calumet Plantation House, Patterson Louisiana

Date added: September 10, 2023 Categories: Louisiana House Plantations & Farms

Calumet Plantation was the name given by Daniel Thompson to a group of adjoining sugar plantations along Bayou Teche that he began assembling about 1866. The residence now known as Calumet was the "O. and N. Cornay Plantation" which he purchased in 1871. It was the home of Octave Cornay, who, with his brother, Numa, had built up a large sugar mill complex on land inherited from their mother, Mrs Henry Cornay, in an area known as Dutch Settlement. She had inherited from her parents, George Haydel and Marguerite Bossier.

The original land grant was to Jean Baptiste Bossier.

During the Civil War, it was the site of a number of engagements, most notable being the Battle of Bisland, in which 25,000 men were involved, and the naval encounters of the Confederate steamer "Cotton," which ended in flames at Cornay's bridge.

Daniel Thompson, who acquired the Cornay homesite and occupied it for thirty years until his death in 1900, was a sugar planter of great importance. He was a pioneer in the research and application of the chemical aspect of the sugar industry, and maintained a year-round study with laboratory analyses by chemists working in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. His work was considered the single most important contribution since DeBore to the development and advancement of the sugar industry in the United States. His son, Wibray, continued his work for several years after his father's death.

The third highly important owners of Calumet were Harry Palmerston Williams and his bride Marguerite Clark. When they married in 1918, she was at the height of stardom, having moved from a career on the stage in New York to being the most highly-paid movie actress in Hollywood. Harry P. Williams was the son of a lumber magnate whose business in the small town of Patterson, Louisiana became the largest of its kind in the world. Harry himself became famous as a pioneer in aviation, starting as a playboy pilot and ending up creating with his partner, an aviation great, Jimmy Wedell, the fastest racing planes in the world. At Calumet, opposite the home now owned by Mr. and Mrs. W. D. Hunter, was developed one of the first airports in the South and one of the first airplane manufacturing plants in the United States. Following two tragic plane crashes that caused the deaths of both Wedell and Williams, Marguerite Clark Williams sold her husband's U.S. Mail contracts and other contracts to Eastern Airlines, and donated the airport to the State of Louisiana. It is still in operation and has a fine museum dedicated to Wedell and Williams, containing some fascinating aeronautical memorabilia.

In the opinion of the State Historic Preservation Office, Calumet is locally significant in the area of agriculture-based upon its long and close association with Daniel Thompson. In the late nineteenth century, Calumet was a major center in southern Louisiana for scientific research in sugar production. Noteworthy study and experimentation was done in the areas of seed cane selection, the introduction of commercial fertilizers, and the use of tropical cane varieties.

The man responsible for making Calumet a center of progressive agricultural methods during this period was Daniel Thompson, who owned the plantation and lived in the main house from 1871 until his death in 1900. J. Carlyle Sitterson, in Sugar Country: The Cane Industry in the South, 1753-1950, notes that Thompson and another Louisiana planter named T. Mann Cage "led Louisiana and perhaps the entire country in the undertaking of costly scientific research in agriculture as a private business venture solely dependent on their own funds." In regard to Thompson's experimentation with commercial fertilizers, Sitterson concludes:

"The experiments of Cage and Thompson were important not so much for the results obtained as for the systematic and scientific methods employed. Even so, these two leaders must be given the major credit for the introduction of commercial fertilizers in the sugar region." In addition to these accomplishments at Calumet, Thompson was also one of the founders (in 1888) of the Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, a weekly periodical which was the organ of the Louisiana Sugar industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

Building Description

Calumet Plantation House today is the product of three major periods of construction: 1) The original 45-foot wide by 40 feet deep, one and one/half story (7-room) center hall house c.1830, 2) an addition of five rooms, and general remodeling c.1850-70, and 3) an addition of three rooms and general remodeling c.1950.

The oldest section of the structure is of heavy mortised and pegged cypress construction, infilled with brick. It retains its original exposed beaded beams and beaded over boards, presently hiding behind a super-imposed sheetrock ceiling. The majority of the walls are in their original location, but some short walls to the rear of this section have been removed or relocated. The roof framing and roof pitch over this early section is also original and unaltered.

The second phase in Calumet's development took place c.1850-70. This phase of construction is not only what transformed the house to its present general appearance, but also is the appearance which corresponds with the most available historical, pictorial and graphic documentation, as well as the ownership of its three most prestigious owners: Daniel Thompson, Harry Williams and Marguerite Clark. In this phase, the house maintained most of the architectural configuration of the original structure, but enlarged it by the addition of rooms to each side, doubling its width to 86 feet, but maintaining the same front-to-rear cross-section of the early house (i.e., the same gallery depth and height, the same interior ceiling heights, the same roof pitch, etc., were maintained in the new construction). (A house that grew in a similar fashion is The Cottage near St. Francisville.) No longer present, but well-documented by measured drawings and photographs of the period, were three wing additions to the rear of the structure, all interconnected by galleries. At this time, additional doorways, louvered shutters, and turned cypress columns were installed to further update the structure.

The third phase, c.1950, was one of unfortunate demolition and unsympathetic additions. Demolition included the three rear c.1850-70 wing additions, porch columns, railing and steps.

Unsympathetic additions included a large glassed-in "garden room," a bed and bathroom wing to the west side and a portico to the east kitchen side, along with various interior refurbishing such as narrow plank flooring, doors, door moldings, and sheetrock ceilings, all super-imposed on the early house with little regard for its original character. The three 1950 appendages are scheduled for removal during the planned restoration.