Oak Alley Plantation: History, Beauty, and Hollywood

Scott: 00:00:01

Welcome to Talk with History. I'm your host Scott, here with my wife and historian Jen.

Jenn: 00:00:05

Hello.

Scott: 00:00:06

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there.

ic trees planted in the early: 1800

The mansion that anchors the property became one of the crown jewels of Louisiana's Sugar bowl, earning its owner the nickname King of Sugar. But historians know that this prosperity came at a terrible human cost.

working these grounds between: 1836

But beyond its Hollywood connection, the site offers authentic insights into antebellum Louisiana, from the complex sugar production process to the daily lives of both the plantation own and the enslaved workers. Let's explore the history of Oak Alley Plantation.

All right, Jen, now, before we jump into talking about a place that you have tried to visit numerous times, I do want to kind of say thank you to our audience. So we are about to hit 50,000 subscribers on YouTube.

And so for those listening, I do want to say thank you to you guys because our podcast audience, that's been growing over the years as well, we started about a year after the YouTube channel.

But, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to what I think is a core part of our audience, and that is our listeners to this podcast, because you guys spend just a good amount of time with us. And I don't know about our listeners, but I always consider myself a friend of any podcast host that I listen to on my favorite podcast.

So I just wanted to say thank you to our listeners. Thank you to our YouTube subscribers. As we get closer to hitting that, that, that fun 50k mark, this is just an opportune time for us to say thanks.

Jenn: 00:02:34

Yeah, this is pretty amazing. You said what? A year ago we were at 10,000.

Scott: 00:02:39

Two years ago we were about to cross 10,000.

Jenn: 00:02:42

And just how exponentially we've grown.

It's all because of you, and it's all because of our community and our interaction and how you gu resonated with the topics and the questions you ask and more you want to know and the things we go out and see. So thank you so much for just being such an interactive part of our community.

Again, leave comments, Let us know what you're interested in, what you liked, what you learned, something else that you're curious about. And, you know, give us those five star reviews because those reviews really do help us grow.

It helps people to find us, it helps the algorithm to push us to the top and all those things. So we just really appreciate our community so much and we, we just love all of you. So thank you.

Scott: 00:03:22

Yeah, thank you so much. All right, Jen, So Oak Alley Plantation. I only ever knew it for the very first time because you loved Interview with a Vampire.

You were a massive Brad Pit fan.

Jenn: 00:03:37

A massive Brad Pit fan. And I think this movie was part of that love of Brad Pit because he acts so well in this because it's Interview with the Vampire, right?

And he's the one who's being interviewed in the, in the movie.

Scott: 00:03:52

Well, and, and the movie itself setting, which is at the plantation, right? That's. That's his home. It, it's, it completely encapsulates the vibe they're going for in the movie with the oak trees and the plant.

It's just beautiful and it just sets the mood. So it was kind of the perfect historic plantation, the historic home for a movie like that.

Jenn: 00:04:13

It was because he introduces himself as Creole. Right. And so that place is what you would think of as a Creole plantation. Right.

Anne Rice is from New Orleans, so she's writing about the people of New Orleans or New Orleans and Nalans, however you want to say it. People will critique my pronunciation, but Louis is the owner of this plantation. Now.

This plantation, Oak Alley, is like the jewel in the crown of the sugar plantation world.

He wouldn't, at his age that he's like in his 20s, he wouldn't own this plantation unless he had inherited it from a family member, which is, that's how this, this plantation is given from the king of sugar who owns all these plantations. Amay. He's the one who introduces sugar to the New Orleans area. He gives it to his brother in law.

So that's kind of how the brother in law even gets this jewel in the crown. Plantation is because it's, it's in the family. Louis would have to have had some kind of connection like that.

Scott: 00:05:15

And Louis, Brad's character.

Jenn: 00:05:18

And so Creole. I always have to explain what Creole means too. So Creole is this it. It. The word means colony. It's a loose way to say colony.

It means anyone who's born in that new colony of New Orleans Louisiana. And you can come from any background that is mixing with the French, the Spanish, the African, and the Native American.

So it's four cultures that are basically being slammed together. And what is coming out of that is the Creole culture, because they're all coming together.

They're all kind of melting together and making this Creole culture. So that's what people consider themselves Creole. And so it is the perfect setting for this Creole lifestyle.

Scott: 00:06:01

Now, one of the things that I actually learned when I think you were. I don't remember if it made it into the video or not.

One of the things that you said that I believe you learned and you were explaining to me was the difference between Creole and. And Cajun. So I thought that was actually really interesting.

Jenn: 00:06:15

So people will get them confused sometimes and kind of use them interchangeably. They're not.

The Cajun culture is Canadian, so it's French Canadians, and they were loyalists during the war, and they're basically kicked out of Canada. And so they have to come down to New Orleans to kind of reset up shop.

Scott: 00:06:33

So that.

So that's really where that kind of the French vibe and that kind of part of that New Orleans and Southern Louisiana culture, that piece of it, that French piece of it comes from the Cajun side.

Jenn: 00:06:45

Yes.

Scott: 00:06:46

And the Creole was kind of all the other melting pot.

Jenn: 00:06:49

It's a melting pot because if you think of New Orleans, we visited there and you saw our video.

If you saw our video on that, how they have the four flags, and it kind of was under French rule, then it's under Spanish rule, then it goes back to French rule for a couple years, then the Americans buy it. So it's kind of like it's having all of these cultures mixed. Big enslavement there. All these Africans are there, plus you, you've came.

You've come there, and the first peoples are already there. Right. The Cherokees, the different American Indians are already there.

So it's those four cultures that are basically melting together to create the Creole culture. Cajun are those French Canadians that get kicked out of Canada.

And that's why you can still speak Cajun French, because it's a different type of French. Think of Montreal people coming down from Canada, and they're known for their spicy food. They're known for that type of culture.

So the two separate things, it's not the same. But if you don't know the difference, people kind of use them interchangeably.

Scott: 00:07:46

Yeah, I just. I just thought that was really interesting because I had always kind of associated the two together. Again, I Just didn't really know any better.

So tell us a little bit about Oak Alley and the history.

And, you know, he said it was the crown jewel of the kind of that sugar bowl that is southern New Orleans where they were growing all this sugar cane and stuff like that. It's about, what, 30 minutes northwest of New Orleans or so.

Jenn: 00:08:10

Well, to drive it was about an hour. So we have a funny story about Oak Alley. I felt like the universe did not want me to see it, right?

I felt like there was something keeping me away from Oak Alley Plantation because I had gone there multiple times, right, for my 40th birthday, gone to New Orleans, had my girlfriends come in. My birthday's in December. It snowed like crazy in New Orleans in December. And Oak Alley was covered in snow.

And we drove out there because, I'll be honest with you, New Orleans snow and Pennsylvania snow are two separate things. And I was fine driving from New Orleans to Oak Alley, which took about an hour. And they closed it when I got there.

And the lady had said, well, we don't have anyone here who can show you anything. And I was like, I can tell you how a sugar plantation works. So they let me. They didn't open the main house, but they let me walk around.

They let me go to the gift shop. It's known for its big gift shop and restaurant there.

Scott: 00:09:08

So you got to see it in the snow.

Jenn: 00:09:09

I got to see it in the snow. And then I always. And I had told you, and you were like, oh, we'll make a point to go back someday. And we just never made it. So I.

I'm 47 now, so I haven't seen it for seven years. And now that I am the historian on American Cruise Line, we stopped there as part of one of our excursions and I got to go and see it. Yes.

New, this area of Louisiana, I would say from New Orleans up to Baton Rouge, a little bit farther up, has the climate for sugar. And you need almost a 12 year growing cycle to grow sugar cane. That's why it's very popular in the West Indies.

That's why it's very popular in Hawaii, some areas in Florida, because you have to have this hot, tropical, subtropical climate. It needs to have this humidity, it needs to have this just this hot growing cycle for sugar cane to grow.

And along the Mississippi, where you get the flooding in the Delta and you get that soil that's rich in nutrients, was a great place to grow sugarcane. Now Abay is the man who introduced the sugar cane to the area.

He his plantations are what are today the New Orleans Zoo and Tulane and downtown New Orleans. Like he owned all of that.

Scott: 00:10:25

So was he like one of the original kind of sugar cane planters, you know, plantation owners?

Jenn: 00:10:30

Yes, he brought a free man of color from the South Indies and he showed him how to do it. Okay.

Basically you're, you're, they use kind of what they call a cane ho method where they dug out a big square and they would put two sugar cane plants in the square and cover them in manure and they would do tons of those squares a day.

And you would let the sugar cane grow for about five, five months and it would get high over your head and then you'd have to harvest the sugar cane, these huge stocks of sugar cane. And you immediately have to crush sugar cane so to get the juice out of it. And if you don't crush it right away, it can spoil.

So you, that's why this, this process is so labor intensive. And then we'll get to like after you juice it, what do you do with that juice?

But Oak Alley, because of its proximity right there in New Orleans, because a May had owned it, he gifts it to his brother in law, Roman. The Roman family. So Jacques Roman will the, is the man who will plant the oak trees. 800ft of live oak. And live oak is the name of the oak tree.

t's, he plants those trees in: 1830

fetime. The house is built in: 1836

So building that house was all enslaved labor. They have these pillars around the plantation, the main house, the big house and all the bricks that were laid.

Everything was done within enslaved labor.

Scott: 00:12:14

And it's a beautiful home. So obviously we've, we've made a video from there. So that video is live on the YouTube channel and I'll link to it and I'll.

And for those watching this particular video podcast, I'll put some, some of the, the B roll and the video shots that you got. But it is a beautiful, I mean it is a gorgeous plantation home.

Jenn: 00:12:32

Oh yeah, it's. And it's from Interview with a Vampire.

So if you remember, Brad Pitt will ride down the main drag with the live oaks around him and it's right along the Mississippi River. So you see that in the movie. The, that's how, that's why these plantation houses are right along the Mississippi for the commerce, for the logistics.

You can get the barrels of sugar right onto the ships, take them right down to New Orleans main port and get them out and sell your product.

Scott: 00:13:00

because the movie was made in: 1994

But you said that in the: 1800

That's what made that soil and that, that kind of farmland, the plantation land, so fertile.

Jenn: 00:13:34

Yes. So you need the flooding of the Mississippi, and you'd be able to see the main house from the river.

They have a widow's walk on the top of the main house as well, which means you could go up there and see the ships coming in and all the ships that are bringing, your products are bringing.

Scott: 00:13:50

So is that like when, Sorry, just like a quick, like, random aside here. You know, in Mary Poppins, like when the admiral's, like, shooting his cannon from the top of his house. Is that what that is? That's the widow's walk.

Okay. I, I, I always wondered that as a kid, and I was just like, just thought that was a weird English thing.

Jenn: 00:14:05

So they call it that because it would be the widows watching for their men's ships to come in. And so you see widows walks on any port town, especially the houses that are close to ports and the docks.

Scott: 00:14:18

I, I had no idea. So hopefully. Hey, comment if you didn't know that either, because I, I'm wearing a shirt that says history buff on it.

But I am not, I am not the history nerd here. Okay, continue. Sorry.

Jenn: 00:14:30

So, because the house is so far back from the river, the widow's walk is useful. Watching the ships come in and we were on a riverboat. That's kind of the types of boats that would be used at that time, because we talk again.

Riverboats have low drafts. And you're using the Mississippi river, which it's deepest In New Orleans, 200ft. But as you move up the Mississippi, it' get shallower and shallower.

And one of the things about the Mississippi, you have to worry about too, is sandbars. So you really want a shallow draft, and that's. These river boats have that kind of shallow draft. So you're watching for those ships.

But yeah, the house is built a little higher, and that's because it would flood all around it and the house would be fine. Plus, I also have to stress to people, plantation owners really didn't live in these homes.

They would come out and visit and make sure their farm is being taken care of, overseers and things like that. But these rich, rich sugar people are living in New Orleans. They're living in the mansions in New Orleans.

Scott: 00:15:27

So I didn't. So did they have like, essentially like a manager running it?

Jenn: 00:15:31

Yes, they have an overseer who's overseeing everything. And so, I mean, they'll come out every now and then and visit their farm home. They'll go to their country home.

But these are the people who are living in those huge mansions in New Orleans, having the huge parties in New Orleans, doing the Mardi Gras. Right. Where do they get the money to have this lavish lifestyle? It's their farms out in the country. And sugar is the main cash crop out of Louisiana.

So again, when you go to Oak Alley, you have to remember you're going to see a lot of these cauldrons, and there's going to be cauldrons all over the place. And that's very unique to a sugar plantation because like I said, once the sugar cane is.

Is cut and they've crushed the sugar cane to get the juice out, and you'll see grinding stones around. The juice is immediately put in cauldrons, and the juice is a very brown color. And it's cooked over and over again probably about eight, nine times.

And it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of stirring. It takes a lot of attention. People get specialized in this field. Now, the byproducts of this, you will know molasses and rum, right?

So when you think of molasses and rum, those are byproducts of sugar. And so rum is coming out of New Orleans, molasses is coming out of New Orleans.

Because as you cook off that sediment that brown to get to a clearer and clearer juice color, you will eventually put. You'll lighten the juice with lime juice. You'll put that in to cool it down.

You'll put it in big clay jars and allow that to sit is for it to evaporate. And then they put a hole in the bottom of the clay jars. And the sugar that's now Dr. Will come out as Granulated sugar.

Scott: 00:17:14

I don't think I realized that sugar cane was giving them that many products.

Jenn: 00:17:18

Yes.

Scott: 00:17:18

Whether it's rum or molasses makes sense. Right. I just always just kind of assume sugar. Where sugar came.

Jenn: 00:17:25

Well, the thing is too, like, it's easier to transport rum and molasses when it comes to, like putting things in barrels and getting it to New Orleans and then getting it out to the east coast, west coast into, you know, England. Like all the trading rum and molasses are going to handle a lot easier on a ship than the white sugar, the white gold. Right.

And that's why it's so valuable to get that and to get to that stage of sugar making. But the lifestyle of this is so difficult. Sugar plantation labor.

They say the lifestyle of an enslaved would be about seven to 10 years during this because of. It's a, it is a 12 month process. It is so labor intensive.

When they're in the harvest time and they're into the juice, the juice juicing time, it's 12 hours on, 12 hours off. And you have two shifts because it takes 24 hours to boil this juice. Like I said, it can't be left. It can't be left.

You have to keep boiling it until.

Scott: 00:18:22

It'S a continuous process.

Jenn: 00:18:23

It's a continuous process. And that grinding is very dangerous. They have these grinding machines and they would not. It would.

It would be very common to see a enslaved men or women without a hand or without an arm or a sugar plant.

Scott: 00:18:39

Because you're getting caught in there because.

Jenn: 00:18:40

You'Re so tired and be doing it over and over and your hand gets caught, your arm gets caught and it would, they, they would just chop it off.

So it's one of those, like, when you think about what it takes for this kind of crop, you really have to talk about the enslaved that lived at Oak Alley. They do a very good job of telling that story. They have six enslaved cabins there behind the main house.

And they tell, they have some of the names listed that historians have found, which I think is very important to, to say their names and to give them agency in their stories. But they talk more about the house slaves that would have lived there.

Because if you're living close to the main house, you're more than likely working in the main house. If you're working in the plantation, the Acres and Acres plantation, you're not coming back to the main house every day.

There's no reason for you to come back.

Scott: 00:19:32

So, so they'd have places where they lived, like out on the land.

Jenn: 00:19:34

Your enslaved quarters would be out on the land.

So the reason why they have these six slave quarters there is to tell, to give them their story close to where people are visiting and tourists can see. And that way you're getting that story, even though it's not authentically where those houses would be. And that's why they're all reconstructed.

But they have a lot of artifacts in there to kind of tell their story.

Scott: 00:19:57

Yeah. And you said that they actually did a pretty good job of. Of balancing. Right.

Not going too heavy and too dark, but tell them, like, the true life story. Like, hey, let's. We're not going to shy away from this. Right. So that. And you said. But then at the same time. Right.

Not far off from where the slave quarters were, there was like a gift shop where you could get mint juleps.

Jenn: 00:20:16

Yeah.

Scott: 00:20:17

Whereas I think you had mentioned. I think after.

It didn't come up in the video, but one of the other plantations not far away leans a lot heavier into what the enslaved life was like and stuff like that. But you said that as far as Oak Alley went, they did a good job of kind of balancing everything with the real history.

Not shying away from that, but also allowing people to kind of just enjoy the kind of the beauty of the grounds today.

Jenn: 00:20:41

Yeah. So they. Because it's such an iconic place in Louisiana history, you see pictures of Oak Alley everywhere. Like, it's been an interview with a vampire.

Scott: 00:20:50

It's. It's.

Jenn: 00:20:50

It's Brad Pitt's house. This filming of him on the front porch, you know, like I said, going down the main drag. Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte was filmed there.

It's a movie from the 50s. The long hard Summer was filmed there. That's a movie from the 80s.

Scott: 00:21:02

The.

Jenn: 00:21:02

It's been in a lot of TV shows. So they do a good job of balancing what that Greek revival plantation home would look like with the beautiful oaks.

But telling the story of the enslaved Whitney plantation, which is close by, tells the enslaved story. It just focuses on their story and their agency, which is also important.

Scott: 00:21:24

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:21:25

But you have to realize there's two conflicting lifestyles that are on this same plantation. There's the white owners, and then there's the enslaved people, the African American enslaved people.

And both of their stories are important, and both of the stories are relevant, but Oak Alley is trying to balance that a little bit. Where Whitney is, is focusing on one side, and there's no right or wrong there because all the stories need to be told.

Oak Alley does a really good job though, of embracing this part of history. And that's why they have the gift shops and they have a really great restaurant there.

So if you want to talk about Creole food or Cajun food and then film history, Quentin Tarantino, when he was filming Django, even though didn't film at Oak Alley, ate at that restaurant every day. Jamie Foxx would eat there, too.

Scott: 00:22:13

Okay.

Jenn: 00:22:14

So it's just a place that has a lot of that great Southern food and cuisine. So they're there to kind of embrace all of the history around and kind of see it and appreciate it.

But the things that are so unique to a sugar plantation that you're not going to see, like on a cotton plantation or a tobacco plantation, are those big metal cauldrons and those grinding stones that you'll see. And then, you know, Roman will die early of tuberculosis.

is son, and then it's sold in: 1925

So it's one of those places that's run by a historical association, and they, you know, they make sure that the stories are being told and you can come and visit. And it's definitely one of those places that's trying to preserve history and preserve all the stories there.

You can see some very unique things about the house. You cannot take video in the house.

Scott: 00:23:20

Yeah, that was. That was a bummer. I was kind of hoping you could get some, but, I mean, just seeing the outside is amazing.

Jenn: 00:23:26

But you can see they have, like, ceiling to floor doors that are windows. So this is how hot it gets in the South. They're opening up these big door windows to get the airflow through.

They also have a thing called a shoo fly, which looks like a big wooden harp, basically cut out, that goes over the dining room table, and it has a string to it where an enslaved, usually small child will hide in a closet and pull it back and forth and it waves over your dining room table to keep flies away. And so a thing you have to deal with within the south. And so it's. They have things like that that you can see and learn about there.

But for me to visit Oak Alley, like I said, once you start to look at. If you really focus on pictures of New Orleans and plantations and Louisiana, you won't.

You'll be surprised how many of those are actually Oak Alley because of that 800 foot row of oaks that hang over the alley leading up to the plantation house. It is a picturesque view of what that would have looked like.

Scott: 00:24:30

Well, and, and these, these oak trees are just. I mean, they're 200 years old now. I mean, that's.

I was pleasantly surprised because your video B roll skills have gotten better over the years and the footage you got, even just with like the simple camera that we have was just. It's amazing. So, so if you're listening to this, I encourage you guys to go. To go watch it. Yeah, it was, it was just beautiful.

And I'm looking forward to whenever I can actually get to get down there. But I'm happy that you were able to do it.

Jenn: 00:25:00

Yeah. And like I said, it's. It is the crown jewel of the sugar plantation in history. Sugar is still a big crop in Louisiana.

You'll see sugarcane growing all over the place. I had some people ask me on the video, that's not sugarcane, that's bamboo. They look very similar and so people will think it is bamboo.

The only way you will know the difference between sugarcane and bamboo is really not visually. You have to grab it. Bamboo is hollow. Sugar cane will be heavy. It's filled with the juice. Okay. So that's how you'll know when you look at it.

Because sugarcane can have the green, it can have the tan can. It can have the same kind of look as it's growing through its lifestyle life cycle.

But the only way you're really going to know is reach over and grab it and know bamboo is hollow and strong. Sugar cane is also pretty strong, but it's going to be heavy because it has. It's filled with that juice inside.

Scott: 00:25:56

Yeah, well, no, that's, that's, that's pretty awesome. And again, the links for locations for the video for any resources that we talk about will be in the podcast show notes or the video description.

Today, Oak Alley stands as both a testament to architectural beauty and the vital education center.

The Plantations Preservation Trust ensures that visitors not only marvel at the stunning 28 columned mansion, but also learn about the complete history of the site, including the lives that the enslaved who built and maintained it.

Whether you're a history enthusiast, architecture lover, or simply seeking to understand this complex chapter of American history, Oak Alley Plantation offers an unforgettable experience that brings the past to life and of course, a beautiful walk through oak trees that you will never forget. This has been a walk with History production. Talk with History is created and hosted by me, Scott Bennie. Episode researched by Jennifer Bennie.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk With History is supported by our fans@thehistoryroadtrip.com our eternal thanks go out to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug McLiverty, Larry Myers, Patrick Bennie, Gale Cooper, Kristy Coates, and Calvin Gifford. Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player and we'll talk to you next time.