Caspiana Plantation Store is an American historic building and a former

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

store built in 1906, located at 1300 Texas Street in Natchitoches,

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. The store served as part of the

crop-lien system The crop-lien system was a credit system that became widely used by cotton farmers in the United States in the South from the 1860s to the 1940s. History Sharecroppers and tenant farmers, who did not own the land they worked, obtained supplies ...

, during the time of

sharecropping Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...

which impacted the lives of many

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

workers. It is listed as a

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

since June 5, 1992 for its agricultural history and significance.

History

The Caspiana Plantation Store was part of the Caspiana Plantation, a Reconstruction-era

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

plantation built by William Joseph Hutchinson (1839–1913) and originally located in the unincorporated community of Caspiana in Caddo Parish,

. The main house at the Caspiana Plantation is named Caspiana House, and is now part of the Pioneer Heritage Center at

Louisiana State University Shreveport Louisiana State University Shreveport (LSU Shreveport or LSUS) is a public university in Shreveport, Louisiana. It is part of the Louisiana State University System. Initially, a two-year college, LSUS has expanded into a university with 21 ...

. The Caspiana Plantation Store allowed local sharecrop farmers to purchase seeds and equipment by using their future crop as collateral, which often trapped people in debt. This store was most active from 1906 until 1942. At one time there were hundreds of these plantation stores in the state, primarily found on the grounds of large plantations. In 1991, the plantation store was moved to the city of Natchitoches after the sale of the property. The process of moving the building required it to be cut in half however despite the changes, it maintained much of its original features and is a rare example of plantation store architecture and history.

History

See also

References

Further reading