Frogmore Plantation is an historic, privately owned

cotton 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 ...

complex, located near Ferriday in

Concordia Parish, Louisiana Concordia Parish (french: Paroisse de Concordia) borders the Mississippi River in eastern central Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,822. The parish seat is Vidalia. The parish was formed in 1807. Concordia Parish is part ...

. Since 1997, Frogmore Plantation is a working farm, tourist attraction featuring many structures, and educational center. Buildings on the site include a

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); a ...

, and a plantation manor house named Gillespie. Formerly this plantation relied on enslaved African American labor. It was added to the

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 v ...

on May 31, 1980.

History

The gin is a system cotton gin, which was invented by

Robert S. Munger Robert Sylvester Munger (July 24, 1854 – April 20, 1923) and his wife Mary Collett Munger (1857–1924) invented the "system cotton gin". After that achievement, Munger started and ran some of the largest gin manufacturing companies in the Un ...

. This invention was the second major revolution in cotton processing (after the original gin was invented by

Eli Whitney Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Although Whitney hi ...

). This example is one of the few (and perhaps the only one) left in existence. The historic plantation house is named ''Gillespie'' and included on its property are a slave row of cabins and numerous outbuildings, or dependencies. ''Gillespie'' was built in c. 1843 in

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

style. wit
three photos and two maps
/ref> With . The plantation includes another two properties individually listed in the

. An archeological site shortly southwest of the house, named Frogmore Mound was added in July 2004, and a

, moved to the property from another location in order to have a working plantation and named

Piazza Cotton Gin The Piazza Cotton Gin is on the Frogmore Plantation at 11656 U.S. Highway 84, about west of Ferriday, Louisiana in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. The building containing the cotton gin press was built c.1880, while the machinery was added c.1900 ...

was added in January 1999. One of the owners of Frogmore Plantation, Lynette Tanner, published a book about narrations of former slaves that resided within Louisiana, "Chained to the Land: Voices from Cotton and Cane Plantations" (2014). Tanner was inspired to publish the book after the Frogmore Plantation was opened in 1997 for public history tours. On July 26, 2019, a fire broke out at the plantation, it destroyed the main house.

References

External links

Official website
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana Greek Revival architecture in Louisiana Houses completed in 1843 Buildings and structures in Concordia Parish, Louisiana {{Louisiana-NRHP-stub

History

See also

References

External links