Winter Quarters in

Tensas Parish, Louisiana Tensas Parish (french: Paroisse des Tensas) is a parish located in the northeastern section of the State of Louisiana; its eastern border is the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 5,252. It is the least populated paris ...

, United States, is a surviving example of an

antebellum Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to: United States history * Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern United States ** Antebellum Georgia ** Antebellum South Carolina ** Antebellum Virginia * Antebellum ...

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 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 ...

. It is located south of Newellton on Lake St. Joseph, an

ox-bow lake An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. In South Texas, oxbows left by the Rio Grande are called '' resacas''. In Australia, oxbow lakes are call ...

, or former bend in the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

History

The main

plantation house A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and e ...

began as a hunting lodge in 1805 built by Job Routh, grandfather of Julia Augusta (Williams) Nutt, but was soon enlarged and became a residence. Before the

Vicksburg Campaign The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi Ri ...

of 1863 during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

, there were fifteen plantations along Lake St. Joseph. However, Union troops destroyed all of them except Winter Quarters, where the soldiers were housed during the winter of 1863–1864. The plantation belonged to the wife of

Haller Nutt Haller Nutt (1816-1864) was an American Southern planter. He was a successful cotton planter and plantation owner in Mississippi. He developed a strain of cotton that became important commercially for the Deep South. Early life Haller Nutt was bor ...

, a planter who was pro-Union. As a result, General

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

ensured the plantation would not be damaged. Wade A. Netterville, brother of the plantation manager J. H. Netterville of Newellton, managed the store at Winter Quarters in the early years of the 20th century, employed in that capacity by the then plantation owner Dr. J. M. Gillespie. Netterville then ran the store at Panola Plantation prior to becoming the manager for two years of the Wyoming Plantation. He subsequently assumed the management of the 1,000-acre Panda Plantation near the parish seat of government in

St. Joseph Joseph (; el, Ἰωσήφ, translit=Ioséph) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who, according to the canonical Gospels, was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. The Gospels also name some brothers ...

. During the 1950s, the James and Bea Doyle family lived at Winter Quarters. Their daughter, Barbara Sue Doyle Hage (1949-2016), was the 1962 March of Dimes poster child and at the time of her death at the age of sixty-six the oldest known survivor of

spina bifida Spina bifida (Latin for 'split spine'; SB) is a birth defect in which there is incomplete closing of the spine and the membranes around the spinal cord during early development in pregnancy. There are three main types: spina bifida occulta, men ...

. Barbara Hage graduated in 1969 from

Newellton High School The Tensas Parish School Board is an entity responsible for the operation of Public school (government funded), public schools in Tensas Parish, Louisiana, Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana, United States. Schools *Grades 7-12 **Tensas ...

and worked for a quarter century for the

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

Extension Service in St. Joseph. She was also a church pianist and vocalist, seamstress, and gardener. She and her husband, David C. Hage, had a daughter and two grandsons. In 1978, Winter Quarters was placed on 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 ...

and was previously open for public tours. The site was critically damaged in a tornado on April 4, 2011. As of February 2022, the site remains closed indefinitely and the State of Louisiana currently has no plans or a set date for reopening the site for public use.

References

External links

Winter Quarters State Historic Site
official site Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana Houses completed in 1803 Museums in Tensas Parish, Louisiana Historic house museums in Louisiana Louisiana State Historic Sites Plantation houses in Louisiana Houses in Tensas Parish, Louisiana National Register of Historic Places in Tensas Parish, Louisiana Cotton plantations in Louisiana {{Louisiana-NRHP-stub