Babin Place Plantation, on the Mississippi River just below the small community of Modeste, Louisiana, is about 7 miles above Donaldsonville in western Ascension Parish. Babin Place originated from two small eighteenth-century Acadian farmsteads in what was known as the “Second Acadian Coast” or “Lafourche des Chetimaches.” In the early 1800s, it became a sugar plantation owned by a succession of proprietors, all of Acadian descent. Babin Place continued to produce sugarcane into the early-twentieth century until it was sold to a local African-American benevolent society, which renamed it New Africa Farm. For over 100 years, Babin Place was also the location of several rural schools for African-American and white children residing near Modeste.

In 1999, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District (CEMVN), planned a levee stabilization project, and then in 2019, proposed the installation of seepage wells. Both projects threatened archaeological remains on Babin Place. Archaeologists conducted intensive excavations on the riverside portion of the plantation in 2000 to recover archaeological information prior to levee stabilization. In 2020, archaeologists monitored the recontouring of the ditch needed to convey water from seepage wells to disposal pumps on the landside portion of the plantation. The aforementioned work and these public outreach materials were funded by CEMVN in partnership with the Atchafalaya Basin Levee District as mitigation for adverse impacts to the Babin Place and Modeste Place archaeological sites resulting from the Mississippi River Levee seepage project at Modeste, Louisiana.

Angola: Plantation to Penitentiary

The history and archaeology presented in this Volume illustrate the remarkable transformation of Angola from one of Louisiana’s major antebellum plantations to its sole maximum security penitentiary. In fact, the property’s survival, intact, for over 150 years is due solely to this peculiar turn of events. In the middle nineteenth century, the seven plantations composing the property belonged to a petite, sharp witted, and incredibly wealthy lady from Tennessee who outlived two of her three husbands and six of her 10 children. Most of the architectural remains found during these investigations date to her period of ownership. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Angola became the primary enterprise of the notorious prison leasee, Samuel L. James and his son. The best historical documentation of the Angola big house dates to the James era. From the twentieth century on, this beautiful property has belonged to the State of Louisiana, and is surely the most scenic state penitentiary in the country.