Natchez, Part 2

Saturday, September 20th


We of course have a list of things to see and do.  We decided to start with the places farthest away, so this morning we visited the Frogmore Cotton Plantation in Frogmore, Louisiana.

Website here: when you first log on, people are singing about picking cotton.  The song stops after 30 seconds or so.

The plantation has several tours; we took the Old Fashioned vs. Modern Day tour, which basically walks you around the plantation while the guide explains the purpose of each building and various facets of life in the 1800s and 1900s.  Our guide could actually sing and everything.  We found out later that she had a college degree in music and also produced the videos we watched.

I have a video of some of the buildings on the grounds.  No singing, though.

Just a few general pictures of the insides of buildings:

 Above: the laundry building, where clothes are cleaned, pressed, and sometimes made.  Yes, that is a quilting frame.

 The overseer's house.  This sometimes belonged to a white hired hand, but often belonged to one of the slaves who kept the others in line.  The house boasted a breeze along the front and back porches, and better quality furniture.

 Sacks for the harvested cotton.  Sacks held about 70 pounds of cotton, and slaves frequently picked between 250 and 350 pounds a day.

 The 3-hole privy.  This time period was long before indoor plumbing....

 A typical bed for a slave.  Mattress was stuffed with moss.

Planting machines in the "modern" era.  The one in front is a John Deere.

Part of the tour was a video showing current cotton farming practices.  No more slaves, thank goodness.  Now the work is done mostly by machine, which bales up the cotton the same way other farmers bale hay.  The seeds are purchased each year from a company and planted; the seeds the cotton plants produce are made into various products, like Crisco.  (Which stands for CRystalized CottonSeed Oil.  Been using the stuff for years and had no idea.)

Another part of the tour was the opportunity to pick a boll of cotton ourselves.  Free souvenir!