SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 159 



Hickey/ The latter gentleman has raised sugar upon his 

 place thirty-five years. In 1817, his father sold his crop 

 of sugar for 11 cents per pound, and his cotton for 30 

 cents. On the 19th of October, 1813, the frost killed all 

 his cane. Sugar was worth, that year, 12 cents per 

 pound. In 1814, he was offered two pounds of cotton for 

 one of sugar, but while loading his boats they were 

 pressed into the surface of Uncle Sam, and he lost the 

 sale. Had the bargain been consummated, he would have 

 realized 30 cents for his cotton, which would have made 

 him 60 cents per pound for his sugar. Col. Hickey is of 

 opinion that bagasse, (the refuse stalks of sugar cane 

 after they have been ground,) is unfit for manure until 

 it has been rotted a great number of years. The best 

 way to dispose of it he thinks is to use it as fuel. 



A couple of miles below, is the plantation of F. D. Con- 

 rad,^ Esq., of which I shall have much to say hereafter. 

 In front of his house is an extensive batture. A batture, 



a prominent physician of Baton Rouge and operator of an exten- 

 sive cotton and sugar plantation called Arlington. The planta- 

 tion was located in East Baton Rouge Parish about four miles be- 

 low Baton Rouge. Champomier, Statement of the Sugar Crop 

 Made in Louisiana, 1849; Pike, Coast-Directory; map of Planta- 

 tions on the Mississipjn River. 



' Philip Hickey, born 1777, at Manchac, then an impoi-tant post 

 of West Florida. Signer of the Declaration of Independence 

 of West Florida, 1810, and influential in securing its peaceable 

 acquisition by the United States. First representative of Baton 

 Rouge Parish in the Louisiana state legislature. Pioneer in cul- 

 ture of sugar cane; erected the first sugar mill in the parish in 

 1814. De Boiv's Review, 11:612-14 (December, 1851). President, 

 Louisiana Agricultural and Mechanics* Association, 1844, 1847. 

 Nashville Agriculturist, 5:17 (1844) ; De Bow's Review, 4:423 (De- 

 cember, 1847). The Hickey plantation as it was in 1802 is men- 

 tioned in Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 10:491 (October, 1927). 



^ F. D. Conrad was vice-president and a member of the Execu- 

 tive Committee of the Louisiana Agricultural and Mechanics' As- 

 sociation, 1844, 1847. The Cottage, ten miles from Baton Rouge, 

 home of the Conrad family, was built in 1830. It was, in 1929, the 

 property of Mrs. Fanny Conrad Buffington-Bailey. De Boiv's Re- 

 view, 4:424 (December, 1847); Nashville Agriculturist, 5:17 

 (1844) ; Saxon, Old Louisiana, 305. 



