164 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



try, in Louisiana, to give every plantation a name, as the 

 country here is only divided off into parishes, which are 

 equivalent to counties at the north; while the smaller 

 subdivisions are known as points, bends, bayous, and by 

 the names of the plantations. Ormond Plantation is 

 among the oldest sugar estates in Louisiana, having been 

 planted in cane upwards of forty years, by the father of 

 this family, and two or three years before, by his brother- 

 in-law, Mr. Butler, previous to which a little opening 

 had been made by a Frenchman, who raised a little cot- 

 ton, indigo, rice and corn. Part of the present mansion 

 is the old house, near a hundred years old. Mr. Butler 

 erected a horse mill, (a portion of the building is still in 

 use,) which the late Mr. McCatchon used about twenty 

 years, when he had the present engine and mill put up, 

 and enlarged his sugar house to suit the necessities of 

 the increasing crop. 



The place now contains 1,600 arpents, (about one sev- 

 enth less than the English and American acre,) of land, 

 850 of which is in cultivation, and from which this family 

 have made 120,000 hogsheads of sugar, and an average of 

 50 gallons of molasses to each hogshead ; that is, 200,000 

 barrels, or six million of gallons, a sea of treacle sufficient 

 to supply all New England with thanksgiving pumpkin 

 pies, at least one year; and then have enough to furnish 

 gingerbread for all the "muster days" besides. The last 

 crop upon the place was about 550 hogsheads. (In all my 

 statements I shall consider the hogshead 1,000 lbs., that 

 being the understood weight of a commercial hogshead 

 of sugar.) When I was there at Christmas, they had not 

 finished making, and the cane from old land was yielding 

 two hogsheads to the acre, or rather arpents, as the terms 

 are promiscuously applied, but always mean the latter. 



Crop made in Louisiana, 1849; Pike, Coast-Directory, map of 

 Plantations on the Mississippi River; "Directory of the Planters 

 of Louisiana and Mississippi," in Cohen's New Orleans Directory, 

 1855, p. 342. Stephen D. McCutcheon was a delegate from the 

 parish to the Southern and Western Railroad Convention, New 

 Orleans, January, 1852. De Bow's Review, 12:306 (March, 1852). 



