Laura Plantation
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Laura Plantation
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Laura Plantation house in 2011 after restoration
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| Nearest city | Vacherie, Louisiana |
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| Area | 37 acres (15 ha) |
| Built | 1805 |
| Architectural style | Stick/eastlake, Other, French Creole |
| MPS | Louisiana's French Creole architecture MPS |
| NRHP Reference # | 92001842 |
| Added to NRHP | February 3, 1993 |
Laura Plantation is a restored historic Louisiana Creole plantation on the west bank of the Mississippi River near Vacherie, Louisiana, (U.S.), open for guided tours. Formerly known as Duparc Plantation, it is significant for its early 19th-century Créole-style raised big house and several surviving outbuildings, including six slave cabins. It is one of only 15 plantation complexes in Louisiana with this many complete structures. Because of its historical importance, the plantation is on the National Register of Historic Places. The site, in St. James Parish, Louisiana, is also included on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Alcée Fortier, who later became Professor of Romance Languages and folklore at Tulane University, was said to have collected Louisiana Creole versions of the West African Br'er Rabbit stories here in the 1870s.
The parents and family of U.S. singer-songwriter Fats Domino ("Blueberry Hill") had lived on the plantation.
In the early 1700s, a large Colapissa village called Tabiscanja or "long river view" was located on high ground above the Mississippi River. In 1785, Acadian refugees settled on the site.
In 1804, the Frenchman Guillaume Duparc, a naval veteran from the American Revolutionary War, had petitioned then-President Thomas Jefferson, for land. Jefferson secured Duparc's loyalty to the U.S., which had just acquired additional territory through the Louisiana Purchase, by granting him land along the Mississippi River. Considering the natives to be Frenchmen, the French did not force them off the riverlands. Instead, the Colapissa continued to live on the rear part of the plantation until 1915.
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