SANKOFA'S SLAVERY DATA COLLECTION
Ashland
Plantation
Variant Names:
Belle Helene
Location: Ascension Pa., LA
Constructed: ----
History: Duncan F. Kenner (1813-1887) built Ashland for his wife, Anne Guillemine Nanine Bringier, a member of an old and influential French family of Louisiana. Duncan F. Kenner was a sugar planter, horse breeder, lawyer and political figure during the antebellum period. The walls of Ashland (as the Kenner plantation was then known) were adorned with paintings of horses, and the grounds included a racetrack. Kenner himself was a keen advocate of scientific methods of farming and experimented with innovations in the sugar production industry. Kenner is said to have been the first in the state to use the portable railroad to carry cane from fields to mill.
When Kenner returned to Ashland at the end of the Civil War, he found his plantation in ruins and his slaves freed, the place having been raided by Union troops in 1862. At the age of 52 he had to start over again. Re-employing as laborers the slaves that had been freed, he built up an estate. When Duncan Kenner died, his plantation was even larger and more valuable than it had been before the war. In 1889, Ashland was purchased by John B. Reuss, a German immigrant who became a prosperous sugar planter. Reuss re-named the plantation "Belle Helene" in honor of his granddaughter, Helene Reuss.
Associated Surnames: Kenner, Morris
Associated Free White Names
Associated Black Slave Names
1865: Freedmen who applied for land at George Tucker Plantation
From "Register of Applications of Freedmen for Land", http://www.freedmensbureau.com/louisiana/landapps.htm Visit page for more details. Ordered by surname.
- Milton Morris and 5 others, Freedmen: applied for land at Ashland Plantation on Sept. 27th, 1865; for "No. of men: 6. No. of women: 6. No. of children: 15."
Agriculture
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