1811 Kid Ory Historic House

Edward Ory was born on Christmas Day 1886 at Woodland Plantation, into a Black Creole family that spoke Louisiana French. He built early instruments himself and led a respected band in southeast Louisiana as a teenager, staying home until he turned twenty-one. Accounts differ on whether the band reached New Orleans in 1907 or 1910. Louis Armstrong joined it in 1919, and Ory played in the original Hot Five lineup that first recorded in November 1925. He wrote Muskrat Ramble, retired to Hawaii in 1966 and died in Honolulu in 1973. The house museum opened in 2021.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Whitney Plantation — 10 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Destrehan Plantation — 11 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• Tickfaw State Park — 24 mi
  A floodplain park on the Tickfaw River, with cypress-tupelo swamp, bottomland hardwoods and about 4.75 miles of trails and boardwalks, plus a nature center with an 800-gallon river aquarium.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 26 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.

More markers nearby

• A. Montz — 0.3 mi
• Welcome To Main Street Park — 0.4 mi
• Woodland Plantation — 0.4 mi
• Laplace — 1.3 mi