Cash or Credit

After the Civil War, Magnolia paid its workers in tokens and scrip that could be spent only at the plantation store. At the end of each year sharecroppers settled their accounts with the LeComte-Hertzog family, and many found they owed money instead of being owed it. In a 2015 oral history, Lolette Jones Wynder describes her family's year-end debts. The store was also where people gathered: on Christmas Eve 1941, Yuke, Duma, Sheck and Eveck LaCour played music in front of it for the neighbors.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 3.5 mi
  The parish church at the heart of the Cane River Creoles of color, begun by Augustin Metoyer on his family's land and still holding Mass for the community that grew from Marie Thérèse Coincoin's children.
• Melrose Plantation — 3.7 mi
  The Cane River estate built on land granted to Louis Metoyer, son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the Yucca House and African House, later an artists' retreat; guided tours Thursday to Sunday.
• Kisatchie National Forest: Longleaf Vista — 6.1 mi
  A free ridge-top overlook and 1.5-mile loop above the 8,700-acre Kisatchie Hills Wilderness on the Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway, in the forest Caroline Dormon helped win in 1930.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 8.6 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• A Very Valuable Man — steps away
• Plantation Pastimes — steps away
• The Quarters Community — steps away
• Unearthing The Past — steps away