Dr. Walter Brashear

Walter Brashear's name is on a town, but his land was the largest plantation on Tiger Island, a strip of ground between swamps and marshes where farms and plantations ran on enslaved labor. A Maryland-born doctor of French descent, he invested in the Barataria and Lafourche Canal Company, which began digging a channel toward Tiger Island in 1829 and did not reach Lockport until 1841. Spanish administrators had reopened the slave trade into Louisiana in the 1780s, so the people who worked the ground there were part of a system already decades old.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wedell-Williams Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum — 6.5 mi
  A Louisiana State Museum in Patterson on the world's largest cypress sawmill town and the Wedell-Williams racing planes, with a theater and changing exhibits.
• E. D. White Historic Site — 19 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Grevemberg House Museum — 20 mi
  Franklin's 1851 Greek Revival townhouse, the official St. Mary Parish museum, saved from demolition by one vote and set in the Franklin Historic District on Bayou Teche.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 23 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• Fort Star — 0.8 mi
• Civil War Years — 1.0 mi
• Charles Morgan — 1.3 mi
• Atchafalaya River — 1.3 mi