Kent Plantation House

Kent House takes its name from Robert Hynson's birthplace, Kent County, Maryland. He bought the house from the Baillio heirs in 1842, and he and Mary Hynson added Greek Revival pavilions in the 1840s. The builder, Pierre Baillio, was the son of a French soldier at the Natchitoches fort, and he lies in Rapides Cemetery in Pineville. In 1864 Hynson refused to leave as Union troops withdrew from the Battle of Mansfield, which kept them from burning the house, though he lost his stock and outbuildings. Replacements for lost outbuildings came from other plantations.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kent Plantation House — steps away
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 2.3 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 2.4 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 6.6 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• The Jewish Temple (Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim) — 1.7 mi
• Little Walter — 2.0 mi
• St. Francis Xavier Cathedral Complex — 2.1 mi
• Lee Street Riot of 1942 — 2.2 mi