"Le Petit Versailles" Historical Marker

Valcour Aimé's gifts reached past his own gardens. In 1856 he gave money for a chapel bell for the church at Vacherie, and in 1860 he bought the failing Jefferson College at Convent, later passing it to the Marist Fathers, who renamed it St. Mary's College of Jefferson in 1864. Why he did it is argued. Some accounts say he wanted to keep the school from having to admit freed Black students; another says he simply wanted it open again. His sugar fortune, like the others along this road, was made by enslaved workers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Whitney Plantation — 6.7 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.
• Laurel Valley Village — 15 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 15 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.
• E. D. White Historic Site — 16 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.

More markers nearby

• James Mather — 1.1 mi
• Colonel Leopold L. Armant Historical Marker — 1.2 mi
• Oak Alley Plantation — 1.3 mi
• Bourgeois Homeplace / Site Familial des Bourgeois — 1.3 mi