The Big House

The sugar that made Marie Azélie Haydel rich was cut by enslaved people whose names are now carved on granite at the site. Ambroise Heidel, a German immigrant, bought the land in 1752, and the family became Haydel. After Marcellin Haydel died in 1839, his widow ran the plantation through its most profitable years, among the state's leading sugar operations, and she died in 1860 as one of Louisiana's largest slaveholders. Accounts differ on whether the family's ownership ended in 1860 or 1867. Bradish Johnson bought the property in 1866 and renamed it Whitney for his daughter.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Whitney Plantation — steps away
  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 — 18 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.
• Laurel Valley Village — 19 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 — 20 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

• The Slave Quarters — steps away
• Allées Gwendolyn Midlo Hall — steps away
• Colonial Sugars Refinery — 1.9 mi
• Saint Hubert Parish — 2.1 mi