The Enslaved Nanny's Room

Under the Prud'homme house, behind a door to the yard, was a brick-walled room, probably with a dirt floor, and a stair rose from it to a trap door in the children's bedroom above. The enslaved nanny who lived there could be called at any hour. Other household workers, such as Venus, a cook, and Martha Ann, a laundress, slept in cabins out back. A nurse named Celeste is documented in 1845 and may have lived here. After the Civil War the family hired nannies, among them Marie Wilson and Carrie Helaire, who did not live in the room.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — steps away
  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.
• Melrose Plantation — 5.0 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.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 5.3 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.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 7.8 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.

More markers nearby

• Creole Architecture — steps away
• Working Iron — steps away
• Hollywood Comes to Oakland Plantation — steps away
• The Helaire Family of Oakland / The Shields Family of Oakland — steps away