The Massé - Darby House

Nobody can say when this house went up. Dates offered include 1782, a range from 1764 to 1776, 1765 and 1815, and no record confirms any of them. What is documented is the land: a Spanish grant to André Massé, whose household was counted in a 1766 census with 24 enslaved people, at a place about three miles away near Charenton. Later owners include James Hennen by 1809, Confederate captain François Optat Darby, and John Baldwin, who bought it in 1867. His descendants kept it until 1938, and the Johnson family had it to 1981.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chitimacha Museum — 3.6 mi
  The Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Charenton: the tribe's account of its territory, the French wars and enslavement, the land held in trust, and river cane baskets.
• Grevemberg House Museum — 3.7 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.
• Wedell-Williams Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum — 19 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.
• Cypremort Point State Park — 20 mi
  A 185-acre Vermilion Bay park reached by road, with a half-mile man-made beach, a marsh boardwalk, shore fishing and a boat launch, and a Chitimacha tradition of a great cypress here.

More markers nearby

• Jefferson Davis Louisiana Association — 2.1 mi
• Welcome to Charenton and the Chitimacha Reservation — 3.4 mi
• Chitimacha Veterans' Monument — 3.7 mi
• Donelson Caffery — 3.8 mi