OVERVIEW

Location

Approximate Location: Ward 4, Township 22 North, Range 13 East, Sections 22-27, (East) Carroll Parish, LA; Next to Erwin or Erin Plantation, Latitude: 32.6245800, Longitude: -91.1537200; Located at Bunch’s Bend, Carroll Parish, Louisiana.

Date Constructed/Founded

ca. 1805

Associated Surnames

Stewart, Marschalk, Goodrich

Historical Notes

Robert H. Stewart owned Elder Grove Plantation at Bunch's Bend, Carroll Parish, Louisiana. He and his father, Robert Stewart, were morticians and furniture dealers of Natchez, Mississippi. Robert Stewart (the elder) was married to Susan Marschalk, the daughter of Andrew Marschalk, a prominent, early 19th-century editor and printer of Natchez.

Census: Appeared on the 1850 Slave Schedules (36 slaves, listed as Robert Stuart) and on the 1860 Slave Schedules (59 slaves, listed as Robert Stewart), 1860 Mortality Schedule (2 slaves listed with last name Stuart)

Associated Slave Workplaces

none

Associated Free Persons

George W. or Robert W. Stewart - father
Robert H. Stewart - owner
Caroline Heermans – wife
Robert Stewart – father
Susan McDonald Marschalk – mother
Andrew Marschalk - father-in-law
Ferdinand M. Goodrich - owner in 1873

Associated Enslaved Persons

none found yet

Research Leads and Plantation Records

Robert H. Stewart Account Books, Mss. 404, 4732, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Miscellaneous Information

This area where Elder Grove Plantation is located was known as Bunch’s Bend until boaters who made it safely around the bend of the river without being attacked by pirates led by a man named Bunch called it a providence that they made it. The area was eventually called Providence and later Lake Providence due to the lake located there.

A statement in the Civil War pension records of Jacob Stewart, my great great grandfather, by his nephew, Robert Stewart, says that Perry Stewart, my great grandfather, and his brother, Ben Stewart took their mother, Margaret Lightfoot, my great great grandmother, from Rifle Point Plantation years after the Civil War up the river to Bunch’s Bend. My Stewarts were born in Natchez but lived in Lake Providence for years and some still live there. Robert Stewart may have sold them to Dr. Samuel Gustine of Rifle Point Plantation. Robert’s son, Robert H. Stewart, may have taken some of them to Elder Grove.

References

1860 U. S. Federal Census – Slave Schedules; A Place to Remember, East Carroll Parish 1832-1975 by Georgia Payne Durham Pinkston; East Carroll Parish Tax Assessors Roll 2006-2007 for legal land descriptions