Overview

Location

1. Click on the following link for the quickest way to learn where Hole-in-the-Wall was (it was at the red marker on the map): http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis538/getgooglemap?p_lat=31.7251643&p_longi=-91.4117829&fid=535713 . Read on to become an expert about this plantation's location.
2. Hole-in-the-Wall Plantation was located:
1. In Concordia Parish (known as St. John's Parish during most of this plantation's existnce), LA.
2. On Maxwell Road near its intersection with Field Road.
3. On the MS River.
1. (The plantation was separated from the MS River by the levee which runs along the River to control flooding, and by Maxwell Road which runs along beside the levee on the opposite side from the River.)
4. Between the MS River towns of Vidalia, LA in Concordia Parish and Waterproof, LA in Tensas Parish.
1. (It was closer to Waterproof than to Vidalia.)
5. Near the Concordia/Tensas Parish line.
3. Finding the plantation on on-line maps. The map coordinates for the plantation were T9N-R1E (Township 9 North, Range 1 East), in some or all of sec. one through 24. The government sectioned the land into grids for survey and mapping purposes. The Township numbers run along the right and left of the maps and the Range numbers run along the top and bottom of the maps. When you find the grid where the Township and Range numbers intersect, then you look in that grid for the section numbers to find the land.
1. This map shows the location of the plantation relative to the location of the MS River in antebellum (before the Civil War) times. After the Civil War, the River straightened itself out some by shifting to the west away from the town of Rodney - leaving it well away from the River. It also formed what was known as a "cutoff" just above Hole-in-the-Wall Plantation. This soon caused the riverbed to straighten out, which removed the "u" shaped part of the River which you can see sticking out into the state of MS just north of this plantation on the River on this map.
1. Sometimes planters would dig the beginnings of a cutoff so that the River would finish the job and change course causing their plantations to suddenly be much more valuable ones right on the River. Of coures this would cause other planter's land to be swallowed up by the River which could lead to a gun fight. More about this is in Mark Twain's book "Life on the Mississippi." Hole-in-the-Wall Plantation is mentioned in the book because it marked an area in the River with very tricky currents for the riverboat Captains to get their boats through.
2. Hole-in-the-Wall Plantation was where you see the name "E. Smith" at the bottom of this map on the left side of the River. E. Smith probably stands for Elijah Smith. Elijah Smith and Abijah Hunt were partners in the Natchez cotton brokerage firm of Hunt and Smith. The firm also ran a chain of five general stores and several public cotton gins beginning in about 1800 when Abijah moved from the North to the Natchez area. Elijah and Abijah (as other maps will show) were investing their profits in land in this area between 1800 and 1811. Abijah's nephew David Hunt inherited a large part of his Uncle Abijah's estate. Thus, part or all of Hole-in-the-Wall Plantation, which was owned by David Hunt, was possibly inherited from Abijah Hunt or bought from his business partners by David Hunt.
3. David Hunt owned 25 plantations. Several were near the town of Rodney, MS shown on this map and Waterproof, LA (not shown on the map - but approximately where you see the name "Mrs. E. Forman").
4. (click on the map to enlarge it) http://usgwarchives.org/maps/louisiana/parishmap/tensaslatourette1848.jpg
2. The following map is of a land survey dated 1829.
1. The probable land coordinates for this plantation were T9N-R1E, including possibly all of sections one through 24.
2. Note that Elijah Smith - a business partner of David Hunt's Uncle Abijah (David's benefactor) owned one of these lots of land and Thomas Hunt (probably some relative of Abijah) owned another. Note also that Abijah Hunt and William Forman owned lot number 26 (William Forman was another member of the Natchez area Hunt and Smith firm as well as Abijah's partner in Huntley Plantation in Jefferson County, MS). David Hunt's Arcola Plantation was in section number 38 on the map and probably covered a lot more of the surrounding sections - possibly including section 26.
3. Although the date on this map is 1829, it probably reflects the land ownership prior to 1811.
1. Abijah Hunt, who died in 1811 is incorrectly shown to still own section 26.
2. David Hunt is not shown owning any land, but a letter at the following link shows that he was renting out some of his land on Lake Concordia (then Lake St. John) shown on this map. http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/natchez/collections/hunt/index.html
4. (the magnifying glass icon at the lower left enlarges the map). http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/SurveySearch/Survey_Detail.asp?dmid=78653&Index=69&QryID=71689%2E71&DetailTab=3
3. The following 1866 map shows the plantation by name.
1. After studying the previous maps, it is obvious that the MS River is not shown all that accurately on this map.
2. The name Hole-in-the Wall can be made out in the "crease" in the map in the upper left between Connor's Plantation and Coles Creek Point.
3. (click on the map to enlarge it) http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/maps/mississippi/statemap/1866dmsrwaterproof_br.jpg
4. This map shows the land and MS River in present times.
1. Lake Concordia can be seen to the west (left) of the plantation, and the MS River is to the east (right) on the above map.
2. The red icon on the map is this plantation's location. To get a better look, first left click on the red icon, then on "Hybrid," and then zoom in using the ruler at the upper left of the map. The map is interactive, so you can hold the left mouse button down and move the cursor around to see the surrounding area as well. http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis538/getgooglemap?p_lat=31.7251643&p_longi=-91.4117829&fid=535713

Date Constructed/ Founded

• It is unclear just when David Hunt (an owner of this plantation) bought up the land for this plantation. It could have been anywhere from around 1811 to as late as about 1840. The land that this plantation was on was subdivided and being sold for cotton farms and plantations at least by 1811.
• Abijah Hunt, his business partners Elijah Smith and William Forman, as well as a Thomas Hunt were investing in land in the area of this plantation as early as between 1800 and 1811 as shown on the above maps. However, at this time the land may have been considered "wild" land (uncultivated, unimproved wilderness land) that was purchased for future plantations or just as an investment.
• David Hunt inherited most of his Uncle Abijah's estate in 1811 and bought a lot of land over the years thereafter. By 1821 a man (possibly Edmond Shenak) renting some of David Hunt's land on Lake Concordia wrote him concerning the rent. Maybe this land was a part of this plantation. A link to the letter and others is at: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/natchez/collections/hunt/index.html

Associated Surnames

Hall

Historical notes

1. For the quickest way to get an idea of what this plantation looked like click on the following links which show other plantations (mostly neighboring Canebrake Plantation) that were similar to Hole-in-the-Wall. Try to picture acres of flat cotton fields stretching away from the buildings in the photos.
1. The layout of the buildings on Hole-in-the-Wall along Maxwell Road was probably like this - only there would have been enough of the two family slave houses to hold 99 slaves. http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/map.asp?name=15001102.jpg&title=Canebrake
2. The two family slave houses probably looked like this - only not so deteriorated and without all the trees and weeds: http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/picture.asp?name=15001002.jpg&title=Canebrake
3. The main plantation manager's family's house looked a lot like this: http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/picture.asp?name=15001003.jpg&title=Canebrake
4. The plantation probably had it's own cotton gin (to remove seeds) and cotton press (to bale cotton)which looked like this - or it may have shared them with some of David Hunt's other nearby plantations such as Arcola Plantation:
1. The gin: http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/picture.asp?name=15009001.jpg&title=Piazza+Cotton+Gin
2. The press: http://www.westville.org/cottonBalingPressNews.htm
5. After the Civil War, there would have been a store on the plantation or nearby that looked like this (for the sharecroppers/tenant farmers) to buy supplies: http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/picture.asp?name=29008003.jpg&title=Laurel+Valley+Plantation
2. One of Elizabeth Hunt's (an owner of this plantation) grandaughters (Elizabeth Ogden Reed) wrote her recollection of what her mother (Elizabteh (Hunt) Ogden's daughter Estelle Ogden) told her about living on Hole-in-the-Wall. The quotes describe the plantation in the 1880s when Elizabeth's widower - William Frederick Ogden - and his family moved to the plantation after the Civil War to try to save it from forclosure. However, the quotes probably apply to the period before the War as well.
1. "Hole-in-the-Wall comprised 3,500 acres"
2. "the house on the place was a story and a half cottage with two bedrooms in a wing. It was built for a manager and his family to live in and was very simple compared to the elegant home they left in New Orleans."
3. "they fitted their furniture in as best they could and made the place quite comfortable and liveable."
4. It was described "as having beautiful flowers and shrubs in the yard and the long front fence was covered with a running cherokee rose, beautiful in the spring and summer. The house was behind the levee but in those days the levees were not so high and boats going by could be seen and the passengers enjoyed the sight of all the flowers and especially the roses."
3. Canebrake Plantation, just to the south of Hole-in-the-Wall on Maxwell Road, has the only surviving complex of antebellum plantation structures in Concordia Parish. Luckily the Louisiana Register of Historic Places has gathered information and photos of Canebrake and posted them on-line. It was surely very similar to Hole-in-the-Wall
1. From the photos of Canebrake, and other plantations at the same website, it looks like the managers house on Hole-in-the-Wall was a raised cottage with probably an addition sticking out the back with the bedrooms. Thus, making the house into probably an "L" shape. It possibly didn't have a second story at first and the center hall was posibly "open" to the outside if I am reading the description of the Canebrake manager's house correctly.
2. Like Canebrake, the slave cabins and other plantation buildings on Hole-in-the-Wall would have been arranged just behind and to the sides of the manager's house forming a small community before the Civil War. Of course after the War, the tenant farmer/share-cropper houses would have been spread out all over the plantation if the usual pattern in the south was followed.
3. Hole-in-the-Wall was probably larger than Canebrake and would have had to have enough of the double slave cabins to house the 99 slaves listed in the 1860 census.
4. Links to photos and a description of Canebrake are at the bottom of the following webpage http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/search_results.asp?search_type=parish&value=Concordia&pageno=1 .

Associated Slave Workplaces

see Woodlawn Plantation MS

Associated Free Persons

• David Hunt - absentee owner before the Civil War, his home plantation was Woodlawn Plantation MS.
• David Hunt owned this plantation from sometime between 1811 and about 1840 until his 1861 death - at the start of the Civil War. Hunt lived almost directly across the MS river from Hole-in-the-Wall. He lived in Mississippi on his Woodlawn Plantation MS. After his death Hole-in-the-Wall was part of his estate which was not divided up among his heirs until 1867. David Hunt was a large planter and one of only about 35 millionaires in the entire U.S. before the Civil War (see Woodlawn Plantation MS for more about him.
• Elizabeth Hunt - absentee owner after the Civil War, received the plantation as a wedding gift from her father's (David Hunt) estate probably in 1865 (after the Civil War).
• Elizabeth Hunt grew up on her father's Woodlawn Plantation MS in Jefferson Co, MS. She attended the Elizabeth Female academy in Washington, Adams, Co, MS near Natchez. She met her husband William Ogden because he was an Oakland College (now Alcorn State University) buddy of one of her brothers. William spent his college breaks with his friend (Elizabeth's brother) at Woodlawn Plantation which was only a few miles from Oakland College. William and Elizabeth fell in love during this time. William finished Law School at the University of Virginia. Then the Civil War came. He fought for the south as a Captain for the Confederacy. He was taken prisoner and held for months on Johnson's Island (http://www.johnsonsisland.org/ ). After the War he returned to his home in New Orleans in a weakened condition from having contracted Typhoid. He regained his health and married Elizabeth in 1865. William and Elizabeth lived in a town house on a corner of Jackson Street in the Garden District of New Orleans after their marriage (The following link has information and photos of houses in the Garden District at the bottom of the page (http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/search_results.asp?search_type=parish&value=Orleans&pageno=37 ). This link has an interactive street map of Jackson Street - Elizabeth probably lived on a corner near St Charles Ave and near Lafayette Cemetery http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl . They had inherited a good sum of money and investments from both sides of the family which even included some of Elizabeth's father's business real estate in Cincinnati Ohio (and of course Hole-in-the-Wall Plantation and another plantation in Mississippi from Elizabeth's family). William's sister Eliza gave them her share of the Ogden inheritance and in return became a part of William's household as she never married. Along with William's law practice income, it was plenty for the family to have lived well in New Orleans for the rest of their lives if they had cut their lifestyle back and sold the money losing plantations. After the War the system of living in town and having a manager live out on your plantation and run it for you was much harder to do profitably. For many years William and Elizabeth did not appear to understand this. A manager was hired to run things out on Hole In The Wall. William and Elizabeth continued living in their large elegant town house on Jackson Street in New Orleans and had live in servants (a cook married to the butler, a house maid, a nurse and Tildie who had come from Woodlawn Plantation and slept in the nursery with the children) and a music teacher and private schools for their children. Elizabeth even took her children and some of the servants on an extravagant sight seeing trip to Niagra Falls - quiet a luxury - in those hard financial times. She had new clothes made for the family to wear on the trip. They were living too extravagantly to make their inheritance last. In addition they constantly had to waste their share of the family fortune to make up the shortfall at Hole In The Wall. Elizabeth died prematurely in her 30s of yellow fever (carried by mosquitoes in those days).
• William F. Ogden, lived on and managed this plantation in the 1880s.
• Elizabeth Hunt's widower - William Frederick Ogden - lost the plantation for a debt of $3,000 in about 1890. The research paper at the following link gives some clues as to why the plantation was so hard to manage in the late 1800s - there was an economic depression in the 1890s and the boll weevil infested the cotton crops in about 1900. http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11082006-162523/unrestricted/jmreonasdiss.pdf . Because of Elizabeth's father's wealth before the War, she and her brothers and sisters married other rich people. William F. Ogden was one of three lawyer sons of LA Supreme Court Justice Judge Abner Nash Ogden of Carrolton (basically part of New Orleans http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/search_results.asp?search_type=parish&value=Orleans&pageno=14 ). William's brother Horatio was the LA State Attorney General and lived in New Orleans. His other lawyer brother lived in Rapides Parish, LA. He also had a sister Eliza who never married and who helped him raise his children when his wife Elizabeth died of yellow fever in New Orleans at about age 35.
• After his wife, Elizabeth Hunt, died; William remarried (to Mary Davies - his children's music teacher). Still they did not realize that they needed to sell Hole-in-the-Wall - which was constantly losing money. William's new bride redecorated and reupholstered the furniture in their New Orleans town house when they really needed that money to try to generate investment income or save to send their children to college. Finally, finances forced William to decide if he wanted to sell out in New Orleans and move to the plantation or to sell the plantation. He chose to fire the plantation manager and move to the plantation to manage it himself. The family's furniture would barely fit in the manager's house on Hole-in-the-Wall. This was a bad move because while William was a decent city lawyer, he was not such a good plantation manager. He eventually lost Hole In The Wall for a debt of $3,000. The plantation was probably lost in around 1890. The family was so broke that they had to move into a friend's house (the Burn at 712 N. Union St. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~msgenweb/plantations/adams/burn-adams.jpg ) in nearby Natchez, MS. One of William and Elizabeth's children had married into the Walworth family who owned the Burn. The house was extravagant enough that probably William and his family lived in the guest house where they were allowed by the Walworths to take in borders for an income. William died there a few years later (1899). William and Elizabeth are buried in the Ogden Tomb in Lafayette Cemetery number one in New Orleans (links to a photo and a document on this cemetery is at: http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/search_results.asp?search_type=parish&value=Orleans&pageno=63 ). The family included:
• Eliza Ogden, William Ogden's unmarried sister
• The children of Elizabeth and William Ogden.
• 1. William F, a Memphis cotton broker
• 2. Ann, married George E. Sears, a New Orleans rice broker
• 3. Estelle, born April 17, 1870, married Thomas Reed
• 4. Elizabeth, died at 23 of Bright’s disease – brought on by the shock of her brother Nash’s death.
• 5. David, died at 18 months of dysentery
• 6. Dunbar H., married Grace Augusta Cox of Columbus, MS and became a Presbyterian minister. The family name Dunbar can be traced back to Robert Dunbar through David Hunt's third wife's (Ann Ferguson) mother (Jane Dunbar). Her father - Robert Dunbar - owned several plantations in the Pine Ridge area north of Natchez in Adams County. Dunbar's aunt Eliza moved from her brother William's household into Dunbar's household as soon as he married.
• Abner Nash Ogden, only child of William Ogden and his second wife Mary Davies, drowned at 18 in the Mississippi River

Associated Enslaved Persons

• According to the 1860 slave census, 99 slaves worked on this plantation.

• Ellen Hall - born 1851 on Hole-in-the-Wall, parents were Wash and Ann Hall, met her husband (Jacob Stewart) while working on Canebrake Plantation. This information was submitted by Edward B Adams (Jacob Stewart was his great, great grandfather), and it originally came from the Civil War pension records of Jacob Stewart.

Research Leads and Plantation Records

• none reported yet

Miscellaneous Information

• One possible connection to the names of the slaves comes from an account of a donation of land in 1872 by Elizabeth Ogden for a black church (the Gilfield Baptist Church) on Hole In The Wall Plantation. The donees were Albert Rush, Alfred Williams, Washington Smith and Joseph Tinsley. The donation was made because of the feelings of "benevolence and humanity" Elizabeth had toward the donees. These feelings of benevolence were probably because the church members were share croppers on Hole In The Wall and had previously been slaves or were the descendants of the slaves.

• Possibly if David Hunt's will is ever found it will give a list of the slaves on Hole-in-the-Wall.

• The following link is to a site that has historic buildings of he antebellum era in Louisiana listed by parish. http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/searchby.asp

References

• The Hunt Family of Jefferson County, by Andy McMillion. http://jeffersoncountyms.org/hunt_family.htm
• "Black Cultural Landscapes and Institutions," page 117, http://www.nps.gov/history/crdi/conferences/afr_acro5_p83-126.pdf

Users Researching This Workplace

• Andy-McMillion

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