Historic Places: Kent Plantation, Rapides Parish, La
Source: Alexandria Town Talk Jan 19, 1949
Submitted by Gaytha Thompson



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KENT PLANTATION

Plantations dotted Central Louisiana when the plantation house was built, but
most of the land still was unclaimed forest.  There was a small settlement
along Red River, but only five years had elapsed since Alexander Fulton had
established his store on the riverfront, at "Rapido" on Red river.  The
dedication of Alexandria as a town was still years in the future, and the
population of the entire parish had been listed three years before as 920
whites and 250 free persons of color.

"Brick kilns were put up on the edge of the bayou, and lumber from the land
was cut on the place to build Kent House.  Probably some of the supplies were
brought up the bayou on small boats that traveled out from the river trading
post, but most of the material that went into Kent Plantation House was from
the land itself.

Slaves worked at the laborious tasks of molding the soft clay into the rose
colored brick, of handhewing the huge cypress trucks that would make the
floors, the pillars, the beams, and the exquisite paneling of the old house.

The first story was built entirely of brick, with small deep windows from
which the family could fight off the Indians who still regarded Central
Louisiana steams and forests as their own.  On the second floor were the
cypress floors, the massive beams and the delicate panels that give the house
so much of its distinction.

The adobe walls of the Kent plantation house are made of deer hair and mud---
from deer that had no doubt once roamed the woods along the bayou, mud that
was dug, mixed, and carried by long lines of slaves, most of them strange,
foreign creatures who could only speak in the brief gutturals of their native
Africa.

One of the more romantic stories of the old Kent house is connected with the
white iris that bloom in profusion there each spring.  The tradition is that
they were brought by the first bride to the plantation, and they grew and
multiplied until they almost covered parts of the garden.

Out in the back of the house the slave quarters were once located, and the old
kitchen was out in the yard, too.  Way back, there is brick about two feet
under the ground, laid as if it might have been a floor, in the herringbone
pattern similar to that used for the floor of the original house.  Just what
that brick was used for---whether it was a floor, or whether it was laid there
for some other purpose they never knew.


Notes: Sometime around 1794-1795 Pierre Baillio II built this home.  There is
no record of the date that Pierre began construction of this home.  Tradition
says that he put the slaves to making and laying bricks and embarked on a
riverboat for a trip down the Red and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. 
Being delayed in his return, he found the negroes had made and laid bricks
until his return, thus causing the house to be unusually high above the
ground.

He lived here for more than a quarter of a century and died there on January
8, 1824