Terrebonne County Louisiana Archives News.....Fifty Years Ago No. 41 March 13, 1897
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Savanna King savanna18king@gmail.com August 11, 2023, 1:46 am

The Thibodaux Sentinel March 13, 1897
There was an engineer by the name of Tift, who represented the firm of Niles & 
Co., of Cincinnati, who was sent here to put up the sugar mills manufactured by 
that firm to be run with steam. These were among the first mills that replaced 
the horse mills in use in the early period of sugar making on the Bayou 
Lafourche. They were considered powerful mills at that time. Today they would 
hardly furnish power to run one of the ordinary pumps in a modern sugar factory.

Tift, after being here several years, making his home near Napoleonville on the 
plantation of Dr. F.A. Williamson took sick and died in the Autumn of 1846. He 
had no family.

In January 1847 the sale of his succession effects were disposed of at public 
sale. Through curiosity I attended the auction. After his kit of tools had been 
disposed of, a trunk of clothing, principally pants, was offered for sale. They 
were all made of what was known as country cottonade. 

The cotton was grown on the Bayou and ginned in a cotton gin, (the only one on 
Lafourche) belonging to August Tete, grandfather of F.A. Tete now a resident 
near the lower line of Assumption parish, the gin being on the west side of the 
Bayou and immediately opposite the present residence of his grandson.

After it was ginned the women would card, spin and weave it into a cloth, both 
chain and filling.

It was generally dyed a blue color but often the chain or the filling was red.

This cloth sold for $2.50 a yard and it required about three yards to make a 
pair of pants. But when a pair was made there was no limit to their duration. 
Men would wear them until they became tired of them and then give them to some 
slave. Tift appeared to have a mania for those cottonade pants, of which there 
were about 50 pairs in his trunks, enough to have lasted him 50 years. They were 
all sold at fair prices as every man in the parish wore them.

Then came what was a novel, interesting and rather an unpleasant scene to me. 
Tift owned a fine looking mulatto or griff slave, weighing probably over 200 
pounds. He had taught him his trade, and he could do all the woodwork necessary 
in placing an engine, and put up the machinery.

He was a man, not only an expert in his business, but one of intelligence and 
judgment. His name was Bill and he had a wife belonging to the Colonel W.W. Pugh 
who still resides nearby. Bill desired Mr. Pugh to purchase him not only because 
that would put him and his wife together, but that he would have a humane and 
good master.

Col. W.W. Pugh was in New Orleans but he had authorized Mr. Thomas Pugh to bid 
for him. Bids ran up to $3300, perhaps the biggest price that had ever been 
offered for a slave on Bayou Lafourche. This was not Pugh’s bid. Bill seemed 
much distressed and went to Mr. Thomas Pugh and begged him to make another bid. 
Mr. Pugh replied: “Bill I have now gone $300.00 more than Col. W.W. Pugh 
authorized me to bid. I can do no more.”

The slave was knocked down to Gabriel Beasly who lived a few miles in the rear 
of Napoleonville. He was a humane master and gave his slave permission to visit 
his wife.

Financially it was a losing purchase for Mr. Beasly as it was only a year or two 
later, when Bill took refuge under a tree during a storm. A bolt of lightning 
struck the tree, and instantly killed the slave. 

It was not safe for a slave to go off of his master’s property without a written 
permit from his owner or overseer. Patrols, as they termed them, would take them 
and march them to the parish jail, for which they received a fee of a dollar or 
more. Owners had to pay the amount to recover their slave. 

Negroes, who had wives away from home, were generally given a permanent pass to 
visit their wives two or more times per week, and passes were given to any 
slaves to visit their neighbors or relatives nearby when it did not interfere 
with their daily labor, especially when they had good masters.

To prevent anyone from selling liquor to slaves was a great point among 
overseers and owners, and many were the devices to catch some unwary merchant or 
trader. The law was very plain that anyone who would sell liquor to a slave 
without permission from the owner or properly authorized person would be liable 
to a fine and perhaps imprisonment. 

Notwithstanding, the profits of such illicit transactions were so great that men 
would risk it, and it was seldom that they were caught.

I remember an instance in which an overseer laid, as he supposed, a trap, to 
catch an unwary dealer. He gave a slave, one night, money to pay for liquor and 
a bottle to contain it, and accompanied the boy near to the victim’s residence, 
sent him to the house to arouse the man. Soon after he came out with his bottle 
well supplied with the fiery liquid. The next day the overseer had the seller 
arrested and at the trial, thinking that he had a sure thing of it, testified 
how the slave had gone into the house of the accused with an empty bottle and 
came out with a full one. The Judge required of the witness if he did not send 
the slave to purchase the whiskey. The witness answered affirmatively. “Well,” 
said the judge, “the slave bought the whiskey with your knowledge and consent, 
and consequently the charge falls.”

I have subsequently seen a great many slaves sold at succession sales, but as a 
general rule they were disposed of in families and purchased by the heirs. 
Slaves about to be sold used to endeavor to select someone to purchase them, and 
when a good price was offered by the party he generally got the man.

I do not remember ever to have seen slaves put up in a slave mart and auctioned 
off. In such sales no regard was given to the wishes or desires of the 
unfortunate slave. The highest bid caught the prize, when brothers, sisters, and 
parents were separated to go they knew not where, and never to see or even hear 
of each other afterwards. 



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