28) OAKWOLD, another old plantation house, is on the left of Highway 29 just before the railroad crossing. One child was severely burned at a campfire as they fled to Texas, and at least two other infants died during their stay there. He and Mary Ellen had eight living children, and they lost nearly as many in this period of heavy infant mortality. He was, however, a conscientious objector to war, a Baptist minister, who testified before the military committee at Shreveport in the regard. Lee by the Confederate Cabinet for this effort. During the Civil War he moved his family to Texas, and from there hauled salt for the Confederacy from the Jefferson Island site. Pearce served in the Louisiana Legislature, 1880-1882. She was the daughter of Ezra Bennett of nearby Bennettsville and brother Maunsel Bennett, another prominent citizen of Evergreen. Educated at Centenary College, Jackson, La., he and his wife, Mary Ellen Bennett, were married when the bride was 15. Stephen Samuel (his father was Stephen Pearce) was born at Cheneyville on October 18, 1833, two days after his father died. Pearce have been the initials of four generations of planters who established a reputation for raising sugar cane and manufacturing sugar in the Evergreen area. 27) The Stephen Samuel Pearce Family - S.S. He was an ardent Baptist and is famous for the passage in Northup where Tanner was pictured reading to his slaves from the Bible to prove they were meant to be slaves. Tanner moved from Bayou Boeuf to the Evergreen area sometime around 1850. Tanner was one of the most extensive planters on Bayou Boeuf and had sugar interest in Cuba as well. William Ford, hired Northup from his owner, the itinerant carpenter, Tibeats, to work under Tanner's carpenter named Myers. Within Evergreen, named for the greenery on its rolling hills, is Bayou Rouge Baptist Church which was founded in 1841 with Peter Tanner as one of its founders. The Village of Evergreen grew along the Bayou Rouge in the early years of the 19th century. This is Lone Pine Plantation house, home of Dr. Continue until you find Northup Marker #9 on your right. When you leave the church, turn right, and after a brief distance, turn left on Goudeau Road. Continue your drive along the street until you come to Bayou Rouge Baptist Church where Peter Tanner and his wife are buried (across the street in front of the church, straight towards the back of the old cemetery). The small family cemetery is at the highest point in a small hill, enclosed by a fence. At the end of this section, to the left, in the middle of a psture, lies the grave of Roger Marshall, the planter who lived across the Bayou Boeuf from the Epps Place. Turn right at the corner of the school grounds. Continue on the highway-Main Street past the Evergreen Elementary School. On your right, as you near the bridge over Bayou Rouge, is the Church of the Little Flower. 29) EVERGREEN, LOUISIANA - Once in Evergreen, you will drive alongside Little Bayou Rouge. It was he who was responsible for providing information leading to the Epps Place and Platt. It was a slave, identity unknown, who was kept at the Avoyelles Sheriff's office to help locate slave. The names Waddill (a street) and Cushman (a cemetery) survive in Marksville. The following day necessary proceedings took place in the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse, Marksville, which freed the kidnapped slave. It was from Marksville that the sheriff set out to locale Platt, the slave, whose identity was not established as Solomon Northup. Ralph Cushman was the presiding judge, a man doomed to die within the next months of a yellow fever epidemic which swept the river towns, including Marksville. Bass died two months after Northup's release from slavery, and the same lawyer, Waddill, left a note in his diary is a brief note regarding the Northup case in which he obviously considered nothing more than a routine case. Bass' role in freeing Northup cannot be overlooked he risked possible death from irate planters who were extremely sensitive regarding "the peculiar institution" during this last decade before the Civil War. It was Samuel Bass, a carpenter living near Marksville with a free woman of color, who sent Solomon's letter to his wife, Anne, in New York, describing his whereabouts after an absence of twelve years. Waddill was a state senator in 1848 and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1852. Watdill, a lawyer of considerable prominence in the state. It was here that Solomon's New York friend, Henry B. 32) MARKSVILLE, LOUISIANA - Marksville was the parish seat of Avoyelles where Solomon at last secured his freedom.
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