San Francisco Plantation

he year was 1827. Just 40 miles downriver, New Orleans was celebrating its first Mardi Gras. Elisée Rillieux, a free man of color and a smart visionary, began buying tracts of land and slaves to establish a sugar plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish. But Elisée never intended to be a planter himself. Like his brother Francois, who in 1822 created an estate that later became Godchaux Plantation, he was more of a speculator and a good one at that. Only three years later Elisée sold the plantation to Edmond Bozonier Marmillion and his partner Eugène Lartigue for the enormous sum of $100,000 dollars, collecting an estimated $50,000 dollar profit.

Edmond, in debt from day one, immediately began establishing a professional sugar production. Although he became a successful planter of large crops, Edmond remained in financial troubles throughout his twenty-six years of ownership. He continued to acquire slaves and purchase additional swamp land, but invested little in modern sugar machinery. During the prosperous 1850s, the plantation became an economical success. But tragedy had long overshadowed Edmond's family life. In 1843 Edmond’s wife Antoinette was dead from tuberculosis, a disease contracted by almost all of her eight children as well. Six of them died throughout a period of just over twenty years.

To provide his surviving sons Valsin and Charles with a prestigious residence, Edmond began building the plantation home that exists today. In 1853 he hired expert builders and purchased twelve highly skilled slaves to convert his extravagant vision into reality. When main construction was finished two years later, Edmond appointed accomplished artists to carry out an ambitious decoration project. It featured five artistically hand painted ceilings, painted door panels, faux marbling, and faux wood graining throughout. The house became so distinctive that it inspired novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes to write "Steamboat Gothic", a story about the family she imagined lived there. Viewed from some angles, the house closely resembles the ornate and yet graceful superstructure of a Mississippi riverboat.

Edmond passed away in 1856, less than one year after the home was completed. The day after Edmond’s death, his oldest son Valsin returned from Europe and was forced to take over the plantation. Valsin Bozonier Marmillion was married to Louise von Seybold of Munich, Germany, and had three daughters. Together they lived at the home and ran the sugar plantation for the next fifteen years. The unusual name “San Francisco” is believed to be derived from Valsin’s comment about the extraordinary debt he was confronted with when taking over the estate. He declared he was sans fruscins or “without a penny in my pocket.” The name evolved into St. Frusquin and, in 1879, was changed into “San Francisco” by the next owner, Achille D. Bougère.

Valsin never envisioned his future as a Louisiana sugar planter. He had been educated at prominent Catholic universities on the East Coast and had worked as an accountant in New Orleans and Paris for many years. But nothing made him want to leave his home more than the death of his six siblings and his own developing illness. As early as 1859, Valsin and his younger brother Charles attempted to sell the estate but were halted by a legal conflict with their sister-in-law, Zoé Luminais. When the argument was settled in 1861, it was too late. War and reconstruction prevented any possibility of a sale for the following fifteen years. Valsin’s and Louise’s dream of moving to Southern Germany remained unfulfilled.

* Tours begin every 20 minutes daily. One of our guides, dressed in period attire, will escort you through a 45 minute presentation of all 14 rooms of the plantation and the grounds.

We are open most holidays. We are closed for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, Mardi Gras Day and Easter Sunday.

Group tours are available by appointment and are designed especially for your particular needs.

Phone toll free (888) 322-1756

Local: (985) 535-2341 
Fax: (985) 535-5450