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Homeland Plantation
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
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35 Homeland Plantation (also known as Home Place, Homeplace, and the Keller House) is located near Hahnville in St. Charles Parish. Begun as early as 1787–1791, the main house appears to have been completed about 1800 and is among the largest surviving French Colonial plantation houses. Records suggest that Pierre Gaillard (ca. 1730–1799) and his wife Marie Jeanne (née Fauche; 1736–1821) began building the main house, a raised cottage in the French Colonial or Creole style, two rooms deep and four across surrounded on all sides by a sixteen-foot gallery, about 1787. The lower story is constructed of brick and the upper of cedar posts in-filled with bousillage. Homeland and Parlange share nearly identical plans, a dormered roof, construction methods, and wedge molded bricks forming the columns. Architectural historians have suggested that Charles Paquet, a free man of color, built both houses. Paquet is documented as the builder of another similar house, Destrehan (1787–1790). As seen in Tebbs’s photographs, the fireplace features a narrow overmantel that extends to the ceiling. Nineteenth-century imported French wallpaper was still in place in 1926. On February 25, 1806, the “Widow Gaillard” and her son, Guillaume, sold Homeland to Louis Edmond Fortier (1784–1849) and his wife, Félicité (née La Branche; 1787–1859). Upon his death in 1849, Homeland passed to Drausin Fortier, Louis’s son, and three sons-in-law. Following Drausin’s death in 1856, Homeland passed through several owners before Pierre Anatole Keller (1854–1931) and his wife, Jeanne Pujo (1871–1964), purchased the property in 1889. Their youngest son, Richard Keller, Sr., owned and managed the property as late as the 1979, when it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Homeland continued until recently to serve as a working farm. Tebbs’s photograph of the mantel is of particular interest because it includes a wider view of the Kellers’ furnishings. HOMELAND PLANTATION 1787–1791/1800–1801 Homeland Plantation (mantel), vintage gelatin silver print, Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.187b 36 @ART:Plates 8, 9, 10 Ormond Plantation (front and side elevation), vintage gelatin silver print, Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.315b ...