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83 Calumet Plantation is located in St. Mary Parish near Patterson. The property was known originally as the O. and N. Cornay Plantation. About 1830, brothers Octave (1805–1869) and Christophe Numa Cornay (b. 1807) built the main house. They had acquired the plantation through their mother, Françoise Radeville (née Haydel; b. 1786), who had inherited it from her parents, Jean-George Haydel (b. 1753) and Marguerite Bossier (1765–1795). Marguerite’s father, Jean Baptiste Bossier (b. 1727), had received the land as a grant. Calumet is a one-and-a-half-story center-hall frame cottage with porches at the front and rear. The walls are composed of briquette entre poteaux. Federal-style dormers and six-over-six windows provide a neoclassical character to the cottage style of the original house. Daniel Thompson (d. 1900) and his wife Georgine “Geordy” Urquhart (née Wibray; b. 1829) purchased Calumet in 1871. Working with a group of chemists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Thompson operated Calumet as a sugar plantation and experiment station until his death, achieving great success testing various fertilizers. Lumber magnate and aviation pioneer Harry Palmerston Williams (1889–1940) and his wife, silent film star Helen Marguerite (née Clark; 1887–1936), owned Calumet during the early twentieth century. Clarence W. Baughman later operated Calumet as a sugar plantation until about 1956. Mr. and Mrs. W. D. Hunter currently own the main house, now located on the grounds of an airport constructed by Williams. Only one photograph of Calumet Plantation is accessioned in the Louisiana State Museum’s Tebbs Collection. It is more of a portrait of the house than an architectural photograph. CALUMET PLANTATION ca. 1830/ca. 1850–1870 84 Chrétien Point Plantation (front elevation), vintage gelatin silver print, Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.243b ...

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