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115 Bagatelle Plantation was originally built in St. James Parish on property near Donaldsonville . On December 7, 1841, builder Robert Spencer Chadsey (1806–1850) and property owner Augustin Marius Claiborne Tureaud (b. ca. 1810) signed a contract to build the main house. Like many of the smaller plantation houses nearby, Bagatelle was constructed in a restrained Greek Revival style. Key features include a central hall, flanking wings (now gone), an entablature, and six fluted Doric columns. Tebbs’s photograph shows the two original dormers on the front, which complement two at the rear, before a later owner added dormers to each side. Tureaud married Joséphine Françoise Aurore Mather (b. ca. 1803), the daughter of George Mather, Sr. (1783–1837). Their daughter, Stella Tureaud (1834–1911), and her husband , Louis Amédée Bringier (1828–1897), operated the plantation together with L’Hermitage until 1881. Another, unmarried daughter, Louise Olivia Tureaud (1841– 1929), owned the plantation when Tebbs photographed it. Soon after, the 1927 flood necessitated the house being moved farther from the levee. Following Louise’s death, Bagatelle passed to Gordon McDonald Mather (b. 1869), a cousin. He sold the property to Monsignor Célestin M. Chambon (b. 1879) in 1941. In addition to adding dormers, Chambon enclosed and enlarged the kitchen and rear façade. Chambon, who had been the curate of St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans and founding pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in Darrow, lived at Bagatelle until 1946, when it was sold to Francis Henderson James (1888–1959), chief engineer at the Salsburg Sugar Factory. The house was vacant following James’s death until 1977, when his son, Dr. Trenton James, and daughter-in-law, Kay, moved Bagatelle on a barge about seventy-five miles upriver to a site on Plaquemine Point in Iberville Parish near the East Baton Rouge Parish line. Many of the outbuildings are preserved at the LSU Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge. Only one photograph of Bagatelle by Tebbs, a front elevation, is accessioned at the Louisiana State Museum. The property is now a private residence. BAGATELLE PLANTATION 1841–1842 116 Uncle Sam Plantation (three-quarter view from the front with unidentified figures), gelatin silver print, Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.256 ...

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