Myrtles Plantation is currently a Bed and Breakfast located in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Build in 1796 by General David Bradford “Whiskey Dave,” when he fled the United States to avoid arrest and imprisonment for his role in the Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion. At that time, this part of Louisiana was a Spanish Colony, and Bradford obtained a land grant of 650 acres to begin a new life.
In 1799, Bradford was pardoned by President John Adams, and he promptly moved his wife Elizabeth and their five children into the plantation with him. He died in 1808, and Elizabeth continued to run the plantation until 1817, when she handed management over to Judge Clarke Woodruff, one of Bradford’s former law students, and the husband of his daughter, Sara Mathilda.
The Woodruff’s had three children, Cornelia Gale, James and Mary Octavia. Chloe was reportedly a slave owned by Mark and Sara Woodruff. Some say that Mr. Woodruff pressured Chloe into being his mistress. Chloe would listen in at keyholes to obtain information on Mr. Woodruff’s business dealings. After being caught by Mrs. Woodruff, one of her ears was cut off, and she took to wearing a green turban to hide it.
As time wore on, and Chloe had had enough of being mistreated. She decided to bake a birthday cake, containing the extract of boiled and reduced oleander leaves, which are extremely poisonous. A house maid, favored by Mrs. Woodruff, claimed Chloe was taking her revenge. Others say she wanted to gain favor again by curing the family of the poisoning. Except, her plan backfired. Only Sara and her two daughters ate the cake, and all died from poison.
To avoid punishment for Chloe’s crimes, the other slaves hung Chloe, and then threw her body into the Mississippi River.
While historical record will state that Sara and her two daughters succumbed to yellow fever, people visiting the Plantation still see a woman, wearing a green turban, haunting the grounds.
Traditionally, when a person died, all the mirrors in the house would be covered. It was believed that the soul of the deceased may become trapped in a mirror. Unfortunately, when Sara and her two daughters died, one mirror was overlooked, and occasionally, Sara and her children can be seen, and the ghostly markings of children’s fingerprints and what are believed to be Sara’s claw marks trying to tear her way out of the mirror eventually manifest in any mirror hung in the precise spot of the original fixture. The space is currently on its third mirror to date.
Elizabeth Bradford died in 1831, and Clarke took that as his opportunity to take his surviving daughter, Mary Octavia, and get out. They moved to Covington, Louisiana and left a caretaker to manage the plantation. Three years later, he sold the plantation. The land, and all the slaves to Ruffin Gray Stirling.
Stirling and his wife, Mary Catherine Cobb, remodeled the house, nearly doubling the size of the former building. They filled the house with imported furniture from Europe, and renamed the plantation to “The Myrtles,” after the crepe myrtles that grew in the vicinity.
Stirling died in 1864 and left the plantation to his wife. It was at this time that the house suffered more tragedy.
During the American Civil War, the house was ransacked by Union Soldiers. The house was robbed of its fine European furniture and expensive accessories. During this time, at least three Union soldiers were killed inside the house. As a result, there is a blood stain in a doorway, roughly the size of a human body. The stain will not come clean. Cleaners have tried, but they are not able to push their mop or broom into that space, as though a force or object is preventing it. People also report seeing a Confederate soldier tromping across the front porch.
In 1865, Mary Cobb hired lawyer and agent, William Drew Winter, to help her manage the plantation. Winter was married her daughter, Sarah, and they had six children.
Misfortune struck in 1868, when one of their children was 3. She was struck ill, and Winter called in the aid of a Voodoo Priestess. The Priestess tried, in vain, to save the little girl. Now, the girl appears in the room in which she died, and has even been reported to practice voodoo on the people staying in the room.
Unfortunately, misfortune struck the Winter’s again later that same year.. The family fortune was tied up in Confederate currency, and they were forced to sell the plantation.
In 1870, the Winter’s were able to buy back the plantation, and in 1871, William Winter was killed on the porch of the house by a man named E.S. Webber. He staggered and crawled up the stairs, before collapsing in his wife’s arms on the 17th step. Guests will find a ghost staggering then crawling up the stairs and stopping on the 17th step.
The plantation exchanged many hands over the years and is now owned by John and Teeta Moss. The plantation is a B&B, with five rooms in the original home, the caretaker’s quarters, four garden rooms built in the 1980’s and four small cottages built in 2012. History tours are offered daily, in which the staff will kindly introduce you to their “other” guests.
