Ghana House

Ghana House. . , The Louis Metoyer or Yucca Plantation, known since 1885 as Melrose Plantation, was established in 1796 by a remarkable family of formerly enslaved people. Five of its buildings: Yucca House, African House, Ghana House, Big House, and the Barn date from the period of African American ownership (1796-1847). The Ghana House is a small one-room structure with horizontal planks and full dovetail notched corners. Cammie Henry moved the building to Melrose in the 1930s from the Dominique Metoyer Plantation, located two plantations downriver from Melrose. She added the chimney and used it as a wash house, garden shed, and cabin for her many guests. Dominique was another son of Marie Therese Coin-Coin, an enslaved person, and the French merchant and planter Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer. , St. Augustine Catholic Church (1829). Established by Augustin Metoyer, it is the cultural center of the Cane River area's historic Creole community. It is recognized as the first Louisiana church built by and for "free people of color" and one of the oldest in the United States., Isle Brevelle:. Louisiana Creoles are descendants of French/Spanish colonials, Africans, Native Americans, or Anglo-American enslaved people and pioneers. Many Metoyer descendants settled in the Cane River area known as Isle Brevelle. Named after Jean Baptiste Brevel' (var. Brevelle), the 18th-century explorer and soldier of the Natchitoches Militia, son of a Parisian-born trader and his Caddo Indian wife., Some Creoles became wealthy planters with large homes, raising cotton and sugar and owning enslaved people. A study of wealthy entrepreneurs of color in the U.S. between 1820 and 1865 identified twenty-one people owning property valued at over $100,000. Seventeen of them lived in Louisiana, and the majority had French surnames. During this time Augustin and Louis Metoyer were two of the wealthiest people in the United States.