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Whitworth Home
Samuel James Whitworth, who had served
alongside Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, married
Margaret Dickson in Bedford County, Tennessee on August
12, 1817,
and they later moved to Caddo Parish, establishing
Forest Park Plantation.
1
Samuel and Margaret had seven children ranging from the
ages of seven to thirty-one: Benjamin Edward; Joseph
Dickson; Samuel James, Jr.; John Isaac; Ephraim William;
Isabella Jane; and Elizabeth Effy (also spelled Effie)
Whitworth. 2
Samuel died on
August 11, 1843 and
was buried in Forest Park Cemetery, east of the house.
3
Margaret had family members from Alabama moved to this
cemetery.
4
She is also buried here.
5
The graves of the slaves are fairly close nearby.
6
Just beyond the cemetery are the graves of the poorer
white people that worked on the land.
7
FINDING THE LAND
In early 1838 Bennett
S. Dickson, the brother of Margaret Dickson, along with
Margaret’s eldest son, Benjamin Edward Whitworth, headed
to Greenwood in order to find a suitable area to
relocate their families.
8
Samuel was ill and went through life as an invalid.
Family tradition holds that he spent most of his time
drinking peach brandy while his wife ran the plantation.
9
If they arrived on the river, then they landed in
Shreveport and from there headed west on what was
probably little more than a wagon trail. The town of
Greenwood, settled in 1836, had not been surveyed by the
government, so the men could not buy the land. But the
family was able to secure some land by building log
structures on it to show that they had arrived to the
section first. High ground was what most new settlers
were vying for, as
Shreveport
and its surrounding areas were susceptible to epidemics,
such as yellow fever.
10
THE MOVE
The
family members, thirty-five slaves, livestock, and
possessions were onboard the ships that floated from
their home in Greene County, Alabama down to the Gulf of
Mexico and on to New Orleans. Once there the possessions
were transferred to a flatboat and the family to a
steamer, which they rode on the Mississippi River, up
the Red River, and finally into Shreveport. Upon their
arrival in the spring of 1839, the family stayed with
Shreveport’s first mayor, John O. Sewall, and his
family, as there were no decent public hotels in the
city.
11
After spending a week with the Sewalls while they waited
on the transfer of their possessions from boat to wagon,
the family set off for their new home.
12
CONSTRUCTION
The land
was surveyed in 1839, and the family bought their
sections of the land. Bennett began building his home on
the left-hand side of the road, while the Whitworth home
was built on the right.
13
The Whitworths built a double log cabin as a temporary
dwelling when the arrived on the land. After this
structure and the cabins for the slaves were built, the
construction of their permanent home was begun. The
Whitworths started the construction of their home in
1839 about 500-feet from the road on the highest part of
the property.
14
The family lived in a dog-trot home until the brick
structure could be erected.15
The slaves used the red clay on the land to fashion
bricks. Local pine and oak trees, as well as cypress
that was shipped to the property, was used for the
window and door sills and shingles. Black walnut was
used to fashion the rafters that supported the roof.
16
Although the Whitworths were pioneers in the area where
they settled, about three miles west of
Greenwood,
their parlor contained rosewood furniture, and they ate
from silver flatware. Their permanent home was the first
brick house to be built in Caddo Parish.
17
HOUSE DESCRIPTION
The Georgian style
house was U-shaped with one-room-deep wings forming a
courtyard at the center. The front of the home faced the
road and was fronted by a two-story portico, supported
by four square columns. The portico, with its own
pedimented gable roofline, protected the upper balcony.
A central transomed entrance led into the hallway. The
windows, all of the sash type, were six-over-six and
symmetrically flanked the front portico. Louvered
shutters were installed on each window, and in 1910
these were reportedly still intact. Two interior
chimneys flanked the main section of the home, and a
third stood at the back wing.
18
The front door led
into the hallway that stretched to the rear of the home.
A straight flight of stairs, which had a curved bottom
step, rose from the central hall, and still remained
sturdy in the 1930s. Twelve-foot ceilings and plastered
walls were found throughout the home to provide for
cooler weather in the summers. To the left of the hall
was the double parlor, separated by an archway.
Furniture was bought from the D. H. Holmes Company in
New Orleans when Margaret made a visit to the city.
19
The black walnut parlor furniture was in the Louis XV
style; the upholstery was stuffed with black horsehair.
The drapes in the room, being light blue and gold, were
held with brass tie-backs. To the right was the dining
room with its mahogany, gate-post style table, chairs,
and sideboard.
20
Behind the dining room was a small office, which had its
own exterior entrance. In one corner of the office was a
spiral staircase the led to the master’s room. The
dining room and parlors had elaborate chandeliers with
the candles being made on the plantation. When company
called expensive whale-oil lamps were used. These lamps
featured shades that family members had hand painted.
21
Upstairs were four bedrooms, which contained beds with
octagonal-shaped posts and red and gilt medallions at
the center of the tester. The vanity tables had small
mirrors and were topped with marble slabs.
22
The kitchen was
separated from the house for the fear of fire, but was
connected by an open walkway. East of the kitchen was an
eighty-foot well. Stables, a smokehouse, and a lock
house also stood on the property.
23
The carriage and its harnesses had silver mountings, and
its drawing horses had nicked tails.
24
Crepe myrtles from
Margaret’s childhood home, Vineygrove, in North Carolina
were sent to Forest Park. English box shrubs lined the
flower beds, and mimosa, black walnut, and pecan trees
were placed throughout the yard. Dwarf deer and peacocks
were also seen amid the foliage.
25
U. S.
soldiers walked the road before the home as they
returned from the Mexican War. Legend holds that some of
these carried pecans from the Rio Grande valley in their
saddlebags and dropped them by the home. An
eighty-foot-tall pecan tree, supposedly grown from these
pecans, stood before the home.
26
A letter from
Margaret to her sister in Idaho reveals that Forest Park
Plantation produced 30,000 pounds of cotton in 1841.
27
The plantation originally encompassed 10,000 acres.
28
SLAVES
One story passed down
through the family, after being told by a former slave,
is that after the Emancipation Proclamation, Joe
Dickson, the brother of Margaret Dickson Whitworth and
manager of Forest Park Plantation, announced to the
slaves that they were free and could leave the
plantation. The slaves talked amongst themselves and
then told Dickson that they did not want to leave. He
then gave them permission to stay on the property, and
many of their descendants still remain in the area.
29
AFTER MARGARET
When Margaret died
her children were left with the land their mother had
acquired. There was no will, but the children divided
the property evenly. The succession described the land
as totaling 1,857.20 acres. In 1869 the children began
selling their interests in the estate: John Jones
Whitworth bought Joseph Whitworth’s property and then
sold it to James M. Martin.
30
Isabella Jane Whitworth and Elizabeth Effy Whitworth
kept their interests.
31
Elizabeth Effy
Whitworth, who was ten-years-old when she arrived in
Caddo Parish, married George Washington Martin, who was
born to Anthony Martin and Delphe Drake Martin in 1810
in Lexington, Virginia.
32
Martin came to Caddo Parish after 1838 and they had four
children: Margaret Dickson Martin, who married William
Culp Agurs; Georgia Elizabeth Martin, who married James
P. Flournoy; James M. Martin, who married Mary Alice
Guynemer; and Delilah Napoleon Martin, who married
Charles Claiborne Philips.
33
When Elizabeth died the property was
divided among her four children, with Georgia
Elizabeth’s interest going into a trust as she was still
very young at the time of her mother’s death. When
Georgia’s sister Margaret sold her share of the
property, it was her aunt, Isabella Jane Whitworth
Howell, and her uncle, Zach Howell, who bought it,
allowing the property to remain in the hands of the
family. Some of the land stayed in Margaret’s hands. In
1877 Georgia
was of age, and she bought her brother, James’s,
interest in the estate, as he had not sold it. After a
year, Georgia and her husband sold 540 acres of the
property to her sister Margaret and the rest of the land
along with the home to her aunt Isabella Howell.
34
In 1878 the house was
renovated, receiving a new roof and new mortar between
some of the bricks. The rear wing that had been occupied
by Isabella Howell was torn down. A porch was built
across the back of the home and had lattice work along
the edges of it. Stairs formerly stood here, leading to
the upper floor of the home.
35
DISREPAIR
After Isabella’s
death in 1896, Zach Howell left the home for Shreveport.
Slowly the house fell into disrepair. The stables,
smokehouse, and slave quarters, which were located
directly behind the home, either collapsed or were used
for firewood. The family cemetery was still maintained.
36
In the 1920s the home
fell into disrepair, as it was vacant and neglected. The
cemetery remains, although many of the stones have been
broken by vandals.
37
Until the late 1930’s
the Whitworth home stood vacant. Broken walls and
windows were all that remained of the once great
establishment of the Whitworth family.
38
Family members had removed much of the furniture,
woodwork, and mantelpieces over the years and put them
to use in their own homes.
39
The cabinets in the dining room were still intact in the
1930’s, as was the staircase that led to the second
floor. Even some of the plaster remained on the walls.
An eighty-foot-deep well remained on the property.
40
The slave quarters
had burned, and the smokehouse, lock house, kitchen, and
stables had been dismantled or had collapsed by the
early 1930s.
41
Years before the
family did so, however, rumors started that the family
had buried their silver beneath the home during the
Civil War, and locals began to dig around the mansion,
weakening the foundation.
42
A Mr. Dickson, who had bought into the property with
Zach Howell, had the home razed in about 1940.
43
The bricks were sold, being used to build the dentist’s
office standing on the corner of Linwood and Claiborne
in Shreveport.
44
References
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