Fast Trip Home

We charged over to New Roads to attend the annual family corporation business meeting. Well, really a family get to gether, with good food and short business meeting. It is always a pleasure to get back to False River and green country that surrounds it, and to see the family. Someone new always shows up, this year it was Jack Gonzales, a third generation family member from California.

We dined at Morel's on False River, feasted at the old plantation house, and had good fast food ala cat fish from the Tiger Drive In. Much to much food, we even ate at the casino in Marksville on our way home.

Found New Roads growing as usual. Odd name for a region filled with French, Spanish and Cajun history. Times in the past people tried to make "New Rhodes" or "St. Mary's." It happened to be a location where a new road to the Mississippi River intersected with the lake - False River. Anyway it dates back more than a 100 years and is today the parish seat of goverment. The parish is named Pointe Coupee.

Pointe Coupee Parish is one of the oldest settled places in Louisiana and indeed, the Mississippi River valley. There are marriage and other documents recorded dating from 1774 - that's before the Revolutionary War. A quick internet search of "Pointe Coupee" will render more information than I can write about here.

My family, the Morrisons, show up a few years before the Civil War - 1856 to be exact. My ancestor is Jacob Haight Morrison, originally from New York State. He knocked around New Orleans since the 1820s and eventually acquired a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish. He named it after his childhood home in New York, Brunswick. Today the old house on Brunswick is gone, that's another story. My branch of the family, the heirs of Walter Christian Morrison, still own part of Brunswich and that plantation is named Angeles Plantation.

Angeles Plantation is about 700 acres more or less, fronts on the mighty Mississippi River. Some of it was inherited out right by Walter Christian, and some acquired over time. Today it is a family corporation and is owned by the heirs in proportion to their branch of the family. Owners are found all over the United States from California to Louisiana.