Kitchen Aromas . . .

Wonderful kitchen aromas abound in the house titillating the nose, stimulating the appetite - must be getting close to Christmas. Rice dressing (aka Dirty Rice) is on the make. And it is generating those great smells.

Next will be Ernestine Green Beans, a recipe handed down from Mama's housekeeper and cook. Ernestine Scott was born on Brunswick, once a Morrison enclave but no more. Its last owner, Edward Morrison (aka Uncle Ed) lost it in the depression. But that is another story. In my day, Brunswick was the estate of Alfred Thibaut. One of Alfred's daughters married my brother-in-law, Helen Thibaut Gremillion. That too is another story for later times.

Part of Brunswick was inherited by my Grandfather, Walter Christian Morrison. He later acquired his half sister's (Sister Mat) inheritance and increased his holdings. And even later he purchase the land on the other side of his holdings to again double his plantation. That plantation is named Angeles Plantation (aka Morrison Farm, Inc.). So we can trace our holdings in the plantation - the "place" as it is known to family - back to 1856 when it was purchased by Jacob Haight Morrison. We even have a copy of the Bill of Sale enumerating what was purchased including slaves.

Ernestine is a descendant of those slaves. At some time, perhaps back in the 1800s a couple of acres were given to the blacks of Brunswick. They have a cemetery and a small church on the land. When Brunswick passed to the Thibaut's that property remained the property of the blacks. The Church is known as the Fifth Ward Church in the Sixth Ward. After Alfred Thibaut died, and Brunswick was claimed by his relatives, fellow Thibauts; they attempted to get the land around the church, they were singularly unsuccessful, that church still belongs to the descendants of the black families that lived on Brunswick and Angeles plantations.

We are inextricably tied to those families, indeed they are part of our family history. When the slaves were freed at the Emancipation Proclamation, they remained for there was no where to go and no way to live other than in the agrarian system at that time.

The plantations were sugar cane producers, a cash crop. A certain portion of the land was held out of cane production and the blacks share cropped on that land; they grew cotton, another cash crop but one that required a lot of labor. Cotton had to be "chopped" meaning cultivated by hand removing the weeds. And later at maturity, the cotton had to be picked, back breaking physical labor. The plantation provided the land, the seed, the fertilizer and the blacks provided the labor. With the demise of the plantation agrarian model, the cotton gins disappeared too.

Today, we can only look back at that system, not the best nor was it the worst. After WW-II the blacks moved off the plantation, perhaps there would only be one or two families still on the place besides the owners. And in time, death claimed those too. Now only family lives on the place.

Ernestine worked for my mother until she could no longer work at all. And even then would come in on holidays to cook. Ernestine's recipes were in her head, she could neither read nor write. She became an integral part of my family to her death. My mother barely out lived her.