Closing In On the End . . ..

End of what?  End of the family Usufructs Agreement.  A Usufructs is a legally binding "use" agreement.  They have been around for centuries but until the early 1980s were not recognized in Louisiana.

Well my family had a Usufructs Agreement drawn up.  My father wrote it and then his lawyer took over and put it good legal language.  He also had it "peer reviewed" and subsequently had it inserted in the Louisiana Constitution making legal.

That agreement controlled the frontage of the plantation and who could do what with what.  My brother built a log house on my father's part of the usage agreement.  There were four more or less equal area across the front of the farm.  One part had the old family house which I call Angeles House.  We subsequently sold the house to a Morrison who is a share holder.

With in a year of my brother building the log house he died.  He died intest-state ( no will) but the agreement was in force so the log house fell to my father as it was on his area of control.  There were other bank issues that were resolved and my father rented the house.  My father died in the mid 1990s at age 86 and the log house became ours.  By ours I mean his heirs; my brother's children, my sister and myself.

I was in the military and then retired to a town outside of Fort Worth, Texas so I could not provide any management help keeping the log house and it became my sisters duty as she lived closest to the house.  My nephew Johnny lived nearby but my sister did the job anyway.

My sister has since died and Johnny has taken over the responsibilities.   Herrise left it in a good lease and all he had to do was collect the rent and pay for the fire insurance.  

Well, the Usufructs Agreement expires at noon, May 28, 2020.  After that the log house reverts back to the plantation.  We will turn over a nice four thousand square foot log house and the management now falls to the plantation.  We, as share holders in the stock ownership of the plantation, will continue to participate in the proceeds but on a per share basis.  We no longer as subset of the larger family have any responsibility for and to the log houseersonaly.

Basically, it has been forty years since the agreement was placed in use.  It will expire.  Others will manage the place and we will all share in any income on  a pro rata basis.

We Must Move On . . .

One of the good things about Gamie's passing is the family coming together.  It takes a death, a birth or a wedding to do that.  Two are joyous occasions one is sad. We had to experience the sad event but once again the family coalesced.  We met, we cried and we laughed.  And we all lamented Gamie's passing.

I have heard from a lot of the family and seen even more at the funeral.  Some were friends, some were kissing cousins and some were total strangers to me.  Herrise had a lot of friends in Baton Rouge, a lot of them associated with the church.  That is a normal family following, we all have different elements, some a blood relatives and some are extended family.  Many came to pay their respects to Gamie.

I have heard from both coasts of the US, from California in the West and Delaware from the East.  Many could not attend the funeral, age and infirmity abound amongst us older members of the family.  Others had things intervene to prevent attendance, that is normal for our fluid society.  We are spread out now and one my laments is that we are gradually losing touch with elements of our family.

One element that keeps us in touch is the family farm, the plantation, Angeles Plantation.  Our annual business meeting is as much a meeting as it is a social gathering.  We get to see on occasion our cousins who all free to attend our social gathering.  You never know who is going to show up and who is not going to show up and that is reflective of our society also.  Some can and do come, some can not attend for a variety of reasons.  It does not matter, it makes it interesting.

I am in hopes the plantation keeps on going for another 100 years.  Its value has grown with time and it is debt free.  It is a corporation now, former partners have stock in proportion to their inheritance.   Now with time, we have more and more stockholders.  It is only natural, some give shares to their children, some inherit their shares from their parents.  It is a measure of how our relative family has grown since 1856 when Brunswick was purchased by Jacob Haight Morrison.  True, Angeles is only a slice of Brunswick, but it can trace its roots back to Brunswick.  Some time before the year 1900 Walter Christian Morrison took his inheritance from Brunswick to start Angeles Plantation.

So that is where we are today.  Still going, still planting, still farming and the family is ever growing.

Papa's Letters . . .

I have been retyping our Grandfather's letters that he wrote in 1901 prior to his marriage to Marie Camille Seghers.  Camille or Cammie, was his second cousin and he had to get permission from the Archbishop in New Orleans to marry.  He got that dispensation.  For some reason our Grandmother, Cammie, kept those letters and a few others written to her by friends.  My mother read them and typed them up.  There were many typos, etc. through out the process.  I have endeavored to correct those slight oversights.  Now it will be digitally recorded on my computer and I will copy it to CD's.

One must remember in those days there were no electric lights, no railroad through New Roads, Steam boats were the primary long distant transportation for the most part.  There were no telephones and no roads either, no cars at all.  None of those had yet been invented.  So the written word, either in newspapers or by letter were the primary mode of communication.  And families depended on each other and their neighbors, so the community in general were much closer than we are today.

I found expressions used then are just as common today.  There are some things a bit different but not by much.   Life was tougher then.

Cammie lived in the Lettsworth area of what is now probably closer to Innis, LA.  She was not far from the river and thus, catching a steam packet was more normal, like getting a bus.  The boats stopped all up and down the Mississippi River and traveled the tributaries like Ouachita and Black Rivers.  New Orleans was a big city and a center of commerce.  That is where one obtained furniture, hardware, fine clothes and even education.  And the Morrison family had already established itself in New Orleans too.

Our Grandfather lived out on Pointe Coupee, and area known in Pointe Coupee Parish as the "Coast of Pointe Coupee."  It was along the river and North and West of the city of New Roads.  Our ancestor Jacob Haight Morrison bought Brunswick Plantation in 1956.    Walter, our Grandfather, was one of the heirs of Jacob Haight and managed to get his share and his half sister's (Sister Matt) share of Brunswick when Jacob died.  He then added additional lands adjacent to his holdings and today that is know as Angeles Plantation (Morrison Farm Inc.).   The Morrison's lost Brunswick in the great depression while Walter successfully held on to Angeles.  We can say we are the only named landholders along the Coast of Pointe Coupee that were there before the Civil War, all the other names have changed or families have moved on.  Rest assured we will be there for at least another 20 years if not a hundred years.

I have not finished the transcription yet.  When I do, I will copyright it and put it on CDs for the family.  Copyrighting will hold title to the intellectual property that belongs to the family.  In time it will the copy write will expire but it will hold up for a number of years.  These letters are heirlooms and of course I will give a copy to the Pointe Coupee Parish Library.  It is also part of the history of Pointe Coupee.

Papa's Letters to Camille . . .

My sister, Herrise, sent me selected copies of the letters my grand father wrote to my grand mother just prior to their marriage.  She did not send all of them, just the ones she need for a application to get Angeles House in to the National Historical Registry.  I then transcribed the letters into Microsoft Word, made some minor corrections is spelling and punctuation as well as formatting so that each letter did not run on into the next, a pagination effort.

It was interesting reading.  My grandfather married is second cousin and had to get permission from the Archbishop in New Orleans.  He had to get a dispensation regarding the marriage of his cousin.  He got the dispensation and the rest is history, family history now.

My mother transcribed the letters on her old portable Underwood Type Writer.  A laborious job at best and just plain toil at worst for her to do.  But those letters are a treasure.  There are about 30 of them, written on steam boats, at his "cabin" or house really, a mailed on a steam boat.  She lived in the upper end of Pointe Coupee Parish and he lived about in the middle as the Mississippi River flows.  So they both lived close to the artery of the nation, the mighty Mississippi.

There was no railroad in the upper end of the parish at that time.  Indeed such a thing as highway did not exist yet.  There were no telephones, cars or trucks, no roads only horses or horse drawn vehicles like wagons or buggies.  And those days there were on tracts here and there that connected communities.  Mostly folks followed the river and if the could afford it, rode on steamboats.

So the letters present a picture of life at the turn of the century as this all occurred in the year 1901.  Everything had to be hauled in by boat, or in wagon from the town of New Roads or up the river from New Orleans.  New Roads is about three miles as the crow flies from Angeles Plantation, my grandfathers farm.  Today that is a hop, skip and jump to travel, about 5 or 6 minutes, back then it probably was a 5 or 6 mile horse ride on mostly non existent byways, across other peoples land, etc.  So everybody knew everybody and of course, there were not a lot of everybodies back then either.

And families were a big thing back then, cousins closer and often visited each other.  There was no other way besides writing a letter to communicate.  And there was no TV or even radio in those days, they were not yet invented.  So you went to see people and stayed awhile to learn all the news, who got married, who was sick, etc.  We do not visit as much nowdays, we use the cell phone and talk to them, or we go to the movie or shopping.  How society has changed.

It was a fascinating task to retranscribe the letters again and now they are in the computer's memory and have been shared to relatives in California and Colorado with the push of a button.  Soon they will be on a CD-ROM.  And when I get the rest of the letters, I will transcribe them too and put in a foreword and perhaps have them copyrighted for it is intellectual family property.  They could make a fascinating book, another Gone with the Wind perhaps.

San Bernardino Shootings . . .

Whew, we used to live in both San Bernardino and Redlands, California.  So the shootings are sort of irony to us.  We have lots of friends that still reside there.  We lived in that area for about nine years.

The Lambe's are old friends that just visited us over the Thanksgiving holiday.  They were here to see their daughter that lives in Dallas and came out to see us.  We had a grand visit together.  He works at the golf course across the street from the Inland Center.  Fortunately, he was not there yesterday, he had other things to take care off.

The Smith's, long old friends that lived next to us in the late 70's in San Bernardino, still live in the relative near area (they move on up, so to speak) called North Highlandsm, a suburb of San Bernardion.  She regularly visits a counselor that lives a block from the shooters residence in Redlands.  They are on vacation in Hawaii.  So they are out of the range of any shooters.

There are others that live in Redlands that we have not heard from but are safe and sound.

I know that this is a tragic event and is yet unfolding as to who, what and where is going on or went on.  Right now it sounds like home grown Islamic terrorism but you never know.  California has always been known for its crazies, lunatics gone wild.

But I recall the night of the riots in Los Angeles, I went out to play cards at home in San Bernardino.  Later heard where a local cop on part time employment shot a potential looter in San Bernardino.  That stopped all riot activity in San Bernardino on the spot.  Word was out, the cops in San Bernardino shoot first and ask questions later.  There was no rioting or looting in San Bernardino that night.

San Bernardino has always been a violent city.  Back in the old wild west days, the gold rush times, it was town where there shoot outs in the streets.  Even in the 1070's through the 1990, it was a tough town with over a hundred murders per year.  There are a lot of indigent people living there, Chicanos, blacks and whites all mixed in together.  Some of the high schools were literal war zones.  Street gangs abound, drugs run amok.  Near by Mentone was the home of the Hells Angels, a famous biker gang. Near by Colton was a tough town too, adjacent to San Bernardino.  Colton's history includes Wyatt Earp as one time City Marshal in that town, his last place as he died there of old age.

We are long gone from that town and community.   We often speak of going back to visit but never seem to get around to doing it.  I think we will wait a little longer now before making a return visit.

Angeles House . . .

Mark Morrison has withdrawn his offer to buy the house.  I had objected to the sale of the land but others in the family saw it differently.  I had sort of withdrawn after 70% of the stockholders wanted to sell the house.

I had resigned my position on the board of directors in preparation for a law suit.  But my sister prevailed upon me not to sue my family.  So I stopped any actions in that regard.  I was resigned to the fact that a piece of the plantation was going to be sold and there was no convincing anyone not to do it.  They had their reasons and motivations, certainly they were separate from mine.

However, that is over for now.  But it was indeed getting close to splitting the family.  There was a lot of furor over the selling of the house, most I am sure on my part.

I had almost come to the conclusion I should withdraw altogether from it dealings with the plantation.  It seemed the others and they were in a majority, wanted to go a different direction.  So my presence was not needed nor wanted and probably not warranted.

I do not think the rest of the family will want to see me there anyway.  Things will be tense for a while.

Families are like that and issues arise.  This one is over for the moment.  I am sure another will arise down the road.  Maybe I will be dead by then.  There is hope!

Karen Galloway . . .

A while back I received a comment on a blog regarding Angeles Plantation from Karen Galloway.  I am paraphrasing but she said her family did business with J H Morrison which is my great great grandfather, Walter Christian Morrison's father.  She said she had never heard the names Brunswick or Angeles only names alike Morrison or Beaud.  She further said she had a sales receipt for or with JH Morrison.

I answered Karen and but got no reply.  I tried several times to trace her down.  I did eventually find a Karen Galloway but she had recently died.  So we missed each other.  Hopefully she is in heaven and now knows the whole story now.

I suspect Karen's family were slaves owned by J. H. Morrison before the Civil War.  That is a pity.  Many of the blacks on the plantations moved off  after the Civil War, who would blame them.  Some stayed on until the end of WW-II when virtually all of them moved off to towns like New Roads where some still reside today.  The plantation society died off for good reason, but I suspect the introduction of fuel powered machines greatly accelerated their departure.  Fewer workers were now needed on the farms with the mules and mule drivers being replaced by tractors.

There was nothing good about that plantation society except the land owners did indeed respect the blacks.  In many ways they were extended family.  They lived with us, they worked in the houses as well as out on the  land.  So they knew us as we knew them. Some of us grew up with them.

There are no family quarters for servants and employees any more.  The cabins were salvaged for the cypress wood.  They gradually disappeared and there is nothing left to remind us of the people or where they lived.  The old plantation commissary disappeared, as did the old mule lot went away.  Chicken coops are gone, hog lots are gone, no more milk cows either. Nothing left of that era at all, just the old Morrison family house and some modern day structures remain.

We do have one remnant, a black church on land given to them by the Morrison family years ago.  The church is still there.  I do not know if it is still active.  The last person I knew associated with the plantation and the church was Pete Carter.  Pete used to do yard work for my mother and at times asked and was given permission to use the yard equipment to clean up the church grounds.  Pete was an elderly man when I knew him.  I must have been ten or twelve years old when Pete came around to our house in New Roads on the banks of False River.

Pete was always a welcomed visitor.  Our cook and house cleaner was Ernestine Scott and she was born on Brunswick.  Ernestine worked for my mother until she died.  And truth be told my mother died not to many years after Ernestine.  Ernestine's nick name from Brunswick Plantation was Boll Weevil.  Never did we ever use that name as we all knew it was a sign of disrespect to her.  She may have been a servant but she was just as human as anyone else and deserved to be properly addressed.

So it remains to us to be a bastion of responsibility to those that were born or otherwise lived on the farms.  I fear that with passing time, relationships have disappeared.  A few selected ones may know or have been told their history but generally none of that is recorded.  So their family trees are clouded; they often refer to where they were born or grew up as their family history.   Some may have a vestige here or there and that perhaps is what Karen Galloway had.  Some regard those times as "Jin Crow" and want nothing to do with it.  I can not blame them.

Times are still hard on the blacks in New Roads.  Part is poor education, part is no jobs and part is crime.  It is a hard fight for them but some have risen to high stature in our society today.  General Honree, the hero of New Orleans after Katrina, is from our area. Pointe Coupe.  There are Catholic Bishops that are black and  are from our local black society.  We have seen other children become doctors and nurses, graduates of Louisiana State University and other prominent schools.  Yet extreme poverty continues and that brings with it distrust and civil unrest.   And it sows seeds of crime.

I wish I could say things are better now than in the old plantation society era but I am not so sure about that.

Sad Day For Me . . .

Today, I resigned as Vice President of Walter Morrison Farm, Inc.  I had to do that onerous task.  I am in the midst of family fight. It is a sad day for me.

My family which owns Angeles Plantation (Walter Morrison Farm, Inc.).  On the plantation is located the old family house, or as I refer to it as Angeles House.  It was built in 1910 or there abouts, cypress, sits on raised piers and located on the front of the farm across the road from the Mississippi River levee.  My cousin, Chris lived there with the provisio that he would take care of the place.  Unfortunately the house had fallen into disrepair and we had to oust Chris for failing to do what was necessary to maintain the house.

So most of the family wants to sell the house and bit of land with it to relative, a descendant but not as yet a stockholder in the farm.  That really has little bearing on the issue, it is the selling of the land.  Selling the land is but the first step in eventual break up of the place.  Some other stockholder will want some more money and request something else to be sold and in time, it will break up.  Many of the old plantations along the Coast of Pointe Coupee have been broken up,  and sold off.  Some do not even have remnants of the old family home.  Our family has had possession of this place since 1856, or at least part of it. 

It is prime land for farming.  It is also prime land for industrial development.  It fronts directly on to the Mississippi River; it has major gas pipe lines through it, it has a major railroad through it, and it has a major state highway through it.  So it has unlimited water, gas, and transportation access from water, rail and trucking.  It is a jewel in the rough.

Yet the sale of just a little bit of our land to satisfy the sale of the family house is troubling.  One can not make deed restrictions to ensure the house to sold back.  Thus a hole is developed in the plantation where the house is owned by someone else.  I want to sell the house and give an 50 year lease to the family member buyer.  That was apparently not acceptable.  The powers to be are going ahead with the sale.

The family has a Usufructs Agreement regarding the use of the land fronting the Mississippi River.  The sale will abrogate the Usufructs Agreement.  That agreement is set to expire noon, May 28, 2020.  There is no written provision to prematurely end the agreement.  Yet the corporation ownership, deems if a 70% majority of the stockholders want to sell the house and land, it can do so.

Well we shall see what the courts have to say about that. And that is why I am no longer on the board of directors and saddened.

Angeles Plantation . . .

Old Angeles Plantation is heating up.  We think  the old place was built in 1910 or so and still stands patiently on its spot along the Mississippi River in Pointe Coupee Parish. The plantation, the land, is the holdings of my Grandfather, Walter Christian Morrison.  The original land holdings of the Morrison's lies to the west of Angeles, Angeles was inherited by my grandfather from Brunswick Plantation, the  pre-civil war holdings of Jacob Haight  Morrison and his wife, Corrine Landry.  Walter Christian was but one of many children.  Today both Jacob Haight and Corrine's portraits hang in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

My grandfather insisted on his share being given to him.  The others left theirs to be handled by his brother, Edward.  Edward eventually lost Brunswick and the Thibaut family owned and farmed Brunswick for years.   Today, Brunswick belongs to Jobie Beaud and he will be the new leaser of Angeles.

Walter also  acquired his half sisters share, Matilda.  Sister Mat's share and his share comprise one half of Angeles, the remainder were acquired by Walter Christian over time roughly doubling the size of the present day land holdings.  Angeles, I believe is 18 Arpents wide and 80 Arpents more or less deep.  Generally the place faces the Mississippi as Mississippi flows from west to east, so Angeles is oriented north to south.

The Mississippi River levee fronting the plantation was moved back but since the house was located close to the river, the levee kind of goes around it.  The levee for years had an off set in front of the east side of the place.  The Atchafalaya Levee Board in the early 60s adjusted the levee at that knee.  So it is not so apparent now days and the new levee orientation makes Angeles off square with the levee.  And it is perilously close to the levee forcing the paved road in front of it to be sited right next to the levee.

In the 1980's my father, a registered Civil Engineer, surveyed the plantation, tying the property markings in with the existing markers on the back of the place.  The rear property line fell into the middle of the "portage canal" with runs east to west providing drainage for the local region.  So he installed an offset line well within our present day holdings and the canal. That allow a future spoil bank for cleaning out the canal.  In  surveying the property line he detect a 20 second error and accommodated that into the modern day survey.  He then filed the survey at the Clerk of Courts office and now it is an official and legal description of the plantation.  Since it coincides with other properties it is locked in.

No one of the family lives full time at Angeles anymore.  It is now a family corporation with the original ownership converted to shares.  We no longer farm it, but we do rent it to farmers.  We just recently changed tenants and are letting it return to sugar cane  My grandfather was a sugar cane planter, so it is appropriate.

I was named for both of my grandfathers, William deGraffenreid and Walter Christian Morrison, so I am one of the many WC Morrison around except it is William Christian not Walter Christian.  They, for the most part, are Walter Christians but not me.  I do carry Walter Christian Morrison's nick name, Chippy.  He was known to pack a pistol and only his close friends ever called him by his nick name.  No other Morrison carries the name Chippy.  But there are a host of William C's and Walter C's floating around the states.

So Angeles house is over a hundred years old.  It is showing its age.
















































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A Morrison Family Peculiarity . . .

The Walter Christian Morrison family owns Angeles Plantation (aka Morrison Farm, Inc.).  Today, as stated we own the plantation as shares of a corporation.  Future ownership will be determined by acquiring shares from one's parents or buying them from a family member. 

Before the final deaths of the four siblings of Walter C. Morrison, our grandfather, they crafted a Usufructs and Habitation Agreement.  A family document.  It was created by my father, John Landry Morrison, SR.  Due to the premature death of my brother John Landry Morrison, JR, the lawyers stepped in to the realm.  It was an outside stimulus, but the attorney noted the risks and took action to remove those risks.

Louisiana is governed by Code Napoleon law, its state constitution is different than the other 49 states of the union.  Simply said, Code Napoleon is "codified law."  That means, it has have in the constitution code that describes the law.  The agreement made by the family was not really legal at the time it was written.  By the way, the state constitutions of the states are contained in two volumes, one for the other 49 states and one for Louisiana.  Everything under Code Napoleon has to be written down in specific code to cover the situation.

Wesley Steen, a lawyer retained by my father, re-wrote the agreement and had a peer review conducted by other Louisiana Constitutional lawyers.  They made a few changes and that cleaned up the agreement.  Then Wesley Steen put forth new code to the Constitution of the State Louisiana that described a Usufructs Agreement and it was adopted by the Louisiana State Legislature.  Thus the use of a Usufructs agreement became Louisiana Law as it was not codified in the Constitution.  English Common Law used by the other states of the union, in general does not apply to Louisiana though that is slowly evolving towards English Common law.

The agreement was between the siblings of Walter Christian Morrison and their heirs.  The fours siblings, John (my father), Walter, Edna and Farnham all signed the document with each signature of the siblings being notarized and witnessed.  The sons and daughters of the original four siblings also signed the agreement.  The agreement which also had some specific language on habitation of the family home on the plantation.  The document was duly record by the Clerk of Court, Point Coupee Parish.

The agreement expires at noon, 27 May, 2020 well after the deaths of the original four siblings.  It is still enforce and honored by the family.  Until recently many of the next generation have not read the document and there are now third tier usufructees (or as the legals refer to it as subusufructees)  For example, the children of my deceased brother are participants but are not signatories of the agreement.  You might say they have inherited it.

Thus we, the Walter Christian Family, so to speak own a little piece of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana.  Others can make similar agreements now and they will stand up in a court of law.

All Quiet on the Western Front . . .

Well not the Western front but in West Feleciana Parish and the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale.  Things have just gone quiet.  No action.  Nada.

With the price of oil down around $50 a barrel it ain't worth drilling.  The wells in Mississippi and northern edge of the Louisiana "toe" cost to much to drill at that price.  Those already drilled are certainly producing oil and gas but not returning sufficient income to justify any new wells.

So we wait.  And it is all quiet on the TMS at the moment.  The last well I saw in activity on was a deep gas well near Zachary in East Baton Rouge Parish.  It was a deliberate drill to the deep depths of the Tuscaloosa Trend for gas not oil.  While gas is bouncing along the bottom so to speak in price it is not really understood why that well was drilled.  That it is a success speaks for itself.

It can only mean that in the future when the price goes up there will be new Tuscaloosa Trend activity in that region.

There used to be one rig floating around in Pointe Coupee Parish.  It would drill a well in Judge Digby Field and move off and do one some where else in the Parish.  Then it would migrate back to the Judge Digby region and drill another well.  I think that well has packed up and moved out, no drilling in Pointe Coupee.

So we wait.  Angeles Plantation has been leased many times but no wells.  So I expect when the price of oil goes back up we may see some activity. But until then, not much is going on.

So it is all quiet on the petroleum front.

Back Home Again . . .

The first thing I noticed was the lack of humidity here in Weatherford.  After New Roads, Angeles Plantation and False River it as quite dry here, only about 65% or so humidity.  While the temperatures in Pointe Coupee were not outrageous, the normal humidity was its typical self, high, damp and oppressing.  Small price to pay for paradise.

But it was good to return to one's abode, one's castle so to speak.  Lonely though as Judie was still in Madison visiting with grandson Will and his parents.  They will soon be off to a visit to France  for a week.  Anne and Will stay only a week.  Jake will be there for a long bike ride.

I miss Europe for the summer months but do not miss the political doings going on over the Euro.  I would love to spend a couple of weeks in Germany again, perhaps a few days in London to go with it.  But that ain't gonna happen.  I am sure it has all changed as my elderly memory slowly declines.  What I thought was a great place and climate might just be pretty tough.  Oh well, better to feast upon one's memories.

We will soon charge back to New Roads for Amanda Louise's graduation from LSU.  I am sure James and Joan will be glad that task is done with.  Soon Jammie will be on his way to some higher education.  I would not be surprised that he would go to Vanderbilt with all of Joan's connects there.  No matter that he festoons all kinds of LSU dress, these things can change over night with the younger generation as they too mature and look about.

Judie is back now.  Arrived last night on American Eagle.  Picked her up and we went and voted in the local election for city fathers.  We have yet another election cycle coming up for county and state officials.  We thought they would do it one time but that is not the case.  The Democratic lawsuits over Gerrymandering changed the dates.  The Democrats lost their lawsuit and the Supreme Court level, saying local Federal Judges can not over rule local legislatures that are acting in accordance with the state constitutions.  A five to four decision and sorely disappointed the local Democrats  Texas is a Red state now days, swinging ever more and more conservative.

Any way it is good to be home again.

False River . . .

As we left Sunday, March 4th, it was as usual a mild day. But what was notable was that the river, the lake, was like a piece of glass. Not even the ducks were out, it was cool and kept them quite. The fishing rodeo Saturday was a one day affair, so the boaters were not out. That is getting rare now days. The lake is surrounded by "camps" some of which are lavish homes, some are ramshackle put together affairs on rented land used by weekenders, not locals.

The weekenders were not out either. It was predicted to be at freezing early AM but in reality it was around 45 to 50 degrees when we left at about 9:30 or so. So the lake stayed calm, just to airish for the boaters to be out and stirring up the place. Even the Purple Martins had not risen. So it was an idyllic scene. Once could imagine it was back in the 1700s - not. Too many camps lining the edge of the lake to take it back to pristine days.

I took a few pictures. I like to do that, once in a while I get a good one. Well once in a great while I get a good one. The camp grounds looked good and the Bill's Cypress trees standout. You can even find the place using Google Earth by those trees. I am sure if not cut back, they will last another 100 years and some one will marvel at them and wonder about them. Who planted those trees in such an orderly fashion? The answer is Wilmark "Bill" Gremillion.

We had a good time out at Angeles Plantation at the business meeting. Well it really is a Morrison family meeting. A lot of the folks showing up do not have a financial interest but they are family and are always welcome.

We stripped the beds, bringing our linen back to be washed and prepared for the next visit. We emptyed the trash, did a small amount of clean up, folded the afghans and turned off the lights. Yep, we locked up on our way out leaving the camp ready for the next family user. We drove off our usual route up through Marksville to Alexandria and on home.

Edwards Shelf Edge . . .

The Edwards Shelf Edge is the geological formation that seems to have all the oil in it. A shelf is an ancient beach so to speak. And just like a real current day beach it has gaps, and places where streams cut through it, etc.. When something cuts through the shelf it is bad news, where it does not cut through is good news.

The original False River Field Alma #1 gas well, the big discovery back in the late 1970s, early 1980s is now defined as the beginning of the Edwards Shelf Dip, or where it falls off so to speak. Alma #1 is capped off now, no longer producing anything. But it spawn the infamous Judge Digby Field which lies under Parlange Plantation and the adjacent Wortell holdings. There must be 15 or 20 wells drilled into that bonanza, not all are active but still generating a lot of gas. At one time that was the top producer on land in Louisiana. It does not do as well now days but still a winner. It has been producing since 1980, that's over 30 years now.

The Edwards Shelf is part of the Austin Chalk deal as is the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale. They are down there quite a distance, like a little over three miles or so. Given that the elevation of Pointe Coupee probably averages about 35 feet above sea level that is pretty deep. That means a lot of problems to drill and very expensive. Ergo, the price of oil has to be around a hundred dollars a barrel.

Some folks draw the Edwards Shelf on a map about in the Mississippi River in front of Angeles Plantation. Others show it further north well into the West Feliciana Parish. Only the experts know, the new technology includes three dimensional seismic plots. We of course have no access to that closely held data. But then why is Angeles Planraron being leased ahead of others in our area, eh? Don't get your false hopes up.

There are wells around Angeles, one on the back of LaBarre, one on the LaCour place both considered to be in the Morganza Field. And at one time the Wilbert well on the back of Stonewall, had a tiny corner into Angeles and the family got a lot of money for a while. That well played out in a year or so. Makes you wonder if it is worth reworking. They did that to the LaBarre well and it started producing again.

Our lease includes the Tuscaloosa Trend, a greater royalty involved. So I guess there is some potential that they will go for the Tuscaloosa Trend vice the Austin Chalk. Who knows what they will do.

The way the geology is in east Texas is Austin Chalk, Eagle Ford (that is very hot play in Texas), Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) and finally Tuscaloosa Trend. TMS is the hot play in the Felicianas across to Tangipahoa Parish. The TMS generally follows the Louisiana Mississippi State line with some very nice wells in Mississippi. There is a new field name Ethel (one says e Thel not Ethel as on I Love Lucy) over in East Feliciana. As the crow flies that is about 15 or so miles ENE of New Roads, a little past and below Jackson, LA.

Well you never know where lightening will strike, perhaps we will hit it this time around.

Geological Terms . . .

If you are from Pointe Coupee you become familiar with certain geological terms that are associated with mineral production. Few realize that the top gas producing field in on shore Louisiana is Judge Digby Field. The big production is located on Parlange and Wurtell properties along False River.

The second most prolific gas producing area in Pointe Coupee Parish is the Morganza Field, which is somewhere around 9 or 10 in the rankings for onshore gas production.

Located close to the family Plantation is the Moore-Sams Field but production is limited. I think the only good well is located on the back of Sugarland Plantation which belongs to the Beaud family. It is several miles from us on Angeles Plantation. And it does not produce a lot of gas either. Perhaps they will go back in a frack it?

The geological terms or names we are familiar with are Tuscaloosa Trend and Austin Chalk. The Tuscaloosa Trend crops out around Tuscaloosa, Alabama but under Pointe Coupee Parish is anywhere from 18,000 to 21,000 feet deep. Considering the highest point of Pointe Coupee above sea level may be about 35 to 40 feet and average around 30 feet or less, those are very deep holes. The zones or reservoirs of gas are very narrow.

Above the Tuscaloosa Trend lies the Austin Chalk zone. It is somewhere around 15,000 to 17,000 feet down. And the Austin Chalk crops out around Austin, Texas. In fact, wells in eastern Texas in the Austin Chalk seem to be very prolific in production of oil.

Recent mineral leasing activity surrounds the Austin Chalk zone. LSU Petroleum experts think Austin Chalk may have around seven billion barrels of oil in it.

So what is driving the leasing furor. A couple of things. The foremost is the price of oil at around $100 a barrel and looking like it will go higher. But the other thing is changing technology in principally horizontal drilling and fracturing or "Fracking." Both of these technologies have been around for 50 or so years. But equipment has improved and the fracking fluids have improved.

Way back when all petroleum wells were just vertical in demenison, drillers when the got to the geological formation they wanted, would fracture the lower well casing with Nitroglycerene. Yup, they would literally blow it up so to speak fracturing the lower casing of the well and the surround geological deposits.

Today's fracking is differnt. Yes, explosives may still be used to preforate the well casings but then the drillers pump down a mixture of fine sand and chemicals under great pressure to force open cracks for the petroleum products to flow into the casing. The sand holds the cracks open. Oh, yes the pressures used to force the chemicals and sand into the cracks is tremendous.

Ganged up pumps, several in series, force down the mixture into the well. Pressures may exceed 20,000 pounds per square inch. The pumps are mounted on trailers, one pump per trailer. The pumps are generally driven by 12 to 16 cyclinder diesel engines. This is a massive undertaking. Some say they may use up to a quarter of million gallons of water to do the job. But it only takes a day or two to do the actual fracturing, may be a week to set up to do the job.

Fracking is a common practice here in the Weatherford area. The Barnett Shale under lies Tarrant, Parker, Denton counties. Actually, it is much bigger than that and is America's number one producer of natural gas a the moment. At any given moment there are four or five drilling rigs in Parker County and the same in Tarrant County. Tarrant county has turned out to be a richer area but harder to drill for it is in the City of Fort Worth. But that is another story . . .

Not more than a couple of miles from us is a company named, you guessed it, "FracTech." Their fleet of trucks go out as far as Haynesville in Louisiana and Cotton Valley in Oklahoma. Others in the fracking business are Schumlemberger, Halliburton and the other common names of well servicing found across the oil producing areas of Louisiana and Texas.

All wells here undergo fracking. And not all wells produce for long periods, just as that is the same in Louisiana and Pointe Coupee Parish. I have seen several wells get capped and abandoned. Ironically, I have seen new wells be drilled close by, may be 500 yards away from the abandoned well. With slant/horizontal drilling there is no telling just where they are seeking the shale. All the shale wells around here are about 6,000 feet deep, give or take 500 feet.

So it is more risky to drill for success in Pointe Coupee. The wells here produce semi-wet gas, that is there is salt water, condensate and some oil. Gas is the primary objective here. Oil is the primary objective in Pointe Coupee. Every well here has a little tank of detergent that is dribble down the well bore to keep it clear of the crap coming up. A small bit of technology that detergent but it is the life saver of many a well around here.

So the current hot "play" is the Austin Chalk. No telling were the sweet spot is. All of it has some oil, but some oil is not enough, they want a lot of it, like a couple hundred barrels a day production.

When You Least Expect It . . .

When you least expect it up comes a piece of good luck or fortune. Received word that someone is interested in leasing the mineral rights on Angeles again. Turns out it is Anadarko Petroleum.

Strange sounding lease. $150 per acre for three years with an option for two more years at $75 per year. The $150 was said to be the bonus, like they are doing us a favor or something. Lots of questions.

I did a web search on Anadarko and Pointe Coupee and came up with the LaCour Field. Never heard of it. Well of course not, it is new. But it is based on the old Pennington well and the Austin Chalk formation, not gas but oil.

Austin Chalk extends from Austin Texas over to Biloxi, MS. And it runs right under the plantation. But it extends down to 16,000 feet or so in depth.

Any rate we are hearing good and bad things and will go with a lawyer this time for the lease. We can get a lawyer for $2 per acre to negotiate the lease for us.

I had thought all such activity was long gone and here it is again. As my grandfather once said, "Its like finding money in the road. You did not do anything for it, you just get it." The place has probably been leased five or six times over the years.

"Out and About"

Judie went for a ride yesterday, out and about so to speak. She did not venture out of the car, her car. I did the driving. We went all the way to Walgreen's to pick her prescription. On the way back we cruised through the neighborhood.

Lo and Behold we ran up upon a couple of her friends walking. So we stopped and she had a grand time talking to them. One had just returned from Christchurch, NZ and was carousing about that they just been in that cathedral that took a beating. Glad they had seen it and glad that they were never going back again. It seems that it is a 14 hour flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane, AU. That was very onerous for them.

They did enjoy the cruise from Australia over to New Zealand and back. And they were mesmerized by the thermal activity in New Zealand. Pretty, yet dangerous.

Another step to getting better. She is really getting tired of living in one room even though it has TV, computer and comfortable chairs. It is the limitations that restrain you that is so hard to take.

Some Silly Things . . .

Mardi Gras is on March 8 this year. My birthday is March 9. So it is on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Really an asupicous beginning this year.

Looks like the Morrison family business meeting is going to be on March 5th. If not the 5th then it will be on the 12th. So I am figuring it will be on the 5th. That will be a trip to New Roads on that weekend.

I have been looking at establishing a web page for the W. C. Morrison family. Lots of stuff can be published and it would be a nice place to host a lot of family trivia. Lord knows, we have a ton of family trivia going back to Jacob Haight Morrison. Some of it has got to be made up but for the most part it is all true. And to think my family were new comers to Pointe Coupee Parish.

Judie's family goes back to literally the beginning of the history of Pointe Coupee, the Gremillion's ancestor was a soldier at Fort DePointe Coupee. That is back into the early 1700s. The Morrison's did not show up until 1856 at Brunswick Plantation.

Brunswick passed on to the Thibauts in the 1930s but my Grandfather had long ago split his share off and it became Angeles Plantation, still in existence to this day. It is now known as the Morrison Farm, Inc. And that is the annual family business meeting conducted on the first weekend of March of every year.

The business meeting is more than just a stock holders session, it is a family gathering. We never know who all will attend, sometimes long lost cousins show up. They are most welcome visitors. We have a grand meal and share our bread with all comers. It is not a big affair but it is a warm affair, warm in that it is family.

Till then . . .

Off to New Roads . . .

We are off to New Roads for the annual Morrison Farm, Inc business meeting, a family affair. Morrison Farm, Inc is Angeles Plantation with roots back to 1856. Old Jacob Haight goes back even farther to the early 1820's in New Orleans.

Today it is rental business, we rent the farm and maintain the old family home. And we collect a few dollars too. But most importantly, we enjoy a family gathering and a great meal by the host. Never can tell what it is going to be but it is always outstanding. Often cooked by Jeannie and Walter Morrison, sometimes by Chris Morrison and sometimes by an outsider who semi-caters the meal. No matter it is always good.

Some times there is hogs head cheese, others with cracklings to munch on. The business meeting is not long, always a pleasure.

It is good to see the family again. We never know who will show up, cousins from South America, or wherever. All are welcome.

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.