page_title: Shadows-on-the-Teche
section_title: 1834 – 1922
hierarchical_section_title: Shadows-on-the-Teche / History / 1834 – 1922
caption_attribution_description: Shadows on the Teche — Main &amp; Weeks Streets, New Iberia (Iberia Parish, Louisiana) (cropped)
context_page_description: Shadows-on-the-Teche is a 3,750 square feet historic house and garden located in New Iberia, Louisiana, United States. Built in 1834 for sugarcane planter David Weeks and his wife Mary Conrad Weeks, the National Historic Landmark is currently owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
context_section_description: David and Mary Weeks were wealthy growers of sugar cane; they owned four plantations totaling approximately 3,000 acres (12 km²) of Acadiana land. Shadows-on-the-Teche was built on a tract of 158 acres on the edge of one of Weeks' plantations in the parish seat of Iberia Parish.  As a town house, Shadows-on-the-Teche was designed for social life and entertainment.  It is said that, at the time of its construction, Shadows-on-the-Teche was only the third brick house to be built on Bayou Teche.
  The Weeks family began to suffer from a series of family tragedies almost at once after the completion of the house.  Planter David Weeks, who became chronically ill while Shadows-on-the-Teche was being built, died in August 1834 in New England while seeking medical attention.  Mary Weeks remarried lawyer John Moore but kept her children's property separate from that of her second husband, as she was allowed to do under Louisiana law.  This property included the 164 slaves bequeathed to their children under the terms of her first husband's will.
  Mrs. Frances Weeks (Magill) Pruett and her children Mary Ida Magill and Augustine Magill were vacationing at Last Island, Louisiana where they died in the 1856 Last Island hurricane disaster.  The children were buried on the grounds.
  The Shadows-on-the-Teche household was economically and physically dependent on Louisiana slavery.  Mary Weeks and John Moore strongly supported slavery and supported the political changes which they thought were necessary to save it; in 1861, Moore was a delegate to the convention in which Louisiana seceded from the Union.  This political status and viewpoint made the household vulnerable during the Civil War.  Federal troops requisitioned occupancy of the property, and officers of the occupying army quartered themselves in it.  Mary Weeks died in December 1863 in Shadows-on-the-Teche while part of the house was being used by Union troops as officers' quarters.
  The house was inherited by David and Mary Weeks' eldest son, William F. Weeks, who partly restored the family fortunes during Reconstruction. However, after his death in 1894, the property was passed to his daughters Lily and Harriet, who were compelled to sell off much of the land surrounding the house to meet their living expenses, reducing the grounds from 158 acres to 2 1/2 acres.
caption: Shadows-on-the-Teche in 1938
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