page_title: Rosedown Plantation
section_title: 19th-century
hierarchical_section_title: Rosedown Plantation / History / 19th-century
caption_attribution_description: English: Étagère from the Barrow family of Rosedown Plantation. 19th century Rococo Revival
context_page_description: Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site is an 8,000-square-foot historic home and former plantation located in St. Francisville, Louisiana, United States. Built in 1835 by the slaveholders Daniel and Martha Turnbull, it is one of the most documented and intact plantation complexes in the South and is known for its extensive formal gardens surrounding the house.
context_section_description: Society in and around St. Francisville, at the time that Rosedown was constructed, was dominated by European, primarily British, settlers who became cotton planters on an enormous scale.  Most of the 19th-century cotton barons in the area had requested and received their plantations lands through the Spanish government, the titles to which remained valid after the establishment of the United States government. The parents of Martha Barrow Turnbull, who owned the land that later became Rosedown, achieved high social status in West Feliciana through their immense cotton operations, and Daniel Turnbull himself was known before the Civil War as one of the richest men in the nation.
  Rosedown, named for a play that the Turnbulls saw on their honeymoon, was not assembled via Spanish land grants, but in a group of seven purchases made by Daniel Turnbull from the 1820s through the 1840s.  At its largest, Rosedown comprised approximately 3,455 acres, mostly planted in cotton.  Daniel and Martha began construction on the main house at Rosedown in November 1834, completing it six months later in May 1835 for a total cost of $13,109.20. The contribution of slave labor to the construction and upkeep of the plantation, as well as to the agricultural prosperity and wealth accrued by Daniel Turnbull, was immense.  During peak years of cotton production, Daniel owned 444 slaves with around 250 working just at Rosedown.
  The couple had three children, William, Sarah, and James Daniel. James Daniel died of yellow fever in 1843, at the age of 7.  William married Caroline Butler, and had two children, William and Daniel.  In 1856, William drowned in a boating accident while crossing "Old River," at the age of 27.  That left their daughter Sarah, who had married James Pirrie Bowman from nearby Oakley Plantation, to inherit the plantation.  The Bowmans moved into Rosedown and had ten children, eight girls and two boys.  Martha and Daniel Turnbull retired to a wing in the back of the house in 1859, to accommodate Bowman's growing family.
  Daniel died in 1861, the same year in which Louisiana joined the Confederacy and declared war against the United States. Rosedown and two other Turnbull plantations were ravaged by the war. Martha Turnbull managed Rosedown after the war. No longer able to operate on the free labor of enslaved people, the family relied on the labor of 250 sharecroppers.
caption: Étagère from Rosedown Plantation. 19th Century Rococo Revival
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