The House That Sugarcane Built: The Louisiana Burguières

THE HOUSE THAT SUGARCANE BUILT

The HOUSE That SUGARCANE BUILT

The Louisiana Burguières

Donna McGee Onebane

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member

of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright © 2014 by The J. M. Burguières Company, Limited

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2014

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Onebane, Donna McGee, 1953–

The house that sugarcane built: the Louisiana Burguières / Donna McGee

Onebane.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61703-952-2 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-61703-953-9 (ebook: alk. paper) 1. Burguières, Eugene Denis, 1804–1876.2. Burguières, Jules Martial, 1850–1899. 3. Sugar growing—Louisiana—History—19th century. 4. Sugar growing—Louisiana—History—20th century. 5. Sugar—Economic aspects—Louisiana—History—19th century. 6. Sugar—Economic aspects—Louisiana—History—20th century. 7. Sugar—Economic aspects—Southern States—History—19th century. 8. Sugar—Economic aspects—Southern States—History—20th century. 9. Sugarcane—Louisiana—History—19th century. 10. Sugarcane—Louisiana—History—20th century. 11. Sugar trade—Southern States—History—19th century. 12. Sugar trade—Southern States—History—20th century. I.Title.

SB228.O54 2014

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Cover Art:

Blue Coulée at Bayou Salé, 2006

George Rodrigue

Acrylic on canvas

30 × 40 inches

Private collection of Philip J. Burguières

To Philip J. Burguières

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. Origins

From France to the New World, 1660s–1831

2. A New Beginning

Eugène Denis Burguières in Southwest Louisiana, 1831–1850

3. Ernest D. Burguières

A Witness to the Rise and Fall of the Louisiana Sugar Bowl, 1850–1878

4. Founding a Sugar Empire

Jules Martial Burguières Sr., 1877–1893

5. The Sugar Baron in New Orleans, 1893–1899

6. Brothers in Business, 1900–1912

7. Denis P. J. Burguières and Brothers, 1912–1936

8. Jules M. Burguières Jr., the Florida Everglades, and Southern States Land and Timber Company, 1913–1936

9. Back to the Plantation

The Reign of Jules Martial Burguières Jr., 1936–1960

10. A Family Business in Crisis

Edward E. Burguières, 1960–1981

11. From the Ashes

Philip Burguières and Ron Cambre, 1978–2013

Epilogue

Appendixes

1. Genealogy

2. Patents

3. J. M. Burguières Company Boards of Directors, 1901–2012

4. J. M. Burguières Family Councils, 2005–2013

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

The House That Sugarcane Built: The Louisiana Burguières has been an eight-year endeavor. A project of this magnitude is possible only with the participation of many individuals. First, I thank Dr. Carl Brasseaux, the former director of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Center for Louisiana Studies; the Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism; and the ULL Press, which gave me the extraordinary opportunity to research and write this book.

I am grateful to the Burguières family, which includes six surviving lines of Jules M. Burguières Sr., for sharing their letters, photographs, business records, and memories with me. In particular, I thank the chair emeritus of the J. M. Burguières Company, Philip J. Burguières, who had the foresight to initiate this story of his family and its role in the Louisiana and Florida sugar industry. I am grateful to Ron Cambre, president emeritus, for his candid input and cooperation in my research; to his wife, Gail Burguières Cambre, for having the good sense to marry him; and to their daughter, Susanne Cambre Dwyer, the current president of the J. M. Burguières Company and the first woman to hold that office.

My heartfelt gratitude goes to my editor, Judith Pearlman, for her eagle eye in editing and her unwavering support and enthusiasm, which kept me sane and gave me hope. Neither I nor the book would be the same today without her. I thank Ellen Goldlust, copy editor, whose professional skills resulted in a polished manuscript.

The Burguières family and I owe a great deal to Leila Bristow, the great-great-granddaughter of the progenitor of the Louisiana Burguières, Eugène D. Burguières, for her tenacious late-night forays into the abyss of the Internet and her relentless pursuit of the past in dusty tomes. The result was the addition of 270 years of French family history. As a copy editor extraordinaire, Leila meticulously examined the manuscript for accuracy, a daunting responsibility given the amount of data available. As the family genealogist, she had the foresight to commission the work of Anne Morddel, a genealogist in Paris, whose professional expertise uncovered ancestors and their graves as far back as the seventeenth century. Leila also collected, scanned, and identified stacks of old photographs and documents, a time-consuming and all-too-often thankless job.

So many other family members contributed to my research. Denise Hein’s beautiful handcrafted family history collection provided the foundation of my research; Ernest A. Skipper Burguières gave me a personal tour of New Orleans from the perspective of his ancestors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, assisted me in the interpretation of legal documents, and persuaded his eighty-four-year-old mother, Virginea Burguières, to do an interview with me.

I thank sisters Barat P. Leefe and Michelle P. Reed for a wonderful and informative interview at the New Orleans Country Club; the late Joan Burguières Brown and William Perry Pepper Brown III, a member of the J. M. Burguières Board of Directors for sixteen years, who shared their family stories with me at Galatoire’s, the historic French Quarter restaurant frequented by their nineteenth-century ancestors; Steve Clayton, Pepper’s partner of many years, who shared a collection of valuable family history and an account of his years with the Burguières; Robin Burguières Bristow and her children (Leila, Marie Robin, and Otis Allen) for their treasured photos, documents, and enlightening stories of the family and their relationships with some of the movers and shakers of early twentieth-century America; Lillamaud and Bill Hammond for their kindness and expert editing suggestions; William and Margaret Dody Burguières, Robert and Mary Ann Burguières, Albert Burguières, and Elsie Burguières for an insightful and entertaining interview around the dining room table from the big house at Cypremort Plantation; Albert Burguières for contributing his written memories of his childhood days at the plantation; Patricia and Arthur Fernandez Jr. for trusting me with their precious collection of family postcards from Europe; Dr. Thomas and Janice Burguières and their five daughters (Alexandra, Elizabeth, Genevieve, Juliette, and Victoria), who served dinner on their ancestors’ china, demonstrating their strong connection to family, past and present. Their warmth and hospitality provided insight into who the Burguières are today.

I appreciate Sam Burguières Sr. and Nettie Burguières for making it possible for me to interview Sam’s mother, Gertrude Reynaud Burguières, not once but twice. Gertrude was the keeper of history and tradition, and she wanted to ensure that generations to come would know about the struggles their family and company endured to safeguard their legacy. I am grateful to Emily Burguières Dalicandro and Martial Burguières, the children of Philip and the late Cheryl Courrégé Burguières, for taking the time to meet with me in Houston and for our shared experience the night the electricity went out in the French Quarter at an annual meeting of the J. M. Burguières Company. I thank Chapman and Linda Burguières, who met with me in Houma, the ancestral home of the Louisiana Burguières. Linda also lent me one of the best sources on Houma history, Helen E. Wurzlow’s I Dug up Houma Terrebonne.

My gratitude goes out to Sheila Walker, who invited me to her home for an interview and dinner, and to Marion Christ Clerc and her sister, Helen Christ St. Paul, for sharing their many memories of the Burguières in Pass Christian—on the same day that Hurricane Katrina made its sudden turn to the east, heading straight for Pass Christian. My thanks go to O. J. Reis and his fellow road warrior for visiting me a number of times in Lafayette to ask the overwhelming question, When will the book be finished? I can finally answer you.

Dale Pfost included me in the Jules Rhum project. Holly Burguières Gluibizzi came from New York to meet with me and other family members in Washington, D.C. Bill Sandefer shared information on the Burguières’ role in the development of Tulane. Dick Leike, a veteran member of the J. M. Burguières Company Board of Directors, shared his written memories of his family.

I am indebted to Earl M. Bailey and his mother, Wanda Bailey, descendants of the E. D. Burguières line, who worked especially hard, providing most of the research for their line. Wanda generously shared her cherished collection of photos and documents.

I appreciate the efficiency and patience of Debi Lauret, the manager of the JMB office for more than thirty years; Glenn Vice, current president of the J. M. Burguières Company, for facilitating a smooth transition in leadership between generations while I was researching and writing this book; and Stephanie Clement and Rhonda Sonnier for their timely assistance in the JMB office.

Local historian Bert Guiberto has spent years documenting Louisiana sugar mills. I thank him for sharing his information with me. Richard and Sandra Legnon, lifelong residents of the Cypremort area, told wonderful stories about plucking oysters from their backyard—Vermilion Bay—in the old days at Cypremort Point before hurricanes and saltwater intrusion changed the precious wetland community.

Former lessees and field laborers also participated in this book project. Harold Junca gave me a tour of the Burguières properties, sharing his experiences as a farmer, and introduced me to former JMB Company employees Henry Colar and Blackie Tabb. Philip A. Kerne III shared his childhood memories of the Cypremort Plantation and sugar mill, where his father, P. A. Kerne, was chief engineer at the sugar mill. Harvey Blanchard gave me a tour of the ripe cane fields his sons were harvesting. Ida Bourque dug out pictures and memorabilia from her years growing up in the Cypremort/Louisa area. Jerry Bourg introduced me to Leroy Yeggins, a ninety-four-year-old laborer who had worked his entire life for the Burguières.

Allied families and distant cousins were also helpful. Both the Patout family and the Burguières are descendants of Isidore Patout. I thank William Patout, president of M. A. Patout and Son sugarcane producers, for sharing his written memoires; Peter Patout, New Orleans antiques dealer, who allowed the use of a valuable photograph from his collection; and Adrienne Patout, who provided information about Patout/Burguières relations.

Philip Burguières purchased Blue Coulée on Bayou Salé, painted by George Rodrigue, to use for the cover of this book because it reminded him of the Bayou Salé of his childhood. Alice Burguières had the painting digitized. Charlotte Schillasi put in skilled and time-consuming work on the J. M. Burguières web site. Doug and Cindy Burguières provided photos of the renovated Cypremort House, a massive undertaking they spearheaded.

The painstaking work of scholars is also at the center of my book. Though the bibliography lists many sources, I am particularly grateful to Dr. Michael Wade, author of Sugar Dynasty: M. A. Patout and Son, Ltd., 1791–1993, which was of immense assistance in my research; Dr. Richard Follett, whose web site, Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1845–1917, and book, Sugar Masters, provided vital data and history; Dr. Shane Bernard, author, historian, and curator for McIlhenny Company, for reading my manuscript; Dr. Jordan Kellman, associate professor of history and dean of the College of Liberal Arts, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, for sharing his knowledge with me; and Dr. Chris Cenac, author of Eyes of an Eagle: Jean-Pierre Cenac, Patriarch, for his advice and encouragement.

Last and most important is my family. My two children, Eve and Jake Onebane, and my two granddaughters, Hillary and Phoebe Mouton, receive my heartfelt thanks for understanding why they saw me only occasionally—and then only when I needed food, water, a new ink cartridge, or more printer paper. I thank my sisters, Caroline and Theresa McGee, who paved the way for me; my mother and father, Dean and Sylvia McGee, from Richard, Louisiana, who taught me to be courageous and outrageous (respectively); and for the constant companionship and unwavering loyalty of my canine assistants, Sam, Molly, and Bay, who never failed to let me know when it was quitting time. Finally, words cannot express my gratitude to my beloved husband, Neal, who has given me the time and freedom to pursue my dreams in this and in all things.

Preface

New Orleans, August 28, 2005

Hurricane Katrina slams into the city of New Orleans, packing 150-mile-per-hour winds with gusts up to 180, the epitome of raw nature exposing the vulnerability of humans. Then comes the man-made disaster: storm surges breach the levees, inundating 80 percent of the city, leaving death, destruction, and disease in their path. The world watches, aghast.

Seventeen days later, it is a surreal scene in the flooded city. In the blackness of night, television crews prepare for a presidential address to a waiting world. Blinding spotlights illuminate the backdrop for the speech, the St. Louis Cathedral, an icon of French and Spanish history in New Orleans and a testimonial to Roman Catholic influence in South Louisiana.

It has been a silent witness to two centuries of baptisms, marriages, funerals, epidemics, fires, the slave trade, wars, and the ravages of time. The birth of jazz, the revelry of Mardi Gras, and the first steamboats gliding down the Mississippi all fell within its purview. For centuries, the three-steepled edifice has welcomed the paradoxical mix of saints and sinners that still characterizes the city of New Orleans.

This night, September 14, 2005, the cathedral is the city’s only reassuring symbol of permanence and endurance.

Southwest Louisiana, September 24, 2005

Against all odds, less than a month after Katrina, a second Category 5 hurricane, Rita, arises from the warm Gulf waters. As if to outdo its recent rival, Rita pounds the coastline and rural parishes of Southwest Louisiana with powerful winds that reach 120 miles per hour. Its fifteen-foot storm surge drowns cattle, floods homes, submerges sugarcane fields just before harvest, and even displaces the dead from their pre–Civil War tombs. Century-old oaks are thrashed in all directions; their dead limbs lie strewn around their massive trunks. Like countless earlier hurricanes, Rita batters the already-fragile Louisiana wetland ecosystem.

When the waters recede, much of the terrain is a moonscape. But as is nature’s way, within a month, tiny green blades of grass push their way through the cracked brown earth, transforming the gray landscape to spring green in the month of October. Wild roseau, delicate Queen Anne’s lace, and purple Louisiana irises spring from the muck. Nature begins to heal, and humans must do the same. We have to go on, local farmer Harvey Blanchard tells me. We just have to pick back up and get after it. That’s all.

New Orleans, February 18, 2006

Six months after Katrina, in stark contrast to the renewal of the South Louisiana countryside, New Orleans is still only a skeleton of what was once one of the most distinctive cities in the world. Crime is rampant; unclaimed corpses still wait in makeshift morgues; posters of missing persons plaster rotting buildings; the homeless barely survive under Interstate 10; and entire neighborhoods have disappeared. It is truly the City of the Dead.

Yet when few residents have returned and only a few intrepid outsiders dare enter the city, nearly one hundred Burguières family members gather in the French Quarter at the Monteleone Hotel for the annual meeting of the J. M. Burguières Company. No matter the conditions, the meeting goes on, as it has for decades. It is a traditional rite that is both business and personal. The year has been difficult, but the clan and the company have prevailed. This act of rejuvenation echoes throughout their history.

The House That Sugarcane Built is a saga of six generations, descendants of Parisian patriarch Jean Louis Burguières, whose son, Eugène, immigrated to South Louisiana in 1831. By 1877, Eugène’s son, Jules, had laid the foundation for a sugarcane empire: 137 years later, it is one of the oldest family-owned and -operated businesses in the state. From 1877 to the present, the company has had a life cycle of its own, moving from extraordinary success in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to near extinction in the second half of the twentieth century and finally to a resounding resurgence in the twenty-first.

Like the company, the Burguières have experienced ups and downs through the generations, evolving from a tight-knit, interdependent clan with extended family living in close proximity into a family with many independent branches that share nothing more than a last name and stock in the same company. Over the years, the Louisiana Burguières have become individuals with different needs and expectations of their company, often carrying emotional and financial baggage of past wounds into the present. The cracks in the foundation reveal traits found in many families, particularly large families, and include distrust, envy, and, some say, intrigue.

But the Burguières’ story also illustrates the ambition and perseverance of a family that has achieved the dream of its progenitor, Jules M. Burguières Sr., whose 1899 Last Will and Testament charged his descendants to always take care of one another. Part of their legacy is the wisdom to know the inherent strength of blood. They have discovered that intertwining family with business creates both a hothouse and a powerhouse. In fact, this book serves, among other things, as a case study of family businesses, revealing their strengths and exposing their weaknesses.

The House That Sugarcane Built also offers a rare insider’s view of sugar planters through the lens of six generations of producers, manufacturers, marketers, and researchers who have been at the epicenter of sugar politics in Louisiana, Florida, and the nation. It provides a glimpse into their professional challenges, failures, and triumphs and a rare view into their families, traditions, relationships, joys, and tragedies.

This history also reveals the experiences of French nationals (Foreign French) in Louisiana in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores their adaptation to a new homeland peopled by a large number of settlers from other parts of Europe, the West Indies, Nova Scotia, and Africa. The story shows how the French developed strong family, business, political, and social networks, cohesive units with all systems working for the good of the clan, supporting one another in this exotic wilderness frontier. Because of the powerful influence of the French in Louisiana and because the Burguières played such a vital role in the state’s agriculture, oil, gas, and salt industries, The House That Sugarcane Built tells a vital part of Louisiana’s rich, diverse, and complex history.

Yet this is an immigrant’s story, as are the histories of most American families. It is a tale of how one family achieved the American Dream within two generations and then nearly lost it a half century later. It is a tale of the descendants of Eugène Denis Burguières, who left Paris to make a new home in South Louisiana and whose progeny would succeed there beyond his wildest dreams.

The House That Sugarcane Built contains a number of recurring motifs that are reminiscent of the Old South and its iconic images—sugar plantations along the bayous, wagons and mules, slaves, the War, and what William Faulkner called the old fierce pull of blood—the blood of ancestors—the tie that binds them together, the concern for the purity of lineage, and the desire to leave a legacy for the next generation.

From the beginning, the Burguières have recognized the supremacy of land, which, as Margaret Mitchell famously wrote, is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts. The patriarch of the Louisiana Burguières first leased property to farm, but he and his sons quickly showed an aptitude for buying the right land, at the right time, at bargain prices. Today, the J. M. Burguières Company owns 50,000 acres of land in South Louisiana and Texas, with 280,000 acres of mineral and surface rights in South Florida. The Burguières have known all along that land is power.

Water courses throughout their long history. For planters, water has always been key, a double-edged sword of prosperity and doom. On the one hand, rain has made the crops grow tall and strong year after year for more than a century, and the rivers and bayous have transported the sugar to the levees in New Orleans for marketing. But damage from too much or too little water—floods, droughts, and hurricanes—has always threatened the harvest. Freezing rain turns the ripe cane stalks into sweet icicles, stripped of their value.

The Burguières have been deeply involved in massive water projects, such as the building of canals (the Suez Canal in the nineteenth century, the Intracoastal Waterway in the twentieth) and the search for water in the arid West Texas desert. They have also developed drainage technology to reclaim marshes and muck land in Louisiana and Florida, creating arable farmland for the production of sugarcane, citrus, and cattle.

Finally, this book is a story of the inexorable passage of time and the influence of the past on the present. To an outsider, all that remains of the past are the concrete foundations of the old Cypremort sugar mill, the rows of oaks shrouded with Spanish moss, the plantation house, and the tombs of generations of Burguières in the family graveyard at St. Helen’s Cemetery on Florence Plantation. Yet today, tractors and combines still rumble past the silent cemetery, harvesting another year’s crop of sugarcane. The family will meet again in February and make more plans for the future. Ultimately, The House That Sugarcane Built proves that the past remains very much alive in the present.

THE HOUSE THAT SUGARCANE BUILT

1

Origins

From France to the New World, 1660s–1831

With what astonishment did I for the first time view the magnificent levee . . . covered with active human beings of all nations and colors, and boxes, bales, bags, hogsheads, pipes, barrels, kegs of goods, wares and merchandise from all ends of the earth! Thousands of bales of cotton, tierces of sugar, molasses; quantities of flour, pork, lard, grain . . . from the rich and extensive rivers above; and the wharves lined for miles with ships, steamers, flatboats, arks, &c. four deep! The business appearance of this city is not surpassed by any other in the wide world: It might be likened to a huge beehive, where no drones could find a resting place. I stepped on shore, and my first exclamation was, This is the place for a business man!

—James Creecy, 1834

On April 29, 1831, two young Parisian bachelors set foot on the levee dock in New Orleans, one of the leading ports in the United States. Like thousands of immigrants before them, Eugène D. Burguières (1804–76), a merchant of independent means, and his cousin, E. Denis Lalande (ca. 1808–44), a jeweler, had crossed the ocean anticipating a bright future in the New World. On November 7, 1830, after bidding farewell to their families, their friends, and their country, they had boarded the ship La Glaneuse at Le Havre, carrying a few worldly possessions, their cultural heritage, and a fine education. Though the ship’s sails were set for western shores, unlike the many ships that had left France in the nineteenth century, La Glaneuse was destined not for New Orleans but for Veracruz, Mexico. The two novice trailblazers had been lured by French promoters who had acquired large land grants in exchange for colonizing the region with five hundred French settlers, who were promised shares of the bounty.¹

1.1 Schooner Jane, 1831.

One can only wonder what motivated these two young men to leave France. What dreams were they following? Perhaps they were escaping the political and economic turmoil in their native country. Or maybe they had imagined a pastoral life in an exotic wilderness where they could raise families and live on their own terms. Or possibly the two businessmen intended to stay just long enough to establish mercantile houses and contacts and then move on to Louisiana or even return to France. One thing is for certain: they had been attracted by promises of the one asset that they never could have acquired in France—land.

Whatever hopes Eugène and Denis had were dashed even before their arrival when La Glaneuse ran aground off the coast of Veracruz. Finally, after landing at their destination on February 18, 1831, they found themselves in the hinterlands of Coatzacoalcos, a mosquito-infested jungle where their fellow countrymen faced backbreaking work, yellow fever, and starvation, conditions so terrible that they drove many to suicide. Even before they had left Le Havre for Mexico, forty-one potential settlers had died. Only two months after arriving, Burguières and Lalande recognized the desperate situation and boarded the schooner Jane for Louisiana, wiser and grateful to have escaped. Finally, at the end of April 1831, six months after leaving Le Havre, they arrived at the Port of Orleans with a new set of plans.²

In the 1830s, New Orleans already had a population of more than forty-six thousand. Located at the mouth of the Mississippi River, it was the outlet for all trade in the Mississippi Valley and a major entry point for world markets doing business throughout the United States, sometimes surpassing New York as the leading port of debarkation. Between 1820 and 1840, the city ranked among the five largest in the United States.³