CHAPTER 1
BEFORE I WAS LITTLE AGES ZERO THROUGH FIVE MY DADDY
My daddy was born August 7, 1912 near White Castle, Louisiana in an area referred to as "New Camp." He lived in a small shotgun one-story house in the middle of a sugar cane field with a large drainage canal running along one side of it.
Desire Franklin Raffray, Artamise Breaux Raffray, Clarence Breaux, Maude Daigle, Newton J. Raffray, Anna Sanchez Raffray, and Adam Raffray
Daddy's daddy, Adam, worked the fields nearby. They lived between highway La. 993 and highway La. 3001 on a dirt road. The old dirt road is now part of highway La. 404. The house was about one quarter mile from Rodusta's store which was located on Hw. 3001.
Daddy's momma, Anna Sanchez, was born Sept. 22, 1886, and died May 13, 1923 when daddy was twelve years old. Some years later they moved to Lone Starr into a larger house. Lone Starr is located on highway 993 about two miles farther from White Castle than the other house on the dirt road.
They moved/evacuated from Lone Starr during the 1927 high water which flooded the area and got into their house as it did everybody's in that area.
Anna Sanchez (my paternal grandmother)
In the future years, dad lived and worked on/at Richland for the Supple family as a tenant farmer and later moved to Cedar Grove Plantation where he worked for the Soniat and then the Burton families for just over forty years as an overseer and later as plantation manager. He died on December 12 in 1984 while living on Cedar Grove and still working for the heirs of the William T. Burton estate. He was 72 years old at the time of his death.
My daddy was pulled out of the 2nd grade when he was 7 years old to work in the sugar cane field by his dad who was a tenant farmer. He would deliver the breakfast and the lunches to the field workers. This entailed getting up very early in the mornings and going by every worker's house and picking up their breakfast buckets. He would deliver to the workers wherever in the field they were working then gather the pails and bring back to the worker's houses so their wives or moms would clean them to place the lunch for that day into them. Before 11 a.m., dad would again go by the workers houses and gather the lunch pails and deliver to the different areas in the field where each worker was at that time. I do not know if he had a mule to transport the food pails or had to do it all by walking but do it he did. During these old days, the workers would eat in the field where they were when the clock struck 12 noon. Come 1 p.m. all the workers went back doing their jobs be it with shovels, hoes, ditch blades, cane knives, plowing behind a mule or whatever it was they were working at. I think daddy again would collect all the lunch pails and deliver them back to their respective homes for use the next day.
This activity surly kept a little boy of 7 or 8 years old very busy for most of the daylight hours. I am sure that he had other chores around the house/yard to do also. Things like shucking, shelling and grinding corn for the chickens and guinea hens that was raised for eggs and meat to eat. Also sloping the hogs and feeding the cows and milking them, etc. etc.
There was always plenty work to do when growing up in the country or on a farm. I experience that myself as did my brother and sister and everyone else that was raised on a farm. It did not make any difference weather you owned it or not- you worked your butts off to survive.
Daddy worked for his dad until he was in his twenties. He quit working in the field one time and moved to New Orleans for about a month or so. He got a job in a factory and was doing really good. Since he knew how to work and was a hard worker, he got several promotions in the short time he worked there. I often wondered what kind of life I would have had if grandpa would not have gone to New Orleans and begged daddy to come back to the farm because he just could not make the crop without him. Of course daddy quit the job and came back to the White Castle area. His boss in New Orleans was sorry to see him go.
Daddy and momma were married and grandpa would pay daddy 25 cents a week. This is what daddy used to tell us. I do not know if this was salary or just expense money. Daddy should have been a partner with his dad. But I don't think that he was. Maybe the 25 cents was just spending money so dad and mom could go paint the town red when not having to work on a weekend. Even during my time spent with my grandpa, he was kind of tight with money. Maybe that was because he never had very much of it during his lifetime.
Daddy lived on Cedar Grove in 1927 and worked with his dad farming part of the land from 1928 to 1942. At this time, I believe he went to Supple plantation (also called Catherine Plantation), to farm for two years as a tenant farmer before moving back to Cedar Grove in February 1944 to start working as and overseer for the owners at that time. Daddy told me that he left Supple after having a falling out with their Field Supervisor who tried to tell him when and how to work the land. Mr. Callegan was trying to force his will upon my daddy and he would not have any of it.
The Burton-Sutton Oil Company purchased Cedar Grove plantation at an auction in New Orleans in 1939 from the L.M. Soniat family who had owned it since before 1920. Sometime in the 1950s, the property was transferred to William T. Burton Industries Inc. Daddy was one of the overseers and stayed on to work for the new owners. Daddy became plantation manager for Cedar Grove Plantation in 1961.
Momma was born in Grosse Tete (pronounced Grow State), Louisiana, on September 29, 1914. Her daddy, Anthony Correl, (born 1889, died 1944), was a sugar cane tenant farmer there. My momma's mom, Josephine Quatrevingt was born 1893, and died in 1917), when my momma was three or four years old. Momma's brother, Nolan, was about two years old at the time. Momma always said that she thought her momma knew that she was dying because several weeks before she died, she dressed herself and the kids and went to town and had a photograph made of her. This is something that cost much money at the time and she did not care to have done before this time in her life.
Momma's grandparents on her daddy's side were Ernest Correl and Pauline Quatrevingt. We do not have the years of birth or death only the year married which was December 31, 1884.
Momma's grandparents on her mother's side were Oscar Quatrevingt (born 1852, died 1930) and Juliet Himel, (no other info). Momma used to tell me that her grandmother Himel's family used to own Ceily Plantation near Thibodeaux, Louisiana. It consisted of over 3000 acres of land. It was a large sugarcane plantation with its own sugar mill. They lost the plantation because of a few dollars owed to creditors. In those days, the High Sheriff would take your property to pay creditors. It did not make any difference how much you owed. You could owe $500 and your property worth $5000. They would take the whole thing to pay the debt. A new law came into effect in the 1950s that changed this forever. The property went to a Sheriff's sale to the highest bidder. Any money left over went to the family whose property they took and sold. This change in the law was many years too late to help the Himel family. When I was a teenager, the Harvey Peltier family of Thibodeaux owned this plantation. I do not know if these are the folks who...
