Beaufort captures the elegance and grace of French Creole society as well as the toil of daily life on a Louisiana cotton plantation. Local legend holds that the house is situated near the site of a 1760s fort, hence the name “Beaufort.” The house may have been built around 1790 for Louis Barthelemy Rachal, who received the original Spanish land grant for the property in 1780s and was living in a dwelling on the property by 1790. Married in 1785, Rachal gradually acquired more land and wealth until his death in 1833, when he owned nearly twenty enslaved people. Rachal’s slaves included many elders, suggesting this was a well-established community of enslaved people that had been together for a number of years. The division of the estate must have been very painful, for ten different men purchased the slaves. Narcisse Prudhomme purchased the property at a public auction in January 1834. Prudhomme enlarged the plantation considerably. At the time of his death in 1844, he owned twenty-eight enslaved people, including several elders. One of the elders was Prince, who was one hundred years old in 1834, meaning he was likely born in Africa. Narcisse Prudhomme II acquired the plantation and continued to grow the family’s fortunes. By the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, he owned a total of 112 enslaved people. Records indicate that Prudhomme allowed his slaves to improve their situation by accumulating livestock through extra work. One such person was Ceraphin, who by 1861 had 60 chickens and 18 cattle. The successive waves of Confederate and Union soldiers who swept through Cane River country in April 1864 during the Red River campaign wiped him out. Ceraphin, who adopted the name of LaCaze upon emancipation, was forced to begin life as a freedman without any property. Although a federal court later awarded him $220 for his loss of property, he would become a sharecropper like so many black southerners after the Civil War. In 1928, the Prudhomme heirs sold the home and five acres to Charles Edgar Cloutier, who called it St. Charles Plantation for the college his sons attended. In 1944, Cloutier’s son, C. Vernon Cloutier, and his wife, Helen Elizabeth Williams, purchased the house, although they had lived in the home since soon after their marriage in 1937. They renamed the plantation “Beaufort” because local tradition claimed a French fort had once stood on the site. Since the house had deteriorated to a deplorable condition by this time, they decided to restore the house to its original splendor. Mrs. Cloutier, affectionately known as “Miss Beth,” displayed her indomitable will by overseeing the restorations and furnishing the house with family antiques and portraits. The current owners are Jack and Ann Brittain; Ann Brittain is Miss Beth’s niece.