St. Emma
S of Donaldsonville, Donaldsonville, LASt. Emma is a good representative example of a large mid-19th-century Greek Revival Plantation house. This can be seen in its full two-story height, its articulation, and in its central hall plan which is three rooms deep rather than the usual two. It amounts to a larger version of the standard five-bay, central hall plan, raised plantation house.
In addition, of the many plantation houses of the Bayou Lafourche area, St. Emma is above average both in terms of size and pretention.
St. Emma Plantation is of historical significance for two reasons. First, it was owned from 1854 to 1869 by Charles A. Kock, one of the leading sugar planters and large slaveholders in Louisiana. Secondly, it played a role in a series of Civil War skirmishes in the Donaldsonville-Bayou Lafource area.
Born in Bremen, Germany in 1812, Charles A. Kock by 1860, had become one of the largest sugar producers in Louisiana and had 300 slaves, of which 124 were at St. Emma. His two sugar plantations were Belle Alliance in Assumption Parish and St. Emma in Ascension Parish.
St. Emma and the nearby plantation Palo Alto were the scenes of a Civil War skirmish in the fall of 1862. Union forces marching from Donaldsonville to Thibodaux were checked by the Confederates in the vicinity of St. Emma and lost 465 men. The sugar houses of St. Emma and Palo Alto were used to quarter Confederate troops.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.