FROGMORE PLANTATION & GINS

1800's Plantation Store

The Frogmore Plantation was built near Native American mounds in the fertile Mississippi Delta, across the Mississippi River from Natchez. There is no grand antebellum house to walk through.  This is a working plantation established in the early 1800's. This site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It 
includes preserved original buildings as well as some that were donated from other plantations to save and protect them from destruction and help set the scene for a working plantation.

 The slave quarters were authentically furnished with the implements they used for daily living, the food that they ate and how they prepared it, and clothes they wore. 

There is a preserved slave quarter cabin (1840) that is furnished with period artifacts. One cabin was divided half, first to show it as if occupied by a slave family and the second half to show it as occupied by sharecroppers. 

There is an open barn with old farm equipment including hand tools and mule-driven implements.

Owner and Guide Lynettte Tanner

It was interesting learning about the the cultivation, harvesting and ginning of cotton.

Steam Cotton Gin Separates Seeds Out of Cotton

In 1884 Robert S. Munger was the first person to invent suction in the gins. On the Frogmore Plantation is a Smithsonian-quality 1884 Munger steam gin for ginning the cotton.  

Baling Cotton Lint

Robert Munger was the man who revolutionized the cotton ginning industry, and this gin is patented 1884. It is in perfect condition and has all the elements, start to finish, for processing cotton into bales. A modern gin can do 900 bales per day.

Preserved Overseer Cabin (1811)

The overseer's cabin was authentically furnished and included an 1810 hand-pegged cypress dogtrot.

It Took 30# of Cotton to Fill Sack

I especially liked the demonstration of how cotton was hand picked by going to the cotton field and pick our own cotton. A slave would have worn a long bag which they filled with the cotton. 

I'm Sure He Will be Growing Cotton in Spring

We had a "hands on" experience of touching, picking, feeling the sharp edges of the pods, and deseeding the cotton.  In a small piece of cotton, about the size of a cotton ball, you could feel about ten seeds trapped in the cotton. It illustrated how labor intensive it must have been to pick cotton by hand.  

America's Original Vegetable Oil

Cotton producers do not waste anything, even the seeds are processed for oil and used in soap, cosmetics, baked goods, mayo, margarine and more. Cottonseed oil is said to be low in trans fat, similar to canola, corn, safflower, soybean and sunflower oil.

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Depiction of Plantation Life

Some slave songs were codes for slaves escaping to be free. 

Native American Mound 

At Frogmore, there is a Native American mound that measures 14 feet high and 200 feet long, one of 39 mounds along Louisiana's Ancient Mounds Heritage Area and Trails.