What food did slaves eat on a plantation?
Weekly food rations — usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour — were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves’ cabins.
What did African slaves eat on the plantation?
Food supplies The plantation owners provided their enslaved Africans with weekly rations of salt herrings or mackerel, sweet potatoes, and maize, and sometimes salted West Indian turtle. The enslaved Africans supplemented their diet with other kinds of wild food.
How much food did the slaves eat?
Enslaved people created variety in their diets by keeping gardens, raising poultry, foraging for plants, fishing, and trapping and hunting wild animals. one [peck], one gallon of maize per week; this makes one quart a day, and half as much for the children, with 20 herrings each per month.
How many slaves were there in Oak Alley?
Through the years at Oak Alley, records indicate that there were a total of 220 slaves. Oak Alley is named for its distinguishing visual feature, an alley (French allée) or canopied path, created by a double row of southern live oak trees about 800 feet long, planted in the early 1700’s, long before the present house was built.
How did Oak Alley Plantation become a cattle ranch?
As a virus had wiped out the sugarcane industry in the early 1900s, the Stewarts ran Oak Alley Plantation as a cattle ranch. Josephine had grown up on a cattle ranch in Texas and was familiar with this type of industry.
What kind of trees are in Oak Alley Plantation?
Oak Alley Plantation. The largest oak has a girth of 30 feet and a 127 foot spread of limbs. Live oaks have a life span of 600 years, meaning these 300 year old trees are middle aged. The green growth seen on the limbs and trunks of the trees is called resurrection fern, which is an air plant that grows on the bark of large trees.
Who was Antoine from Oak Alley Plantation?
Jacques and Celina Roman. The most noted slave who lived at Oak Alley Plantation was named Antoine. He was listed as “Antoine, 38, Creole Negro gardener/expert grafter of pecan trees,” with a value of $1,000 in the inventory of the estate conducted upon J.T. Roman’s death. Antoine was a master of the techniques of grafting,…