Last Changes 11/17/2008
All Saints Pictures redone 2/13/2008 by scanning negatives
Allendale Plantation, home of dairying in Northwest Louisiana, began when John James Marshall brought some of his slaves westward to work his Louisiana acreage, located off what is now Linwood Avenue Extension, in DeSoto Parish. The name Allendale evolved from a later purchase of a forty-acre farm known as “the Allen place.” The Allen farm has a little one-room log cabin that John Marshall enlarged to accommodate his large family, who were still living in Orange County, Florida. His wife had died when he brought his family to Louisiana’s frontier, and his oldest daughter, then about 18, came to help take care of the younger children. John James Marshall continued to acquire acreage surrounding his farm until, in 1860 he owned 3,040 acres, with 1,000 acres under cultivation. Allendale had 92 servants, living in 23 slave dwellings on the plantation. It was Mrs. John Julian (Mattie) Marshall who introduced the first registered Jersey cow into Northwest Louisiana, purchased by her in 1885. In 1927 a Shreveport newspaper reported that most of the dairy cattle in northwestern Louisiana descended from Allendale stock. The barn built to serve that dairy herd of the 1880's is still in use at Allendale for today’s beef herd. John James Marshall came to Louisiana after operating several plantations in South Carolina and Florida. He was a law school graduate, having spent 1825 through 1827 studying law in Philadelphia. His brother, Henry Marshall, established a plantation in DeSoto Parish well-known as Land’s End Plantation. The elaborate home at that site was built to replace an original dog-trot that was the first home of the Henry Marshalls in Louisiana in the 1860's. The home at Allendale is far more typical of early Louisiana plantation homes than the popular pillared mansions. It did, however, have some distinctions over average log cabins of the area. The walls were built of square-hewn oak, rather than the more common pine, and chinked with clay and straw instead of more widely used split-boards, nailed over cracks between the logs. The Allendale logs were joined with square notches at the corners. The style of the house, now known as the “dog trot,” evolved from two original “single pen” cabins, joined together by the familiar open-end passageway found in many frontier homes in northern Louisiana. Family correspondence indicates that John Marshall added to the log house before moving in with his family in 1854. A second “dog trot” was built a few feet away, parallel to the first and joined by a porch which lined up with the open passages. The second portion was demolished in 1930 by the present owner, Henry Marshall, Jr., but family snapshots show the two houses connected by the porch. The first cooking was done in a separate building behind the main house until the present kitchen wing of board and batten construction was added in the 1880's at the southeast corner. A bedroom and bath wing were added on the west end in 1933. Along the east side of the house is a shed room which covers the two small end rooms and forms an extension of the now enclosed passageway. An old wooden cistern still stands behind the house. The cistern was converted into a playhouse by a later generation of Marshall’s. The north end of the passage is enclosed by two batten doors and two glazed doors, moved there from the second dog trot in 1930. At that time the east room was paneled to match the west log room, which had been paneled with vertical pine boards in 1870. About half of the original roof framing remains. Beneath the sheet metal roofing can be seen wood shingles, probably native cypress or cedar shakes. Chimneys are of molded mud brick. Windows reveal various details of construction., and very thin mullions on some windows and on the front doors appear to have been made with hand tools. In 1887 John Julian Marshall donated four acres of Allendale for construction of All Saints Episcopal Chapel, located on the Stonewall-Frierson Road now, less than a mile from the Allendale home. A “considerable number of free men of color” from neighboring plantations are listed among the donors to the building. It is indicated they attended early services at the chapel. Contributions from South Carolina, Indiana and Florida were listed as “foreign.” All Saints’ Episcopal Church was consecrated on February 6, 1887. Over the chapel altar is a stained glass window, a memorial to John James Marshall and his oldest daughter, Margaret Olivia Marshall, the first two persons buried in the graveyard adjoining the chapel. Five of the six sons of John James Marshall are buried in the churchyard at All Saints’. The site had been selected and used as a family burial ground before the donation of the acreage to the church, and a number of family members had already been buried when the chapel church was erected. Stained glass windows in the building are intricate, held together with metal braces. Much of the original glass is intact. At the front behind the altar is a communion rail hand carved from a single pine board. The sturdy chapel has walls of solid virgin pine. Benches were tooled fo virgin pine with imported mahogany trim. All Saints is one of the two surviving plantation chapels still in use in Louisiana. Services have been held periodically since its consecration in 1887.
{Pictures "scanned" from photos taken 1984.}
{Many of the pictures had to be altered to lighten.}
{Pictures "scanned" from photos taken 1984.}
{Many of the pictures had to be altered to lighten.}
Pictures scanned from negatives of photos taken 1984.
{Many of the pictures had to be altered to lighten.}
