| What makes it historical? |
General David Bradford fled to Spanish-controlled Louisiana in 1794 after inciting an attack on Pittsburgh over a new excise tax on whiskey! See, the brand new US government thought the tax would help pay off state debts from the American Revolution, but instead it really ticked off farmers and distillers! They started tarring and feathering the tax collectors who came round to pick up the money, then arose in full scale Whiskey Rebellion! That is a story for another landmark; for now, let’s talk about our fugitive.
He settled here in St. Francisville, where Baron de Corondelet gave him a land grant of 650 acres. His slaves built a huge estate in 1796, and when President John Adams pardoned him, he moved his whole family here. His wife, Elizabeth, continued to manage the plantation until 1817 when it was sold to Clarke Woodruff, then to Ruffin Gray Stirling, who completed the ornate latticework on the exterior, in 1834. Then, after looting during the Civil War, Mrs. Stirling brought on future owner, William Drew Winter to renovate the estate. He was killed on the porch in 1871!
Mr. Winter’s spirit is one of 12 rumored to still linger at the Myrtles Plantation! The most famous of them comes from the Woodruff period and tells of a slave girl named Chloe, who was coerced into a physical relationship by Mr. Woodruff and had her ear cut off for listening to family conversations! The legend says she slipped oleander into a cake that she fed to the family, whether for revenge or medicinal use depends on the story, and Mrs. Woodruff and her two daughters died from it! The other slaves hanged Chloe and threw her in the river out of fear of Mr. Woodruff’s revenge!
Though no one has been able to find a record of the Woodruffs owning a slave named Chloe, and though the Woodruffs died of yellow fever, a startling photograph of a ghostly apparition wearing a turban, just like the one Chloe wore in legend, surfaced in 1992 and fed into the idea that angry spirits still haunt this bed and breakfast! Stay here if you dare! |
