3110 Highway 494, Natchitoches, Louisiana

About 3110 Highway 494

Here is your chance to own a unique piece of history. Offered fully furnished, Cherokee Plantation is an excellent example of a Creole Cottage, at traditional building type indigenous to Louisiana. The tall, single-story house was raised on brick piers, approximately six feet above grade. The floors, walls, and the massive hipped roof were built of traditional heavy timber construction, using hand-hewn cypress. The walls of the four original central rooms were filled between the studs, posts and braces with bousillage, a mixture of mud and moss, Interior walls were painted, and exterior walls sheathed in weatherboards. Cherokee was a part of a Spanish land grant issued to Philippe Frederique and Jacques Faure in 1795. The house dates back to some years before 1839 when Emile Sompayrac purchased teh plantation from his father-in-law Narcisse Prud'homme and altered the house for his wife Clarisse. In that same year, the famous Bossier-Gaiennie dual was fought at the rear of the plantation. Sometime after the purchase, the plantation became known as Cherokee because of the plush hedges of Cherokee roses at the entryway. After Emile's death in 1878, parcels of the property were sold, and in 1891 the remainder was bought by Robert Calvert Murphy, The Murphy family retained ownership of Cherokee until 2024. Built of "bousillage" (mud with moss and deer hair), the raised-type of construction has the original size fireplaces, tall folding doors of "faux bois" (the grain painted on the wood). Doors of this type are used throughout the house. All the wide-board floors are original as are the windows and doors with panes of hand-blown glass, and a large number of locks and pieces of hardware. There are porches on three sides of the house. Eighteen columns of hand-hewn cypress extend from porch level to the eaves. The entire skeletal structure of the building, the massive sills, the floor beams, the ceiling beams and the studding are hand-hewn cypress.

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