Civil War
Though 1861 is often thought of as the beginning of the Civil War, it was also planters’ most profitable sugarcane harvest to date. Using the exceptional profits from the Weeks family plantations, which were only possible due to the forced labor of enslaved men and women, John Moore commissioned two paintings of the Shadows by French artist Marie Adrian Persac. These works showcased the front (as seen here) and rear views of the home.
The lives of those who lived at the Shadows were profoundly impacted by the outbreak and events of the Civil War. In January 1861, Mary’s second husband, Judge John Moore, had left for Baton Rouge to sit on the committee drafting Louisiana’s Ordinance of Secession. Within the month, Mary’s grandson, David Weeks Magill, had left university in Virginia to join the Confederate Army at Camp Moore outside of New Orleans.
By the close of summer 1862, the Union Army was beginning to advance through Southern Louisiana, having taken control of New Orleans in April. By summer 1863, Judge Moore, as well as Mary’s children, Harriet, Charles, and William had all left the Teche country with Harriet and Charles’ families in tow. Mary wrote that she felt “abandoned by all,” but remained at the Shadows even as Union Troops occupied the mansion as its local headquarters in New Iberia. While Union soldiers took over the Shadows’ main floor and outbuildings, Mary, her sister-in-law Hannah Jane Conrad, as well as enslaved house-servants Louisa, Charity, and Sidney, occupied the family quarters on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
Mary died in her bed at the Shadows while her family was away on December 29, 1863.
The People of the Shadows
William Frederick Weeks
Portrait of William Frederick Weeks by John Beale Bordley, circa 1843-1845.
William Frederick Weeks married his cousin Mary Gorham Palfrey on July 7, 1846. The couple took up residence at Grand Côte where they had five children. Only two, however, would grow to adulthood, Lily (b. 1851) and Harriet (b. 1864).
During the Civil War, William left his family and fled to Texas, forcibly taking with him many of the men and women who were enslaved at Grand Côte plantation. Though the Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect, he believed that Texas was safe from Union troops and, as he put it in a letter to John Moore, “Negro property will be safe when not one is left a slave in Louisiana.”
William would not return to New Iberia until after the war. He and Judge Moore were named executors of Mary C. Weeks Moore’s estate and so he moved his family to the Shadows where he would live with his wife and children until his death on January 24, 1895…only three months after the birth of his only grandchild, William Weeks Hall.
Mary Lily Weeks
Mary Lily Weeks was 9-years-old at the outbreak of the Civil War. While her father escaped to Texas, she remained at Grand Côte plantation with her mother and the women soon found their circumstances dramatically changed. The bounty of food, as well as the many other luxuries that had once been readily available to them, had all but disappeared.
After her beloved grandmother passed away, and her father returned, Lily moved with her family to the Shadows—where she would reside for the next four decades. Soon after they settled in, they welcomed another daughter, Harriet, whom Lily would watch after for the rest of her life. In 1891, after a decade-long courtship, Lily married Gilbert L. Hall. At the age of 43, she gave birth to the couple’s only son, William Weeks Hall—the last member of the family to reside at the Shadows.