About the Terrebonne Historical & Cultural Society, Inc.

Museum Information

Membership

History of Southdown

Exhibits

Famous Cajun Recipes from Senator Ellender

Southdown Marketplace Arts, Crafts, & Food Festival

Special Events Calendar

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Southdown Plantation House is a 19th-century sugar manor house and home to the Terrebonne Museum of history and culture. It was built in 1859 as a one-story Greek Revival house by sugar planter William J. Minor. His son, Henry C. Minor, added the second floor and Victorian-style architectural features in 1893. The Southdown sugar plantation remained in the Minor family until 1932, and during the 1920's the owners helped to save the sugar industry in Louisiana by propagating a sugarcane variety resistant to mosaic disease.

In 1975, Valhi, Inc., a subsidiary of Southdown Sugar, Inc., donated the Southdown Plantation House and Servant's Quarters to the non-profit Terrebonne Historical and Cultural Society, who turned the property into a museum. Exhibits include original bedroom furniture of the Minor family and other antique furnishings; a history and culture room; a Mardi Gras room; a Native Peoples room; changing works by local artists; a sugar industry room; Boehm and Doughty porcelain birds; Charles Gilbert art collection; Thad St. Martin literature collection; a re-creation of the Washington, D.C office of U.S. Senator Allen J. Ellender; and a restored 1880's plantation worker's cabin. (Click here for more history or exhibit information).