Ormond Plantation in Destrehan was built prior to 1790 and is believed to be one of the oldest French West Indies style Creole plantations on the Mississippi River. Pierre Trépagnier built the original plantation after having received the land from Louisiana’s Spanish Governor Bernardo de Galvez as a gift for his valor against the English. Trépagnier received a tract that reached from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain.
He then erected a two-story raised cottage with deep galleries and a cypress roof. Richard Butler purchased the plantation after the War of 1812 and named it “Ormond,” after Ormond Castle in Ireland, the home of James Butler, Earl of Ormond.
A major restoration took place in the mid-20th Century by Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Brown of Brown’s Velvet Ice Cream and Avery Island (McIlhenny) respectively. One of only three plantations remaining today in St. Charles Parish, the Ormond mansion sits on a 16-acre site and is owned by the Carmouche family.
This text is © copyright material by Marilyn Richoux, Joan Becnel and Suzanne Friloux, from St. Charles Parish, Louisiana: A Pictorial History, 2010.
