• 7"x 10" image size (9"x 12" paper size) / 500 prints / 11"x 14" matting size

While farm workers were busy in the fields, it was the wood boy's job was to keep the houses of the plantation supplied with wood for cooking and heating throughout the year. He was to go out into the woods, fell and split trees, and deliver firewood with his mule-drawn cart. Mule, hybrid offspring of the jackass and the mare, was much used and valued as a beast of burden. It excelled both its parents in sagacity, muscular endurance, surefootedness, and length of life.

Sugar cane was brought to the West Indies soon after the discovery of the New World and introduced to Louisiana in 1751 by Jesuits who brought it to their plantation outside of New Orleans. Raised for syrup and a rum-like drink called tafia, cane became a commercial crop when Etienne de Bore' developed the crystillization process to refine sugar in 1795. Sugar hit its height in the 1850's with the advent of the steamship, allowing sugar to be transported great distances. Most of the crop was refined in Philadelphia and Maine. At the peak of prosperity, there were some 1,500 plantations in operation. The great number of the grand plantation houses of Louisiana were built then. The sugar plantation of the early days was a closed community. There was work to be done year-round; roads and levees to be built and maintained, food crops to be grown for the people and animals that worked the farm.