Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

LAPLACE — P. Anne Battiste grew up in a home where she didn’t look like her siblings. Her father’s identity was a family secret that never escaped her mother’s lips, and she felt consumed by a desire to discover who she was.

With little information to grasp about her father’s side of the family, she was drawn to the family legacy recorded on her mother’s side. Her great aunt Lizzie Eugene Wright, known by her family as “Aunt Sis,” had communicated the lineage of her immediate ancestors to a relative while on her sick bed in hopes of preserving the Thompson-Eugene family history in St. John the Baptist Parish. The result was five pages that came to be known as the “Family Notes” that have been distributed at family reunions for the past 40-plus years.

Using records located through Ancestry.com, Battiste was able to expand on the family’s history in the River Parishes. In September 2019, Battiste published “The Legacy Papers: The Thompson-Eugene Family and Our River Road Connection.” In February 2021, the book was accepted into the Library of Congress for its historical significance in tracing the roots of an African American family from the Civil War through the Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights Movement, leading up to the 21^st Century.

The Legacy Papers also include historically significant references to St. John the Baptist Parish landmarks related to the family’s history, including the Terre Haute Plantation on River Road and the “Ory Plantation,” now known as the San Francisco Plantation in Garyville.

“I was 15 years old when I got Aunt Sis’s notes. Even though I would have preferred to know more about my father, I delved into my mother’s history because it gave me a sense of figuring out where I came from. From that pain of needing to know more, I took Aunt Sis’s notes and just started investigating,” Battiste said.

Getting her family history published and accepted into the Library of Congress was always the goal.

“I wanted to get this into the Library of Congress so that when I die and leave this Earth, these papers will be able to live on,” she said.
Chapter One begins with an account by the late Lizzie Eugene Wright detailing the history of her grandparents and parents in the River Parishes. Her grandfather, Charlie Thompson, resided in an area of St. Charles Parish now known as St. Rose along with his wife, Millie Williams, and his brother, Sam Thompson. It was said that Charlie was a Native American who wore his hair long and rode a white horse.

During the winter months, he ran the sugar mill and worked in the blacksmith shop on the Terre Haute Plantation grounds (a site that has been restored by Cargill and is now identified as the Graugnard House) in St. John the Baptist Parish.

He brought his daughter Mary along to work in the house he lived in during the harvesting season. It was around this time, during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War, that Mary Thompson met Jack Eugene. Together, they started the Thompson-Eugene legacy.

Lizzie Eugene Wright stated that her father, Jack Eugene, was born in 1866 “in the yard of his mother’s white people” on the grounds of the Ory Plantation, now known as San Francisco Plantation in Garyville.

Years after the Family Notes were written, Battiste visited San Francisco Plantation. She remembers the tone of her mother’s voice, solemn and certain, when she said, “This is the place.”

When Battiste asked about the “Ory Plantation” name, a curator was adamant that the Ory family had never owned the grounds. However, according to Battiste, a mention of the Ory family owning the site appeared on the San Francisco Plantation’s website a month later.

Battiste is excited to continue unraveling the mystery through her genealogy research, since the website lists the timeframe of the Ory family owning the home as the early 20^th Century, while the family notes indicate the family owned the grounds more than 40 years earlier.

Battiste said The Legacy Papers represent a living, breathing document. The book is revised once a year to include new discoveries, and Battiste is working with a historian to confirm details about the San Francisco Plantation ownership for a future revision. Newly uncovered details about the family of Jack Eugene will be included in this year’s revision.

Battiste has learned a lot about American history in the process, as the original Family Notes included references to Reconstruction and the 13^th and 14^th amendments. The Legacy Papers also includes a chapter on the plight of African Americans through the years covered by the book. The social commentary in the book speaks on modern-day racial issues in America that became national news topics in 2020, months after its original publication.

“In 2019, the book was finished. I knew something was missing from the book, and I couldn’t publish it yet. I read the book and her original papers again, and I realized the setting was missing,” Battiste said. “The overall work is a message of family and country.”

“The Legacy Papers: The Thompson-Eugene Family and Our River Road Connection” is available on Amazon. The Library of Congress Control Number is: 2019471015.