St. John the Baptist Parish (SJBP) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 census, the population was 42,477. The parish seat is Edgard, an unincorporated area, and the largest city is LaPlace, which is also unincorporated. History St. John the Baptist Parish was established in 1807 as one of the original 19 parishes of the Territory of Orleans, which became the state of Louisiana. St. John the Baptist Parish is part of the New Orleans–Metairie metropolitan statistical area.
The parish was considered part of the German Coast in the 18th and 19th centuries, named for numerous German immigrants who settled along the Mississippi River here in the 1720s. On January 8, 1811, the largest slave insurrection in US history, known as the German Coast Uprising, started here. It was short-lived, but more than 200 slaves gathered from plantations along the river and marched through St. Charles Parish toward New Orleans. This is part of the Sugarland or sugar parishes, which were devoted to sugar cane cultivation. Planters held large numbers of enslaved African Americans as workers before the Civil War. Many freedmen stayed in the area after emancipation because of their ties to family and associates. They worked as tenant farmers, and numerous freedmen stayed in the area to work on these plantations afterward.
The parish includes three nationally significant examples of 19th-century plantation architecture: Evergreen Plantation, the Whitney Plantation Historic District, and San Francisco Plantation House.
Present-day St. John the Baptist Parish includes the third permanent settlement in what is now the state of Louisiana, after Natchitoches (1714) and New Orleans (1718). It was considered part of the German Coast. The area was settled in the early 1720s by a group of German Catholic colonists.First Families – The Pioneers, scphistory.org Many families established settlements close to the Mississippi River in the areas now known as Lucy, Garyville, and Reserve. The area was under the French regime until 1763, when France ceded Louisiana to Spain after losing the Seven Years' War to Great Britain (this was known as the French and Indian War on the North American front).
At the beginning of the Spanish colonial period, many Acadians, people of French descent, began arriving in south Louisiana due to being expelled by the British from what is now Nova Scotia and eastern Canada. The British took over French territory in Canada and in North America east of the Mississippi River. The first Acadian village in Louisiana was established in what is now Wallace. The German and French cultures thrived alongside one another, but French came to be the dominant language. They developed a culture known as Cajun.
In 1769, the Acadians who settled in the area began a search for land to build a church. The governing Spanish authority at the time approved the request, and the land was expropriated on February 21, 1770. The first church stood in the same location as the modern St. John the Baptist Church. The new church carried the same name as the original chapel of the German Coast settlement.
The first pastor was Spanish Capuchin Father Bernardo de Limpach. The first church records note a marriage between Antoine Manz and Sibylla Bischof in 1772. The first church survived until being swept away by floodwaters in 1821.Tricentennial Thursday: St. John the Baptist, Edgard, among oldest parishes, clarionherald.org, February 22, 2018Brooke Robichaux: St. John the Baptist Church commemorates 100 years, lobservateur.com, October 28, 2020
The early settlers in the area received land grants from the Spanish or French royal governments, depending upon which country ruled the territory at the time of application. The French style of property allotments was made up of narrow frontage on the river so that each plantation had access for transportation of goods to and from New Orleans and world markets. The main house and supporting outbuildings were constructed near the river. The remaining property extended away from the river deeply into the wetlands, where land was cleared for the cultivation of sugar cane.
For decades into the 19th century, most transportation was done by boat, mainly on the bayous and lakes of the area, but via the Mississippi River as well. St. John, with its fertile land being nine feet above sea level, proved to be an excellent settlement for farming and agriculture. In the late 18th century, planters began to invest more in labor-intensive sugar cane cultivation and processing, increasing their demand for slave labor. Sugar production meant prosperity for the planters and New Orleans. Planters held large numbers of enslaved African Americans. The sugar and cotton parishes all had majority Black populations before the Civil War.
With the sugar wealth, some wealthy planters built elaborate houses and outbuildings. Three survive in St. John parish; each is recognized for its national architectural and historic significance. On the west bank is the major complex of houses and outbuildings designated as the Whitney Plantation Historic District and the National Historic Landmark (NHL) of Evergreen Plantation. San Francisco Plantation House, also a designated NHL, is on the east bank.
San Francisco and Evergreen plantations are open to the public for tours. The Whitney plantation house is planned for renovation. Whitney and Evergreen plantations are both included among the first 26 sites on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
In January 1811, the German Coast Uprising started in this parish. It was the largest slave insurrection in US history, but it was short-lived. The slaves killed two whites, but suffered 96 deaths among their forces at the hands of the militia and in executions after quick trials afterward. They attacked five plantations and burned three houses to the ground. A major leader was Charles Deslondes, a mulatto (mixed-race) slave brought by a planter from Saint-Domingue in the late 18th century. He and his followers were influenced by the ideals and promises of the French and Haitian revolutions. France ended slavery on Saint-Domingue after its own Revolution, but tried to reimpose it. Slaves and free people of color rebelled, gaining independence after huge losses among French regular forces sent by Napoleon to retake the island.
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln mentioned St. John the Baptist Parish in the Emancipation Proclamation as a confederate parish.
Deslondes gathered more than 200 slaves from plantations along the way, marching downriver into St. Charles Parish toward New Orleans before meeting much resistance. Unable to get the arms they had planned on, the slaves were defeated by the well-armed informal and territorial militias. During these confrontations and even more by summary executions after brief trials, Deslondes and ninety-five slaves were killed. Decades before the American Civil War and emancipation, the actions of these people expressed African Americans' deep desire for freedom.Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South, pp. 106-117, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007 paperback
As the number of white families in the settlement increased, they wanted education for their children. Before the Civil War, typically planters would hire tutors, often college graduates from the North, who would live with the family for an extended period of time, typically two years. The tutor would teach all of the planter's children, and sometimes the family would arrange for other neighborhood children to join the classes as well. There was no public education.
In 1869, following the Civil War, families wanting French instruction founded private schools to continue their culture. The Anglo-Americans had imposed English as the official language. The Reconstruction legislature, with both African American and white representatives, established the first public schools in the state during this period. It took time for the state to arrange adequate funding for public education. In the segregated system, education for Black children was less well funded and lagged behind that for whites. The first high schools at Edgard and Reserve were not built until 1909. Students traveled to the schools by horse-drawn buses or by train.
Geography According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the parish has a total area of , of which (61%) are land and (39%) are water. It is the third-smallest parish in Louisiana by land area and fifth-smallest by total area.
St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana is located on the Mississippi River, approximately upriver from the Gulf of Mexico and upriver from the City of New Orleans. The area, known as the River Region, has an abundance of natural resources and a mild "Sunbelt" climate. The average monthly temperature in New Orleans ranges from in January to in July, and rainfall averages per year with monthly averages running from in October to in July. The New Orleans/River Region contains a good supply of raw materials, which has helped Louisiana maintain a high rank in the United States in the production of natural gas, petroleum, sulfur, salt, and fur pelts. High silica sands, lime, clays, timber, seafood, and various agricultural products are also produced in abundance.
St. John the Baptist Parish is bisected by the Mississippi River. Though the River separates the Parish into northern and southern parts, the former is still referred to as the "east bank" and the latter as the "west bank," referring to the direction of the river as it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi provides an important transportation corridor that supports the heavy industry located in the area.
St. John the Baptist Parish is bordered by St. Charles Parish and Lake Pontchartrain to the east, Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas to the north, Lafourche Parish and Lac des Allemands to the south, and St. James Parish to the west. It is one of four parishes which comprise the "River Parishes;" St. John Parish is the heart of the "River Parishes."
This section of the state, also consisting of St. James, Ascension, and St. Charles Parishes, makes up the area along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Since the mid-20th century, when the oil industry developed from resources found here, all of these parishes are home to at least one major chemical- and/or petroleum-processing facility. The industry is the major source of employment in the region but it has had adverse environmental effects. St. John the Baptist parish has the highest rate of environmental cancer of any census tract in the United States.
Much of the parish is either open water or wetlands. The wetlands are currently protected by federal law and development is limited to what is permitted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and/or the Federal Wildlife and Fisheries Department.
Higher ground in the parish is found in an alluvial plain which generally borders the Mississippi River on both sides. Soil deposits from the Mississippi's annual flooding created a rich and fertile area which has historically been intensively farmed (sugar cane, soybeans, feed corn, and occasional cotton). This fact, as well as the natural transportation corridor supplied by the river, resulted in the creation of numerous plantations and farms along the lower Mississippi Valley.
Many of these plantations were large tracts of land with modest or average-sized homes and outbuildings found on the higher ground. Several, however, were improved with palatial mansions. Three of the larger homes have survived in St. John Parish, as noted in the History above.