David and Mary Weeks, 1818-1834
"We have moved into the New House that I find more cool and
pleasant than I expected...I disliked to make the exertion [of moving]
and found it very fatiguing when I did, as I had not been use to running
up and down stairs, that when I get use to it will be of service to me...Heaven
only knows if my hopes will ever be realized but I hope in A house so
well ventilated that they will be blest with health of late years they
have not all enjoyed." - Mary C. Weeks, New Iberia, to David
Weeks, New Haven, CT, June 28, 1834
David
Weeks, builder of the Shadows, was just one of many Anglo-Americans who
made their way to the Attakapas region, the present day parishes of St.
Martin, St. Mary, Iberia, Vermilion, and Lafayette, after the 1803 Louisiana
Purchase to seek their fortune making sugar. Another family important
to our story is the Conrad family of Virginia. By 1808, Mary Clara Conrad
and her family were living on a plantation on the Bayou Teche between
New Iberia and Jeanerette, probably Rosedale, the home of Mary's maternal
grandmother Ann Thruston.
As a young man, David Weeks began working with his father, William Weeks,
accumulating much property in the Felicianas and the Attakapas in the
early 1800s, purchasing most of Grand Cote (now Weeks Island), over 2,000
acres by 1818. They grew cotton in the Felicianas, and attempted indigo
and cotton in the Attakapas before David Weeks began concentrating on
sugar in the early 1820s. While establishing the plantation at Grand Cote,
David found time to court and marry Mary Conrad, Mary being 21 years of
age and David 32. The couple resided on William Weeks' plantation on Bayou
Sarah near St. Francisville.
After David's father died, they decided to move to their Attakapas properties
to concentrate on the production of sugar at Grand Cote. Though Grand
Cote was ideal as a sugar plantation, its location was considered too
remote for his family, so David first acquired property on Bayou Parc
Perdu where they lived for four years, before he bought, in 1825, the
property at New Iberia on Bayou Teche.
Mary was proud of the house they built at Parc Perdu, where her first
child was born in 1822. But in 1825 David sold the Parc Perdu plantation
and moved his young family to the recently purchased tract of land on
the outskirts of New Town (New Iberia now), where he built on a tract
of 158 acres, the brick dwelling house now called The Shadows-on-the-Teche.
Eight children were born to David and Mary: Frances, William, Alfred,
Harriet, Charles, Frederick, David, and an infant girl who died shortly
after birth. Construction of the new house began in 1831 and was finally
completed in 1834. Invoices indicate that two brothers were in charge
of most of the building process, Jotham and James Bedell. One of only
three brick structures on the bayou in its' vicinity, the Shadows was
constructed in a Classical Revival style on the exterior with the distinctive
eight white columns across the front facade. Unlike other southern plantation
homes of its time, the new Weeks home incorporated a Louisiana Colonial
floorplan.
As the house neared completion in May 1834, David Weeks left on a sea
voyage to New Haven, Connecticut, in an attempt to find a cure for a recurring
unidentified disease. In mid-June 1834 Mary and six children moved into
the new house. The happiness of moving into the new home, was overshadowed
by worry about the absent David Weeks, who died August 25, 1834, never
having lived in the new house on Bayou Teche. Almost six months after
his death an inventory was taken of his estate; the house and furnishings
were valued at $20,700 while the main plantation of Grand Cote at $75,000.
Next Page: Mary Weeks and John Moore
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