Arlington + Julia Dalton

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Since it's a reference book at the library and can't be checked out, I finally treated myself to Vestiges of Grandeur The Plantations of Louisiana's River Road.




It came in today and I love it and no longer feel guilty about buying it.
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I happened upon Arlington Plantation in Franklin, Louisiana (St. Mary Parish), currently up For Sale via The Preservation Directory.



There is some interesting architectural info about it HERE
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It made me think about another place in St. Mary Parish...Morgan City. This is the city my great great grandfather John Dalton moved to from Pennsylvania in the late 1800's with his wife and 8 children. John Dalton was born in Ireland and his family moved to the United States (Pennsylvania) just a year or so later in 1850.

His daughter Julia Dalton O'Brien (born in 1881) is my great grandmother. And yes, THIS NECKLACE Ryan and I designed via Little Ghost Designs is named after her.

Julia with her sisters (they called her Jule)


I have some of her books from when she and her sisters Annie (born 1883) and Bessie (born 1885) attended Dominican College, which is now gone. Its former campus is now part of the property of Loyola University New Orleans, where both my mother and I went to school.

The books are great. In them, I found letters the sisters wrote on the pages to each other and silly letters Julia wrote out of boredom to herself while in class etc.





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Ah, I am getting off track though.

The point of all this, is to mention the house that still stands in Morgan City, which once belonged to one of the Dalton girls and her husband (a Cotten). Strangely, two of the Dalton sisters married two of the Cotten brothers. And according to a couple of census reports I looked up, for a while they lived down the street from each other and the unmarried siblings from both families lived with the couples until they too married and started their own families.

It is called Cotton Top, and is one of the historic homes in Morgan City, built around 1910.

This is the home today.


This is my aunt in the 1950s on the stairs in front of it.



The Morgan City website says this about Cotton Top:

"This Colonial Revival house features a colossal semicircular portico with a matching concave semicircular balustraded balcony. It represents a level of design sophistication seldom seen in the St. Mary Parish domestic Colonial Revival style."
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I haven't been to Morgan City since I was about 8 years old. It's only about 1.5 hours away too. I really want to go for a visit with my daughter in the next month or so. The family burial place is there and also, in one of the old beautiful churches there is a stained glass window dedicated to my great great grandmother Catherine Keane Dalton. It would be so neat to see all of these things...take pictures etc.
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I have no idea who owns Cotton Top now or if it is even still in the family...having no luck finding much information on it at all actually...not yet at least.
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www.day-lab.com

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