Weeks Family

David Weeks was a prominent Bayou Teche planter who died in 1834. His children by Mary (Conrad) Weeks included:

After Mary remarried John C. Moore, the Weeks brothers became formed a variety of business partnerships with their step-father, creating an extensive network of Bayou Teche plantations around New Iberia, Grande Cote, and Cypremort. Mary Weeks Moore died at the end of December, 1863.

John C. Moore also had two other daughters, Evelina and Adelaide, who married William M. Prescott and Willis B. Prescott, respectively. W. B. Prescott died before the Civil War, and at some later date, Adelaide apparently married John Leigh.

Resources

Refugee Experience

Like the Avery Family, the Weeks and Moore plantations were dramatically affected by the operations up the Bayou to Franklin by Union forces.1

During the letters examined for 1862 and 1863, the general picture I got is that John Moore and Maggie Weeks remained near Mansfield and Shreveport, while Moore’s wife (Mary C. Weeks) remained on their home plantations managed by Julius A. Johnson. Ben Prescott (a grandson of Moore’s) also remained along the Bayou, as did William Lourd (an overseer), temporarily, but later removed to northwest Louisiana or Texas. (Prescott intended in September 1863 to leave for Texas as soon as “the health of the Negroes will admit of it,” but unclear whether he did.)2 Allie Weeks and Mrs. Brashear were in Starville, Smith County (where at some point in 1863, Allie lost a child), though they later planned to remove to Freestone County. John Leigh also was situated mainly in Texas, while William F. Weeks, Alfred C. Weeks, and C. C. Weeks moved back and forth from Texas to northwestern Louisiana. This is a general impression, though, and needs to be figured out more definitely.

One thing that is also beginning to emerge was the interest the Weeks brothers and John C. Moore both had in making money in Texas; they weren’t just going for “safekeeping,” but also seeking profit. Examples include:

A visitor registration book from Avery Island also suggests that some members of the Weeks clan spent brief periods in 1862 with the Avery Family along Bayou Teche.3


  1. See also this letter.

  2. Ben Prescott to John Moore, September 11, 1863, Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations, Series I, Part 6, Reel 18, Frames 162-163.

  3. Register of Visitors at Petit Anse Island from 1859 to 1866, Avery Family Papers, Records of the Antebellum Southern Plantations, Series J, Part 5, Reel 11, Frame 874-885. Visits included ones from Harriet Weeks and Mrs. Alfred C. Weeks in June; from John Moore in July and September, when he was accompanied by Willis Prescott; and from Maggie Weeks and Alfred C. Weeks in September.