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

• Alfred C. Weeks
• William F. Weeks
• Harriet Weeks
• Charles C. Weeks, m. Maggie Weeks
• David Weeks

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

• My Omeka collection on the Weeks Family
• Finding aid for John C. Moore Family Papers at LSU
• Weeks Family Collection, Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Planations, Series I, Part 6
• Weeks Family Papers, Records of Southern Plantations from Emancipation to the Great Migration, Series B, Part 6
• The Shadows-on-the-Teche historic site

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:

• John C. Moore reporting on hiring out wages around Houston
• Maggie writing that Ben Prescott has found “profitable business” by working a farm near Nacogdoches
• W. F. Weeks reporting in January 1864 on rates for hiring out slaves in Texas and prospects for Mexico trains.
• Discussion between John C. Moore and W. F. Weeks about whether it is too financially risky to run trains to Mexico

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