Prominent Louisiana sugar planter and refugee to Texas during the war, sometimes known as “Bud” to family members. He married Mary Gorham Palfrey in 1846, and he is a central character in the postbellum Weeks and Family papers. Also known as “Bud” in family correspondence. See also Weeks Family.

Before the Civil War

By the 1850s, Weeks “stood at the vanguard of an industry that combined technology, science, expert management, and slave labor.”¹ His over 200 slaves, 2,000 acres of land, and steam-powerd sugar mill were centered in St. Mary Parish around Grand Cote Island, which later became known as Weeks Island, and his plantation at Cypre Mort. “Like many of his sugar-master brethren, Weeks combined personal industriousness with the capital required for modernization and technical improvement.”²

During the Civil War

Weeks and his siblings were apparently able to get the 1861 sugar crop harvested, but had difficulty getting it to market. In January 1862, William and Alfred C. Weeks bought a steamboat to run sugar over to Houston, though they were disappointed at the return profits.³

In May 1863, William was still near home in New Iberia with his mother, and able to report to his step-father John C. Moore about the impact of Yankee movements in the area. “A vast number of negroes have gone off with the Yankees,” he wrote, adding that the departure of the federal forces had left area residents in “a curious position, being neither Confederates nor federals, that is in point of law.”⁴

Sometime shortly thereafter, however, it appears that Weeks was able to take almost thirty enslaved men to Houston “and obtained a contract to furnish X ties to the Rail road at 65 each cutting them along side of the track lining not more than 100 yards to haul and deliver,” and at favorable rates of $40 a month for the hire of the men.⁵ He may have then taken a larger train of slaves to Texas later in July.⁶ Two of these enslaved men, Marcellus and Lit, belonging to Alfred C. Weeks, had been impressed but managed to get off “on the ground of ill health,” in the case of Marcellus and on the ground of age in the case of Lit, who “got off by insisting that he was over 50 years old.” He hoped to place these and other slaves on shares in Texas, thereby putting the cost of provisioning them on the owners of the land instead of assuming it himself.⁷

As late as February 1864, he was still hiring out at least some slaves to the military for coopering.⁸ And another letter in February 1864, written from Houston, indicates that two of his enslaved men (who appear to have been working as part of an impressed gang by the government, though the letter is hard to read) had escaped.⁹

Letters from this period indicate that Weeks may have made an arrangement with Robert Mills to hire out his slaves in the Houston area, perhaps to railroads, the military, local planters, or all of the above. Mills’s prominent merchant and banking firm provided letters of introduction for Weeks to J. S. Sullivan in Richmond, Texas, and M. S. Stith, near Wharton, in October 1863. By May 1864, Weeks and his brother Alfred C. Weeks had hired sixteen enslaved men to the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, which was credited by the Confederate Labor Bureau towards their impressment quota.¹⁰ Weeks’s relationship with the railroad appears to have given him some kind of detail exemption, for he told his wife in September 1864 that he feared leaving the state: “I am all right as long as I stay in Texas, with the military, but I fear my position is not soo good if I leave the state. I have to get a leave of absence from the president of the road to go any where.”¹¹

Weeks’s exact whereabouts in these months is uncertain, as it appears that he travelled regularly between Houston, Huntsville, Waverly, Navasota, Starrville (where Maggie Weeks was temporarily living), and Louisiana. He continued his connection with Mills, advising his step-father in January to “address me here [in Houston] care R. & D. G. Mills.” According to an 1864 letter from C. C. Weeks, he was by then renting a place near Huntsville.¹² But he is also sometimes mentioned as having a “cottage” in Gentry Station on the railroad, which is where Harriet Weeks came to visit him in the late spring of 1864.¹³ In January 1864, Weeks was contemplating getting his teams prepared to go to Mexico to buy cloth and take it back, but was also planning to attempt to accompany Harriet Weeks back into Louisiana around February 1.¹⁴

Meanwhile, by May 1864, Weeks had somewhere (either in New Iberia or in Texas) managed to raise “about 500 acres of very fine corn” and “about 100 acres of cotton.”¹⁵ He reported an abundant corn crop at one of his Texas places, which he proposed to use to fatten hogs to lay up bacon. His cotton had not fared as well because of a late attack of worms, but Weeks was confident enough about the value of investing in cotton that he told Moore he would look for a suitable place in Texas where the Magill estate slaves might be hired to cultivate cotton the next year. He also reported on a large amount of cloth spun with looms on his own place.¹⁶

In October 1864, Weeks told John Moore that “I am doing very well so far, the R. Road furnishes me in beef at price $70 to $150 each” which they were able to get through “the quarter master or military authorities.” He also believed he would soon be able to help Moore, who was without meat and money in DeSoto, because “the R. R. Company owes us between $15 & 20,000 which should be paid in new issue and will be, as soon as they can get it.”¹⁷ Yet on the same day, he told his wife, who had apparently written of his good luck, that

I cannot think what you mean by my good luck. I have had none, have made nothing here but a little Confederate money, and not enough of that to buy me a suit of clothes. I have no cotton on the Colorado except a few bales say about 25, the product of the labor of a few hands I sent there during the cotton picking season. There are but three negroes on the Colorado who were impressed by the Govt and were sent back to the place they had been previously hired; being inconvenient to get them away, they were hired for the balance of the year at about $10 per month. Joe Coleman is the only negro any of us have in San Antonio except Marcellus, who is with Col. White free of charge. Joe hires for $20 per month. So you see I am doing nothing and have not made gold enough to buy medicine for the negroes.

I am not, have not been, nor do I expect to be interested in any blockade runner. The only gold which has come into the possession of any of our men was received by A. C. Weeks for two negroes he sold for six hundred dollars. He did not buy a pound of [cotton?] nor any thing else. If any one thinks they can come to Texas and make gold easily, let them come and try it. I am very much worried at this report & I will write to [Alfred] to correct it as I hope you will do in the most positive manner. Within the last two weeks I have bought 40 bales of cotton, which I want to take to Matamoras, in the hope that I may be able to get what Charly would call supplies for my family. This little affair is my own entirely, no one else has anything to do with it. If I succeed you will hear all about it, and you may always feel certain that you will know more about my affairs than any one else & if you dont know of any good luck which may befall me you may know there is nothing in it. I have no pleasure which is not shared by you to some extent.¹⁸

It is difficult to reconcile this with his more optimistic letter to Moore on the same day, but he may be trying to assuage some anger in Mary who had apparently heard that he had specie on hand. “I have given you a hurried account of my operations,” he concluded, “enough at any rate to convince you that neither I nor [Alfred? or Lilly? or Lis, short for Lewis? or Alfred C. Weeks’s enslaved man Lit?] have made any specie. The only specie which I have is fifty cents given me by Mrs Huff. I might sell negroes for it, but I do not like that way of getting it.”¹⁹

Mary had apparently also been expressing concern about the health of one of the slave men, which gave Weeks a “hearty laugh.” He may be trying to reassure her that all is well. In a later letter he explains that while some of “the negroes” were hired nominally for specie, usually the hirer always came up with some excuse not to have it. That was why “we have not received specie enough to buy medicines.” Mary had also written that another enslaved woman, Ellen, had said she was “dissatisfied,” but Weeks found this hard to believe given her situation in Houston, where “she has the best & easiest place in Houston.” The cotton crop was a failure.²⁰

Towards the end of the war, in March 1865, he contracted with Henry W. Allen, Governor of Louisiana, to use “his twenty or teams exclusively in hauling cotton for the State to San Antonio with privilege of back freight at his own option.”²¹

After the War

On January 2, 1866, Weeks was in Gentry Station on his way to Polk and Walter counties “to settle up my business there,” apparently related to the ginning of cotton. He continued to maintain business relationships with consignment merchants in Texas like C. S. Longcope, Robert Mills, and others, who handled the sale of cotton grown on estates that he either owned or rented—which is unclear to me right now.

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