Bradshaw

Dear Grandpa: Making sugar like making cider

The success of the sugar industry in south Louisiana in the early 1800s made planters rich and attracted scores of young men seeking their fortunes to the Teche country. One of them was Joseph W. Lyman, a young doctor who moved from his native New Hampshire to Franklin in 1830 or 1831.

He was not a planter, but he soon became versed in the sugar cultivation of the day, which he described in a letter to his grandfather in March 1831. He said corn, sweet potatoes, melons, and other crops were grown in the area, but “since sugar making has become such a rage” planters “shamefully neglected” anything but cane.