RESERVE
After Whitney and Ida married they lived in an area known as Dutch Bayou, it is still using this name. It got its name from a bayou which runs through the swamp northward into Blind River and eventually into Lake Marpaus. The community was just a stones throw from the sugar mill in Reserve.
The town of Reserve itself got its name in an unusual way. It seems that there was a traveling salesman that went up and down the German Coast selling wares to the plantations. Since there were no hotels/motels in those days it was common practice for the plantation owner to invite him to stay at the plantation house. On one occasion it is rumored the salesman was refused lodging and made a remark to the owner to "reserve this place because I will come back and be the owner." This salesman was a Frenchman named Leon Godchaux and he made his promise come true. He returned and not only purchased the plantation, but built a sugar mill, for processing sugar cane, but a sugar refinery that grew to be one of the largest in the world. The town was named Reserve because of his statement and the plantation was known as the Reserve Plantation. The sugar refinery, Godchaux Sugars , prospered well into the 1950's before the world economy changed.
Whitney and Ida built a house on a street named Old Cornland, because of its first use as a cornfield, and raised their family. The old homestead continues to be inhabited by one of their descendants. The house went through many changes in my lifetime, from cistern water to well water to public water. It went from a shotgun style house to a house very much like the houses of today. Doris, Bobby, Gerald Sr., and Susan were born in Reserve. All continue to live in the community today no more than 5 minutes away. Gerald Sr. married Ruth Lambert from Gramercy, La. , another sugar town. Gramercy
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