Excerpts from "Looking Back: A Narrative History of Bayou Chicot" by Mabel Alice Thompson, 1985, privately published (copy in LDS library). p. 238
Captain Sam Haas' old landmarks are now gone form old Bayou Chicot. With the tearing down of the old home this ends an era in time. This fine old home was built somewhere about 1880, and had four bedrooms, a large entrance hall, and a parlor downstairs. The kitchen and dining room were built off to the back having a porch to connect them to the main house. This was the usual way houses were built back in those days.
This house was named "Martha Manor" after Captain Sam Haas' wife, Martha Cole Haas. She was the daughter of John and Lavinia Hudson Cole, born in 1845. The house was built of heart pine, and had cypress siding on the outside. I noticed the length of the rafters when the house was being torn down, and was told that they were thirty-seven feet in length. There were eight large pillars or columns across the front, there were two large chimneys, one at either end of the house. One chimney had three fireplaces in it, and the other had two. There was a fireplace in the kitchen and dining areas also.
. . .Mrs. Haas' family, the Coles, were Huguenots coming originally from South Carolina and had come into this area before Sam Haas arrived. The Huguenots had lost their political freedom during the reign of Louis XIII. In 1685 they lost their freedom of worship. Thousands fled France to America, and many made their homes in Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and South Carolina.
. . . On the back porch of Martha Manor there was a large bell mounted up high, and when dinner was ready, Mrs. Haas or a servant rang this bell to let Captain Haas know it was time to come to dinner. He would close his office, and invite whoever was there to go dinner with him. He would close his office, and invite whoever was there to go to dinner with him. It was told that Mrs. Haas usually prepared a large meal as she never knew how many would be there. His store and house were about the distance of two or three city blocks apart.
Martha Cole Haas died in 1907, and it was told that Captain Haas would not let anyone touch a thing in the house, but wanted it left just as it was when she was living. Many told me that it was at the time of Mrs. Haas' funeral that they saw the first hearse they had ever seen, and drawn by two black horses.
There were no funeral parlors or undertakers except in large towns or cities and most people prepared their dead at home, they were most often buried in homemade coffins, and these were carried to the cemetery in a wagon.
