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By 1780 the Dog River plantation belonged to Charles Orbanne Demouy who married Pierre Rochon's niece Marie Louise. The Demouys had eight children, five of whom lived to adulthood. The family lived part of the year at the plantation while maintaining a home in Mobile. Few changes occurred in daily plantation operations from the Rochon to the Demouy occupancies. Slaves continued to toil in the fields and tend cattle at the Dog River plantation, as well as at Demouy's plantation on the Tombigbee River. Demouy also had children by one of his slaves; this second family lived at the Tombigbee River plantation. Archaeological remains dating to the Demouy-era include a pieux en terre (post-in-ground) building (Structure 2) with attached fenced enclosures, a wooden palisade, and refuse pits located on the bluff edge. Other pits, postholes, fences, and erosion control barriers were found around the former Dog River bayou near the middle of the site. |
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The popular design on this sherd from a blue dash charger was attributed to potteries in London and Bristol from the 1730s to the 1760s. Fragments of this vessel were found in a pit dating to the Demouy occupation. |
| Another pit located on the edge of Dog River bluff contained refuse discarded during the Demouy occupation in the Spanish colonial period. Among the artifacts are Spanish colonial majolica, Westerwald stoneware, creamware, pearlware, glass beads, gunflints, lead shot, an iron latch, and iron barrel hoops. |  |
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These wooden remnants are all that is left of posts placed in a trench to form a wall or erosional barrier between the plantation home and the area occupied by slaves. The wood was preserved for nearly two centuries in the water-saturated soils of the former bayou of Dog River |
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