Beary and Swartenbroek Family Papers

Thomas Beary was born in Rye, New York in 1853. He was educated in New York City and apprenticed to be a carpenter before moving to Louisiana in 1874. He became manager of Magnolia Grove Plantation (later known as Waubun Plantation), a position he would hold for nine years, and then became manager of Senator Edward Douglass White, Jr.’s plantation near Thibodaux, La. Thomas Beary also served as superintendent of the construction of the Lafourche Sugar Refinery (at the time one of the largest sugar refineries in the state), and subsequently served as its manager. James Beary (Thomas Beary’s brother) was born in 1863 and moved to Louisiana in 1879. He initially worked with his brother on Magnolia Grove Plantation before purchasing the Enterprise store and plantation in 1885. He later served as a justice of the peace, a member of the school board, and sheriff of Lafourche Parish.

Jean Camille Lieven Swartenbroek emigrated from Belgium to New Orleans in 1852, where he worked as a music professor. He later established a musical instruments business which failed during the 1870s. He married Felicia Margarita Romagosa, the daughter of a Terrebonne Parish farmer, and their daughter Laura Felicia Swartenbroek was born in New Orleans, La. Laura Swartenbroek married Thomas Beary in 1881. Their children were John Van Hal Beary (1883-1933) and Andrew Thomas Beary (1890-1953).

Biographical information taken from The Lafourche Country Volume III: Annals and Onwardness (Lafourche Heritage Society, 2010).