John Hampden Randolph

John Hampden Randolph (March 24, 1813 – September 1883) was a Louisiana slave owner and sugar planter. Born into an elite Virginia family, when his father was appointed to be a federal judge in the lower Mississippi River valley in 1823, Randolph moved with his parents to the then-remote Natchez District of the Mississippi Territory. Randolph may have worked as a slave trader to supplement his income as a cotton plantation owner. In the 1840s he moved across the Mississippi River to Louisiana where he entered the sugar business, eventually assembling an expensive sugar works and owning a large area of land in Iberville Parish. His four contiguous plantations were called Nottoway, Blythewood, Forest Home, and Bayou Goula. Most of the land was devoted to sugarcane cultivated by an enslaved labor force but the fields were interspersed with timberland and cypress swamp. Randolph became quite wealthy by the 1850s and commissioned a large, storybook mansion house at Nottoway. Three of his sons served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, one of whom was killed at the Siege of Vicksburg. Randolph's fortunes contracted after the war and he began selling off his land holdings for debt service. After Randolph died in 1883 his heirs sold the plantation house. It passed through two families before it was sold to businesspeople who marketed it as an event venue offering a "plantation style" setting. The "big house" at Nottoway was destroyed in a catastrophic fire in May 2025.