Three years of planning and fundraising to commemorate an obscure but major piece in America’s 250th celebration was wiped out in just three days.
The story starts before the American Revolution. The British built Fort Bute at the confluence of Bayou Manchac and the Mississippi River in 1766, exactly 10 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall.
Baton Rouge’s General Philemon Thomas chapters of the Sons and Daughters of American Revolution spent three years researching and fundraising to install the historical marker near the site of the British’s Fort Bute in the southernmost corner of East Baton Rouge Parish…