CARVILLE

1800's - Indian Camp - name referred to historic Houma (red) Indian's hunting and fishing ground located on this site some years earlier.  Their village was apparently located on the Mississippi River south of this site.

1825 - The site tract is purchased by Robert Coleman Camp on May 12.  His early farm or plantation was known as Woodlawn according to Persac's map of the Mississippi River published in 1858.

1857-1859 - Construction of the Center's Administration building-designed by the notable New Orleans architect Henry Howard, who also designed Nottoway Mansion and other Mississippi River Road historic plantation manor houses, located on Louisiana's famous Great River Road.

1860-1874 - General Robert C. Camp a Virginia-born planter commissions the construction of the plantation manor house, and brings his troops up from New Orleans for rest and relaxation on this site.

1894 - Louisiana meets the challenge of providing care for leprosy patients. The first seven patients are transported from New Orleans by river barge to what is then a deserted Indian Camp Plantation. The Louisiana State Legislature, with Dr. Isadore Dyer, a dermatologist and leprologist from Tulane University medical school, establishes the Control Board for the Louisiana Leper Home at Carville, Louisiana, "a place of refuge, not reproach; a place of treatment and research, not detention."

1896 - Dr. Dyer and Mother Mariana contract an agreement for, "the nursing of the patients and the household management," of the Louisiana Home.  Four Catholic Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul from Emmitsburg, Maryland arrive to provide care for the patients at the Louisiana Home under the leadership and charge of Sister Beatrice Hart.

1905-1916 - State of Louisiana purchases the property and its contents in December of 1905.  The state at this time provided custodial care for the patients.  The state funds the first "Home" for patients in the United States.  Many building improvements and the first covered walkways at the "Home" are constructed.

1916 - John Early, a patient from the Louisiana Home goes to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress, as to the need for a United States Hospital for Leprosy.  His belief is that a Hospital and Research facility can offer the patients hope, instead of just custodial care in a remote place away from society.

1917 - On February 3, an Act is established for a National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana.  Senate Bill number 4086, initiated by William M. Danner, from the American Leprosy Missions, Rupert Blue, MD, Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service and Senator Joseph E. Ransdell, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and National Quarantine, becomes a reality.

1920 - The "Home" is sold by the State of Louisiana to the United States Federal Government for $35,000.

1921 - The United States Public Health Service (USPHS) takes  operational control and the 'Home' becomes the United States Marine Hospital Number 66...The National Leprosarium of the United States