
Braithwaite Manor was a plantation located near Ragley, Beauregard Parish, Louisiana (20 miles north of Lake Charles, and southwest of Rhodes). Founded in 1779, it was owned by the Braithwaite family, a wealthy dynasty of Scottish-American settlers who became rivals with the Gray family after the American Civil War. In 1899, the rivalry was brought to an end when the Van der Linde Gang wiped out both families; Beau Gray and Penelope Braithwaite eloped to Boston, while matriarch Catherine Braithwaite and the others were massacred, and the Gray family was nearly destroyed after Dutch van der Linde and his gang betrayed them. Braithwaite Manor was derelict by 1907, and the Manor grounds were completely overgrown. Local fishermen formed a fishing community at the docks where the plantation workers once lived, building a home above the ruins.