They were married in March of 1858. Penelope moved into the big house with her new husband and had borne him a daughter and a son by the time Louisiana voted to secede from the Union, and war was imminent. The master died before the first shots were fired, making Penelope the mistress of the plantation where her father had toiled his whole life. There was no time for either father or daughter to be pricked by the irony of the thing, for shortly thereafter, her daddy and brother were killed in combat, and Louis, her husband and father of her two children, died from scarlet fever, leaving young Penelope Deschamps the owner of a plantation she did not understand the mechanics of running and did not have the intelligence or patience to learn. Besides, Confederate soldiers were trashing the place, commandeering the big house and stealing silver and busting up chifforobes and bedposts for firewood. Seeing no way she was going to come out of this with even two pennies to her name, she contacted a lawyer in New Orleans and made a sale for a quarter of what the plantation was worth, then booked passage on the Magnolia for herself, her mother, her two children, and six of her favored slaves—a brother and sister, the sister’s husband, and their kids, who served as kitchen help and playmates for Penelope’s own children. The rest had been sold along with the plantation.