Vidal, Joseph

Joseph (Jose) Vidal was secretary to Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, the Spanish Governor of the Natchez District, 1792-1797. Vidal later became commandant of the Post of Concordia, in Spanish Louisiana. Samuel Davis, Vidal's son-in-law, was a planter, banker, and land speculator in Louisiana. Davis, in possible partnership with Vidal, owned Lake, Vidalia, Pittsfield, and Mirvin plantations in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. At one time, Davis was a director of the Planters' Bank in Natchez.

Francis Surget was a planter and land speculator whose extensive holdings in Louisiana and Arkansas and whose ownership of over 10,000 slaves made him one of the largest planters and slaveholders on the antebellum South. Dr. Robert Carter (Samuel Davis' son-in-law) owned Lake and Vidalia plantations in the 1860s.

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