Helen Spyker & Spyker Farm

The 1725 acres of corn, soybeans, and timber in nearby Morehouse Parish have been planted and worked for nearly 160 years. They are one example of how a university’s greatest gifts might come from its friends, alumni, and supporters within the community. An institution’s main priority, in fact, is to benefit the community that supports it. For this reason, the university prides itself in these partnerships with those in the ULM family, each of whom have helped it strive for excellence.

The property’s origins stretch back to 1857 when planter, Leonidas Spyker, left his home at Hard Times Plantation in Bossier for Morehouse Parish. Spyker details the winter trek which took nearly three weeks to complete in his diary, one of the initial Spyker gifts to the university. Aside from the journey, the diary chronicles weather patterns, crop yields, and the goings-on of New Hope plantation. The diary even contains poetry; scrawled amid memos and figures on its first few pages. It is available for viewing at the ULM library.

New Hope flourished until the outbreak of the Civil War, which eventually “played havoc” with Spyker’s finances and forced him to once again relocate. He moved to New Orleans in 1861 and prospered there as a cotton broker (Spyker & Johnston, 349). Although Spyker resided there until his death, he kept New Hope intact, and it was inherited by his granddaughter, Pauline Spyker Johnston. It was Pauline who would later decide that the property should be donated to the university. In 1968, her estate passed to Helen Spyker, the family’s last remaining descendant, who honored her aunt’s wishes and left it to the ULM Foundation in 1980. The estate’s worth was estimated at $2.5 million dollars.