The Helaire family traces its history to the late 1700s and to two enslaved workers whose son, Helaire, was born at Oakland in 1809. After Emancipation he was known as Jean Baptiste Helaire, and with his wife Filis, or Phillis, he raised seven children and began a close family line that continues today. After the Civil War, several generations of the Helaires remained at Oakland as sharecroppers while also taking on many other kinds of work. Felix Helaire was a sharecropper, a blacksmith, and the operator of a small family cane syrup mill at his house, and Carrie, before marrying into the family, worked as the planter family's babysitter. Many members of the Helaire family still live in the Cane River area. The Shields family is tied to a cabin that reflects life in the Quarters from the mid-1950s to early 1960s and is one of the only examples in the United States of an original slave and tenant cabin furnished by former plantation residents. Former Oakland resident Elvin Shield helped furnish the cabin. Born on Melrose Plantation in 194?, he moved with his family to Oakland Plantation in 1954 to work as sharecroppers, while his mother and sister also worked as cooks. The Shields family lived in the two remaining cabin until 1962. After serving in Vietnam, Elvin married Betty Robinson and later became a Supervisory Mechanical Engineer for the National Guard at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Since retiring, he has volunteered at the park, sharing childhood experiences and demonstrating how to make the wire toys that entertained plantation children.