 La Pointe died in 1751, thereby allowing his daughter Marie-Josèphe and German son-in-law Hugo Ernestus Krebs to come into possession of the property.The property was maintained as a plantation during their ownership, and enslaved African labor was used to produce commodities such as rice and cotton.According to Anglo-Dutch traveler Bernard Romans, Krebs also created a roller cotton gin more than two decades before the invention of Eli Whitney's in 1793

The name Old Spanish Fort was derived during Spanish control of the Mississippi Territory in the late eighteenth century, when the structure served as a fortified home of Don Enrique Ginarest, an officer in the Spanish Army, who married the granddaughter of Hugo Krebs.