De Boré owned a large plantation a few miles upriver of New Orleans on the Mississippi River, which was annexed the city of New Orleans in 1870, and is now the site of Audubon Zoo, Tulane University, and Audubon Park. He, and more than 80 slaves of African and American descent, originally cultivated indigo on the land, but when this product lost its market as a result of competition from Guatemala during Spanish control of the colony, he ordered his fields converted to the production of sugar cane.