EVERYBODY LOVES A PARADE

EVERYBODY LOVES A PARADE -- CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

by Anne Butler

Nothing says Christmas to an excited child more than a parade, especially a safe small-town one like St. Francisville’s popular Christmas in the Country parade the first Saturday each December, complete with marching bands and decorated floats, Santa resplendent in his sleigh and important local officials in convertibles throwing lots and lots of candy. And right out there with all the excited children catching that candy, every year for the three decades this celebration has opened the holiday season in the Felicianas, is Ms. Fay Daniel, owner of one of St. Francisville’s iconic downtown shops. 

It’s not that Ms. Fay is exactly a child, but she doesn’t know that, and no one has the heart to tell her. So she keeps anticipating Christmas and celebrating the season with that childlike exuberance and sense of wonder that make the holidays so magical, regardless of age. In her timeless shop, The Shanty Too, purveyor of “gifts and fancy goods” for those same three decades, she loves to share that excitement, with a holiday open house, spectacular decorations, and great shopping. She has also had a hand in planning and executing Christmas in the Country and its parade since the very beginning, many years as the overall chairperson and always the most enthusiastic supporter.

Of course, the parade has grown considerably in three decades (haven’t we all??). Highlight of a weekend designed to draw holiday shoppers into downtown St. Francisville, it started inauspiciously in the late 1970s with a few hay-filled flatbed trailers pulled by farm trucks or tractors, Scout groups trudging along on foot, a couple of costumed Historical Society stalwarts wobbling along on bicycles, and an earlier generation of politicians flinging tootsie rolls from pickups. Everybody who could beg, borrow or steal a horse rode in the parade, which turned out to be a bad idea and was halted in the interest of safety after a few hair-raising runaways. No one had any idea who would actually show up to participate, so the parade was always a surprise even to its organizers, at least until the Women’s Service League took over the project and set some tasteful guidelines.

But even in those early, simple years, St. Francisville’s holiday parade and its ever-expanding roster of wonderful little shops drew crowds. Because, you see, Christmas in St. Francisville, historically the commercial center of surrounding English Louisiana cotton plantations, has always been a magical time. In the 19th century, country folks from miles around would pile into wagons to do their weekly shopping in the little town’s dry-goods emporiums that offered everything from buggies to coffins, gents’ fine furnishings and ladies’ millinery. And at Christmas time, tiny tots would press their noses against frosted storefront windows like those at The Shanty Too to gaze with wistful longing at elegant china dolls and wooden rocking horses.

It’s still that way today, and the historic little rivertown’s Christmas in the Country celebration on December 3, 4, and 5, pays tribute to its heritage and showcases its continuing vitality as the center of culture and commerce for the entire surrounding region. As Fay Daniel says, “We have some really nice stores here, and the shop owners work hard to keep them fresh and up to date.”

Millions of tiny white lights trace soaring Victorian trimwork and grace gallery posts to transform the entire town into a veritable winter wonderland for Christmas in the Country, as special activities throughout the extensive National Register-listed downtown Historic District provide fun for the whole family at this celebration of the season, a joyful alternative to mall madness.   The Saturday parade this year has the theme “SaintSational Christmas,” celebrating not only the championship WhoDat Nation but also the local West Feliciana High School teams, also called the Saints, and riding in the parade and reliving former glory will be several generations of sports heroes, cheerleaders, dancers and homecoming queens.

Beginning at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3, Santa Claus comes to town to kick off the Lighting Ceremony of the Town Christmas Tree, followed by a public reception and fireworks display at Town Hall hosted by jovial longtime St. Francisville Mayor Billy D'Aquilla and featuring performances by the First Baptist Church Children’s Choir and West Feliciana Middle School Choir.   From 6 to 8, visitors have the rare opportunity to glimpse beautifully decorated interiors of participating houses along Ferdinand and Royal Streets’ Peep Into Our Holiday Homes. The Baton Rouge Symphony presents its annual concert of seasonal selections and dessert reception beginning at 7 p.m. at Hemingbough; tickets are available at the Bank of St. Francisville.

Saturday, Dec. 4, begins with a 7:30 a.m. Community Prayer Breakfast at United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall just off Royal St., followed by Breakfast with St. Nick for children at Jackson Hall next to Grace Church at 8, 9:30 and 11 a.m., sponsored by the Women’s Service League (reservations recommended; call 225-721-3563).  The Women’s Service League also sells fresh wreaths and pre-wrapped Plantation Country Cookbooks all weekend on Ferdinand St. next to the library, with proceeds benefiting local civic and charitable activities.

Throughout the day Saturday there will be children’s activities--spacewalk and obstacle course,  pictures with Santa—plus the Main Street Band (noon to 2), handmade crafts and food vendors in oak-shaded Parker Park.  There will also be entertainment in various locations throughout the downtown historic district, featuring choirs, dancers, musicians, and other performers. 

The angelic voices of the Bains Lower Elementary children's choir—Voices in Motion-- are raised at the West Feliciana Historical Society Museum on Ferdinand St. at 9:30. The Bain Elementary Chorus sings at the Methodist Church Fellowship Hall at 9:15, followed by West Feliciana High School's very popular Latin and Spanish Clubs (10:30 a.m.) and the high school choir (11).  At 11:30 on Ferdinand St. the Junior Jazzercise group puts on a lively show, followed by a Shin Sun Korean Martial Arts demonstration. From 10 to 2 the Sweet Adelines’ Lyrical Quartet strolls and sings along Ferdinand and Royal Sts., while the Angola Inmate Traveling Band from Louisiana State Penitentiary performs across from Garden Symposium Park from noon to 4. The children’s musical program called A Joyful Noise performs at 12:15 at Town Hall.

Saturday’s highlight, of course, is the colorful 2 p.m. Christmas parade sponsored by the Women’s Service League. The parade features several grand marshalls, including Jimmy Heidel of the original 1967 New Orleans Saints team, and Darren Coates, local high school grad who went on to be named MVP of the infamous Bayou Classic as a member of the Southern University football team.  Dozens of gaily decorated parade floats vie for coveted prizes, accompanied by cheerleaders, bands, bagpipes, vintage cars, marching ROTC units and dancers. Santa rides resplendent in a magnificent sleigh pulled by Louisiana State Penitentiary's immense prized Percheron draft horses, groomed and gleaming in the sunlight with their sleigh bells jingling. 

The parade lines up on Royal St. and traverses Ferdinand and Commerce Streets, so don’t plan on driving through downtown St. Francisville mid-afternoon. At 6 p.m. on Saturday, the United Methodist Church on Royal St. hosts a Community Sing-a-long, while the First Baptist Church on US 61 at LA 10 sponsors its very popular Live Nativity from 6 to 8 p.m., reminding of the reason for the season.

In addition, Saturday evening from 6 to 8, visitors are welcomed for candlelight tours, period music and wassail at Audubon State Historic Site on LA Hwy. 965, where artist-naturalist John James Audubon tutored the daughter of plantation owners and painted many of his famous bird studies in the early 1820's. This historic home never looks lovelier than in the soft romantic glow of the candles that were its only illumination for its early years. During the day from 10 to 4, the historic site observes its annual holiday festival.

Christmas in the Country activities continue on Sunday, December 5, with in-town activities augmented by a Christmas Tour of Homes presented from noon to 5 by the Friends of the Library, showcasing carefully selected contemporary homes; tickets are available at the West Feliciana Historical Society museum and at the library both before and on the day of the tour.

The enthusiastic sponsors of Christmas in the Country are the downtown merchants, and the real focus of the weekend remains the St. Francisville area's marvelous little shops, which go all out, hosting Open Houses with refreshments and entertainment for shoppers while offering spectacular seasonal decorations and great gift items.  A variety of quaint little shops occupy historic structures throughout the downtown area and spread into the outlying district, each unique in its own way, and visitors should not miss a single one. 

From the rich Victoriana of The Shanty Too, for thirty years the anchor of the downtown business community and always noted for eyecatching Christmas decorations, to the jewelry beautifully crafted from vintage buttons at Grandmother's Buttons, and the incredibly extensive selections of carefully chosen gift and decorative items at Hillcrest Gardens and Sage Hill Gifts, downtown St. Francisville is filled with fine shopping opportunities.  Potter Michael Miller, photographer Toni Ladnier and artists Herschel Harrington and Joe Savell (Backwoods Gallery) have studios displaying their own works, while the St. Francisville Art & Antiques, Avondale Antiques, Bohemianville Antiques, and the newly opened A Few of My Favorite Things shop  feature vintage collectibles and fine furnishings. The Wine Parlor in the St. Francisville Inn has a sale on gift bottles of fine wines, Birdman Books & Coffee has an eclectic selection of books, and Belle Glen Traditions stocks children’s toys plus sports memorabilia and gift items. Ins-N-Outs and Coyote Creek nurseries carry live seasonal plants to complement any decorating scheme. The tourist information center/museum in the West Feliciana Historical Society headquarters on Ferdinand St. has a great selection of books, notecards and prints, plus free maps showing locations of all of the other retail outlets, local plantations, restaurants and accommodations.

On the outskirts of town, intrepid shoppers won't want to miss the exquisite creations at Patrick’s Fine Jewelry, the fleur-de-lis decorative pieces at Elliott’s Pharmacy and an extensive collection of the latest in electronics at Radio Shack in Spring Creek Shopping Center, as well as Border Imports with huge selections of Mexican pottery, ironwork and concrete statuary on US 61 north.  Most of the plantations in the St. Francisville area have gift shops, and a visit to those would permit enjoyment of spectacular seasonal decorations as well. Restaurants and B&Bs in the area offer gift certificates to extend the giving throughout the year.

Located on US Highway 61 on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge, LA, and Natchez, MS, the St. Francisville area is a year-round tourist destination, but visitors find it especially enjoyable in the winter when the glorious 19th-century gardens are filled with blooming camellias.  A number of splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours daily: the Cottage Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, the Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens seasonally. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs.

The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and antiques shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area serving everything from soul food to Chinese and Mexican cuisine, seafood and classic Louisiana favorites. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register-listed historic district, and there are also modern motel accommodations for large bus groups.

For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities, including the lively monthly third Saturday morning Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

Fall - St. Francisville, 200yrs.

YELLOW LEAF FESTIVAL HERALDS FALL IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

by Anne Butler


Fall in the Feliciana hills has traditionally been heralded by cooling temperatures, yellowing leaves, and the rumble of big ol’ farm trucks hauling the sweet potato harvest to the cannery near the banks of the Mississippi River below St. Francisville. For decades in the mid- to late-20th century, potatoes were the main cash crop supporting many a small farmer, whose wife often found seasonal employment on the assembly lines of the canning plant. Today there are only a few tenacious potato farmers left, so the 8th annual Yellow Leaf Arts Festival on Saturday and Sunday, October 30 and 31, from 10 to 5 in historic downtown St. Francisville’s Parker Park, pays tribute to the past significance of this staple crop in a region whose economics and way of life were once completely dependent on agriculture.


It was in the early 1940s that Harry Daniel teamed with the LSU Horticulture Department to initiate commercial sweet potato production in the St. Francisville area, where the rich soil proved perfect for the cultivation of yams that were sold locally to Princeville Canning Company, which was replaced by Joan of Arc. Big farm operations like the Daniel family planted over a thousand acres and employed a hundred workers, and small farmers contracted with the cannery for the yield on smaller plots which were often worked with mules. When the local packing houses and cannery were in full operation, at least 2500 acres in the St. Francisville area were planted in sweet potatoes, with seed potatoes set out in early spring to produce the slips planted in early summer and harvested in early fall.


Yes, the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival will feature artists, more than 50 of them, but a special adjunct this year will be the mini-Sweet Potato Festival, with 40-pound crates of freshly harvested potatoes, a bake sale offering a nostalgic taste of sweet potato dishes like fries and muffins and casseroles and the pies without which no holiday dinner would be complete, even a couple of real live oldtimers reminiscing about growing this crop back in the fifties. There will also be a booth featuring sweet potato creations---culinary or craft---with everyone encouraged to bring anything made with a sweet potato, and there might even be a giant sweet potato strolling the grounds. This mini-fest is the brainchild of hardworking Jerry Landrum, who still grows Beauregard, Evangeline and Puerto Rican sweet potatoes as well as tomatoes and all the other row crops that make him a popular fixture at the local farmers’ market.



But just as the fertile fields nourished the potato crop, so the scenic landscapes of the St. Francisville area have nurtured artists of all stripes, beginning in the 1820s when artist-natural John James Audubon was so inspired by the natural beauties of the region that he painted a number of his Birds of America studies while tutoring the daughter of the plantation family at Oakley. This year’s Yellow Leaf Arts Festival brings together more than 50 artists and craftsmen showcasing their artworks.



Demonstrating in the Gazebo will be this year’s featured artist Murrell Butler, nationally recognized wildlife and landscape painter whose exacting detail and keen eye, natural talent and long years of naturalist studies give rise to comparisons of his wonderful works with those of Audubon. Of course scenes from his native Louisiana have long inspired this homegrown artist, but lately travels through the southwest and down into South and Central America have broadened his interests and have led to large landscapes featuring such scenes as an Ecuadoran volcano and the brilliantly colored toucans and other birds of the Rainforest. Butler will have prints and originals on display for the festival, which this year has the theme “Louisiana Wildlife.”



Other artists displaying their works at this festival sponsored by the local Arts For All organization, with support from the Bank of St. Francisville and St. Francisville Main Street, include painters Lyn Lokey and Martha Singer, Lisa Horn, Jane Dedon, Dody Sandifer, A.J. Spinks, Julie Kraft, Jo Busse, Kathy Chasee, and folk artist Deborah McNeal; potters Dee Lewis, Rocky Broome, Susan Rodrigue, Craig Roth, Barry and Terry Galloway; jewelry designers Catherine Rouchon, Lynette Costanza, Vero Orsinger, Lisa Lapeyrouse, Teresa Bass Lambert, Karuna Spoon, Becky Baker, Judy Tanner; candlemakers Camp Topisaw and Connie Dubois; furniture maker Wendell Dietz. There will also be wooden bowls from Dunbar McCurley and Lambert Louviere; birdhouses made by Tommy Myers and Joe and Doris Arabie; clothing and fabric art by Suzanne Holland, Debbie Ardoin, Ze and Courtney Huff; crafts by Henrietta Addison; owls by Chris Roldan; mobiles by Carolyn Weir; Margie Blake’s art glass; and Salongo Lee’s photographs. Also participating will be Holly Shoemake’s girl scout troop, the youth group from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Voices in Motion singing at 11 and an impromptu acoustic song circle at 3.



As if this were not enough, new this year will be another adjunct to the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival, just across the intersection, where the first Magnolia Faux Blood Music Festival at the picturesque 3-V Tourist Court will feature such popular performers as internationally known roots-rock artist Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express at Magnolia Café Saturday evening, with Jace Everett sitting in with the band and Lee Barber opening. On Sunday Darryl Hance’s three-piece blues rock band opens at 11 a.m., followed by the Texas old-school country swing band of Mike Stinson, then the roots-rock country sounds of Bill Davis and another performance by Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express. Jace Everett closes the evening with country songs. While the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival and Sweet Potato Celebration are both open free of charge, the Mag Music Festival charges admission, $20 single day, $30 two-day pass.



The month of October is filled with a huge variety of other activities and events as well. On Friday, October 15, and Saturday, October 16, the twenty-second annual Southern Garden Symposium presents a series of workshops bringing in gardening enthusiasts from across the South to bask in the beauties of the glorious antebellum gardens for which the St. Francisville area is justly famous. Programs feature hands-on demonstrations and talks on such widely divergent subjects as the preservation of the Rosedown Gardens and the botanical secrets of the Amazon Rainforest, plus lunch at Afton Villa Gardens, tea at The Cabildo, and Friday evening Speaker’s Gala at The Oaks. For information see www.SouthernGardenSymposium.or or call 225-635-3738.



The active St. Francisville Main Street program gets everyone into the Halloween spirit on Friday, October 22, in oak-shaded Parker Park, beginning at 5:30 p.m. with fun children’s pumpkin decorating followed at dark by the Movie Under the Stars called Monsters vs. Aliens; bring lawnchairs and blankets. Pumpkins will be provided, but you can get more at the Farmer’s Market on Thursday and Saturday mornings all month, as well as at the Klein Farms Pumpkin Patch on LA 965. This is fitting prelude to Friday, October 29, Saturday, October 30, and Sunday, October 31, when the Myrtles Plantation hosts its chilling Halloween extravaganza through a spooky historic house called one of America’s most haunted. The Audubon State Historic Site also observes the holiday on October 29 with an All Hallows Eve interactive program on Halloween superstitions and traditions of the 1800s, while the Rosedown Plantation State Historic site dons mourning garb to recreate a family funeral of the early 19th century.



And there’s more! Every Sunday in October the Louisiana State Penitentiary on LA 66 at Angola puts on “The Wildest Show in the South,” with prisoner hobbycraft sales, tons of food, and hair-raising rodeo events guaranteed to be unlike any you’ve ever seen at any other rodeo. Other than the ladies’ barrel racing, all rodeo participants are inmates in this enormous maximum-security prison. The covered arena seats over 10,000 and fills up every Sunday; with road construction along US Highway 61, visitors should pack plenty of patience to cope with traffic congestion. Grounds open at 9 for the arts and crafts, and the fascinating state museum at the entrance gate will also be open. The rodeo starts at 2, and advance tickets are a must. Prison website at www.angolarodeo.com provides information and spells out regulations which must be observed on prison property.



While October generally offers the most pleasant weather, St. Francisville is a year-round tourist destination area featuring a number of splendidly restored plantation homes open for tours daily: The Cottage Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, The Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens seasonally. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs.



The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, horseback riding with rental mounts from Cross Creek Stables. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and antiques shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area serving everything from soul food to Chinese and Mexican cuisine, seafood and classic Louisiana favorites. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register-listed historic district, and there are also modern motel accommodations for large bus groups.



For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities, including the lively monthly third Saturday morning Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

ANIMALS Remind of St. Francisville’s History

ANIMALS Remind of St. Francisville’s History
By Anne Butler
Since the dawn of history, animals have played vital roles in the development of civilization, as food and furs, as beasts of burden, as comrades and pets. Imagine the early colonists, if you will, enduring months-long ocean voyages in cramped quarters with the fowl and pigs and goats they needed to start a new life in a new world (remind anyone of their last cruise??), or the conquistadors with their warhorses and cattle that became the ancestors of many of our wild mustangs and longhorns. Not only in peacetime did animals contribute; the National World War II Museum in New Orleans currently has an exhibit saluting the four-legged and feathered friends’ significant security roles in campaigns on the Home Front and across the European Theater as well.

A turkey named Gus welcomes visitors to the museum at Audubon State Historic Site.

Today animals continue to contribute in unique ways as visitors are welcomed to the St. Francisville, LA, area, especially on the historic plantations open for daily tours, where costumed human hosts often find themselves upstaged. This is especially so at the Oakley house, center of the Audubon State Historic Site. In a beautifully preserved pastoral setting where artist-naturalist John James Audubon painted many of his Birds of America studies in 1821, it is particularly fitting that the Wal-Mart greeter is a gregarious gobbler named Gus. Discovered as a feathered foundling abandoned at the front gate, Gus is a gorgeous broadbreasted bronze turkey who serves as the unofficial mascot of the historic site, welcoming guests in front of the museum in friendly fashion. Visitors, say site managers, “either love him or freak out,” but Gus is the most photographed icon at Oakley. Other animals on-site include a couple of cows named Daisy and Buttercup, some old-fashioned geese and chickens, a peacock and a few cats, giving guests a feel for the farm animals so important in the 19th century; Prissy the pig has unfortunately passed on.

The St. Francisville area’s other major state historic site is gorgeous 1830s Greek Revival Rosedown Plantation, where the emphasis is on the glorious gardens and the only present-day animals are a dozen or so chickens, while the lovely landscaped grounds of nearby Hemingbough are graced by a flock of peacocks, the most popular being an albino one the owner calls, naturally, Whitey.

Farm Animal at Oakley House

Butler Greenwood Plantation, established in the late 1700s by members of the same family in residence today, also boasts a friendly roving peacock called Humphrey, whose colorful tail feathers are much in demand during molting season. Humphrey, typically vain, likes to admire himself in shiny surfaces---car bumpers, French doors, and even the bubble skylights above some of the B&B cottage Jacuzzis, giving bathers a thrill until they realize the preening peacock atop their roof is looking at his own reflection rather than at them. As the only resident peacock, Humphrey is relatively quiet, but on occasion lets out a screech shrill enough that one New Orleans visitor exclaimed, “Oh my God! Is that a gorilla??”   Butler Greenwood also has ducks, a friendly dog, and an assortment of outside cats including one whose initial homeliness was compensated for with the elegant name of Eudora Rose and another that is half bobcat.

At historic 1790s Cottage Plantation, guests are greeted by a little yellow Labrador retriever named Tara, unfailingly eager to escort visitors on excursions across the extensive grounds and across the creek into the surrounding unspoiled woodlands. While Tara jumps into the pond to gobble the food thrown to the pet mallard, a previous lab had the strange habit of actually fetching the duck itself out of the water and burying it in the ground with only its head sticking out, quacking for dear life! Just up US 61 above The Cottage, Wakefield Plantation, now a private residence, is surrounded by a picturesque herd of registered longhorn cattle whose lean meat is recommended by the cardiologist-owner as far healthier than other fat-laden beef beloved by less health-conscious consumers today.

Longhorns at Wakefield Plantation

Early Louisiana author Lyle Saxon included in his 1929 book Old Louisiana a description of the hallways at Acadia Plantation where 9 pointers and setters slept until summoned to go hunting. Said Saxon, “All day long there would be growls and yelps as their tails were stepped upon, for it was nearly impossible to go from room to room without stepping on some sleeping animal. But the dogs must have been strangely good-natured, for no one was ever bitten.” Sounds like Catalpa Plantation, where instead of herds of cattle, the soft-hearted owner today has a milling herd of dogs, many of them friendly drop-offs or salvaged strays.

Greenwood Plantation tourists and overnight guests enjoy gazing at the horses and the Beefmaster-mix cattle in the adjacent pastures, and there’s a popular green-eyed black cat named Sam. Nearby, the former Angola Plantation now is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where there are large herds of beef cattle and  horses, some used as mounts for the correctional officers patrolling  farm fields as inmates work the crops and others bred to pull the heavy farm wagons and equipment. Among the most popular features of St. Francisville’s annual Christmas parade are Angola’s immense Percherons pulling Santa’s sleigh, coats gleaming and harness bells jingling. Angola’s canine population works, too, with bloodhounds bred to track escapees and also often used to locate lost or missing persons in nearby rural areas; there’s also one very scary-looking wolf-dog.

Mary Thompson of Catalpa Plantation and one of her several dogs.

Of course at The Myrtles, which bills itself as “America’s most haunted house,” there have been sightings of spirit animals. The longtime tour director recounts stories of a smokey grey cat called Myrt with a disfigured face, who returned after death to haunt the grounds, never showing up in photographs but immediately recognized by return visitors because of the unusual facial characteristics. And then there was the big white dog, remarkably similar to one said to have been owned by a turn-of-the-century resident, spotted by contemporary visitors. Said the tour director, “If the dog had been seen on the grounds, it might have been passed off as one from the neighborhood. But to see it inside in the hallway??? And then it would disappear…”

These resident domestic creatures serve as reminders of the important roles animals played in the early years---the hunting dogs and barn cats and mousers, the sleek coach horses and walking horses carrying plantation owners across their fields, the sturdy stubborn mules pulling plows and farm wagons loaded with cotton or cane, the strong oxen hauling huge trees felled in the forests for building, the dairy and beef cattle providing milk and meat and hides, the practical poultry and more decorative fowl adding beauty to 19th-century landscapes and plumage to decorate ladies’ bonnets, the pigs and goats and sheep and all the other reminders of the days when plantations were self-sufficient entities raising all the necessities of life right on the place.
They serve as perfect introductions to the St. Francisville area, which features a number of splendidly restored plantation homes open for tours daily: The Cottage Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, The Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens seasonally. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs.

Peacok at Hemingbough.

The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, horseback riding with rental mounts from Cross Creek Stables. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and antiques shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area serving everything from soul food to Chinese and Mexican cuisine, seafood and classic Louisiana favorites. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register-listed historic district, and there are also modern motel accommodations for large bus groups. The month of September features some fun special events in the St. Francisville area, including the popular Vibes in the ‘Ville on Saturday, September 25, filling oak-shaded Parker Park with an afternoon music festival featuring everything from blues to bluegrass, plus a kids’ kazoo parade. That same weekend, the Audubon State Historic Site celebrates the bicentennial of the West Florida Rebellion with military encampments, period crafts, live music, vintage dancing, and lectures by noted scholars. For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities, including the lively monthly third Saturday morning Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com

ST. FRANCISVILLE’S QUIRKY LITTLE BIRDMAN

by Anne Butler
There’s one in every town, that favored gathering spot where townsfolk come together to hear the news, share joys and sorrows, castigate crooked politicians and, particularly for the lonely, enjoy a therapeutic touch of socialization. These gatherings used to take place around potbellied stoves in old general stores, where whiskered whittlers sat on three-legged stools and told tall tales while the womenfolk crossed creaking wood floors to gossip over bolts of calico or barrels of flour. Today in urban areas, these gathering spots seem to be the ubiquitous but far less atmospheric Starbucks or CC’s.

But in the quaint little 19th-century rivertown of St. Francisville, Louisiana, there’s no question that this significant central role is filled by the colorfully quirky Birdman Books and Coffee, right in the middle of historic uptown and entrenched in the hearts of visitors and residents both young and old.

During the dog days of summer, patrons of the Birdman follow the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.” And indeed this is an unhurried place, a place to ease into the day, a place to give the gift of time and a sympathetic ear to those with burdens or triumphs or special news or knowledge to share. Sit down. Take it easy. Sip your cappuccino or your healing chamomile tea. Savor the experience, savor the repast, savor the conversation. That’s what it’s really all about at Birdman--the conversation, the communion, the coming together of longtime friends and complete strangers. This is the spot to see into the soul of St. Francisville, the heart of the community.

This isn’t a fancy place. It’s cozy, comfortable, welcoming. Owner Lynn Wood is a creative soul, an artist around whom the local creative community coalesces. The walls are hung with original artworks, often her own, and an eclectic collection of books spills from the shelves along with fanciful wooden birdhouses and Lynn’s father’s artfully carved birds. The atmosphere is stimulating. encouraging of intelligent conversation, with tables close enough in proximity so that everyone can join in. Although she is mostly confined behind the counter presiding over the preparations, Lynn Wood calmly watches as the world instead comes to her.

There are regulars like the silver-haired retired banker who consistently holds court at a center table and who once knew everyone worth knowing in state government and high finance, making for interesting chatter as he consumes his customary big breakfast of Birdman’s specialty omelets or sweet potato waffles. Another regular, a retired cattleman and landowner who listens to the BBC on still nights, contributes a wealth of historic detail, for as a child he was unusually attentive to the conversations of surrounding elders now long dead, making him the local expert on off-the-wall genealogy and minutiae.

Twirling on the stools at the counter, by glass display cases filled with scones and baked goods, may be found the town surveyor chatting with a local minister in his favorite porkpie hat, while the elementary school principal sits nearby treating grandchildren to breakfast as a last fling before school starts. Conversations wax and wane as patrons come and go, newcomers joining in as departing customers hand off the responsibility for keeping things going. The town’s most faithful employee, who rain or shine walks a million miles a day keeping the roadsides free of litter, stops in for refreshment, and Lynn often kindly provides a nourishing comp meal to a down-on-his-luck patron in exchange for a quick sweeping of the outside patio where guests are welcome to dine with well-behaved dogs.

From the big fancy financial institution across the street comes the bank VP, who is greeted with kisses by the late longtime ministers’ elderly daughters who get together regularly at Birdman. Tables fill with realtors and lawyers with their laptops jumpstarting busy workdays with a jolt of caffeine and maybe some muffins made with blueberries straight from the local farmers’ market. Power walkers and sweating joggers breeze in for a quick pick-me-up before powering on. Foreign tourists and out-of-state visitors stop in to check the pulse of the town; even strangers can tell at a glance that Birdman is the ideal place to find out what’s happening locally, what’s really happening.

The conversations quiet as the day wears on, with shoppers stopping in for a brief refreshing respite, laden with packages from St. Francisville’s wonderful antiques and gift shops—The Shanty Too, Grandmother’s Buttons, Sage Hill, Hillcrest, Bohemianville Antiques—or art galleries like Backwoods and Harrington’s and the artist’s co-op. Midafternoon the Birdman hosts quiet meetings of movers-and-shakers, perhaps planning tourism events and the many special activities designed to keep St. Francisville one of the state’s top tourist destinations with its historic plantation homes and glorious antebellum gardens open to visitors, plus its unspoiled wilderness recreation areas. After school, kids pop in to chill out with root beer or coke floats and ice cream.

On most Monday evenings Lynn schedules live music with simple suppers, and she’s deeply involved with children’s art projects, community arts market days, and the inclusive Arts For All group. She has a finger in just about every pie, literally, as the sponsor of the much-anticipated Fourth of July Pie Baking Contest, in the spirit of the old-fashioned county fair cook-offs of yesteryear; the most recent event even had an organic category, and proceeds benefit the ongoing restoration of the town’s first public school building.

This warm and welcoming gathering spot provides the perfect introduction to the St. Francisville area, which features a number of splendidly restored plantation homes open for tours daily: The Cottage Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, The Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens seasonally. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs.

The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, horseback riding with rental mounts from Cross Creek Stables. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and antiques shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area serving everything from soul food to Chinese and Mexican cuisine, seafood and classic Louisiana favorites. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register-listed historic district, and there are also modern motel accommodations for large bus groups.


For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities, including the monthly third Saturday morning Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

JULY HOT AS A FIRECRACKER IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

by Anne Butler An eloquent document formally severing the colonies’ ties with Great Britain, the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson, the architect of much of the document, declared, “May it be to the world…the signal of arousing men to burst the chains…and to assume the blessings and security of self-government…the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion...All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.”  Thomas Jefferson would die some years later on July 4, a date he hoped would annually “forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”  Also on the committee charged with drafting the document along with Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin was John Adams, who wrote his wife Abigail that he felt that momentous day in July should be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival…commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God…pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfire, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” Philadelphia first marked the anniversary on July 4, 1777, with bonfires, bells and fireworks, plus the adjourning of Congress, and this custom soon spread to other towns and cities, especially after the War of 1812. By 1870 Congress had established Independence Day as a national holiday, and over the years it has traditionally been observed with patriotic oratory, political speeches, fireworks, parades, symphonic spectaculars, and lots of baseball games and barbecue. But imagine, if you can, the fervor with which the day was celebrated by the early residents of the St. Francisville area, center of cotton plantation country settled by Anglos who began descending from the East Coast shortly after the Revolutionary War, a desperate conflict many of them either witnessed or participated in. The early owner of The Cottage Plantation, for example, was the son and nephew of five brothers who served with honor on George Washington’s staff. The son-in-law of the builder of Butler Greenwood Plantation was the son of a valiant young soldier who survived being bayoneted nine times by the British during the revolution, nearly froze during the harsh winter at Valley Forge, and lived to become governor of Georgia. And as for “taxation without representation,” that battlecry of the 13 colonies objecting to King George III’s taxes, it was still resonating with the builder of The Myrtles Plantation when he led the so-called Whiskey Rebellion against new president George Washington’s excise taxes on spirits, the first test of the new nation’s federal powers, and had to escape from Pennsylvania to Spanish territory.  For a number of years the St. Francisville area has celebrated the Fourth of July with fireworks and free hot dogs and cold drinks provided by the Town of St. Francisville and its active Main Street Program (www.stfrancisville.us or www.stfrancisville.net) at the ball fields behind Sonic. In addition to this family-oriented event, gorgeous Greek Revival Greenwood Plantation, off LA 66 north of St. Francisville, hosts its first old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration with free open house from 1 to 4, plus food, games, rides and other activities (www.greenwoodplantation.com) . The Myrtles, on the outskirts of St. Francisville, salutes the members of our armed services on the Fourth (225-245-1525) with Freedom Appreciation Day on the grounds, with children’s activities, free hot dogs, soft drinks, chips, and great live music from local favorites Emily Branton, Nancy Ropollo and the Angola Prison Band. Participants are requested to wear red, white or blue, and to bring lawn chairs or blankets and photos of servicemen for a Tribute Table. Another favorite event in the St. Francisville area in July is the annual Feliciana Hummingbird Celebration, held Friday and Saturday, the 30 and 31st. Birding celebrations are particularly appropriate in this area that harbors such a huge population of both resident and migratory birdlife, just as it has since the 1820s when artist-naturalist John James Audubon was so spellbound by the abundant flora and fauna that he painted some 80 of his Birds of America around St. Francisville. The event, sponsored by the Feliciana Nature Society, highlights the unique hummingbird breeding habitat that entices ruby-throats to linger awhile in the months between late March and early September as they migrate from South and Central America up to Canada. Friday evening’s entertainment begins with a 6 p.m. wine and cheese reception in the 27-acre spectacular gardens of Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site. The evening’s featured speaker is Andre Brock, whose degrees are from LSU in Animal, Dairy and Poultry Science (BS) and in Horticulture (MS). Now serving the St. Francisville area as 4-H Agent and Assistant County Agent, he will present a program on gardening to attract hummingbirds. On Saturday, July 31, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., the festival continues at two private gardens, where vendors will offer hummingbird-attractive plants and where hummingbird biologists Linda Beall and Nancy Newfield will capture and band birds, giving visitors the rare opportunity to observe the tiny creatures up close as they are being weighed and measured. The banding sites are the homes of Carlisle Rogillio on Tunica Trace and artist Murrell Butler on Oak Hill Road, both of which usually attract dozens of hummingbirds. A small fee is charged for both events. For more information, visit www.audubonbirdfest.com or call 800-488-6502. The St. Francisville area features a number of splendidly restored plantation homes open for tours daily: The Cottage Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, The Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens seasonally. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs. The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, horseback riding with rental mounts from Cross Creek Stables. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and antiques shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area serving everything from soul food to Chinese and Mexican cuisine, seafood and classic Louisiana favorites. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register-listed historic district, and there are also modern motel accommodations for large bus groups. For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities, including the monthly third Saturday morning Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

THE DAY THE WAR STOPPED — IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

by Anne Butler Up the steep hill they trudged, sweating in the sticky June heat, staggering under the weight of the simple wooden coffin, the white flag of truce flying before them in the hot summer sun.  The guns of their federal gunboat, the USS Albatross, anchored in the Mississippi off Bayou Sara, were silent behind them as a small party of officers struggled toward St. Francisville atop the hill. The procession was not an impressive one, certainly not an unusual event in the midst of a bloody war, and it would no doubt have escaped all notice but for one fact--this was the day the war stopped, if only for a few mournful moments, and the lovely little rivertown of St. Francisville invites the public to join in commemorating the events 147 years ago on the weekend of June 11-13. In June 1863, the Siege of Port Hudson was pitting 30,000 Union troops under Major General Nathaniel P. Banks against 6,800 weary Confederates under Major General Franklin Gardner, fighting over the all-important control of traffic on the Mississippi River.  Port Hudson and Vicksburg were the only rebel strongholds left along the Mississippi, and if the Union forces could wrest from them control of the river traffic, they could cut off supplies from the west and completely surround the Confederacy.  Admiral David Farragut had attempted to destroy Confederate cannons atop the bluffs from the river, but of his seven ships, four were turned back, one was completely destroyed, and only his flagship and the USS Albatross passed upriver safely, leaving ground troops to fight it out for nearly another month. Lt. Commander John E. Hart, the federal commander of the Albatross, had just the week before posted a touching letter to his wife, left behind with their young son Elliott in Schenectady, New York.  Praising his little boat for getting through the fearsome firing from the batteries atop the bluffs at Port Hudson, Commander Hart promises after the war to take his wife on a trip down the river to see the famous battlefields.  As he writes he can hear the cannons booming to the south, but his attentions are on more immediate matters…how many blackberries his crew have had to eat lately, and how when a “jolly good cow” is spotted, he sends a sailor ashore with a pail, chuckling how some rebel farm folk will be surprised when “old Brindle comes home at night and ain’t got no milk for them”…how hot it is, and how long since he has seen ice, and how he would love a glass of cool claret and water.  Even in the midst of war, there are mundane little touches of life scattered through the letter from Hart to his beloved wife…the mockingbirds singing around the boat, the little puppy he’d put ashore at Plaquemine to be raised, the shipboard litter of kittens.  After perilously running through the Grand Gulf batteries on the river to the north, Hart writes that the Admiral signalled, “How many killed?”  And he answered none.  The Admiral signalled, “How many wounded?”  And he answered none.  And just then Kitty, ship’s mouser, produced kittens which Hart insisted become part of the official report…important to note the wartime births as well as the all-too-frequent deaths. A respected naval officer and graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Commander Hart would have even more lasting impact through his death, which occurred at 4:15 p.m. on June 11, 1863, in the captain’s stateroom as the Albatross patrolled the waters of the Mississippi River near Bayou Sara, just below St. Francisville.  Masonic and naval records list Hart as having “suicided,” died by his own hand “in a fit of delirium.” It had been surmised that perhaps he suffered from dementia induced by yellow fever, for a mere four days earlier his cheerful letter home hardly seemed to exhibit despair, but the surgeon’s log implicates debilitating dyspepsia, perhaps combined with depression. The note left behind by the commander, in those days before antacids and little purple pills to ease the pain of gastric reflux disease, lamented, “God knows my suffering.” Hart was a Mason, and aboard his ship were other officers also “members of the Craft,” desirous of burying their commander ashore rather than consigning the remains to the river waters, especially since a metallic coffin which might have contained the body for safe shipment home to New York could not be found.  A boat was sent from the Albatross under flag of truce to ascertain if there were any Masons in the town of St. Francisville.  It just so happened that the two White brothers, Samuel and Benjamin, living near the river were Masons from Indiana. They informed the little delegation that there was indeed a Masonic lodge in the town, in fact one of the oldest in the state, Feliciana Lodge No. 31 F and AM.  Its Grand Master was absent serving in the Confederate Army, but its Senior Warden, W. W. Leake, whose “headquarters were in the saddle,” was home on furlough and was soon persuaded to honor the request.  As a soldier, Leake reportedly said, he considered it his duty to permit burial of a deceased member of the armed forces of any government, even one presently at war with his own, and as a Mason, he knew it to be his duty to accord Masonic burial to the remains of a brother Mason without taking into account the nature of their relations in the outer world The surgeon and officers of the USS Albatross, struggling up from the river with Hart’s body followed by a squad of Marines at trail arms, were met by W. W. Leake, the White brothers, and a few other members of the Masonic lodge.  They were greeted at Grace Episcopal Church by the Reverend Mr. Daniel S. Lewis, rector, and with full Episcopal and Masonic services, Commander John E. Hart was laid to rest on June 12, 1863, in the Masonic burial plot in Grace’s peaceful cemetery, respect being paid by Union and Confederate soldiers alike.  And soon the war resumed, Lee’s northern invasion turned back at Gettysburg July 3, Vicksburg falling July 4, and Port Hudson finally surrendering July 9, all in one catastrophic week.  But for one brief touching moment, the war had stopped at St. Francisville, and this moment will be marked the weekend of June 11, 12 and 13. The commemorative events begin on Friday, June 11, at 7 p.m., with graveside histories in the peaceful oak-shaded cemetery at Grace Church, where Commander Hart’s grave is marked by a marble slab and monument “in loving tribute to the universality of Free Masonry.” Over the years it was decorated with flowers by members of the Daughters of the Confederacy. W.W. Leake in 1912 was buried nearby after a long and honorable career as state senator, parish judge and bank president. An Open House and presentation of lodge history at the double-galleried Masonic Lodge just across Ferdinand St. from the graveyard follows at 8 p.m. Friday evening. On Saturday, June 12, a lively parade travels along St. Francisville’s historic main street beginning at 11 a.m., followed by lunch at the Masonic Lodge from 11 to 12:30. Visitors will be pleasantly transported back in time during the afternoon, as Grace Church’s parish hall is the setting for a concert of antebellum period music and graceful vintage dancing from 11:30 to 1:30. At 1:30 commences the very moving dramatic presentation showing Commander Hart’s young wife in New York as she reads his last letter to their small son and then receives the terrible news of his death. This is followed by the re-enactment of the burial of Hart, with re-enactors in the dignified rites clad in Civil War uniforms accurate down to the last button and worn brogan. Taking leading roles in this ritual, amazingly, are W.W.Leake’s great-great-grandson Robert S. Leake, as well as Frank Karwowski, member of Commander Hart’s Masonic lodge, St. George’s in Schnectady, New York, and Shirley Ditloff who now operates a popular B&B in W.W. Leake’s Royal St. townhouse. During the afternoon on Saturday, Oakley Plantation in the Audubon State Historic Site offers special related programs, including a Civil War encampment, complete with tents and authentically clad re-enactors, plus black powder and musket demonstrations from 2:30 to 5. From 6 to 8 p.m. costumed dancers perform stylish dances popular during the Civil War period, and Oakley House, which is never lovelier than by candlelight, opens for special evening tours. On Sunday, June 13, Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site from 1 to 3 presents a program on Civil War medical techniques and their all-too-often conclusion, period burial customs. At Oakley, a 1 p.m. talk focuses on Jefferson Davis’ young bride, Sarah Knox Taylor Davis, daughter of President Zachary Taylor, who succumbed to yellow fever on their honeymoon visit to his sister’s plantation in West Feliciana. This will be followed by a Civil War demonstration from 2 to 4 p.m. All of these activities are free and open to the public. Among sponsors are St. Francisville Overnight! (Bed & Breakfasts of the area), the Feliciana Lodge No. 31 F and AM, Grace Episcopal Church, and St. Francisville Main Street.  The St. Francisville area features a number of splendidly restored plantation homes open for tours daily: The Cottage Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, The Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens seasonally. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs. The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, horseback riding with rental mounts from Cross Creek Stables. There are unique specialty shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed and Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register-listed historic district, and there are also modern motel accommodations for large bus groups. For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar for June gives dates and information on special activities, including the monthly third Saturday morning  Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com. For additional information and a complete, updated schedule for The Day The War Stopped, see www.daythewarstopped.net.

PHOENIX GREENWOOD PLANTATION—ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA,

by Anne Butler

Greenwood Burning It was a dark and stormy night. Really, it was. When lightning struck the uppermost corner of glorious Greek Revival Greenwood Plantation near St. Francisville on the night of August 1, 1960, the first awareness of the impending tragedy came from a glimpse of the glow of flames in the reflecting pond. And by the time help arrived, the fire had lit up the night so brilliantly, according to one eyewitness, that it was possible to read a book in the glare. Laurie Fisher, 15 at the time, lived just across the road from Greenwood. He vividly remembers that a rare and violent cool front passed through that evening, with the worst lightning he’d ever seen in his life. “Lightning struck all over that Greenwood hill,” he recalls. He had been clipping pastures, but hurriedly drove in from the field, turned on a heater and pulled his big 12-pound cat onto his lap to warm up. Laurie Fisher 50yrs later. Laurie’s aunt and uncle, Naomi F. and Frank Percy, had purchased Greenwood in the early 1900s from the Reed family, restoring the magnificent home and sharing it with the public for tours, magazine features, even as a setting for movies like Drango. The house was called the finest example of Greek Revival architecture in the South, nearly 100 feet square and completely surrounded by 28 Doric columns of slave-made brick supporting a solid copper roof topped by a belvedere from which the Mississippi River was visible. The evening of August 1, the elderly Percys were enjoying a visit from a young grandson, Jimmy Lathrop. He would be the first to spot the reflection of the flames in the pond and sound the alarm. Headlines Local Newspaper Greenwood Today Word spread quickly. By the time the old two-ton 1953 Chevy firetruck lumbered out from St. Francisville, neighbors and relatives had rushed over to help salvage what furnishings they could. Crowds of spectators clogged the narrow country lanes, and the ground was so rain-soaked that the heavy firetruck quickly got stuck. Laurie was sent home to unhook the cutter from his tractor so he could pull the firetruck out of the pond. The heat from the flames, he recalls, was so intense that the firefighters faced an impossible task, with the hollow cypress walls acting like flues to accelerate the destruction. By morning, there was nothing left of Greenwood but the brick columns and several forlorn chimneys stark against the sky. Laurie says the embers from the fire stayed hot for 10 whole days. “We never felt the world was the same after such an enormous tragedy,” he says today, his voice still tinged with sadness. Only the Columns Remained after the 1960 Fire Little did he know that Greenwood would rise from the ashes like the phoenix to become one of the St. Francisville area’s most appealing tourist destinations once again. After languishing untouched (but never unloved) for nearly a decade, the romantic beauty of the ruins resonated with the late Baton Rouge attorney Walton Barnes and his son, Richard. They purchased the house site and 300 surrounding acres in 1968, determined to return Greenwood to its antebellum glory days, when builder William Ruffin Barrow engaged prominent architect James Coulter to build a fine home on family property that would eventually grow to 12,000 acres for the cultivation of first cotton and then sugarcane. Guided by vintage films and photographs, tattered magazine features and fading family recollections, the Barnes spent some 20 years reconstructing the home as close as possible to the original. Today it once again welcomes visitors for tours, overnight stays in a detached B&B structure across the reflecting pond, corporate workshops and functions, beautiful weddings and social events. Hollywood has returned as well, with such films as Louisiana, both parts of North and South, and Sister, Sister using Greenwood as a setting for memorable scenes. Costumed Hostesses Greenwood is but one of six plantations making the St. Francisville area (on US Highway 61 between Baton Rouge and Natchez) a year-round tourist destination. Besides Greenwood, Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, Butler Greenwood, The Cottage and The Myrtles—are open for daily tours, and Afton Villa Gardens opens seasonally. There are unique little shops in restored historic structures, and reasonably priced meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville. Some of the state's most unique Bed and Breakfasts offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; modern motel facilities can accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking, hiking, birding, horseback riding and other recreational activities. The month of May is filled with special events, from a Memorial Day weekend cycling classic to a simple garden stroll, from community market day in the park to nature walks and living history demonstrations at state historic sites, and even a performance by the Baton Rouge Symphony (check the events calendar on the West Feliciana Tourist Commission website at www.stfrancisville.us). This is also the site for online coverage of tourist facilities and attractions in the St. Francisville area; see www.stfrancisville.us or www.stfrancisvilleovernight.com, or telephone (225) 635-3873 or 635-4224.

The Cottage Plantation one of Feliciana’s earliest

The Cottage Plantation one of Feliciana’s earliest

By Anne Butler
         

Its name hints at a rustic simplicity, and indeed this early plantation house was constructed long before the popularity of southern Greek Revival grandeur or Victorian flamboyance. Today one of six historic plantations that draw tourists to the St. Francisville area, The Cottage exhibits instead a sensible sturdiness, and for nearly 150 years it housed the sensible sturdy members of a single family.

In late 1810 or early 1811, shortly after the West Florida Rebellion ousted the Spanish in the area, Judge Thomas Butler purchased lands along Alexander’s Creek granted in the mid-1790s by Baron de Carondelet to John Allen and Patrick Holland. Named by Governor William C.C. Claiborne the first judge of the Feliciana parishes in 1812 after Louisiana became a state, Judge Butler was elected in 1818 to represent the area in the United State Congress, though he found in Washington “nothing like the agreeable social society we have in Louisiana.”

He came from a long line of distinguished military heroes descended from the Irish Dukes of Ormond. His father and four uncles, several under age 17 at war’s onset, fought valiantly on the American side in the Revolutionary War, gaining high rank and a toast from George Washington, with whom they endured the harsh winter of 1777-8 at Valley Forge. General Lafayette also commended the brothers’ bravery, saying, “When I wish a thing well done, I have a Butler do it.”

These brothers also fought in the subsequent Indian Wars, during which Major General Richard Butler, second in command of the US Army, was mortally wounded, tomahawked, scalped, and his heart was eaten by the redskins, while Col. Thomas Butler, father of the judge, was shot through both legs but was saved by a third brother. This same Col. Butler later gained notoriety for stubbornly resisting the famous “roundhead order” issued by General Wilkinson forbidding the wearing of a “queue,” the long pigtail favored by Anglo aristocracy and colonial army officers. After much anguished correspondence with his dear friend Andrew Jackson, the colonel was still under order of courtmartial for resisting what he considered an “arbitrary infraction of his natural rights” when he perished of yellow fever in 1805 in New Orleans, and it was said a hole was cut in the bottom of his coffin so that his queue might hang out in defiance.

Col. Thomas Butler had six children, the oldest being his namesake, born in 1785. Judge Thomas Butler, descending south from Pennsylvania, in 1810 was commissioned a captain in the cavalry of the Militia of the Mississippi Territory, purchased The Cottage soon afterward, and married Ann Madeline Ellis of Natchez in 1813. Together they had a dozen children, expanding the simple early cottage structure to accommodate them, and the judge’s letters to his beloved wife during absences on court duties or in Congress often begged her to “kiss my dear sweet children for me and make them often think of me.” Well educated and well travelled, the family maintained a cultured lifestyle as Judge Butler increased his landholdings to include several sugar plantations in Terrebonne Parish.
The children married into other distinguished plantations families---the Stirlings, the Minors, the Forts, even the family of Andrew and Rachel Jackson. The sons and cousins fought at the Battle of New Orleans with General Jackson, who made an extended visit to The Cottage on his way back to Tennessee, for Judge Butler’s brother was the general’s chief of staff.

The family military prowess continued during the Civil War. Judge Butler’s son Robert Ormond Butler, a Yale-educated physician born in 1832 who studied medicine in Paris, served as Surgeon in Chief under Confederate Brig. Gen. Pratt. He referred in correspondence to the Union troops as “villainous vandals,” describing a heartbreaking midnight march down the Mississippi River below Baton Rouge as “one continued scene of desolation and sadness, nearly every place plundered even to the huts of the poorest creoles, large plantations deserted not a living thing to be seen, the river once so teeming with life and gladness flowing by us as swiftly and silently as that stream said to flow to eternity.”

Dr. Butler’s children and grandchildren were the last generations of Butlers to occupy The Cottage. His daughter Louise, who never married, was a writer and historian of some note, whose published pieces in early Louisiana Historical Quarterlies captured the very soul of southern plantation life in the nineteenth century. When The Cottage was sold by the Butler family in the 1950s, an effort was made to preserve other vivid images of life in the early days through the donation of priceless vintage books to the LSU Library, significant correspondence and records to the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection at LSU, and an incredible collection of early 19th-c. garments to the university’s Textile & Costume Museum. Even portions of the once-extensive gardens surrounding The Cottage were shared, with one enormous white azalea more than 100 feet in circumference shipped by railroad flatcar to Houston.

Today The Cottage, long and rambling, peacefully presides with unpretentious charm atop a bluff overlooking Alexander’s Creek, the multitude of French doors opening from the long front gallery admitting cooling breezes and the huge live oaks providing plenty of shade. To the rear, one of the state’s most extensive and fascinating groupings of original plantation dependencies--the judge’s office/schoolroom, smokehouse, saddle room, commissary, kitchen/laundry, dairy and well house, greenhouses, carriage house with Judge Butler’s Philadelphia-made 1820 carriage, slave quarters used in filming The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brick-walled family cemetery--collectively provide a clear picture of life on functioning plantation communities of the early 19th century.
Now occupied by Harvey and Mary Brown, its present-day economic viability stems from tourism, and visiting writers wax eloquent about The Cottage as a state of mind, its antebellum ambience evoking the serenity of a bygone era. When The Cottage was purchased in the fifties by Harvey’s uncle J.E. and Eudora Brown of Chicago, a number of improvements were effected, including an inside kitchen, swimming pool, and raised automobile bridge over the creek to replace a scary hanging footbridge and low-water ford. Mr. Brown was an innovative inventor and pioneer in the television industry, but both he and his wife threw themselves wholeheartedly into community preservation efforts by opening The Cottage for tours and Bed & Breakfast in rooms with fine four-poster beds and morning demitasse served on a silver tray before guests are called to a hearty plantation breakfast in the antique-filled dining room. The Cottage was the first B&B to open in the St. Francisville area, and remains one of the most popular.

With six plantations—Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, Butler Greenwood, The Cottage, The Myrtles and Greenwood--open for daily tours, and Afton Villa Gardens open seasonally, the St. Francisville area (located on US Highway 61 between Baton Rouge, LA, and Natchez, MS) is a year-round tourist destination. There are unique little shops in restored historic structures, and reasonably priced meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville. Some of the state's most unique Bed and Breakfasts offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; modern motel facilities can accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking, hiking, birding, horseback riding and other recreational activities. For online coverage of tourist facilities, attractions and events in the St. Francisville area, see www.stfrancisville.us or www.stfrancisvilleovernight.com, or telephone (225) 635-3873 or 635-4224.