Wednesday, November 16, 2011

St. Francisville, La. Christmas in the Country

Christmas in the CountryCHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA
by Anne Butler
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 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 December 2, 3 and 4th pays tribute to its heritage and showcases its continuing vitality as the center of culture and commerce for the entire surrounding region with an event-filled weekend designed to draw holiday shoppers into historic downtown St. Francisville.
Christmas ParadeMillions 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.  
Beginning at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, Santa Claus comes to town to kick off the Lighting Ceremony of the Town Christmas Tree, followed by a public reception 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.  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. 3, 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 and 9:30 a.m., sponsored by the Women’s Service League (reservations recommended; call 225-718-3847).  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.
Laughing at the ParadeThroughout the day Saturday there will be children’s activities--spacewalk, 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 10 a.m. From 9:30 to 10:30 the West Feliciana High School Performance Choir sings at the United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall, followed from 11 to 11:45 by the school’s Beginning and Advanced Choirs. 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 front porch of Town Hall is gospel headquarters with stirring performances from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. by the Williams Singers, Second Chance, New Beech Grove Baptist Church Male Chorus and the Sensational Soul Searchers, while New St. Luke Baptist Church Music Ministry also has a cookbook sale there.
Saturday’s highlight, of course, is the colorful 2 p.m. Christmas parade sponsored by the Women’s Service League. 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 Saturday parade this year has the theme “Rolling on the River,” its grand marshall the longtime local ferryboat captain, especially appropriate as St. Francisville prepares to host the travelling Smithsonian exhibit “Journey Stories” examining settlement routes and patterns across the country, with one of the most important early highways being the Mississippi River itself. Christmas in the Country publicity posters this year feature St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers.
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 4, with in-town activities. 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, great gift items, and extended hours.  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.
Special GiftsFrom 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.  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, A Few of My Favorite Things and the newly opened Bayou Pickers shop feature vintage collectibles and fine furnishings. Femme Fatale specializes in fine fashions.
The Wine Parlor in the St. Francisville Inn has gift bottles of fine wines, and Birdman Books & Coffee has an eclectic selection of books. Ins-N-Outs, Wild Bunch Farms 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.
White LightsLocated 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 some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area serving everything from ethnic cuisine to 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 Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

Monday, November 07, 2011

Smithsonian Show

St. Francisville, LA, Anticipates
Sharing its Journey Stories

by Anne Butler
The Thanksgiving season is often a time of homecoming---going back to Grandma’s, where the roast turkey is stuffed with nostalgia and seasoned with stories---a time of sharing family histories and tall tales of the often treacherous travels our ancestors undertook to claim lands and establish new lives in a new country. How appropriate, then, for St. Francisville to now be making preparations to host the travelling Smithsonian Institution exhibit called Journey Stories, which opens the first week in February in the West Feliciana Historical Society’s museum/visitor center on Ferdinand Street right in the heart of St. Francisville’s National Register Historic District.
This fascinating exhibition has been designed to encourage small towns across the country to examine in depth just who we are and how we got here, revealing nationwide migration patterns as early pioneers braved the perils of travel in the days of dangerous ocean shipwrecks and riverboat sinkings, runaway teams and overturned wagons on rude rutted dirt tracks, plus pirates and outlaws, wild animals and wild Indians.
smithsonianAs compelling as these national records are, the localized ones are even more so. St. Francisville certainly had some unique settlement routes, from the Mississippi River bringing early Anglo pioneers to an area that reminded them of the rolling hills of the Old Country, to the sunken traces worn deep into the loessial soils by horse-drawn coaches and covered wagons, to the country’s earliest standard-gauge railroad line. The entire community has enthusiastically participated in the programs augmenting this exhibit, from young school children to the elderly discussing their memories, so residents and visitors alike stand to gain greater understanding of the builders and shapers of this community—the Native Americans and the immigrants from Europe and Africa and the Eastern Seaboard, some arriving of their own free will and others arriving in chains--and the pathways they took to get here.
Leading up to the opening will be related events to build anticipation, including the Rollin’ on the River-themed parade during St. Francisville’s immensely popular Christmas in the Country the first weekend in December; a Walking Tour of Jewish History on Saturday, February 11, led by Rebecca Kastil to highlight significant structures and contributions of St. Francisville’s early Jewish immigrants, beginning at 11 a.m. at Julius Freyhan School; and at 3:30 on Saturday, February 11, at the Oakley Plantation House in the Audubon State Historic Site, a one-woman play entitled “Rachel O’Connor’s World” featuring talented local thespian Kathryn Ward portraying a determined female Feliciana plantation owner and planter. CD guides available at the museum/visitor center for the duration of the exhibit offer an interesting self-guided driving tour through West Feliciana Parish history, and a map overlay by artist David Norwood contrasts the present roadways with the original ones by which the earliest settlers arrived.
journeyOn Sunday, February 12, a grand opening reception kicks off the Journey Stories exhibit at the West Feliciana Historical Society Museum at 2 p.m., hosted by the Women’s Service League. The exhibit stays up until March 19, and every weekend is filled with special activities and programs, all free and open to the public. On Saturday, Feb. 18, the museum hosts a presentation by Feliciana Filmmakers of Student Oral History Projects from 10 a.m. until noon. On Saturday, February 25, Friends of the Library hosts its Celebration of Writers and Readers, bringing together recognized authors and their fans at Hemingbough Convention Center beginning at 8:30 a.m., while Margo Soule will present a program on Louisiana’s Native Americans at 2 p.m. in Audubon Market Hall on Royal St. On Sunday, February 26, the featured program is Dr. Irene S. DiMaio Gerstacker’s Louisiana: Fiction and Travel Sketches from Antebellum Times through Reconstruction, at 2 p.m. in Audubon Market Hall, followed by a reception hosted by the St. Francisville United Methodist Church in the church fellowship hall.
Saturday, March 3, a Gospel Music Fest with local church choirs will be sponsored by the Rotary Club in oak-shaded downtown Parker Park from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. as tribute to the St. Francisville area’s only really original indigenous music, the soulful songs of the early black religious congregations. Tribute will also be paid to the country’s earliest standard gauge rail line, the West Feliciana Railroad that connected the cotton plantations of the St. Francisville/Woodville area with the riverport at Bayou Sara, in a 2 p.m. program presented by widely respected local historian Elisabeth K. Dart in the old courtroom of the West Feliciana Courthouse, followed by a reception sponsored by historic Grace Episcopal Church.

The following Sunday, March 11, Louisiana’s Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne, a wonderful speaker, extols the virtues of the Bayou State in his entertaining presentation “Why Louisiana Ain’t Mississippi,” in the old courtroom at 2 p.m., followed by a reception sponsored by the Julius Freyhan Foundation. The weekend of March 16 through 18th St. Francisville hosts the annual Audubon Pilgrimage sponsored for four decades by the West Feliciana Historical Society, commemorating the 1821 stay of John James Audubon by opening the doors to significant antebellum homes plus glorious 19th-century formal gardens, historic churches and a rural homestead where the rustic skills of early life are demonstrated. The evening of Friday, March 16, at 7 p.m., costumed re-creators rise from the graves in Grace Church’s beautiful cemetery to tell their own stories.
St. Francisville is the last Louisiana community to host Journey Stories; the exhibit comes down on March 19. But St. Francisville is a year-round tourist destination 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, offering periodic fascinating living-history demonstrations so visitors can 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 Chinese and Mexican cuisine to 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) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.
logo la endowment smithsonian institution


Photographs provided by the Smithsonian Institution.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

FALL IS WELCOMED WITH OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

by Anne Butler
Fall St. FrancisvilleFall in the Feliciana hills brings fabulous autumn color to the woodlands and perfect cool temperatures for the outdoor activities that attract so many visitors to the area throughout October. Active individuals find this month ideal for hiking in the rugged Tunica Hills, once the snakes and poison ivy have retreated and the falling leaves open up scenic vistas not noticeable in the lush overgrowth of summer. Several state wildlife management areas, Clark Creek Natural Area with its rare waterfalls, Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, and the Mary Ann Brown Nature Preserve offer hiking trails ranging from family-friendly Sunday strolls to challenging hills and steep hollows.

Less active souls find plenty of outdoor activities as well. Parker Park in the middle of St. Francisville’s National Register-listed downtown historic district is the setting for an October 15 Community Market featuring a variety of arts and crafts, and later in the month the park also hosts the very popular Yellow Leaf Arts and Mini-Sweet Potato Festival. This 9th annual festival will be held October 29 and 30, featuring more than 60 artists and craftspersons displaying their creations beneath the spreading live oaks. Among participants will be furniture maker Gordon Graham, potters Michael Miller and Craig Roth, stained glass artist Marjorie Blake, whimsical folk artist Laura Lindsey, and nationally recognized wildlife artist Murrell Butler. Artist in Residence in the park gazebo is the incredible nature    photographer/author C.C. Lockwood, and live music will be provided by Jodi James, the Mosspickers, the Fugitive Poets, local songwriters, and Ann Savoy & Her Sleepless Knights. Besides celebrating the artists who continue to find creative stimulation in an area that has provided inspiration ever since John James Audubon painted a number of his famous bird studies there in the 1820s, the Yellow Leaf Festival also pays tribute to the sweet potato, longtime staple crop in a region whose economics and lifestyle once centered around agriculture. Crates of freshly harvested potatoes, plus prepared dishes, will be available.

music, dance, community market daysThe month of October is filled with a huge variety of other activities and events as well. On Friday, October 14, and Saturday, October 15, the twenty-third 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 by such distinguished speakers as Southern Living’s Editor–in-Chief M. Lindsay Bierman, plus lunch, tea at White’s Cottage, and Speaker’s Gala at Wyoming Plantation. For information see www.SouthernGardenSymposium.org or call 225-635-3738.

The active St. Francisville Main Street program gets everyone into the Halloween spirit beginning on Friday, October 14 in Parker Park with a space walk and child-friendly Movie Under the Stars at dark; bring lawnchairs and blankets plus a donation of canned food for the Food Bank, and the Women’s Service League will be offering concessions. This is a fitting prelude to the fun Trick or Treat Down Main Street on October 31.
pumpkin carving by main street program

The last weekend of the month (Oct. 28-31) 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 28 (6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.) with an All Hallows Eve interactive program on Halloween superstitions and traditions of the 1800s, while on the 29th Rosedown Plantation State Historic site dons mourning garb to recreate a family funeral of the early 19th century. The 29th is also the date for the Friends of the Library fundraising book sale at the local library on Ferdinand St.

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 finally completed along US Highway 61 around St. Francisville, visitors should find traffic congestion less of a problem this year. 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.

Fall in St. Francisville
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, offering periodic fascinating living-history demonstrations so visitors can experience 19th-century plantation life and customs.
community market days
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  Chinese and Mexican cuisine to 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) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

Photos by ptWalsh

Thursday, September 15, 2011

UNIQUE WILDLIFE

UNIQUE WILDLIFE REFUGE IN ST. FRANCISVILLE AREA
by Anne Butler

Wooden Kayak on Cat Island NWRSlipping through the silent waters in a kayak or canoe, shaded by immense old-growth cypress trees draped with Spanish moss and wild vines, it’s hard to realize that this is in West Feliciana Parish, better known for its steep wooded hills than for the alligator- infested swamps of more coastal Louisiana. But then Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge near St. Francisville is a unique habitat area, and it certainly provides some unique recreational opportunities.

Established in 2000, Cat Island WR lies along the southernmost unleveed stretch of the lower Mississippi River. At 10,473 acres, it preserves one of the largest tracts of virgin wetland forest not protected by levees from cyclical flooding and is sometimes inundated by 15 to 20 feet of water in the springtime. From late December through June, there are times when the refuge is inaccessible except by boat, and the river can rise and fall several times during those months (check river levels at www.srh.noaa.gov/lmrfc).

Deer watch.This makes for a unique habitat of lakes, bayous, creeks and undisturbed forests, supporting huge populations of wintering waterfowl and migratory birds, as well as resident wildlife including white-tailed deer, black bear and many varieties of smaller game. Fishing and crawfishing, hiking, fall hunting, birdwatching, canoeing and other recreational opportunities abound.

There are four miles of hiking trails, including the 2½-mile Black Fork Trail maintained by the Louisiana Hiking Club, and the 1/4 -mile Big Cypress Trail to the National Champion bald cypress, largest tree of any species east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. This tree is thought to be between 800 to 1500 years old and is an astounding 85 feet tall.

The 526th refuge in the National Wildlife Refuge System, Cat Island is currently unstaffed and is overseen by the St. Catherine’s Creek NWR Complex in Natchez, MS, under the direction of project leader Bob Strader (catisland@fws.gov or 601-442-6696). Strader stresses that the importance of Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge is its uniqueness. “Only 10% of the historic Mississippi River floodplain actually floods on an annual basis,” he explains, “and so the dynamics of the wetting and drying cycles make this refuge area exceptionally unique and ecologically significant.”

 Large cypress trees everywhere on Cat Island NWRAcquisition of the refuge lands was made possible by an initial purchase of 9500 acres by The Nature Conservancy of Louisiana. A large part of the purpose in establishing the refuge---in addition to conserving and managing habitat areas, aquatic resources, endangered species of plants and animals, and the historic native bottomland community in this important alluvial plain---was to encourage participation of volunteers and facilitate partnerships between the US Fish and Wildlife Service, local communities and conservation organizations to promote public awareness of refuge resources.

Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge is open only during daylight hours, and vehicles are restricted to public roads and designated parking areas; ATV use is permitted on designated trails only. For hunting, fishing and ATV use, an annual Special Recreational Activity Permit is required.  Maps for accessing the refuge are available at the West Feliciana Historical Society tourist information center/museum on Ferdinand St. in the heart of St. Francisville.

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.  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.

Champion Bald-cypress treeParticularly 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, hunting. 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 seafood to Chinese and Mexican cuisine, not to mention 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 and a Farmers’ Market every Thursday and Saturday morning) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

Egret feeding An visitors paddling the flood waters.
Another large bald-cypress Inside view of bald-cypress

Friday, July 29, 2011

Fabulous Historic Furnishings

St. Francisville area’s fabulous historic furnishings being inventoried

by Anne Butler

The sofa did it.

It was the sofa that actually kicked off this unrelenting quest for historical truth. One single sofa from historic Wakefield Plantation near St. Francisville started the ball rolling and instigated a very exacting and detailed inventory of all of the significant material culture of the Lower South, an ambitious project expected to eventually encompass all of Louisiana as well as Mississippi and Alabama.

Adam Erby rehangs pre-Civil War portrait after measuring and examining it.
It is hardly surprising that the project started in the St. Francisville area, for the historic plantations in this section of the South, called English Louisiana for the origins of its earliest settlers, contained a wealth of fine furnishings, silver and china, books and musical instruments---all the accoutrements of the cultured and refined lifestyle of the wealthy cotton planters. The first settlers came down from the East Coast in the late 1700s with trunks and crates and wagonloads of belongings to furnish the simple early plantation houses---The Cottage, Butler Greenwood, The Myrtles, Oakley. As the planter-families prospered, the homes the second generations built in the 1830s—Rosedown Plantation, Greenwood Plantation--were grand Greek Revival ones requiring even more elaborate furnishings, and so the owners went on Grand Tours of Europe or lengthy purchasing excursions Up East. The fact that so much evidence of this early material culture still survives has astounded and delighted the experts cataloguing the individual pieces.

But to get back to the sofa. A decade ago, New Orleans attorney Paul Haygood, who from time to time took some of his leisure time to indulge his passion for historical research, was notified that a sofa was for sale by a New Orleans antiques dealer that might—or might not—have come from Wakefield Plantation just north of St. Francisville. Having family ties to the Stirlings of Wakefield, Haygood purchased the classical piece, probably made in the 1830s with lots of curves, and began trying to document its provenance.

He knew that Lewis Stirling and his wife Sarah Turnbull had taken a lengthy trip to New York in 1836 to conduct business, socialize, enjoy the cultural scene, and most especially to purchase furnishings suitable for the extravagant new house they were building, a grand columned Greek Revival. In the Stirling papers preserved at LSU, he found an invoice for a Grecian sofa purchased in 1836 from Edwards and Baldwin in New York; the firm had just come into prominence by furnishing mahogany seating for the fancy new Astor House hotel.

Further exploration led to photographs of other Wakefield furnishings being shown to experts in New York, where they generated great excitement. Delving into preserved family and factor receipts revealed that the Stirlings had not only purchased a number of chairs and sofas from chairmakers Oliver Edwards and Cyrus Baldwin, but had also commissioned a large number of four-poster beds and tables from eminent New York City cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe, 28 crates in all. The bill was a grand total of $1900, and the purchase is one of only three major documented sales of Phyfe’s late Grecian-style work. Quite a few of these pieces remain in the Wakefield Plantation house today.

Richie Garrison, head of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, has come down from Delaware to check the progress of his students and explains to them the virtues of a rosewood piano stool.
With Matthew A. Thurlow, Installations Coordinator in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Haygood wrote a detailed article for The Magazine Antiques on his fabulous findings. Encouraged by museum experts to do something more, he arranged to hold a symposium on the classical period of the 1830s in this area. Still not satisfied, insatiable experts encouraged him to see that a professionally done inventory was taken, and that was the impetus for the founding of the Classical Institute of the South to take the lead in the project, an umbrella non-profit organization of important state museums and collections—the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Louisiana State Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the LSU Museum—plus a board of advisors made up of outstanding experts in the field.

Funds were raised for competitive fellowships to allow a summer of research in St. Francisville conducted by several scholars from the Winterthur Program in Decorative Arts at the University of Delaware. Winterthur, premier museum of American decorative arts and sponsor of a number of preeminent research programs, was the home of wealthy collector and horticulturist Henry Francis du Pont; its 175 rooms contain over 90,000 documented objects, plus exhibit galleries. The two interns began their work in New Orleans with several days of orientation with experts on Louisiana history and decorative arts.

 With plans to expand the program next summer, the interns are concentrating this year on the furnishings of four historic sites in West Feliciana—Wakefield Plantation, Butler Greenwood Plantation, Catalpa Plantation and Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site, plus historic items from Wakefield in a more contemporary family home called Woodhill Farm.

Says Haygood enthusiastically, “They have found wonderful things. This will make people all over the country aware of the material culture we have in Louisiana and the Deep South, which has not always been appreciated. The interns have been thrilled to find enormous collections that help to complete the picture of the classical environment in this area, from stunning original parlor furnishings to the Phyfe furniture, early Meeks pieces, wonderful portraits and magnificent silver. It’s amazing to see their excitement and especially to see it percolating up to the great classical experts at Winterthur, who are thrilled as well. The findings will be featured at the Winterthur Symposium next spring, and will be online for use by scholars (with locations and ownership confidential); perhaps there will even be a book, and almost certainly magazine articles.  We are so in hopes that this will help promote cultural tourism in the St. Francisville area especially.”

The two interns working in St. Francisville this summer are Alice Carboni, originally from Rhode Island, and Adam Erby of Lunenburg County, Virginia. Called the “Lois F. McNeil Fellows,” the two bring a passion for historic culture to the project. Alice has spent the past 8 years in New Orleans, attending Tulane and working as the associate collections manager at the New Orleans Museum of Art, while Adam came straight from the University of Virginia with a major in American Studies with emphasis on architectural history.
Alice Carboni examines an antebellum armoir, cataloging primary and secondary woods.


Both say their findings have greatly exceeded their expectations. Says Adam, “There are phenomenal things for such a tight geographic area, bespeaking the amazing wealth here and the high quality of furnishings people were purchasing.” Alice adds that she had not previously studied or visited the southern plantations and was not sure what she would find, and has been “blown away by the survival of so much material culture, still in original families with so much knowledge of the provenance. The quality of the pieces, exceptional examples from all parts of the country, is just phenomenal and exciting.” The two have worked on material culture in the Upper South and have found that pieces there have not survived in such quantities as in the Lower South.

“The St. Francisville community has been so welcoming and gracious, and it has been fun to meet the locals as well as see the objects and houses,” says Alice. “This has enhanced our understanding of this area, these objects and these houses. It’s such a different sort of landscape, and it’s great to be able to study it in situ. We don’t always get to bring it all together in our scholarship requiring so much library research.”

Paul Haygood takes inventory of extensive library of rare books.
A number of years back when St. Francisville’s local historical society hosted a fundraiser like Antiques Roadshow and imported several appraisers from Sotheby’s, the New Yorkers placed advance disclaimers in the newspapers reminding residents that the South had been primarily an agrarian society and early settlers put their money into land rather than furniture, so participants should not be disappointed if items they brought for appraisal were not as valuable as they might hope. Of course the Lower Mississippi River corridor in antebellum days was inhabited by an enormous number of the country’s wealthiest and most cultured families, and their plantation mansions were furnished with some of the finest pieces money could buy. People who would have brought in insignificant little oddities instead brought their finest treasures and knocked the socks off the New York appraisers, who in future years were careful not to be so condescending.

This material culture inventory should do much the same for the entire under-appreciated Lower South. From the classical sofa at Wakefield that launched this whole project to the magnificent silver services, the original upholstery with trim detail and the exceedingly rare slave livery and other treasures found in all the historic houses, the fascinating material culture that remains extant in the St. Francisville area enriches our understanding and expands our picture of early life in the Lower South, and promises to knock the socks off antiques enthusiasts across the country.


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.  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.

Rosedown Plantation
Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site in St. Francisville, La.
The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, hunting. 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 and a Farmers’ Market every Thursday and Saturday morning) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.



Friday, July 08, 2011

Unique Culinary History

St. Francisville Noted For Its Unique Culinary History

by Anne Butler

enjoying a normal lunch
Louisiana is famous around the globe for its food, and justifiably so. Visitors come from far and wide to enjoy culinary offerings prepared by our well-known professional chefs, and the locals, as the saying goes, don’t eat to live, they live to eat. The whole world salivates for our Creole and Cajun cooking.
The elaborate multi-coursed Creole meals with their aristocratic European antecedents spread from New Orleans up the Mississippi River through the fabulous antebellum plantation estates, their formal dining tables often graced by visiting royalty impressed that such rural kitchens could produce rich and elegant fare equal to anything found in the Old Country. But when the penniless Acadian exiles arrived in Louisiana later in 1700s, struggling to rebuild lives shattered when authorities expelled them from Nova Scotia farmlands, they had to learn a whole different way of cooking, of necessity making do with whatever they could harvest in the swamplands and prairies, the preparation involving lengthy slow-cooking and plenty of seasonings to make less-than-prime ingredients palatable, with providential rice added to many a dish to stretch a little meat or seafood to feed dozens of stair-step children.
But St. Francisville is not Creole. St. Francisville is not Cajun. Did the residents of St. Francisville, therefore, starve? Not by the looks of us. In English Louisiana, settled by mostly Anglos, there was a whole different type of food preparation, and it is only recently being recognized as at least comparable to, if not equal to, the Creole and Cajun cooking for which Louisiana is known.
cooking demonstration at rosedown plantation
Louisiana’s beloved Chef John Folse has always recognized that the history of our foodways is just as important as other aspects of our heritage, and in his Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University he makes sure the students understand the provenance of all the dishes they prepare. Each semester he invites guest lecturers to describe different types of cooking that make up Louisiana’s wonderful culinary and cultural gumbo---Creole, Cajun, Italian, German, Spanish, Native American, African and other ethnic influences.
The St. Francisville resident who is always summoned by Chef Folse to discuss the English cooking brought to the area by its earliest Anglo settlers used to joke with the culinary classes about crossing the river to eat French cooking. English cooking, she would tell the students, was basic and perhaps a bit bland, maybe even, dare we say, boring. But upon further thought, she realized that the English cooking for which St. Francisville was noted was really a perfectly wonderful heritage, building upon indigenous ingredients and a unique sense of place. Starting with prime meats and vegetables fresh from home gardens meant that the dishes did not need to be overly seasoned or stewed for hours or smothered in sauces to make them edible, and consequently basic was not necessarily a bad thing. And when she put out a plea on Facebook for locals to recall favorite foods most closely associated with the St. Francisville area, the mountains of responses were mouth-watering.
The early Anglo plantations were self-sufficient communities where most of the foodstuffs were grown or raised right on the place, with enormous vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, cold-frames for winter production, herds of cattle and sheep and pigs, flocks of poultry. The incredibly talented cooks in the outside kitchens, working over open hearths or later wood stoves, added a little spice from Africa, introducing such staples as okra and yams while greatly improving the basic English dishes.
community market days
Selling greens at Community Park Days
Its location right on the Mississippi River provided St. Francisville with access to fresh seafood from the coast and citrus crops from lower Louisiana; early merchants often had sacks of oysters and blood oranges shipped up the river as Christmas gifts for favored patrons, so that every Christmas dinner table was graced with oyster gumbo, and oyster stew for New Year’s, with a fat juicy orange in every child’s Christmas stocking.
The Feliciana woodlands were teeming with wild game. The English, don’t you know, have always considered themselves very sporting, with hunting dogs so plentiful it was hard to ascend entrance steps without stepping on some. Small game birds, venison, squirrel and wild turkey were popular foods, and some families even maintained river steamers for fishing excursions. There were prime roasts and pork loins and lamb chops, all such good cuts that they needed little seasoning.
Stirring the cracklin.
Farm crops influenced the diet here as elsewhere. Bountiful crops of sweet corn provided corn pudding, roasting ears, macque choux learned from the Indians, and plenty of cornbread made from home-ground meal. During St. Francisville’s spring Audubon Pilgrimage, the re-created Rural Homestead demonstrates grinding cornmeal and cooking cornbread on a wood stove, and there’s even a working still used to produce moonshine (the corn likker was supplanted by muscadine wine, cherry bounce and all manner of other stimulants---those English, need we say, were rarely known to be teetotalers.
Sweet potatoes did exceptionally well in the Feliciana soils and a local canning plant provided the livelihood for many residents through the latter 1900s. It was said without exaggeration that St. Francisville ladies knew hundreds of ways to cook sweet potatoes, from pies to fries and puddings to the basic baked potato that provided many a child’s lunch on school days, besides warming pants pockets on brisk walks to school during chilly winter mornings. This being a small town, the ladies, especially the church ladies, were so skilled at whipping up sweet potato casseroles topped with marshmallows and praline crunches that hardly a catastrophe could befall a family in town before a squadron of neighbors and relatives were marching up the front steps loaded down with consoling casseroles.
So what delectable dishes do St. Francisville residents most closely associate with their area over the years? A Facebook request elicited dozens of mouth-watering responses.
“Fried chicken,” says one, “back when the recipe began with ‘get the axe!’” Homemade biscuits with pure cane syrup. That old southern staple dessert, chess pie, favorite of pilgrimage luncheons and church suppers both black and white. Tomato aspic, colorful staple of ladies’ luncheons back when ladies wore hats and white gloves and had manners; even better, fried green tomatoes. Bourbon pie, so much better the next day after it had aged overnight in the icebox; pecan pie; South of the Border milk punch, served, rumor had it, to whet the whistle during cut-throat hands of poker. Teacakes and little girl’s fancy-dress tea parties under the live oaks dripping with moss. Holiday plum pudding slathered in hard sauce made of real butter and sugar and plenty of bourbon, and eggnog at Christmas, especially at Catalpa Plantation where Miss Mamie used an egg shell as a jigger and made sure it was “the bigger half.” Homemade mayonnaise on tomato sandwiches, and sweet tea.
table setting at rosedown
Dewberry jelly, back when every briar patch along the river hid plenty of berries (and plenty of snakes as well), and cobblers and jam cakes with six or seven thin layers. Field peas and butter beans, mustard greens and collards seasoned with slabs of salt meat, tender young snap beans with new potatoes. Cornbread sticks cooked in cast-iron molds greased with lots of lard. Watermelon rind pickles. Big ol’ striped crookneck cushaws, looking like overgrown squash and practically requiring a chainsaw to cut open, baked with butter and cinnamon or put in pies or bread.
Pralines, especially those made by Miss Emily who hawked them from a little red wagon to drivers waiting to cross the Mississippi on the ferry.  Grits and grillades. Okra gumbo; stewed tomatoes. Fried catfish Fridays in Lent at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church.  Fig wine; fig ice cream; fig anything. Barbecue, and not just pig or calf but goat as well, cooked on spits over pits in the yard.
Grinding Corn
Grinding corn at Rural Homestead
 The old memories, fading but still fragrant, are augmented by more contemporary creations like the iconic Spinach Madeline, and sensation salad and shrimp/eggplant casserole at the Oxbow or shrimp po-boys at Magnolia Café done scampi-style with pepper jack cheese instead of breaded and fried. And then there are those gigantic Mag cookies, and the pita BLTs with sprouts and avocado…and the list could go on and on, with a nice variety of restaurants in St. Francisville carrying on the local culinary traditions with a little extra oomph and maybe, we might as well confess, a little dash of Creole and Cajun seasoning, too.
So yes, Virginia, just as there is life in Louisiana beyond New Orleans and Cajun Country, which comes as a big surprise to a lot of people, so there is food in Louisiana beyond Creole and Cajun cooking, and some of it is fabulous. Maybe it’s time to put St. Francisville and English Louisiana on Louisiana’s Culinary Trails map.



About West Feliciana Parish & St. Francisville, La.

kayaking cat island
Large Bald-cypress tree at Cat Island NWR
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.  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, hunting. 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, a Farmers’ Market every Thursday and Saturday morning, and Hummingbird Festival the last weekend of July) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

A Civil War Event

DAY THE WAR STOPPED IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA
By Anne Butler
day the war stoppedUp the steep hill they trudged, sweating in the sticky June heat, staggering under the weight of the 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. This touching moment will be marked the weekend of June 10, 11 and 12, in St. Francisville, Louisiana, where it all took place.
In June 1863, the bloody 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.
burial at grace churchThe commemorative events begin on Friday, June 10, at 7 p.m. in St. Francisville, with graveside histories in the peaceful oak-shaded cemetery at historic Grace Episcopal Church, where several participants in the original event lie buried---the grave of the Albatross’ commander John E. Hart, whose burial stopped the war and united fellow Masons in both blue and grey, is marked by a marble slab and monument “in loving tribute to the universality of Free Masonry,” while nearby lies W.W. Leake, local Masonic leader and Confederate cavalry officer who expedited Hart’s burial. 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 11, a lively parade travels along St. Francisville’s historic main street beginning at 11 a.m., followed by lunch at the Masonic Lodge from 11:30 to 12:30. Visitors will be pleasantly transported back in time during the afternoon at the nearby United Methodist Church hall by a graceful demonstration of vintage dancing from 12:30 to 1:30. At 1:30 commences the 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 burial of Hart in Grace Church cemetery, with re-enactors in the dignified rites clad in Union and Confederate Civil War uniforms accurate down to the last button and worn brogan.
Day the War StoppedOn Saturday evening from 6 to 8:30 PM, at Oakley Plantation (Audubon State Historic Site), brilliantly costumed vintage dancers will perform stylish dances popular during the Civil War period in the museum theater, encouraging participants to join in and learn the steps. Oakley House, which is never lovelier than by candlelight, opens for special evening tours from 6 to 8 p.m. This year all three floors of Oakley will be filled with costumed living historians demonstrating what life was like during the Civil War years for civilians and soldiers on both sides of the conflict. A picket will greet guests at the entrance in full military uniform. In the dining room the discussion will be about wartime shortages of foodstuffs as ladies converse over their ersatz coffee made from okra, and other ladies will be attending to their mending in the hallway as they make sure the solders’ uniforms have all the buttons sewed on. Convalescent soldiers are attended to in the office, and the little drummer boy waits anxiously in the bedroom to go off to war. In another bedroom, as his anxious wife looks on, a gentleman dons his uniform and packs his gear into a haversack. Confederate headquarters in the library will be the scene of discussions of the nearby bloody Siege of Port Hudson, while in Audubon’s room foraging soldiers confiscate civilian goods for the military, candles, for example, and much-needed food.
On Sunday, June 12, 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.
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, United Methodist Church, and St. Francisville Main Street.
ParadeLocated 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.  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, hunting. 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.

GREAT GARDENING TRADITION

IMAHARA’S ST. FRANCISVILLE BOTANICAL CONTINUES GREAT GARDENING TRADITION

By Anne Butler

Imahara's GardensThe rich soils and mild climate of the Feliciana Parishes combined to produce some glorious 19th-century gardens, lush landscapings of live oaks towering over camellias, azaleas, sweet olive, magnolia fuscata, hip gardenias and all the other old-fashioned plants carefully chosen to complement the magnificent plantation homes and Victorian townhouses. Today those grand antebellum gardens are joined by a contemporary garden just as carefully planned and extensive in scope, a labor of love designed to bring a master gardener back to his roots.

Walter Imahara was one of ten children of a Japanese-American family uprooted by wartime hysteria, relocated from their prosperous California farmland and interned for several years during World War II. The family settled in postwar Louisiana, where they were hired to reclaim the sprawling  gardens at historic Afton Villa Plantation just north of St. Francisville.

As a schoolboy, Walter labored there with his parents and siblings, struggling to clear the jungle-like growth obscuring the beauty of Afton Villa’s terraced plantings and magnificent century-old oak alley, and as a young man he first helped and then succeeded his father James running the Imahara Nursery and Landscaping Co. they developed from scratch into a million-dollar enterprise that beautified the entire Baton Rouge area.

As the oldest son, according to age-old Japanese tradition, of him more was expected, an extra sense of responsibility and stern discipline, and Walter Imahara did not disappoint, rising to the top of every endeavor he undertook…well, almost.  As a weightlifter, he won dozens of national and world gold medals and was president of the International Weightlifting Federation when he put finally put down his competition barbells after half a century of involvement. It was probably his consuming passion for weightlifting that kept him from being tops in his college horticultural studies, but he certainly learned enough, for later as a professional nurseryman he earned the respect and admiration of his peers and was elected to the presidency of prestigious southern and national landscape associations.

After all the hard work and tough discipline for all those years, Walter Imahara certainly deserved a quiet and peaceful retirement. So did he settle with his elegant wife Sumi into a comfortable rocking chair on the front gallery of his St. Francisville country home? Not in a million years. First he labored to turn the unassuming cow pasture around his weekend retreat into a veritable arboretum of hundreds of crape myrtles, magnolias, hollies, camellias, weeping yaupons and yews, palm trees and the Japanese cherry trees his father had loved so much. Pristine white fences line the perimeter and an entrance gate opens onto a boulevard lined with stately Italian cypress trees.

Gardens near St. Francisvillle LouisianaSo then did Walter Imahara rest on his laurels and rock on his porch? Not a chance. It wasn’t long before he set his sights on 55 acres of property on Mahoney Road at the riverside edge of St. Francisville, overgrown hills and steep hollows that had once been part of an experimental livestock farm where 1920’s Louisiana governor John Parker spent part of his retirement years. It had been ages since the property had been productive and it straddled a steep ridge 60 feet above the low-lying cypress swamp and hollows, but Walter Imahara looked at the tangles of briars and brush obscuring the eroding hillsides and he saw potential, the chance to create a legacy garden reminiscent of the grounds of Afton Villa where he spent his childhood. And then he worked miracles.

From the time he purchased this land along the backwash banks of the Mississippi River on Bayou Sara, Walter Imahara and his crew labored, selectively clearing and resculpting the terrain with trackhoes and bulldozers for drainage and erosion control, allowing the 30-acre cypress swamp to serve as the natural reservoir. Eroding soils were shaped from ravines into four ponds, with large rock and filter fabric used to control the overflow, and irrigation systems were installed. Mass plantings of azaleas top-dressed with pinestraw and spaced off-center helped control erosion, providing spectacular color and proving to be deer-resistant as well, important in this wooded region. Other groupings include dozens of different varieties of magnolias, topiaries of various hollies, over 25 varieties of crape myrtles, palms, and many, many more, thousands and thousands of plants.

Road from St. Francisville,  La. to Imahara GardensLovely as it is (and it will become even lovelier as the years pass and the plants mature), this garden is not just for show; the plantings include a huge variety of botanical specimens that should prove of great interest to avid gardeners, with hardy and specialized plantings that thrive in the natural setting of the alluvial Tunica soils. Tours extolling the virtues of each variety are conducted by Walter and often his niece Wanda Chase, who as the third generation has taken over Imahara’s in Baton Rouge and is also a licensed landscape architect and much-honored hardworking young nurserywoman. Walter’s sisters Lily and Irene help out as tour guides as well, often in the conference center that comfortably seats 50 and serves as a venue for gardening talks and refreshments. The conference center is also an art gallery displaying the priceless woodcarvings of Japanese calligraphy produced with mallet and chisel in his old age by Walter’s father James, to whom this garden, so exemplary of the family horticultural skills and passions, serves as a great tribute.

Imahara’s Botanical Garden, on Mahoney Road in St. Francisville, opened its gates for special events and scheduled groups in the spring of 2011. Every Saturday and Sunday from May 28-29 through July 2-3, the gardens will welcome visitors to enjoy the incredible crape myrtle bloom. It will also be open for the October Southern Garden Symposium and December’s popular Christmas in the Country celebration in St. Francisville, as well as for prearranged visits by gardening groups, senior adult and church groups, class reunions, club meetings and landscape association get-togethers, with Imahara family guides and catering available by reservation.

Walter Imahara admits his incredible garden will also make a spectacular setting for weddings, exercise walking and an enormous array of other possibilities for the future. So will Walter Imahara, with his never-ending supply of goals and dreams, ever really retire? Not in a million years!

flowersTo schedule events, activities or guided tours for groups in the garden, contact imaharasbotanicalgarden@gmail.com, and for information on upcoming garden events, log onto facebook.com/pages/Imaharas-Botanical-Garden or visit imaharasbotanicalgarden.blogspot.com.

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.  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, hunting. 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.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

St. Francisville's Temple Sinai

by Anne Butler

Early photograph of Temple Sinai
The little rivertowns all along the Mississippi River corridor saw an influx of Jewish immigrants in the mid-19th century. Escaping religious persecution in Germany, these early settlers followed the cotton culture westward and brought with them experience in mercantile operations and finance, filling a gap between planter and slave. As middlemen, they provided the underpinnings and practicalities to prop up a plantation economy that existed precariously on credit, and after the Civil War many Jewish proprietors of country stores found themselves in the land and cotton business when debts were settled through means others than cash. With profits from these transactions, Jews funded philanthropies benefitting their communities and became active in civic and political affairs. They had a significant impact on the areas in which they settled, and yet today there is no Louisiana museum or cultural center recognizing their contributions. At least there had not been one, until now. The first organized Jewish congregation in the St. Francisville area, meeting initially in a hotel and then an opera house, incorporated in 1901 and quickly set about building their Temple Sinai on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River. When the temple was dedicated in 1903, it was an event involving all members of the community at large. As the local newspaper described it, "The sacred building was filled by a large congregation composed of both Jews and Gentiles. It was an hour of rejoicing." Joining together with the congregation to celebrate the completion of the temple were rabbis from New Orleans, local judges, Protestant rectors, choir members from many different faiths, and processions of children bearing palms and candles.
Temple Sinia in St. Francisville, La.
Temple Sinai today.




The fine building, 35x50 feet, had a number of large stained glass windows and high ceilings contributing to perfect acoustics. The handsome circular pews, altar and raised choir gallery were of quarter-sawn oak. The exterior, painted dove grey trimmed in green, featured doorways topped with arched gothic windows and wide central steps flanked by tall twin towers.

Alas, the Temple Sinai would have a short lifespan. Within a few years of its dedication, many of its members had either died or moved to New Orleans for greater business opportunities. In 1921the building was purchased by a small Presbyterian church, which in its own time would suffer declining membership and would close when most of its members joined the local Methodists.

After years of decline, most recently under ownership of the parish police jury, Temple Sinai is being resurrected as part of a cultural complex in combination with the historic brick Freyhan School, first public school in the parish constructed with major funding provided in the will of prominent 19th-century Jewish entrepreneur Julius Freyhan. The Freyhan Foundation has big plans for both of these adjoining structures, with space for cultural and civic activities, plus exhibits on early Jewish contributions to community life as well as early education in the parish. One sizable donation toward restoration of the school building came from the elderly granddaughter of Julius Freyhan.

Plans for  Temple Sinia
Future Plans
While some stabilization work has already been accomplished on the school building, the temple will be the first restoration project to be completed. The Freyhan Foundation, with a Save America's Treasures grant from the National Park Service combined with other contributions, has hired Holly and Smith Architects to rehabilitate the structure, repairing exterior wood trim and lap siding, painting, and replacing the towers that had been removed at some point from the front façade of the temple. A service wing added to the rear will provide practicalities like restrooms. Work is set to begin in late spring 2011. Upon completion of the restoration project, Temple Sinai will provide a non- denominational multi-purpose space envisioned as a much-needed venue for community events and cultural programs. This will be augmented by the Freyhan School part of the complex, where the major exhibits and events space will be a welcome addition to St. Francisville's cultural tourism scene, providing a gathering spot for local residents as well as offering enlightening historical insight so that visitors might gain appreciation for the contributions of the area's early Jewish immigrants.

Inside Temple Sinia
Inside Temple Sinai
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. 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

The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas-hiking, biking, birding, photography, hunting. 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.



Temple Sinia front doors
Doors & Arches
Front view of Temple Sinia with doors open.
Temple's Entrance

Benches behind the temple and high school
Julius Freyhan High School
benches behind the Temple..
Temple Sinia - side view, surrounded by large live oaks.
Side view of the synagogoue.

Paddling the refuge
Spring brings paddling Cat Island NWR and Bayou Sara.

Tourism Information


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 this time of year when the glorious 19th-century gardens are still filled with winter-blooming camellias mixed with the earliest bloomers of spring, the flowering bulbs and fruit trees. 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.

Butterfly
Great Outdoor Photography
The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas-hiking, biking, birding, photography, hunting. 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.