Plantation Country Romance

Plantation Country Romance: February in St. Francisville is for Lovers

By Anne Butler

When Martha Barrow of Highland Plantation returned to the St. Francisville area after completing her education at Madame Legoin’s fashionable educational institute in Philadelphia, she was 18 and in the sweet bloom of youth. She quickly caught the eye of handsome planter Daniel Turnbull, ten years her senior. Writing of the relationship some years hence, one of their granddaughters would say, “A mutual romance immediately commenced, little Cupid cast his darts and their hearts that instant caught the sunshine they through life had sought.” They were joined in matrimony in 1828 and their descendants for generations would occupy their magnificent home called Rosedown, now a state historic site where the wedding of the Turnbull’s daughter Sarah is regularly reenacted.

Not far away at The Cottage Plantation, back when letter-writing was an art form marked by fine penmanship and even finer sentiments, the plantation owner would write to his beloved wife the tedious details of an 1838 solitary sea voyage to New York and close by proclaiming his abiding love: “I have nothing further to say except to tell you what you have heard once or twice before, viz. that I love you with all my heart and mind,” to which she subsequently replied, “It would be impossible for me to express half the love I bear you.” Their lengthy union had already been blessed with a dozen children, and The Cottage too would remain the family home for a century and a half.

These early settlers in the St. Francisville area enhanced the verdant woodlands with fine homes surrounded by formal gardens and fields of flourishing crops. In the garden gazebos and vine-hung arbors, along the private parterre paths and on shady galleries graced with fanciful trim, many a romance blossomed. Today there’s still something about the peaceful pastoral setting that continues to inspire painters and poets, photographers and nature enthusiasts, and---yes, indeedy---most especially, lovers.

Social mores have drastically changed since suitors of yesteryear had to stealthily exchange love notes or surreptitiously steal kisses while strolling secret garden paths hidden from vigilant chaperones’ surveillance, but romance is still in the air. The St. Francisville area remains a popular lovers’ destination---for romantic getaways, for proposals, for weddings, for honeymoons. And the good folks of St. Francisville do all in their power to enhance the possibilities. February is the month for lovers, and not just on Valentine’s Day.

First, fall in love, maybe on a romantic getaway to one of the St. Francisville area’s Bed & Breakfasts, which run the gamut from historic townhouses (Barrow House & Printer’s Cottage, Shadetree, St. Francisville Inn) to antebellum plantations (Butler Greenwood, The Cottage, Greenwood, The Myrtles), from lakeside clubhouses (Lake Rosemound Inn, Hemingbough) to golf resorts (The Bluffs on Thompson Creek); there are also modern motel accommodations (Best Western and Magnuson). Equipped variously with Jacuzzis and fireplaces, porch swings and four-poster beds piled with fluffy comforters, some of the B&Bs are historic and some contemporary, some are in the country and some in town, and they all provide just the perfect backdrop for kindling a romance.

Then, pop the question, and the choice of romantic settings is unlimited, from down by the riverside to atop a gurgling waterfall in the Tunica Hills, from Victorian gardens colorful with blossoming camellias to oak-shaded parks and plantation grounds. Propose over a sumptuous candlelight dinner at St. Francisville’s fine dining venues (Oxbow Restaurant, Carriage House at The Myrtles), or dancing to the live band at Magnolia Cafe. Present the ring, maybe a designer one from Patrick’s Fine Jewelry, along with a box of fabulous chocolates from the local candy shoppe (The Shanty Too), and flowers from the local florist (Magic Maker).

The same fine restaurants provide splendid locations for bridesmaids’ luncheons and rehearsal dinners, as does the restaurant at The Bluffs and the more casual in-town eateries like Que Pasa, East Dragon, Cozy Corner Bistro; for the really casual, there’s a good pizzeria (Sonny’s). For catered sit-down meals, the St. Francisville Inn with its central courtyard and wine parlor is a prime destination. The gift and antique shops and the art galleries of St. Francisville offer a huge selection of unique one-of-a-kind wedding gifts.

As for wedding locations, there are a number to choose from, including several beautiful historic churches (Grace Episcopal, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic and United Methodist, all in the National Register-listed downtown historic district, and all with their own special requirements). For large ceremonies and receptions, Hemingbough with its lovely lake and grand Greek Revival Greenwood can accommodate hundreds, as can the fine full-service Victorian of the Felicianas. The Myrtles (30-50 guests, more at Ridgecrest) and Butler Greenwood Plantations (15-20 max) host smaller weddings beneath ancient live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and the two state historic sites (Rosedown and Audubon) have begun permitting outdoor ceremonies on their spectacular grounds, as has magnificent Afton Villa Gardens.

The Bluffs has a lovely small chapel, and popular informal venues in St. Francisville are the gazebo in Parker Park and historic Market Hall on Royal Street, as well as hilltop Shadetree. Sage Hill gift shop has a rear addition that’s ideal for small events. Feliciana Seafood caters and rents tables, chairs and other equipment, and other local caterers include Magnolia Café, Oxbow, and the superb upscale Heirloom Cuisine. Confections by Michelle furnishes divine wedding cakes (plus creative customized groom cakes ranging from crawfish pots to toothy sharks, from Tiger tailgating to duck hunting). There are several good local photographers for both engagement and wedding photos, and the retired Justice of the Peace (Kevin Dreher) officiates with just the right mix of meaningful dignity and relaxed charm (he’s the consummate storyteller; ask him to expound on some of the more unusual weddings at which he has officiated, in locations ranging from the state pen to elegant estates to doublewides where the cake was probably one of Michelle’s red-velvet armadillos).

And for the honeymoon and subsequent anniversaries, the St. Francisville area B&Bs can’t be beat, offering romantic charm and privacy, ensuring that the spirit of love and romance lives on. After all these years, Cupid’s darts are still being cast.

St. Francisville remains 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. In February the West Feliciana Historical Society Museum hosts the travelling Smithsonian Institute exhibit called Journey Stories, free and open to the public, with a number of related activities and events.

For visitor information and details on all of the wedding particulars, 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.

Early Travels to St. Francisville

Early Travels to St. Francisville, LA, Led to Some Lurid Descriptions

by Anne Butler

The four-laning of US Highway 61 and the new Mississippi River Bridge make it easy to reach St. Francisville these days, but in the 19th century, travels to this picturesque little Mississippi River village were fraught with perils and gave rise to some spectacularly gruesome newspaper dispatches.

In February, as the West Feliciana Historical Society museum, on Ferdinand St. in St. Francisville, hosts the travelling Smithsonian Institute exhibit called Journey Stories, the focus is on who we are and how we got here. St. Francisville and its now-vanished sister city Bayou Sara beneath the bluffs have got some fascinating tales to tell in this regard.

There were rough early roadways through the wilderness along which the initial settlement patterns could be traced, the pioneers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries braving attacks by Indians and bandits and wild animals as they descended the Natchez Trace into what was then Spanish territory to carve the early indigo and cotton plantations from the Feliciana wilderness. Even the main street of St. Francisville in the 1800s was the scene of cattle drives and heavy-laden wagons en route to the riverport at Bayou Sara below the hill. Muddy quagmires during wet weather and deeply rutted the rest of the time, these roadways led to some unfortunate accidents, buggies bouncing and overturning, with runaway horses compounding the problems. One of the earliest burials at historic Grace Episcopal Church, on the road leading through St. Francisville to the river, was that of baby Edward Baldwin, just five months old, whose cause of death in 1840 was listed as ‘flung from buggy,’ a not-uncommon occurrence.

And then there were the steamboat explosions and sinkings and wrecks like the February 1859 catastrophe of the steamboat Princess which nearly decimated the Feliciana bar. Having boarded passengers at the Bayou Sara landing, the fast packet was headed to New Orleans for the opening of the state Supreme Court and was packed with over 200 prominent passengers. Delayed by fog upriver, the boat was running behind schedule and its crew stoked the blazing fires and tried to make up for lost time. When the Princess exploded at Conrad’s Point just below Baton Rouge, over 70 passengers were mortally wounded. One was Lorenzo D. Brewer, St. Francisville attorney and owner of the historic townhouse called Virginia; transferred to the Natchez for a desperate return trip home, he died before reaching the Bayou Sara landing.

Passengers boarded these riverboats with not a little fear and trepidation despite the fact that many of the steamboats were floating palaces offering luxurious cabins and sumptuous meals. The newspapers of the day were rarely governed by the dictates of good taste and proper political correctness, and journalists had a field day coming up with ever-more scintillating stories of trials and tragedies in order to sell papers. One of the more flamboyant accounts appeared in a September 1843 extra edition of the Louisiana Chronicle, headlined “Bayou Sara, LA Steamer Clipper No. 1 Explosion, September 1843.”
Although only 14 persons were killed, ten others missing and feared dead, and nine wounded, the article calls this “one of the most terrible catastrophies which has ever happened on the Mississippi.” As the Clipper No. 1 was backing from her moorings at the Bayou Sara landing, she blew up “with an explosion that shook earth, air and heaven, as though the walls of the world were crumbling to pieces about our ears. All the boilers bursting simultaneously---machinery, vast fragments of the boilers, huge beams of timber, furniture and human beings in every degree of mutilation, were alike shot up perpendicularly many hundred fathoms in the air.”

“On reaching the greatest height” (and as the writer reached equally great heights of lurid description), “the various bodies diverged like the jets of a fountain in all directions, falling to the earth and upon roofs of houses, in some instances as much as 250 yards from the scene of destruction. The hapless victims were scalded, crushed, torn, mangled and scattered in every possible direction, many into the river, some in the streets, some on the other side of the Bayou nearly 300 yards---some torn asunder by coming in contact with pickets and posts, and others shot like cannon balls through the solid walls of houses at a great distance from the boat.”

Local physicians and residents rushed to the scene to help. “Our citizens generally, every man and mother’s son, appeared only anxious as to how they might render most service to the poor sufferers—white and black, without distinction.” Said the newspaper reporter, “The scene was such as we hope never to look upon again,” but steamboat explosions occurred with such distressing regularity that it was a wonder journeys were ever undertaken in those days, and it is a real tribute to the courage and determination of the early residents of St. Francisville that they had ever arrived or moved about at all.
The Journey Stories exhibit examines migration patterns across the country, augmented by a number of local lectures and special programs. On Saturday, Feb. 11, a walking tour highlights significant contributions of St. Francisville’s early Jewish immigrants, and at 3:30 at Audubon State Historic Site, a one-woman play entitled “Rachel O’Connor’s World” presents the life of one determined Feliciana plantation owner.

On Sunday, February 12, a 2 p.m. reception at the museum officially kicks off the Journey Stories exhibit. 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 presents Student Oral History Projects. On Saturday, February 25, Friends of the Library hosts its Celebration of Writers and Readers at Hemingbough, while Margo Soule speaks on Louisiana’s Native Americans at 2 p.m. in Audubon Market Hall. 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. Saturday, March 3, a Gospel Music Fest in Parker Park from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. highlights the soulful songs of the early black churches. Tribute will also be paid to the country’s earliest standard gauge rail line that connected cotton plantations of the St. Francisville/Woodville area with the riverport at Bayou Sara, in a 2 p.m. program in the West Feliciana Courthouse.

The following Sunday, March 11, Louisiana’s Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne extols the virtues of the Bayou State in his entertaining presentation “Why Louisiana Ain’t Mississippi,” in the old courtroom at 2 p.m. The weekend of March 16 through 18th St. Francisville hosts the annual Audubon Pilgrimage, sponsored for four decades by the West Feliciana Historical Society to commemorate the 1821 stay of John James Audubon. Friday, March 16, will also mark the release of a new book, MAIN STREETS OF LOUISIANA published by UL Press, covering the wonderful historic Main Street downtowns across the state, especially timely as Louisiana celebrates its 200th birthday; St. Francisville is one of 33 Main Street communities featured, and a book release reception will be held in Town Hall, with author and photographer in attendance.

The river port of Bayou Sara is gone now, washed away by floodwaters, but St. Francisville atop the hill remains 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.