Writers and Readers

A GATHERING OF WRITERS AND READERS IN ST. FRANCISVILLE When the West Feliciana Parish Police Jury in midsummer approved a bid of $2.7 million to construct a new library, old timers considered it a natural progression in an area that has traditionally been devoted to the literary arts. The town had one of the state’s earliest public libraries, and the surrounding plantations had extensive private libraries of their own. Today St. Francisville is home for several published authors and retired university literature professors. Besides looking forward to the spacious new library, today’s booklovers anticipate with great relish a special event dubbed A Gathering of Writers and Readers, begun in 2007 and now under the auspices of Arts For All, the non-profit umbrella agency for all arts in West Feliciana. The celebration brings together published authors with readers who might not otherwise have the opportunity to hear writers read from and discuss their work. Scheduled for Saturday, February 22, 2014, at Hemingbough Cultural Arts Center just south of St. Francisville, the all-day event begins at 8:30 a.m. and will be moderated by SLU professor and former bookstore owner Charles Elliott, himself a writer, film director and noted character. Four professional authors will be featured, as well as distinguished repeat guest Ernest Gaines, recent recipient of the National Medal of Arts, who will be honored for his extraordinary literary contributions, and featured writers from previous years are invited to “gather” again. Dr. Wiley Cash, nationally acclaimed award-winning fiction author, had his first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, selected as a New York Times Notable Book. A North Carolina native, Cash earned his PhD at UL Lafayette and studied under writer-in-residence emeritus Ernest J. Gaines. It was there that he began the bestselling book A Land More Kind than Home, which NPR called “great Gothic Southern fiction filled with whiskey, guns and snake-handling.” His second book, the just-released This Dark Road to Mercy, promises to be just as riveting, a novel of love and atonement, blood and vengeance. Rheta Grimsley Johnson is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and author of nonfiction books including Poor Man’s Provence—Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana about time spent in Henderson in the Atchafalaya Basin. Dr. Julie Kane, Northwestern State University professor and Louisiana’s past Poet Laureate, has published five volumes of poetry, and her poems have appeared in dozens of anthologies and journals. Both Cash and Kane are experienced university professors, and Johnson has been on the short list for a Pulitzer for journalism; her popular folksy columns appear in Baton Rouge’s The Advocate. Anne Butler writes nonfiction books preserving Louisiana history and culture, as well as children’s books, hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, and true crime, including Weep for the Living; as a crime writer she had certainly not intended to become an actual participant, but when she was shot five times, she managed to get a good book out of even that experience. Her more recent books  Louisiana Hwy. 1  and Main Streets of Louisiana include beautiful color images by Louisiana photographer Henry Cancienne. These diverse authors have been specifically chosen to give the audience a well-balanced appreciation for the art of literature---poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, nonfiction, all with great appeal to Louisiana readers. They will share their creative processes and works; participants, including several students on scholarships, are encouraged to ask questions and will have an opportunity to interact with the authors. Seating is limited. For online information visit http://artsforall.felicianalocal.com. Tickets, $35, may be purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/491750 and include parking, individual author presentations as well as moderated panel discussions, book signings, refreshments, lunch and a dessert reception with authors. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council, the Greater Baton Rouge Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency.  A grant from Entergy allowed Arts for All to invite Wiley Cash, who will be the Entergy Author for this event.

Dr. Wiley Cash Rhea Grimsley Johnson Dr. Julie Kane Anne Butler

AUDUBON PILGRIMAGE SURE SIGN OF SPRING IN ST. FRANCISVILLE
By Anne Butler

The forty-third annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 21, 22 and 23, 2014, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. The ice storms of winter may have confused the plants, but savvy pilgrims know it’s spring when the West Feliciana Historical Society throws open the doors of significant historic structures to commemorate artist-naturalist John James Audubon’s stay as he painted a number of his famous bird studies and tutored the daughter of Oakley Plantation’s Pirrie family, beautiful young Eliza. And regardless of the winter weather, the azaleas always come through with spectacular bloom just in time for the pilgrimage.

Carefully selected features this year—three antebellum homes in the countryside and one townhouse-- illustrate the grand good luck of needy historic homes fortunate enough to fall into the hands of dedicated and knowledgeable preservationists.

Overlooking Little Bayou Sara from a high bluff along the Tunica Trace, Live Oak is one of the earliest plantation homes in the Felicianas, built around 1808 on part of a 1796 Spanish land grant by Elijah Adams. A splendid two-story structure with four sturdy brick columns across the lower gallery and five slender wooden ones across the upper one, the home shows both Spanish and Anglo-American architectural influences, with steep unbroken roofline, thick brick walls that taper upwards, and exterior staircases as well as a tiny hidden indoor stair. Unlike later Greek Revival structures, the house has no central hall; instead, rooms open to the outside for ventilation. There are seven fireplaces, and the sturdy framing beams are of pit-sawn red cypress and blue poplar, notched and pegged together.

In 1824 Live Oak was acquired by Bennett Barrow, and a century later Katherine Towles LeSassier and her husband operated a post office and school for neighborhood children who arrived on horseback. By the 1960’s, Live Oak was unoccupied; cattle grazed on the grounds, the back porch had fallen off, the third-floor attic was full of rats and bats and wasps. None of which deterred dedicated preservationist Sue Turner, who with her husband purchased the house in 1975, having loved it ever since receiving as a young girl a small watercolor of it by artist Charles Reineke purchased in New Orleans. They immediately commenced a sensitive and thorough restoration under the direction of restoration architect Samuel Wilson.

Also now in the Weyanoke plantation community, Sunnyside was languishing abandoned in a field in Pointe Coupee until a dedicated historian trucked it across the Mississippi River bridge and reassembled it on a treeless sweet potato field. Sunnyside was built near Lettsworth in 1838 for Laura Thomas, niece of General Philemon Thomas, hero of the 1810 West Florida Rebellion and the War of 1812. She was 15 when she was married Charles Tessier, and after her death in 1852 Sunnyside was occupied by the plantation overseer and not subjected to modern improvements, remaining a veritable time capsule.

Still, only an experienced eye would have noticed the potential in the unpretentious little story-and-a-half structure with its rusted tin roof sitting abandoned in an overgrown field near Lettsworth. Fortunately, David Floyd, Rural Life Museum director and longtime preservationist, had the requisite experienced eye, recognizing immediately that this typical bluffland house type, vernacular architecture at its best, would fit in perfectly with neighboring historic homes in Weyanoke. And so the little Sunnyside house was meticulously disassembled and moved, then put back together. Its lumbering trip across the old bridge at Baton Rouge in December 1997 made the television news more than once.

Sunnyside’s lush landscaping is a tribute to Floyd’s beloved longtime mentor, the late landscape architect Steele Burden. Maturing live oaks line the drive from the Tunica Trace, a crape myrtle tunnel draws the visitor through the pieux picket fence to the patterned plantings at the entrance, and a side potager of herbs and vegetables is presided over by a traditional weathered dovecote. Eminently suited to this 19th-century home, these plantings anchor the house beautifully to its site.
Nydrie is a handsome raised Creole cottage that was filled with stored hay until salvaged and relocated from Tangipahoa. Constructed in the 1850s in Tangipahoa near the Confederate training camp called Camp Moore, it was used as a hospital during the Civil War. The upper floor was the living space, while the open lower level, its walls of old brick upwards of 16” thick, was used as a rustic dirt-floored carriageway for wagons and buggies. In 1997, the upper floor of the house was cut in half and moved on two 18-wheelers to property originally part of Rosedown Plantation; the upper walls and floors, all of wood, proved to be in remarkably good condition, as were the upstairs doors. The hip roof, removed prior to the relocation, was replaced with a new gable one. The downstairs brick, some so old they had embedded animal footprints, were saved and reused.
Today spacious rooms flank a wide center hallway on the upstairs “premier etage,” and the lower floor has been enclosed as well. The house has been beautifully furnished with an eclectic collection reflecting the diverse tastes and extensive travels of the owners, Earl and Anne S. Eichins, New Orleanians who found refuge in St. Francisville after Hurricane Katrina. Now both occupants and home have been admirably settled into their new location, the old house grounded by terraces of old brick, arbors hung with climbing roses and a parterre garden.

In town, the comfortable little cottage called Ardisia has benefitted from a succession of master builders enhancing its charms through the generations. Its hilltop site provided an ideal vantage point for viewing the passage of history, adjacent to the courthouse square and overlooking the major thoroughfare traversed by cattle drives and cotton wagons en route to the Mississippi River port of Bayou Sara below the hill.

As the area struggled to recover from the Civil War, court documents seem to indicate that the property was owned by William Walter Leake, respected judge, bank president and state legislator who raised 11 children in the Barrow House on connecting property facing Royal St. When Johnson Street was carved out to connect Royal and Ferdinand Sts., it separated several lots facing Ferdinand that in 1878 had been sold to Thomas Raynham of a family of expert craftsmen, joiners and brickmasons whose skills were evident in beautiful Grace Church.

In 1919, widowed Mary Ann Raynham’s will left to her niece Mamie Levert “my three lots with house and all improvements thereon facing Ferdinand in the town of St. Francisville, also six silver teaspoons.” Mamie’s relative Thomas Raynham, that English-born master builder, had constructed for her a comfortable bungalow overlooking Ferdinand Street, where her husband Dr. Eloi Levert kept a medical office in a front room. On the adjacent lot Mamie inherited from her aunt was a cottage for their cook Aunt Nellie. When Mamie died in 1939, this property was sold for $3,500 to Willie Randolph Cason, whose son-in-law, Rodney Cassagne, was a master carpenter.

The house now called Ardisia, originally two front rooms, two rear cabinets or small rooms, and at least one dirt-floored room, really began to take shape as Cassagne replaced the roof, added two back rooms and stair, reframed the second floor, poured concrete for the front porch; bricks from the original fireplace formed the front walk. In 1985 Cason heirs sold the property for more than $41,000. Current owner Melissa Higgins moved to St. Francisville in 2002, found the occupants of this little hilltop cottage erecting a For Sale sign, and bought it practically the same day.

Other features of the 2014 Audubon Pilgrimage include Afton Villa Gardens, Audubon (Oakley) and Rosedown State Historic Sites, three 19th-century churches in town and beautiful St. Mary’s in the country, plus the Rural Homestead with lively demonstrations of the rustic skills of daily pioneer life. Audubon Market Hall houses the popular antique show and sale, and the Audubon Play will be performed several times daily on Saturday and Sunday in recently restored Temple Sinai. Daytime features are open 9:30 to 5; Friday evening activities are scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m., Saturday soiree begins at 7 p.m.
The Historic District around Royal Street is filled during the day with the happy sounds of costumed children singing and dancing the Maypole; in the evening as candles flicker and fireflies flit among the ancient moss-draped live oaks, there is no place more inviting for a leisurely stroll. Friday evening features old-time Hymn Singing at the United Methodist Church, Audubon Play in Temple Sinai, Graveyard Tours at Grace Episcopal cemetery (last tour begins at 8:15 p.m.), and a wine and cheese reception at Bishop Jackson Hall (7 to 9 p.m.) featuring Vintage Dancers and young ladies modeling the pilgrimage’s exquisitely detailed 1820’s evening costumes, nationally recognized for their authenticity. Light Up The Night, the Saturday evening soiree, features live music and dancing, dinner and drinks beginning at 7 p.m.

For tickets and tour information, contact West Feliciana Historical Society, Box 338, St. Francisville, LA 70775; phone 225-635-6330 or 225-635-4224; online www.audubonpilgrimage.info, email sf@audubonpilgrimage.info . New this year is a package including daytime tours, evening entertainment Friday and Saturday, and a Saturday picnic lunch. Tickets can be purchased at the Historical Society Museum on Ferdinand Street.

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 restored plantation homes are open for tours daily: Cottage Plantation, Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are open in season. 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 some weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Sunday and Monday).

The nearby Tunica Hills region offers recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, hunting. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and shops, many in restored historic structures, and restaurants 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 historic district; there are also motel accommodations for bus groups.

For visitor information, call St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission at 225-6330 or 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com, www.stfrancisville.net or www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).

MARDI GRAS ESCAPEES PARADE TO ST. FRANCISVLLE
By Anne Butler

As the rest of south Louisiana celebrates Mardi Gras in a burst of fun and frivolity preceding the austerity of Lent, with everything from costumed royalty at masquerade balls to fabulous floats in colorful street parades and even rowdy riders galloping about in pursuit of terrified chickens for the gumbo pot, St. Francisville marches to its own different drum and does what it does best. This quiet little rivertown in English Louisiana, where the primarily Protestant pioneers made no fuss over carnival season, provides a respite from the madness, a peaceful haven for Fat Tuesday escapees and a romantic destination for Valentine lovers.

And whether you’re traveling for escape or romance, whether you’re trying to find yourself or lose yourself, St. Francisville has just the right accommodation for your trip. Bed & Breakfasts run the gamut from historic townhouses to antebellum plantations, from lakeside clubhouses to golf resorts and throw-back thirties’ motor courts. Some are contemporary and some historic, some in the countryside and some right in the midst of St. Francisville’s National Register of Historic Places downtown, and they’re as different as night and day.

Most historic of the in-town B&Bs is the Barrow House-Printer’ Cottage, two structures across the street from each other on beautiful Royal Street. The Barrow House was built around 1809 and during the Civil War was the home of attorney W.W. Leake, Confederate cavalry officer who facilitated the rare moment of civility when Masons in both blue and grey joined in universal brotherhood to bury a Union gunboat commander in the cemetery of nearby Grace Church. Leake’s daughter married Dr. A. Feltus Barrow, country doctor and town mayor who gave the house its name. The Printer’s Cottage across the street is a late 1700’s post-and-beam structure with upstairs evidence of the passage of a cannonball. Between the two structures, there are bedrooms and suites, with exceptionally fine antiques as well as modern conveniences.

The St. Francisville Inn is located in the Wolf-Schlesinger House adjacent to oak-shaded Parker Park and was built in the 1880s by prosperous merchant Morris Wolf, of the Jewish immigrant family so important to the region’s post-war economic survival. The bustling emporium begun across the street by his brother-in-law, J. Freyhan & Co., was taken over by Wolf and his brother Emmanuel and renamed M&E Wolf’s General Store and Cotton Gin. The Victorian house contains the wine parlor and dining area where a sumptuous breakfast buffet is served for the public and for guests staying in rooms across a bricked courtyard.

Shadetree bills itself as magical, and so it is, perched on a wooded hilltop on Royal Street with sloping lawns and a view of the Mississippi River from its rustic decks. An individual cottage plus several suites in the eclectic main structure provide upscale amenities, while the grounds are ideal for birding, bonfires and relaxing.

And then there are the 3-V Tourist Courts, throwbacks to the thirties’ cabin-with-attached-garage motoring days and perfect backdrop for the filming of “Bonnie and Clyde.” Fun little spaces and amazingly well equipped for their size, they are right next to Magnolia Café in the center of all the activity, especially on Friday nights when the Mag has live music.

There are also modern motel accommodations in town---Best Western and the 100-room Magnuson on the lake---capable of housing entire busloads of visitors, plus apartments at Lamplighter Suites for overnight, weekly or monthly rental. Peaceful Pines Campgrounds and Shelby J’s RV Park have full hookups and facilities for motor homes.

In the countryside surrounding St. Francisville, four historic plantations offer overnight accommodations. Begun in the 1790s by David Bradford of Pennsylvania, leader of the Whiskey Rebellion protesting a tax levied on spirits, The Myrtles has been more famous in recent years for a different variety of spirits, billing itself one of America’s most haunted houses. Stories swirl around the deaths of Bradford’s daughter and several small granddaughters, and there was also a documented Reconstruction-era murder on the long front gallery. Hair-curling candlelight mystery tours on weekends may have some guests preferring to stay in the newly constructed B&B cottages rather than the elaborate rooms in the main house. There is an on-site restaurant as well.

The main house at Butler Greenwood Plantation, also begun in the 1790s by the area’s first physician and later home to the chief justice of the Louisiana’s first Supreme Court, is still occupied by members of the original family, so guests stay in eight well-equipped cottages scattered around the landscaped grounds. Some overlook a pond and others are perched on the edges of steep wooded ravines, all very quiet and peaceful with lots of live oaks and 19th-century gardens.

Another early plantation is The Cottage, 1795 land grant purchased in 1811 by Thomas Butler, the first judge of the Florida Parishes, and remaining in the original family until the 1950s. Andrew Jackson stayed there on his way home from the Battle of New Orleans; his chief of staff was Judge Butler’s brother and there were at least 7 other Butlers in the party, taxing the accommodations of even this commodious home so that the host had to sleep in the pantry. Guests today have a choice of rooms in the main house and attached wing, furnished with fine antiques, or one separate pond-side cottage.

Designed for William Ruffin Barrow in 1830 by noted architect James Hammon Coulter, Greenwood Plantation was considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture, 100 feet square and completely surrounded by 28 immense Doric columns of slave-made brick. It was struck by lightning on August 1, 1960, and burned completely to the ground. Only the columns and chimneys were left, but they were enough to inspire the Barnes family to purchase the property and rebuild an exact duplicate. Guests are now welcomed for overnight stays in a separate structure across the reflecting pond.

More contemporary accommodations may be had at Lake Rosemound Inn, lakeside clubhouse situated on the banks of beautiful Lake Rosemound. Rooms and suites have private entrances, guests have access to lakeside beach and fishing, and there is even an ice cream parlor. Hemingbough is an ambitious conference center, elegant setting for large cultural events and receptions, with gardens and an amphitheater and Greek temple beside a large lake. Overnight accommodations here are in a replica of the garconnier at Uncle Sam Plantation, as well as a variety of smaller structures.

The Felicianas’ first golf resort and private residential community, The Bluffs enhances a spectacular 674-acre wooded setting overlooking Thompson Creek with a challenging 18-hole championship course designed by golf great Arnold Palmer to highlight its unique site. The Lodge at The Bluffs has suites, and the Clubhouse features a restaurant and grill, meeting and fitness facilities.
B&B owners can provide personalized recommendations for touring, dining, special seasonal events, recreational activities and everything else that can make overnight stays enjoyable and interesting, whether guests want to have an active visit or want to relax and do nothing at all. There’s something for everyone in St. Francisville. (And for those guests exhibiting withdrawal symptoms of carnival deprivation, right across the Mississippi River is one of the state’s oldest Mardi Gras celebrations in French New Roads, just over the Audubon Bridge!)

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, the Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are open in season. 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 some weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Sunday and Monday). Rosedown has special exhibits and events throughout the month of February in observance of Black History Month.

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 nice 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 225-6330 or 225-635-4224; online visit www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com, www.stfrancisville.net or www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).