By Anne Butler
There’s just something special about small-town Christmas shopping, with welcoming shopkeeps, unique settings with plenty of character, and one-of-a-kind inventory, combining to make the experience enjoyable, as opposed to the dreaded harried hurried crush of big-box stores. And St. Francisville’s wonderfully varied boutique shops and galleries deliver all that in spades, especially during the ever-popular Christmas in the Country. This year set for December 4, 5 and 6th, the safe, family-oriented weekend is crammed full of spectacular seasonal decorations, musical entertainment throughout the National Register-listed downtown, breakfast with Santa and a colorful parade themed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” caroling and window-peeping, plus contemporary house tours and even a symphony concert.
Millions of white lights trace soaring Victorian trimwork and grace gallery posts to transform the entire picturesque little town into a veritable winter wonderland for Christmas in the Country. The mayor lights the town Christmas tree Friday evening, Dec. 4, with a reception and fireworks beginning at 6 p.m., followed by a chance to “Peep into our Holiday Homes” along Ferdinand and Royal Streets from 6 to 8. Saturday, Dec. 5, begins at 7:30 a.m. with a prayer breakfast at Methodist Church Fellowship Hall, followed by the Women’s Service League Breakfast with St. Nick for children at Jackson Hall of Grace Episcopal Church; there are two seatings at 8 and 9:30 a.m., reservations are encouraged, and advance tickets may be purchased online at www.womensserviceleague.com ). The Service League also has its usual fresh wreath and cookbook sale on Ferdinand St.
A Saturday house tour (10 to 4) benefits the wonderful new parish library and showcases some unique contemporary homes as well as beautiful 19th-century St. Mary’s Church. Tickets ($25 in advance, $30 day of tour) may be purchased at the library, online at www.brownpapertickets.comor at tour homes on event day. Sponsored by Friends of the Library for the 18th year, featured homes include the Carolina-I farmhouse of the Lindsey family (now happily overflowing with the third and fourth generations since development of Lake Rosemound by family patriarch, the late Lloyd Lindsey Sr.); a secluded Tunica Hills home called Briar Creek which comes complete with sheepherder’s wagon and lifesize bronze bear; and Harmony House/Melody House, two separate structures joined by a 150-foot bridge over a 60-foot ravine.
St. Francisville’s oak-shaded Parker Park overflows with children’s activities, music, food and crafts vendors all weekend including Friday evening, and there will be entertainment throughout the historic downtown area, featuring choirs, dancers, bands, and other performers. Talented art students display their works at local shops, with purchase proceeds benefitting the local school arts programs. A Charlie Brown Christmas movie will be shown at 2 p.m. in Jackson Hall. From 10 to 4 on Saturday, Oakley plantation house in Audubon State Historic Site presents Colonial Christmas cooking demonstrations in the outside kitchen, followed by candlelight tours with period music and wassail from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. In town, Saturday evening entertainment includes a Community Sing-Along at United Methodist Church on Royal Street from 6 to 7, a Live Nativity inside First Baptist Church on US 61 from 6 to 8, and “Peep into our Holiday Homes” to admire Christmas decorations in participating historic structures. New this year will be Twilight Shopping and Music, extended hours for downtown shopping on Saturday evening from 4 to 7 p.m., with musical groups and bands enlivening some of the venues.
The Christmas parade, usually held on Saturday, will be on Sunday, December 6, this year, beginning at 2 p.m. and traversing Ferdinand and Commerce Streets. Sponsored by the Women’s Service League, the parade features gaily decorated floats, marching bands, and of course Santa Claus riding atop a vintage fire truck. The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra has its Holiday Brass concert and dessert reception at Hemingbough Sunday evening beginning at 7 p.m.; tickets are available at Bank of St. Francisville.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 shops, which go all out, hosting Open Houses with refreshments and entertainment while offering spectacular seasonal decorations and great gift items. A variety of quaint little shops and galleries occupy historic structures throughout the downtown area and spread into the outlying district, each unique in its own way; visitors should not miss a single one.
The town’s longstanding popular anchor stores have been joined by a number of smaller boutiques offering a wonderful variety of wares—antiques, collectibles, original artworks, upscale and affordable clothing, housewares, decorative items, jewelry, books and children’s playthings-- to remind visitors how timeless is the excitement of small-town Christmas shopping at this exuberant celebration of the season.To balance the “wretched excess” of materialism by remembering the less fortunate this time of year, however, there’s one heartwarming local charity that would welcome donations. “Sharing Jamie’s Joy” was begun a couple of years ago by the widow of young Jamie Navarre as a memorial ministry to the homeless. Leslie Davis Navarre and her son Tucker, with help from supportive family and community members, compile and deliver some 200 “blessing bags” of greatly appreciated practical necessities like ponchos and socks, gloves, winter hats, toiletries, pens and notepads, candy, even big black garbage bags for protection against the wet winter weather. Cash contributions are accepted as well as the items mentioned here; deadline for donations is December 12th, and information may be obtained by calling Leslie at 225-931-8611.
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: the Cottage Plantation, Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are open in season and are both spectacular. 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 periodic living-history demonstrations to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Monday and Tuesday).
The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking and especially bicycle racing due to the challenging terrain, birding, photography, hunting, and kayaking on Bayou Sara. 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 West Feliciana Tourist Commission and West Feliciana Historical Society at 225-6330 or 225-635-4224, or St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873; online visit www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com www.stfrancisville.net or www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).
Thanksgiving turns our thoughts backward, back to the 1620s First Thanksgiving celebrated by Plymouth pilgrims with the Native Americans who taught them survival skills, back to our heritage and history, back to “Over the River and Through the Wood, To Grandmother’s House We Go.”
When she died in September at the age of 84, longtime St. Francisville mayor William H. D’Aquilla, “by the authority vested in me by the State of Louisiana and the Town of St. Francisville,” officially proclaimed October 3 as Ms. Emily Smothers Williams Day in recognition of the great respect with which she was viewed in the community.
They will be joined by Chris LeBlanc, for over 20 years a mainstay on the Louisiana music scene, whose performances resonate with the rich bluesy sound of the south; Betsy Braud with her upbeat gumbo bayou jazz with a hint of the swamp; talented LSU music school grad Kiki Lynell; and beloved local blues band the Delta Drifters. Also appearing are Oscar “Harp” Davis, one of the region’s best blues harmonica players and member of the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame; John Gray, educator and trumpet player noted for his wide range of musical genres from classical to jazz, funk and R&B; Chris Belleau, physiatrist by day and in Zydeco bands by night, whose album Knee Deep in the Blues featured him on vocals, harmonic and Cajun accordion.
Located on US Highway 61 on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge, LA, and
In just about the only part of south Louisiana whose woodlands experience an explosion of autumn coloring as frosts turn leaves brilliant reds and yellows and oranges, it is only fitting that one of the most popular area celebrations is called the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival.
With the beauty of its lush natural resources and its fascinating depth of heritage, the St. Francisville area has inspired many a painter and writer. Audubon responded to the call of its prolific birdlife; Walker Percy responded to the echoes of its history. Today, it’s the wood that speaks to Mitch Evans, whether live oak or black walnut, sinker cypress or hackberry, pecan, river birch, red maple or sweet gum. And he listens and he understands, letting the chunks of wood tell him what to make of them…trencher bowls, vases, designs like paintings rendered in slivers and bits of wood, even a piece where he has used his chainsaws, grinders and sanders to turn small bits of wood into what you’d swear are shiny river rocks.
Arts For All calls the Yellow Leaf Festival a celebration of the “friendly, relaxed, authentic, small-town quaintness that is St. Francisville,” (for information, 
Every Sunday in October, the Angola Prison Rodeo draws more than 10,000 eager spectators to witness death-defying bravado in events like bareback bronc or bull riding, wild cow milking, wild horse race, buddy pick-up, bulldogging, inmate poker (last one seated wins, the other players having been hooked sky-high by charging brahma bulls), Bust Out (six bulls released at once) and the crowd-pleasing Guts and Glory when inmates on foot try to snatch a $100 chit from a bull’s horns. “The Wildest Show in the South, ” which keeps the audience on the edge of their seats from the moment the black-clad Angola Rough Riders charge into the arena at break-neck speed, also features prisoner hobbycraft sales, tons of food, and inmate bands. Other than the ladies’ barrel racing, all rodeo participants are inmates in this enormous maximum-security prison. 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 (
Flatboaters in the late 1700s used to pull into the still waters of Bayou Sara creek where it emptied into the Mississippi River to get out of the river’s strong current and spend a peaceful night on the way to New Orleans. Often these same boatmen also stopped there on their walk back up the river to wherever they started their journey; their boats, with no engine power, could hardly travel upriver against the current, so the flatboats were broken up and sold for lumber, setting the crew afoot as they headed for home.
But by the late 1920s, particularly after the devastating flood of 1927 that displaced millions of people along the Mississippi River corridor, most of Bayou Sara port city’s occupants had moved their residences and businesses up the hill to St. Francisville, and what was left was abandoned to the river’s current. Even the creek called Bayou Sara declined, silt filling its deep swimming holes, no longer navigable by most boats except during flood times when river waters backed up into it.
One location along Bayou Sara is featured on the popular annual Hummingbird Celebration on Saturday, September 12, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Hummingbird biologists Nancy Newfield and Linda Beale capture, study and band these amazing little birds, giving onlookers a chance to get up-close-and-personal. Admission is free to the two banding locations: artist Murrell Butler’s property along Bayou Sara at 9485 Oak Hill Road just north of St. Francisville, and Carlisle Rogillio’s Wild Bird Sanctuary at 15736 Tunica Trace (LA 66) near Angola. 
Natchez, MS, the St. Francisville area is a year-round tourist destination. A number of splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours: the Cottage Plantation, Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are open in season and are both spectacular. 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 periodic living-history demonstrations to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Monday and Tuesday). 
Few of the folks who enjoy community festivals and get-togethers on the landscaped grounds of beautiful Parker Park in historic downtown St. Francisville stop to think of the history of that particular property, but if these oaks could talk!
As he prospered, his family grew to include a wife and three daughters named Eliska, Eugenie and Mehitable, the latter known as Hetty. In 1876 plans for a suitable estate were drawn, including a handsome grove and circular drive, plus stables in the back and 6 ½ acres labeled as “park.” The enormous Victorian Gothic house he built had a broad front gallery and three steep pointed gables across the front. By the 1880s the Wolf brothers, who took over Julius Freyhan’s huge dry-goods emporium and cotton gin just across the street, would build matching homes of similar style next door, one still standing as the St. Francisville Inn. 
In the 1990s the widow of her son, James Munroe Parker, graduate of Annapolis and great-grandson of Dr. Dennison Stocking, donated the property to the Town of St. Francisville, and it now contains a veteran’s memorial, Victorian bandstand, paved walkways and well-maintained shaded grounds. Parker Park is the site of the popular fall Yellow Leaf Arts Festival, community market days, movies in the park, and numerous other activities, and advance scheduling of activities must be done through town officials.
“All you need is love” say the promotional posters, but you’d better bring your credit cards too, because the popular WAGS AND WHISKERS GALA Saturday, August 1, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Hemingbough just south of St. Francisville, is the major fundraiser for the West Feliciana Animal Humane Society and the “Bo” Bryant Animal Shelter. 
Tickets to the gala are $25 and may be purchased at the Bank of St. Francisville, from shelter volunteers, or online through 
Inmates from the nearby parish work-release facility voluntarily help, and a new grant pays for part-time employment of a couple of older staff members, but with the springtime explosion of kittens and puppies, there’s always a need, especially for more volunteers to augment the core group keeping the shelter open, caring for animals, overseeing adoptions, cleaning and handling the multitude of requisite chores, plus related efforts in grant writing, fundraising, supply purchasing, carpentry, you name it. More foster homes for animals, especially those too young or injured to stay in the shelter, are needed, too, plus more donations of cash and supplies like collars and leashes, pet carriers, cat litter, old towels, pet food; and of course there’s always the need for more families willing to adopt.
The shelter is open to the public Sunday through Friday 9 to 12, Fridays until 2, and every day 4 to 5:30, but volunteers are there every day of the week, twice a day, providing the medical care, grooming, maintenance and love. Some of the volunteers are children, who provide plenty of loving attention for animals often starved for affection. For shelter or humane society information, telephone 225-299-6787, 225-635-5801, or online 
Another fundraising event, called Night At The Museum, benefits the West Feliciana Historical Society, with costumed presenters entertaining the crowd, plus fine refreshments at the Ferdinand Street headquarters/museum/tourist information center (call 225-635-4224 for details). The museum, in an 1880s hardware store, has fascinating exhibits recently professionally redesigned to show off the society’s extensive collection of artifacts. Proceeds benefit ongoing preservation projects and maintenance on restored historic structures. 
Natchez, MS, the St. Francisville area is a year-round tourist destination. A number of splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours: the Cottage Plantation, Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are open in season and are both spectacular. 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 periodic living-history demonstrations to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Sunday and Monday). 
Called “intellectually serious but high spirited,” the Walker Percy Weekend features lectures and panel discussions on topics including “Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy: Catholics in the Christ-Haunted South,” “Walker Percy and David Foster Wallace: Losing it at the Movies,” “From Gone With the Wind to Garden & Gun: Walker Percy at the Crossroads of the Old South and the New,” and “Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man: Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and the Southern Imagination.” 
Proceeds benefit the Freyhan Foundation’s ongoing efforts to restore as a community cultural center the area’s first public school building, a stately brick structure overlooking the Mississippi River with a grand third-floor auditorium and an outdoor amphitheater down the hill. Nancy Vinci, Freyhan Foundation head, calls the Walker Percy Weekend the group’s biggest fundraiser and appreciates the national exposure the restoration project receives. “Hopefully,” she says, “in a few years we will be having Walker Percy Weekend events in the restored Freyhan building.”
June also brings The Day The War Stopped in St. Francisville, Civil War re-enactment of a moment of civility in the midst of a bloody conflict when Masons in blue and grey joined the Episcopal rector in burying a Union gunboat commander and fellow Mason from New York. Free events are scheduled June 12, 13 and 14th around Grace Episcopal Church and the Masonic Lodge; for information, www.daythewarstopped.com. 
The nearby Tunica Hills region offers unmatched recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking and especially bicycle racing due to the challenging terrain, 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.
The bonds of brotherhood, those Masonic ties that bind stronger than anything on the outside, saved many a plantation house in south Louisiana during the Civil War---among them, Chretien Point Plantation in Sunset, where ailing elderly Hypolite Landry III drug himself from his sickbed onto the upper gallery and flashed the sign that made General Nathaniel Banks recall the Yankee troops about to destroy the home; and Madewood near Thibodaux, where widowed Eliza Pugh, mother of 15 children, saved the plantation from destruction by appealing to the Union general’s Masonic ties to her late husband.
The Albatross was patrolling the Mississippi River off the port city of Bayou Sara just below St. Francisville when a single shot rang out from the captain’s stateroom. It was 4:15 p.m. on June 11, and the vessel’s commander, John Elliot Hart of Schenectady, New York, lay mortally wounded on the floor, his pistol beside his body and a note detailing his despondency over his sufferings from dyspepsia. Attempts to find a metal coffin in which to ship his body home proved futile, and so the ship’s surgeon went ashore in hopes of making arrangements for burial on land.
The commemorative events begin on Friday, June 12, 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 lie the Reverend Dr. Daniel Lewis, Episcopal rector who presided at the burial, and W.W. Leake, the local Masonic leader and Confederate cavalry officer who expedited Hart’s burial. An Open House and historical presentation at the double-galleried Masonic Lodge just across Ferdinand St. from the graveyard follows at 8 p.m. Friday evening.
On Saturday evening from 6 to 8:30 p.m., at Oakley Plantation (Audubon State Historic Site), brilliantly costumed vintage dancers will perform dances popular during the Civil War period, and the house opens for special evening tours from 6 to 8 p.m. On Sunday, June 14, Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site has a special exhibit on Civil War burial customs. 
Open this year for the first time is Retreat Plantation, built around 1823 on property of Sarah Bingman and named Soldier’s Retreat by her second husband, Clarence Mulford, a U.S. Army captain at nearby Fort Adams. A 1½-story Anglo-Creole home with handsome architectural details set on a bluff overlooking Little Bayou Sara, it has been restored by present owners C.B. and Mary C. de Laureal Owen, continuing seven generations of Percy family occupancy since 1859.
An exuberant Carpenter Gothic Victorian home approached from US Highway 61 via an impressive oak avenue, The Oaks was built in 1888 by Judge Thomas Butler, Confederate veteran, planter and police juror. From his family’s isolated plantation he moved to be nearer St. Francisville’s amenities, embellishing his new house with stained glass, fanciful gingerbread trim, dormers and turrets. When the last of his nine children died, The Oaks became home to the E. I. Daniel III family.
Other popular features of the 2015 Audubon Pilgrimage include Audubon (Oakley) and Rosedown State Historic Sites, three 19th-century churches in town and beautiful St. Mary’s in the country, as well as the Rural Homestead with lively demonstrations of the rustic skills of daily pioneer life. An 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, Sunday 11 to 4 for tour homes; Friday evening activities are scheduled from 6 to 9 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 
As the rest of Louisiana and the country celebrate the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans, that iconic mismatch of 11,000 veteran redcoats against an outnumbered ragtag band of pirates, militiamen, Kaintuck sharpshooters, Creole aristocrats and a troop of Feliciana Horse, St. Francisville remembers its own connections to this pivotal fight. Because after the 1815 battle that would save New Orleans from the British and give Americans a sense of national identity for the first time, after demonstrating the brilliant leadership that led to his election as the seventh president of the United States, General Andrew Jackson spent the night at The Cottage Plantation in St. Francisville. And you can, too.
Today this early plantation hosts Bed & Breakfast guests in six antique-filled rooms in the main house and one individual pond-side cottage. A full breakfast is served in the formal dining room of a house little changed since General Jackson’s visit. This is only one of St. Francisville’s overnight accommodations that are so charmingly varied in style that at least one will be perfect for that romantic getaway for Valentine’s weekend or that quiet escape from Mardi Gras madness.
More contemporary accommodations offering romantic getaways in the St. Francisville area include The Lodge at The Bluffs, 32 room/suites with access to spectacular golf course and other fitness facilities, plus restaurants and chapel. Lake Rosemound Inn has four rooms on the banks of a beautiful large lake, and Hemingbough has 8 rooms and several suites on the landscaped grounds of a large conference center/events venue with lovely lakeside amphitheater. Besides several RV parks, the St. Francisville area also has two full-service motels, the Best Western and the Magnuson, capable of accommodating large bus groups as well as individual travelers; Lamplighter Suites is suitable for longterm rentals as well as overnights.
February is also enlivened by A Celebration of Literature and Art’s Writers and Readers Symposium at Hemingbough on February 21, allowing area readers the rare opportunity to interact in person with published authors; this year’s event features mystery writer Abigail Padgett, New Orleans novelist Moira Crone, Louisiana Poet Laureate Ava Haymon, and gifted photographer Richard Sexton (
