St. Francisville, LA Celebrates Audubon & His Birds March 16-18

St. Francisville, LA Celebrates Audubon & His Birds March 16-18
By Anne Butler

The forty-seventh annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 16, 17 and 18, 2018, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For nearly half a century the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown 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. A year’s worth of planning and preparation precedes each pilgrimage, and with 47 years of experience under their belt, society members put on one of the South’s most professional and enjoyable pilgrimage presentations. This year’s breath of fresh air comes from never-before-shown properties and enthusiastic new owners of old houses.

One of this year’s featured country plantations is a remarkable house called Woodland, a story of unexpected twists and turns, intergenerational connections and a fascinating trip all the way across the Mighty Mississippi to the ancestral lands of the present owner in West Feliciana, a journey across hundreds of miles and two centuries. A grand Greek Revival house, Woodland was built in the mid-1800s on a sugar plantation near the steamboat town of Washington, but had been abandoned for years and was facing demolition when Cammie and David Norwood saved it. It took a year to prepare the old structure to be hauled circuitously along 375 miles of back roads and another several years to put it back together. Now the Woodland house has been returned to its original glory, filled with fine family furnishings and anchored to its pastoral site by well-planned landscaping, looking as if it has been there forever.

Another country plantation home with a remarkable history is glorious Greek Revival Greenwood, which has enjoyed more than its fair share of miraculous resurrections. Its story began in 1798, when widowed Olivia Ruffin Barrow journeyed by covered wagon to Spanish Feliciana. One of her grandsons would elope with young Eliza Pirrie, Audubon’s pupil. In 1830 Olivia’s son William Ruffin Barrow engaged prominent architect James Coulter to build a fine home on family property that would grow to 12,000 acres.

In 1915 Frank and Naomi Fisher Percy restored the house and opened it to the public. Featured in magazines, visited by tourists and beloved by Hollywood, it was called by National Geographic the finest example of Greek Revival architecture in the South. But on the night of August 1, 1960, lightning started a fire and within three hours, there was nothing left but 28 Doric columns and some free-standing chimneys. These ruins touched the hearts of Walton Barnes and his son Richard, who purchased the house site and 278 acres in 1968 and began the enormous effort of rebuilding. In July 2016, along came new owners Julie and Hal Pilcher, recently retired with the energy and enthusiasm to undertake significant improvements to ready the home for its first pilgrimage appearance.

An earlier country home also featured for the first time on the Audubon Pilgrimage this year is The Cedars, its design and first cash crop—tobacco—bespeaking the Virginia background of original owner Simon Hearty, for whom the property was surveyed beginning in 1790. The house was built between 1793 and 1795, and it was said that the artist John James Audubon sketched the birdlife on Cedars Lane and visited with the family there. After Thomas Butler purchased the property from his mother-in-law in 1879, his two daughters, Mamie and Sarah, who stayed in New Orleans after graduating from Newcomb, returned as spinsters to spend weekends in a house enlarged with two-story octagonal additions; subsequent owners, the Fred Kings, raised a family in a home they too improved.

Today The Cedars is houses a vibrant young family, the Andrew Grezaffis. They have filled it with an eclectic mixture of furnishings imparting the feel of having been lived in by generations of the same family, as all old homes should feel, although the Grezaffis and their five small children have been in residence only a few years.

In historic downtown St. Francisville are a couple of featured cottages across from the parish courthouse. Miss Lise’s Cottage was originally built in Bayou Sara, the flood-prone port city on the banks of the Mississippi River. In the late 1800s it was hauled up the hill into St. Francisville, safe from the floodwaters, its two rooms home for the first “telephone girl” whose early switchboard was on the second floor of the nearby bank.

Until recently a conveniently located attorney’s office, now it puts the WOW factor in this year’s pilgrimage and shows how adaptable these old structures can be in the right hands. The exterior facade retains the traditional Creole cottage character. but oh, that unexpected interior-- all black and white and simply stunning, showing what happens when you turn loose a gifted career architect, Jim Dart, and a frustrated designer of equal talent, David Anthony Parker II, on a charming little historic cottage, where the juxtaposition of antique and contemporary is stunning and a carefully curated collection of modern art strikes a happy balance with treasured family antiques.

Some of the best-loved pieces descend from Dart’s grandfather, an engineer and attorney whose law office next door to Miss Lise’s Cottage is now home to Kora, Grezaffi and Levasseur Capital Management (yes, the same Grezaffi whose home The Cedars is another pilgrimage feature). Built in 1842, it has housed such notable barristers as Uriah B. Phillips who was blown up in a mid-1800s steamboat explosion, and Louisiana’s last antebellum governor Robert C. Wickliffe.

Besides these featured historic structures, pilgrimage visitors are welcomed at Afton Villa Gardens, Rosedown and Audubon 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. Audubon Market Hall hosts an impressive exhibit of more than sixty of Audubon’s Birds of America done in the Felicianas, Audubon State Historic Site features morning explorations of nature photography and birding programs (led by C.C. Lockwood and Dr. Tom Tully) augmented by a bird walk at Oak Hill (home of artist Murrell Butler). There will also be floral arranging demos, and this year the hills are alive with the sound of music as special performances are scheduled for each featured home and throughout downtown St. Francisville in tribute to the late father of this year’s chairman. 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., 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, 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 UpThe 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.westfelicianahistory.org, email wfhistsociety@gmail.com. A package including daytime tours and all evening entertainment Friday and Saturday is available. Tickets can be purchased at the Historical Society Museum on Ferdinand Street.

Other events planned for March in St. Francisville include A Walk in the Park on Saturday, March 3, from 9 to 4, bringing a festive gathering of musicians, artists and craftsmen to oak-shaded Parker Park.
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 (weekends), 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.

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 www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com, www.stfrancisville.net or www.stfrancisville.us (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).

Audubon Pilgrimage Heralds Spring

Audubon Pilgrimage Heralds Spring in St. Francisville, LA
By Anne Butler

The forty-sixth annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 17, 18 and 19, 2017, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For over four decades the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown 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. A year’s worth of planning and preparation precedes each pilgrimage, and with 46 years of experience under their belt, society members put on one of the South’s most professional and enjoyable pilgrimage presentations. This year’s featured homes include Wyoming Plantation, St. Clare House, Hillcroft and Wildwood, plus a welcome new emphasis on birds.

Audubon arrived at the Mississippi River port of Bayou Sara by steamboat in June of 1821 and walked up the hill into St. Francisville, where he was to meet Eliza Pirrie and her mother at nearby Wyoming Plantation for a brief rest and repast before journeying to Oakley. Besides its Audubon connections, Wyoming also had enormous relevance in the social and political life of the St. Francisville area. Begun in the early 1800s, the plantation would be the home of Louisiana’s last antebellum governor. The original home burned, and by the 1920s the property belonged to Sam Vinci, who had emigrated from Italy as a 17-year-old with big dreams. The extensive Wyoming property was purchased in the 1980s/90s by Sam’s granddaughter, the late Elaine Vinci, and her husband Leonard Sullivan, who turned the house into a magnificent but livable showplace filled with fine 19th-century furnishings by such famous makers as Prudent Mallard and Alexander Roux.

By the time of Audubon’s arrival, the Bayou Sara area had endured years of cyclical flooding by the Mississippi River, and many of the residents deserted the little port city for the safety of St. Francisville’s high ground, where Catholic monks from across the river had long come to bury their dead. It was right after the disastrous 1912 flood that tug captain James Aubic moved his family up the hill and had a house built behind Our Lady Of Mount Carmel Catholic Church by his brother-in-law, carpenter George Baier, no doubt using some salvaged building materials. Recently beautifully restored, shaded by ancient live oaks and century-old camellias, this is now owned by the church as the comfortable home of the Catholic priest, Father Cary Bani. He has named the elegantly simple home St. Clare for one of Francis of Assisi’s devotees, in keeping with the patron saint of the town itself and the church devoted to Our Lady.
Across from the Catholic Church is regal Hillcroft, reigning over the western end of Royal Street from its landscaped hilltop setting and crowned by a rare widow’s walk overlooking the Mississippi River. Of neo-classical colonial revival design with columned entrance portico and rear double galleries, the house is one of St. Francisville’s largest, but was built for Judge Samuel McCutcheon Lawrason for a mere $5000 beginning in 1903 on what had been a cow lot and fruit orchard. In 1925 Hillcroft was purchased by a relative and namesake of the judge, sugar chemist Samuel Lawrason Butler, whose granddaughter Julie and husband Mitch Brashier have sensitively adapted the historic home to an active lifestyle including yet another Sam, their young son.


Wildwood and its preservation-minded occupants have been integral parts of the Audubon Pilgrimage since its inception. The house was on the very first pilgrimage in 1972, and two generations of owners have served as pilgrimage chairwomen in different years (1975 and 2001) as well as being involved in every aspect of the annual tours every single year. Once a profitable cotton plantation, in 1915 Wildwood was purchased by Albert Lee Soule, president of the Soule Commercial College in New Orleans, as a weekend retreat from the city. Specifications for the 7,000-square-foot three-story farmhouse, designed by his architect brother to feature such innovations as inside bathrooms, closets and intercoms, called for assuring “all work done or materials furnished shall be first class in every respect.” In 1958 the property was purchased and revitalized by Conrad P. and Frances McVea, educators and dedicated preservationists, and now Wildwood is home to the next generation: Tom McVea, former state representative, farmer and cattleman, inveterate collector of vintage wood that somehow always comes in handy when restoring an old place, and his wife Toni.

Other features of the 2017 Audubon Pilgrimage include Afton Villa Gardens, Rosedown and Audubon 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. 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., Saturday soiree begins at 7 p.m.

This year’s pilgrimage has a new and welcomed focus on Audubon’s birds, for he painted 32 at what is now the Audubon State Historic Site, over 60 in the Felicianas, and more in Louisiana than in any other state. Audubon Market Hall hosts an exhibit of Audubon prints daily and Friday evening, featuring those birds rendered across West Feliciana in such locales as Beechwoods and Beech Grove Plantations, along Bayou Sara, in the Sleepy Hollow woods and the Tunica Swamp. Also on exhibit will be Audubon-inspired paintings by talented local artist Patsy Dreher and middle school art students. Of great interest will be morning presentations at Audubon State Historic Site featuring three widely respected local ornithologists guiding nature walks and giving bird talks on grounds trod by Audubon himself in 1821: Friday 9:30 to 10:30 or 11 a.m. featuring wildlife/landscape artist Murrell Butler; Saturday 9:30 to 11 a.m. featuring author/photographer C.C. Lockwood; and Sunday 9:30 to 11 a.m. with Dr. Tom Tully, LSU vet school avian specialist.

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, 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 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.westfelicianahistoricalsociety.org, email wfhistsociety@gmail.com. A package including daytime tours and all evening entertainment Friday and Saturday is available. 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 splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours: The Cottage Plantation (weekends), 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.

F

2016 Audubon Pilgrimage

St. Francisville’s Spring Fling: Audubon Pilgrimage
By Anne Butler

The forty-fifth annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 18, 19 and 20, 2016, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For over four decades the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown 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. A year’s worth of planning and preparation precedes each pilgrimage, and with 45 years of experience under their belt, society members put on one of the South’s most professional and enjoyable pilgrimage presentations.

This year’s tour features several townhouses in St. Francisville’s National Register Historic District and two early plantations in the surrounding countryside, each illustrative of the interconnections of early homes and family histories.

The Cabildo, thought to have been built on Royal Street in St. Francisville as early as 1809 with handhewn joists and brick walls 22 inches thick, is a Spanish colonial structure used over the years as monastery, tavern frequented by Audubon, bank/counting house, West Feliciana’s first parish courthouse beginning in 1824, barbershop, grocery, hotel, drugstore, library, and now beautifully restored present residence of Peggy and Joey Gammill, preservation/conservation experts.

Vinci Cottage at Virginia, all of 1000 feet, was built in the forties of materials salvaged from the detached kitchen and servants’ quarters behind the 1817 historic townhouse on Royal Street called Virginia, perfect for owner Nancy Vinci’s “downsizing with dog.” Supplementing the postage-stamp lawn of this cottage is Woodleigh Garden, just across Royal, a beautifully landscaped hillside setting filled by owners Leigh Anne and Butch Jones with heirloom pass-along plantings and a pleasant brick courtyard with fountain.

The Myrtles, a raised English cottage begun in the late 1790s by Judge David Bradford, leader of the Whiskey Rebellion, was enlarged by subsequent owners throughout the 19th century. The long front gallery is graced with grape-cluster wrought iron, and inside rooms are formalized with elaborate plaster friezework and marble mantels in the twin parlors. John E. and Teeta Moss are the current owners.

Rosale Plantation, north of St. Francisville at Wakefield, was part of early settler Alexander Stirling’s enormous 1790s landholdings; when the elaborate brick house his daughter Ann Skillman built in 1836 burned in the 1880s, the family moved into the two-story schoolhouse, built the same time. Today the simple farmhouse with sweeping vistas of manicured oak-shaded lawns and multiple ponds is owned by Peter and Lynda Truitt.

Other popular features of the 2016 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, 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., 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.westfelicianahistoricalsociety.org, email wfhistsociety@gmail.com. A package including daytime tours and all evening entertainment Friday and Saturday is available. 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 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).

Popular Audubon Pilgrimage Welcomes Spring To St. Francisville, LA

Popular Audubon Pilgrimage Welcomes Spring To St. Francisville, LA
By Anne Butler
The forty-fourth annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 20, 21 and 22, 2015, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For over four decades the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown 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. This year’s featured homes include three country plantations and one historic townhouse, plus two significant state historic sites.
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.
At the opposite end of the parish is Dogwood, in the Thompson Creek delta on lands initially granted by Spain to Jean Cloccinet as part of a failed resettlement of Acadian exiles. The house was begun in 1803 by George Freeland, an early settler from the Carolinas. His initial hewn-log shed-roof house, two rooms flanking a hallway and topped by a sleeping loft, has been enlarged over the years and is home to the family of Rob and Missy Couhig.
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.
Perched on a hilly lot overlooking St. Francisville’s main thoroughfare, Ferdinand Street, the Levert-Bockel House was constructed in 1918 for Mamie Bockel Levert using materials salvaged from flooded Bayou Sara properties inherited from her father, a prosperous Prussian immigrant sadler. In one of the comfortable bungalow’s rooms, her husband Dr. Eloi Levert practiced medicine. It is now the home of the Tom Tully 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.
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 the pilgrimage’s exquisitely detailed 1820’s evening costumes, nationally recognized for their authenticity. Light Up The Night, the enjoyable Saturday evening soiree, features dancing to live music by United We Jam, sensational dinner catered by Heirloom Cuisine 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. A package including daytime tours and all evening entertainment Friday and Saturday is available. 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 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. 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).
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).

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).

ONLY IN ST. FRANCISVILLE

By Anne Butler

Audubon Pilgrimage

Tourism in Louisiana is big business, generating some $10.7 billion in annual spending by more than 26 million visitors. Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne, head of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, is introducing a new marketing campaign for 2014 with emphasis on Louisiana’s cultural diversity. Its tagline is “Only in Louisiana,” a slogan promoting the state as a unique cultural destination, and St. Francisville fits right into that marketing campaign with a number of site-specific local offerings ranging from the country’s largest bald cypress tree to a museum full of compelling exhibits on the hair-raising history of the country’s largest and most infamous maximum-security prison.


This little 19th-century rivertown has always had an abiding sense of place and respect for its history as English Louisiana’s plantation country, which for more than four decades has been shared with visitors at the annual spring Audubon Pilgrimage, one of the state’s longest running and most professionally presented historic home tours. Most recently attention has turned to enhancing awareness of the area’s early Jewish immigrants; the turn-of-the-century temple has been beautifully restored and the parish’s first public school, built primarily with contributions from German Jewish immigrant Julius Freyhan, is being resurrected as a community cultural center and the state’s first museum highlighting the significant contributions of the early Jewish immigrants whose business and financial acumen proved so vital to the post-bellum economic recovery of the South.

Angola Museum

In a region long famous for its lush antebellum gardens, a contemporary horticultural masterpiece serves to showcase the contributions of another group of immigrants, the Japanese-American family who brought the extensive gardens at Afton Villa Plantation back to life upon relocating to Louisiana after World War II. Today Imahara’s Botanical Garden rivals the early plantation plantings with thousands of plant specimens as well as a display of Haiku cypress carvings sharing the family legacy.


St. Francisville’s early settlers, those who carved the indigo and cotton plantations from the wilderness, certainly chose a propitious location for the little settlement right along the Mississippi River, so important as a means of transportation. Springtime overflow of its waters enriched the surrounding bottomlands and also provided, along this the only unleveed stretch of the lower Mississippi, the cyclical flooding that created the unique environment now preserved as Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, home of the country’s largest bald cypress and other old-growth trees as well as habitat for an abundance of both migratory and resident birds and waterfowl.

Cat Island NWR

From St. Francisville northward, the rugged Tunica Hills area is an unspoiled wilderness that continues to support the same rich birdlife that so enthralled artist-naturalist John James Audubon in the 1820s that he painted dozens of his famous bird studies right in West Feliciana Parish. The steep wooded hillsides and deep cool hollows shelter rare plants and animals such as chipmunks found nowhere else in the state, and St. Francisville’s proximity to Clark Creek Natural Area make it an ideal jumping-off spot for hiking to a popular series of waterfalls.


If the early settlers chose St. Francisville’s location for its prime planting prospects, correctional officials chose the area just as carefully for its rugged terrain making escapes difficult from the maximum-security penitentiary called Angola, once the bloodiest prison in the country. Now its days of infamy are preserved in compelling exhibits in a museum which, along with the prison rodeo called the Wildest Show in the South, has helped make the 18,000-acre correctional facility the unlikeliest of tourist attractions.


Another special event unique to St. Francisville is the summertime Civil War re-enactment called The Day The War Stopped. Instead of the usual guns-blaring battle scene, this is actually a celebration of a rare moment of civility in the midst of a bloody war, when Masons from both Confederate and Union forces joined together in brotherhood to bury under flag of truce a Union naval officer in the oak-shaded cemetery of historic Grace Episcopal Church.

Temple Sinai

Louisiana is indeed a unique cultural destination where visitors have experiences available nowhere else. As Lt. Gov. Dardenne says, “When they come to Louisiana, they are going to leave with an experience unlike anything else. When you leave Louisiana, stories will be your best souvenir.” St. Francisville certainly has its share of special experiences and goodness knows there are plenty of stories. As the little town becomes a creative haven for writers, artists, musicians and others seeking quiet inspiration, other local events have been especially planned to enhance that experience and share it with visitors.


On Saturday, February 22, A Gathering of Writers and Readers, a symposium sponsored by Arts For All of author presentations, panel discussions and book signings, takes place at Hemingbough in St. Francisville. Moderated by SLU professor and writer Charles Elliott, the event features National Medal of Arts recipient Ernest Gaines as well as four professional authors chosen to give the audience a well-balanced appreciation for the art of literature—poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, nonfiction.

Day the War Stopped

Nationally acclaimed award-winning fiction author Dr. Wiley Cash, the Entergy Author for this event, earned his PhD at UL Lafayette, where he began the bestselling novel A Land More Kind than Home, called “great Gothic Southern fiction filled with whiskey, guns and snake-handling.” His just released second book promises to be just as riveting. Rheta Grimsley Johnson is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and author of nonfiction books including Poor Man’s Provence about time spent in the Atchafalaya Basin. Dr. Julie Kane, Northwestern State University professor and Louisiana’s past Poet Laureate, has published five volumes of poetry, and Anne Butler writes nonfiction books preserving Louisiana history and culture.

For online information visit artsforall.felicianalocal.com; to purchase tickets, brownpapertickets.com/event/491750.This program is supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of CRT, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council, the Greater Baton Rouge Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.


Another literary event, planned for later in the year, will focus on the writings of the late Louisiana author Walker Percy and his cultural and family ties to the St. Francisville area.

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 living-history demonstrations most 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 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).

Visit St. Francisville—new guidebook for tourists

By Anne Butler

Tunica Hills - photo by Darrell Chitty

Throughout much of the 20^th century, tourists flocked to the St. Francisville area’s unspoiled pastoral landscapes and splendid plantation homes for guided tours through the romanticized glories of the antebellum period, with some historic homes open to the public on a daily basis and other private homes open only during the spring Audubon Pilgrimage. But times have changed, and so have the demographics of tourism. Some visitors are younger, the older ones are more active, and they all want to be more engaged, more involved, more informed.
While many visitors continue to enjoy the plantation homes, where history is now presented in a more realistic version and hands-on demonstrations make it come alive, others are looking for more active pursuits. The St. Francisville area is uniquely suited to satisfy their wildest desires, from bicycle races through the steep hilly terrain to warrior dashes across firepits and mudholes, from waterfall hikes to birding in the same woodlands that inspired the artist Audubon in the 1820s.

Greenwood Plantation - by Anne Butler

The area is especially popular with bicyclists. Quiet country lanes overhung with moss-draped live oaks beckon recreational bikers, but for the competitive bike racer there are several more challenging options. The nationally famous Rouge Roubaix, a classic 100-mile road race considered one of the top 12 hardest races in the world,  draws experienced bikers to the treacherous Old Tunica Road’s sunken roadbeds and rugged hills on a demanding course that crosses some of the roughest terrain in West Feliciana Parish and Wilkinson County, MS. Even in the middle of town there are bike races that go round and round and up and down the hills of St. Francisville proper past historic homes with galleries dripping with gingerbread trim, galleries and shops in vintage structures, the still-used parish courthouse and the banks of the Mississippi River.
And then there’s the infamous 8-mile wooded mountain bike trail called The Beast that crisscrosses the creeks and hollows of the 200-acre West Feliciana Parish Sports Park, where the challenging Warrior Dash is also set; the world’s largest obstacle course, the annual dash takes place in numerous locations across the country and world with thousands of participants slipping and sliding through grueling 5-K Mud Runs, the individual participants often raising funds for St. Jude’s Hospital and other worthy causes.
Hiking in the Tunica Hills, Cat Island and just across the Mississippi state line in the Clark Creek Natural Area with its scenic waterfalls is especially popular in the fall and winter, while the Nature Conservancy’s Mary Ann Brown Preserve and the shorter trails at the Audubon State Historic Site are child-friendly and not as demanding. Birders find the wilderness areas full of both resident and migratory birdlife, and Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, with its rare cyclical flooding from Mississippi River overflow and its old-growth cypress trees, provides a prime observation area for migratory waterfowl. The Tunica Hills and Cat Island woodlands and swamps are filled with whitetail deer and smaller game animals, so the areas attract hunters during season.

Rosedown Plantation - by D. Chitty

With the shift in tourism interest from sedentary study of historic sites to more active and more involved activities, the St. Francisville tourist guide has been redesigned to reflect the new emphasis on recreational areas. Just released, it features fine color images of not just the historic plantations but also the unique landscapes that draw visitors to the area. The guide book is available at the West Feliciana Historical Society’s museum and visitor information center on Ferdinand St. in St. Francisville as well as other local outlets, and it will be introduced at the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival the last weekend in October.
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; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are 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 fascinating living-history demonstrations most weekends to allow visitors to experience 19^th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Sunday and Monday).
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, including the Farmers Market on Thursday mornings).

St. Francisville Celebrates Spring with Audubon Pilgrimage

By Anne Butler

Evergreenzine

The forty-second annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 15, 16 and 17, 2013, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For over four decades the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown 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 folios and tutored young Eliza Pirrie of Oakley.

Features of the 2013 Audubon Pilgrimage include one historic townhouse (Evergreenzine) and three country plantations (Wakefield, Beechwood and Catalpa), plus Audubon (Oakley) and Rosedown State Historic Sites, Afton Villa Gardens, three 19th-century churches and the Rural Homestead with lively demonstrations of the rustic skills of daily pioneer life. Tour houses are open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Wakefield Plantation

This year’s carefully selected features vividly illustrate how many early families were closely related by blood or marriage, thus intertwining their heritage and homes in the fascinating fabric of Feliciana history. Martha Barrow Turnbull of Rosedown Plantation had a daughter named Sarah who would marry the son of Oakley’s Eliza Pirrie, whose first husband was Martha’s brother and whose second husband was the Reverend William R. Bowman of Grace Church. Wakefield Plantation and Beechwood were both part of early settler Alexander Stirling’s immense landgrant holdings, and Stirling is buried in the Beechwood cemetery beside his wife Ann Alston, her sister Lucretia Alston Pirrie of Oakley, and Lucretia’s daughter Eliza Pirrie. Catalpa Plantation was the home of Willie Fort, who was so taken with Eliza’s beautiful Bowman granddaughters that he married not one but two of them.

All of these early plantations—Oakley whose three-storied double-galleried house whispers of West Indies influence, Rosedown and Wakefield with their grand 1830s Greek Revival structures, plus Catalpa and Beechwood with later but exceedingly pleasant Victorian cottages--were furnished with supplies from the drygoods mercantiles operated in St. Francisville mostly by industrious Jewish immigrants like the builder of the historic townhouse called Evergreenzine.

Beechwood Plantation

The National Register 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 entertainment features a play called “An Audubon Spring Sketch” with middle-school actors at 5:30 p.m. in Audubon Market Hall, old-time Hymn Singing at the United Methodist Church (6 to 7 p.m.), art exhibit at the recently restored Temple Sinai (6 to 9 p.m., and also open during the day Saturday and Sunday 9 to 5:30), dramatic Graveyard Tours at Grace Episcopal cemetery (6 to 9, last tour begins at 8:30 p.m.), and a wine and cheese reception at Bishop Jackson Hall (7 to 9:30 p.m.) featuring a casual style show of the pilgrimage’s exquisitely detailed 1820’s costumes, nationally recognized for their authenticity. The Audubon play will also be presented on Saturday at 10 and 2, and Sunday at 2 p.m. in Market Hall. Light Up The Night, the Saturday evening soiree, features live music and dancing, dinner and drinks beginning at 7 p.m.

Catalpa Plantation

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. Tickets can be purchased at the Historical Society Museum on Ferdinand Street.

Throughout springtime, the gardens of St. Francisville are spectacular, with some of the state’s finest antebellum plantings showing what a felicitous climate, rich soil, horticultural know-how and unlimited labor could produce in the mid-1900s. Rosedown Plantation’s 27 acres of formal plantings of heirloom specimens and Afton Villa’s landscaped terraces and oak allee underplanted with Pride of Afton azaleas have recently been joined by a contemporary garden, Imahara’s Botanical, where one of the state’s outstanding horticulturists has created a blooming hillside oasis from an old cypress swamp and overgrown gullies (open weekends).

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. Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Gardens are open 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 offer unmatched recreational activities in unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, all especially enjoyable in the cool weather. 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 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 or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities like the twice-weekly farmers’ market).

Spring Blooms - March 2012

Spring blooms beckon Audubon pilgrims to St. Francisville, LA
by Anne Butler
The forty-first annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 16, 17 and 18, 2012, celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For over four decades the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown 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 folios, and 2012, being the 200th anniversary of Louisiana statehood, promises to be a spectacular tour.

Features of the 2012 Audubon Pilgrimage include two historic townhouses, Hillcroft and Prospect, and in the surrounding countryside two early 19th-century plantations: Highland and Woodland, plus Afton Villa Gardens and Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, three 19th-century churches and the Rural Homestead with lively demonstrations of the rustic skills of daily pioneer life. The fascinating Smithsonian Institution exhibit Journey Stories, examining who we are and how we got here, fills the Historical Society museum, and two other historic buildings downtown hold the popular antiques show and sale. Tour hostesses are clad in the exquisitely detailed costumes of the 1820’s, nationally recognized for their authenticity.

On Pilgrimage weekend, St. Francisville’s National Register-listed 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, Graveyard Tours at Grace Episcopal cemetery, and a wine and cheese reception featuring a style show of glorious period costumes at Bishop Jackson Hall. Light Up The Night Saturday evening features live music and dancing, dinner and drinks. 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.

Throughout springtime, the gardens of St. Francisville are spectacular, with some of the state’s finest antebellum plantings showcasing what a felicitous climate, rich soil, horticultural know-how and unlimited labor could produce in the mid-1900s. Rosedown Plantation house is surrounded by 27 acres of formal plantings featuring a number of heirloom varieties, and it is open daily throughout the year. Afton Villa gardens are open seasonally, with landscaped terraces and parterres brightened by the blooms of thousands of flowering bulbs and the famed Pride of Afton azaleas along the oak alley. A third garden, Imahara’s Botanical, this year takes its place among the premier garden spots of the south, with extensive hillside plantings of azaleas, camellias, crape myrtles, hollies and magnolias, palms, oaks and fruit trees interspersed among reflecting pools and an old cypress swamp, plus a conference center with fascinating displays of Haiku carvings, a new Japanese garden and even Mount Fuji replicated among Feliciana’s hills; tours offered Saturday (10 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m.) and Sunday (1 and 3 p.m.) in March, April and May, plus larger group tours by advance registration (call 225-635-2001).

March 31, the 2012 St. Francisville Spring Garden Stroll, presented by Feliciana Master Gardeners, provides access to unique private and public gardens both in town and in the surrounding countryside, with proceeds going to 4-H scholarships and local school gardens (call 225-635-3614 for information, or email abrock@agcenter.lsu.edu). Also on March 31 and April 1, Arts for All, the organization that fosters appreciation for the arts in West Feliciana Parish, sponsors a community art show at historic Audubon Market Hall on Royal Street in St. Francisville; says Arts for All president Becky Landry, the show continues a time-honored tradition of support for the arts and artists begun in the early 1800s when John James Audubon found the area’s landscapes and birdlife so creatively inspiring.

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. Through mid-March the newly redesigned West Feliciana Historical Society Museum hosts the free Smithsonian exhibit Journey Stories, with a number of related activities and events.
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.

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.
As 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.
On 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.


Photographs provided by the Smithsonian Institution.

VOICES FROM THE PAST

VOICES FROM THE PAST IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA
by Anne Butler

If only these walls could talk! How often have we lamented that the lessons of history might be lost without the voices of the past recounting their experiences. In the four decades that the West Feliciana Historical Society has hosted the Audubon Pilgrimage in St. Francisville, this popular spring fling has featured beautifully restored antebellum plantations and historic townhouses, brilliantly blooming azaleas, hostesses resplendent in replicated 1820s garb, old-time rural crafts and skills, and even glamorous nighttime entertainments. But initially something was missing, some intimate personalized voice resonating through time, and the ancestral oil portraits, the architectural treasures, the leather-bound literature…all gave only mute testament to past glories and sorrows.

One of the historic churches featured on the pilgrimage is Grace Episcopal, the oldest church in St. Francisville and second oldest Episcopal congregation in the state, established in 1827.  Its first rector was the Reverend William R. Bowman, second husband of widowed Eliza Pirrie of Oakley Plantation whom the artist Audubon was hired to tutor in the early 1820s; their son would marry the beautiful belle Sarah Turnbull of Rosedown Plantation.

The present brick church, which replaced an early simple wooden building, is  reminiscent of the Gothic country churches of rural England, from whence came many of the pioneering settlers of St. Francisville. Its cornerstone was laid by Leonidas Polk, the Fighting Bishop of the Confederacy, in June 1858, the same year an immense Pilcher organ was shipped downriver from St. Louis and fitted into the south transcept in memory of Judge George Mathews.

From Judge Mathews’ plantation came the oak saplings that now shade the cemetery where he rests in peace along with many of the early settlers. Among the earliest burials was that of baby Edward Baldwin, whose death in the 1840s was recorded as ‘flung from buggy.’ During the Civil War, as St. Francisville received heavy shelling from a Union gunboat on the nearby Mississippi River, old Aunt Sylvia Chew, a free woman of color, took refuge before the altar until a cannon ball crashed through the window over her head; she then fled to the cemetery and put her faith in the substantially built tomb of her old acquaintance Dr. Ira Smith.

With the serene cemetery so full of history and stories, it was no wonder that pilgrimage planners conceived the idea of raising the dead to tell their stories, and who better to direct this fascinating performance than local resident and Grace parishioner Shirley Pourciau, who had earned a Master’s degree in Theater from the University of Illinois and then spent 30 years as a public school teacher, enthusiastically directing plays and pageants and all manner of church shows until she retired from Lee High in 1983. Early performances of the Cemetery Tales utilized the talents of relatives and colleagues from Baton Rouge, but Mrs. Pourciau soon realized that the St. Francisville area abounded in homegrown talent.

Some of these frustrated thespians are real pros, like Dave and Valerie Barnes, who have had many years of professional radio and television experience, while others are simply blessed with a flair for the dramatic, but each gives a memorable performance bringing to life a carefully selected cross-section of St. Francisville residents beginning in the heady years just prior to the Civil War and continuing through the trying times afterward. And so, as dusk falls and the fireflies flit amid the moss-draped live oaks, costumed spirits rise among the tombstones to relate their poignant stories, and in doing so, relate the history of St. Francisville itself. An introduction to Grace’s history is given from the brick front steps of the church, and then young guides lead visitors through the cemetery lit by candles and torches, all to the strains of acoustic period music provided by talented David Porter.

Beside the sturdy tomb of Dr. Ira Smith, who died Christmas day 1850, stands his widow Mary Ann Gray, half-sister of Eliza Pirrie, relating how her husband named their plantation Troy after his boyhood New York home. Another 1850 burial was that of Grace church vestryman Levi Blount, who hanged himself from an oak tree after falling into debt over a costly sugar mill; Blount’s widow Lavinia, who with her New England bluestocking sisters came south to provide young ladies with sound classical educations, relates her story as well. William Dana Hatch was another early vestry member of Grace Church; a merchant in Bayou Sara, he died in 1866 at the age of 54, and over the years his tomb, surrounded by fancy iron fencing, has irreverently been dubbed Hatch’s Pen.

The Turnbulls of Rosedown are well represented in the cemetery and in the performance, with three different generations telling their tales, beginning with Martha Barrow Turnbull who with her husband Daniel built magnificent Rosedown Plantation in the 1830s and over six decades surrounded the home with glorious gardens based on landscapes seen on her European honeymoon. Her grandson Daniel Turnbull Bowman was slain in 1900 after volunteering with the army unit sent to quell the Moro insurrection in the Philippines. Lt. Bowman is portrayed graveside with such elan by Hamilton Willis, complete with the riding boots that are his customary attire, that during one performance, as he related how his devoted mother fretted over his perilous military service, the cell phone forgotten in his pocket rang, and without missing a beat Willis adlibbed, “That must be her now.” The third of the Turnbull-Bowman spirits is the most recent, the fifth generation, Mamie Fort Thompson, last of the area grande dames and noted for her wicked wit. Into her 90s “Miss Mamie” presided over Catalpa Plantation, sharing with each and every tourist who came calling a glass of the potent sherry referred to as “grandma’s daily dalliance with naughtiness,” and proving to the world that old southern belles never die, nor do they ever lose one iota of their charm.

A deceased rector of Grace Church tells his tale in this graveyard filled with fine statuary and Victorian monuments of marble and stone. But amidst such splendor sadly stand characters like Tullia Richardson whose plantation was aptly named Misery, and Hannah McDaniel who died in 1885 at age 90 so impoverished she had no tombstone at all. When her daughter’s attorney-husband was killed in the explosion of the steamboat Princess en route to the opening of the Supreme Court in New Orleans, the family sold their elegant townhouse on Royal St. in St. Francisville and opened a boarding house in New Orleans to make ends meet. Another distinguished barrister mortally wounded aboard the Princess in 1859 was Uriah Burr Phillips; when the steamboat’s boiler exploded rounding Conrad’s Point just below Baton Rouge, those passengers not killed instantly were laid out on the lawn of the Conrad’s Cottage Plantation. Burr was shipped home to linger a week before dying and was laid to rest beneath a hand-carved Italian marble monument.

Beside the enormous stone cross marking his family plot arises the spirit of Judge George Mathews, chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1812 until his death in 1836; his father was an early governor of Georgia, and several brothers-in-law served on the first vestry of Grace Church. His is the earliest burial included in the Cemetery Tales, while nearby is one of the most recent, the 27th Marine Corps Commandant, General Robert H. Barrow of Rosale Plantation, whose distinguished military career took him around the world but who returned to his boyhood home for retirement. Declining burial in Arlington National Cemetery, General Barrow opted to be laid to rest in 2008 beside his beloved wife Patty, the interment ceremony with its impressive military honor guard and booming gun salutes attended by everybody in town, including school children.

The voices of the past speak to us in many ways, sometimes harshly and sometimes gently, but rarely so movingly as when the spirits of the dead rise to tell their stories beside their tombstones. These Cemetery Tales take place on Friday evening, March 18, as part of the annual Audubon Pilgrimage, which celebrates a southern spring in St. Francisville, the glorious garden spot of Louisiana’s English Plantation Country. For 40 years the sponsoring West Feliciana Historical Society has thrown open the doors of significant historic structures to commemorate the tenure there of artist-naturalist John James Audubon as he painted a number of his famous bird folios.

Features of the 2011 Audubon Pilgrimage March 18, 19 and 20 include two  historic townhouses: Avondale and White’s Cottage, and in the surrounding countryside two 19th-century plantations: Wakefield and Spring Grove, plus Afton Villa Gardens, Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, three 19th-century churches and the Rural Homestead with  lively demonstrations of the rustic skills of daily pioneer life. Tour hostesses are clad in the exquisitely detailed costumes of the 1820’s, nationally recognized for their authenticity.

The National Register-listed 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. Besides the Graveyard Tours at Grace Episcopal cemetery, Friday evening also features old-time Hymn Singing at the United Methodist Church and a wine and cheese reception at the West Feliciana Historical Society museum headquarters. Light Up The Night Saturday evening features live music, dinner and drinks. For tickets and tour information, contact West Feliciana Historical Society, Box 338, St. Francisville, LA 70775;phone 225-635-6330; online www.audubonpilgrimage.info, email sf@audubonpilgrimage.info.

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.

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