Bayou Sara Kayak Rental

Bayou Sara Kayak Rental revives access to St. Francisville creek

By Anne Butler
Photos from Ava Barrett

            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.
            And so a little shantytown sprang up and took its name from the creek, and it soon grew into one of the most significant ports along the Lower Mississippi, with extensive commercial and residential districts, its wharves crowded with steamboats and packets. The creek Bayou Sara was navigable for several miles to the north of St. Francisville, allowing plantation owners along the waterway the luxury of shipping their produce to the river from their own docks, at least through most of the 19^th century.
            Alas, the port of Bayou Sara was situated right on the river’s banks below St. Francisville, which had the sense to develop on a high ridge. Washed by floodwaters most springs, devastated by fires that destroyed dozens of woodframe structures in the business district, shelled during the Civil War, by 1909 the port city had seen better days. A newspaper report of that year gives an amusing account of a scheduled visit by the battleship Mississippi. The chairman of the local Bayou Sara reception committee, chagrined at accounts of elaborate banquets and balls given the ship’s officers and crew at New Orleans and Baton Rouge, wired its captain, “This is a hell of a place to receive anybody, but we will do the best we can.” And when a newspaper correspondent, tongue in cheek, wired back inquiring whether civilians should dress in high silk hats and frock coats during Bayou Sara’s welcome ceremony, the response was a hospitable “Not necessary to wear anything at all. Come ahead!”
            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.
            Now, nearly a century later, the beautiful creek called Bayou Sara is once again coming into its own, thanks to a new business called Bayou Sara Kayak Rental, brainchild of avid fisherman Andy Green and his fiancée Ava Barrett (who admitted to preferring to pass the time on the water with a good book until she too caught the fishing bug). Since they started last fall, they have had enthusiastic support from not only tourists, who revel in the unspoiled bayou scenery and unusual wildlife, but also from locals who gain a whole different perspective from water level, not to mention a good physical workout.
            Clear swift-running waters at its upper end near its mouth pass sandy beaches and clay bluffs, while the creek widens as it approaches the river and its turbid waters fill with alligators, otters, beavers and plenty of waterbirds—egrets and herons, roseate spoonbills, woodpeckers and the occasional eagle. The fishing is fine and Andy always manages a good catch for customers, whether fishing the fall run of white and striped bass, reeling in enormous catfish, or simply enjoying birdwatching and exploring flooded forested wetlands. Cat Island is accessible through the ditch when water levels are right and Andy also offers guided fishing trips to the Gulf Coast.
            Reasonable rates are $35 for two-hour guided kayak trips, $50 for four hours. All day non-guided rate is $35 per single kayak, $50 per tandem (two-person) kayak. The Pelican kayaks (sit on, not in) are built for stability; no experience is required, and the two-person tandem kayaks are perfect for trips with children. Guided Gulf fishing trips are $75, with full service provision—rods, lures, life vests, dry storage for valuables. Andy and Ava plan on expanding by adding more kayaks, sponsoring a Bayou Sara Cleanup community project and maybe a catfish rodeo, coordinating youth kayak lessons with the parish sports park and possibly even a summer camp.
            “Bayou Sara is such a pretty waterway and it’s not fully appreciated locally. It’s one of only two tributaries that enter the Mississippi River in Louisiana from the east, and kayaking Bayou Sara provides a glimpse of the state’s natural beauty that you will never forget,” says Andy Green. Give him a ring at 225-202-8822 to schedule a trip.
            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.
            Sunday, September 13, from 3 to 5 p.m. at Hemingbough, A Celebration of Literature and Art presents an afternoon of words and song called Watermelon Wine and the Poetry of Southern Music. Frye Gaillard, journalist and author, will read from his classic book on country music, Watermelon Wine, and rising country music star Anne DeChant performs her favorite tunes, including some composed in collaboration with Gaillard. The performers will converse with the audience prior to the event, from 1 to 2:30. Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com; CLA members $10, non-members $20 for both events.
            Another September event attracting visitors to St. Francisville is the LAVetsFest at the West Feliciana Sports Park on September 27, promising all sorts of sporting events, live music (big names like the Lost Bayou Ramblers), runs and bike races, fishing tournament and rodeo, car show, auction and jambalaya cook-off, all in tribute to veterans of all military branches.  Proceeds from concessions benefit the Veterans Foundation.
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 19^th-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. 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).

October in St. Francisville Brings Out Colorful Leaves…and Colorful Characters

October in St. Francisville Brings Out Colorful Leaves…and Colorful Characters

By Anne Butler

Hollywood veteran and ageless beauty Andie MacDowell was recently quoted as saying Southern people are crazy and she’s thankful for having grown up as part of that, recognizing the richness a little local color and a lot of local characters can add to life. If ever there were a living breathing example of that, it’s little St. Francisville, Louisiana, where eccentricity is not just tolerated but enthusiastically embraced.

From the late lamented town jailer who covered his bald pate with everything from Elvis pompadours to orange poodle-curl wigs, to the overgrown child who saddled up his three-wheel bicycle and patrolled the streets handing out speeding tickets to unsuspecting tourists, from the hard-drinking pistol-packing mama who wore a pirate’s eyepatch and drove a herd of her own cattle to LSU during the Depression to pay her tuition, to the savant who picks up trash along the roadways while reading Charles Dickens, and the mysterious Orthodox priest stalking the streets in long flowing black robes, St. Francisville has certainly harbored its share of colorful and well-loved characters.

So it’s appropriate that the town’s celebrations of life, its festivals, are just as colorful. And in October, they run the gamut from ghosts to garden-club ladies sipping tea, from fearless inmate roughriders to artists and crafters under the ancient live oaks of the town park. And every one of these diverse celebrations adds to the richness of life in this southern small town. Says Andie McDowell, “People say reading Faulkner is hard because he’s all over the place, but for me it’s easy—I’m right there with him.” And you can be, too.

October is crowded with events allowing visitors to sample first-hand St. Francisville’s beloved quirkiness.  This being the season of witches and goblins, The Myrtles Halloween Experience scares the pants off visitors every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and October 31 from 6 to 9 in a historic plantation house calling itself the most haunted in America (for tickets, telephone 800-809-0565). Indeed, when the attached gift shop caught fire not long ago, the ghosts were said to have saved the 1790s main house (the local firefighters just might’ve helped, too).

For a taste of authentic historic funeral customs, nearby Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site is dressed in mourning garb October 27 through November 3. On October 31 at 4 p.m. the costumed staff of this National Historic Landmark relates Soul Stories of Rosedown family members’ lives and deaths.

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 (www.angolarodeo.com provides information and spells out regulations which must be observed on prison property).
Somewhat more sedate activities are offered October 10 and 11th at the 26^th annual Southern Garden Symposium, a series of entertainments, workshops, tours, demonstrations and lectures by prestigious speakers in this the land of glorious antebellum gardens. Workshop topics this year include floral design, container gardening, edible garnishes, plant structures, gardening for birds and bees, heirloom bulbs and period architecture, and landscape design over the years (www.southerngardensymposium.org).

The last weekend of October, the 25^th and 26^th, the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival is a gathering of dozens of artists and crafters demonstrating and selling their wares in downtown oak-shaded Parker Park. This 12^th annual event sponsored by the umbrella arts organization called Arts For All to celebrate all arts for all persons, Yellow Leaf 2014 brings together more than 55 artists, plus live music, fun children’s activities, and food including locally grown sweet potatoes. New this year is a Native Bird Photography Contest, and just down Burnett Road from Yellow Leaf on Saturday, the Friends of the Library hold a book sale at the wonderful new parish library.

Arts For All calls the Yellow Leaf Festival a celebration of the “friendly, relaxed, authentic, small-town quaintness that is St. Francisville” (for information, www.artsforall.felicianalocal.com).

For this and every other October event, the town welcomes visitors to revel in its pervasive local color and meet its local characters to understand just what actress Andie McDowell was talking about, that wonderful richness of life in a small southern town.

And the events just keep rolling along through fall into winter. November 15 the Louisiana Vets Fest in the West Feliciana Parish Sports Park supports and celebrates veterans of all wars with children’s activities, military displays, hotly contested cook-off contests providing plenty of good food, and exciting live music including Marcia Ball and Jimmie Vaughn (http://lavetsfest.org). And December brings the well-established and well-loved small-town holiday celebration called Christmas in the Country, with shop open houses, strolling musicians, lively parade (this year on Sunday rather than the customary Saturday afternoon due to election run-offs requiring that polling places not be blocked), and an afternoon house tour benefitting the new parish library.

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 19^th-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 shops, many in restored historic structures, and restaurants serving everything from ethnic cuisine (Chinese, Mexican, most recently Lebanese) 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, including the Farmers Market on Thursday mornings).

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).

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).