THE DAY THE WAR STOPPED — IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

by Anne Butler Up the steep hill they trudged, sweating in the sticky June heat, staggering under the weight of the simple wooden coffin, the white flag of truce flying before them in the hot summer sun.  The guns of their federal gunboat, the USS Albatross, anchored in the Mississippi off Bayou Sara, were silent behind them as a small party of officers struggled toward St. Francisville atop the hill. The procession was not an impressive one, certainly not an unusual event in the midst of a bloody war, and it would no doubt have escaped all notice but for one fact--this was the day the war stopped, if only for a few mournful moments, and the lovely little rivertown of St. Francisville invites the public to join in commemorating the events 147 years ago on the weekend of June 11-13. In June 1863, the Siege of Port Hudson was pitting 30,000 Union troops under Major General Nathaniel P. Banks against 6,800 weary Confederates under Major General Franklin Gardner, fighting over the all-important control of traffic on the Mississippi River.  Port Hudson and Vicksburg were the only rebel strongholds left along the Mississippi, and if the Union forces could wrest from them control of the river traffic, they could cut off supplies from the west and completely surround the Confederacy.  Admiral David Farragut had attempted to destroy Confederate cannons atop the bluffs from the river, but of his seven ships, four were turned back, one was completely destroyed, and only his flagship and the USS Albatross passed upriver safely, leaving ground troops to fight it out for nearly another month. Lt. Commander John E. Hart, the federal commander of the Albatross, had just the week before posted a touching letter to his wife, left behind with their young son Elliott in Schenectady, New York.  Praising his little boat for getting through the fearsome firing from the batteries atop the bluffs at Port Hudson, Commander Hart promises after the war to take his wife on a trip down the river to see the famous battlefields.  As he writes he can hear the cannons booming to the south, but his attentions are on more immediate matters…how many blackberries his crew have had to eat lately, and how when a “jolly good cow” is spotted, he sends a sailor ashore with a pail, chuckling how some rebel farm folk will be surprised when “old Brindle comes home at night and ain’t got no milk for them”…how hot it is, and how long since he has seen ice, and how he would love a glass of cool claret and water.  Even in the midst of war, there are mundane little touches of life scattered through the letter from Hart to his beloved wife…the mockingbirds singing around the boat, the little puppy he’d put ashore at Plaquemine to be raised, the shipboard litter of kittens.  After perilously running through the Grand Gulf batteries on the river to the north, Hart writes that the Admiral signalled, “How many killed?”  And he answered none.  The Admiral signalled, “How many wounded?”  And he answered none.  And just then Kitty, ship’s mouser, produced kittens which Hart insisted become part of the official report…important to note the wartime births as well as the all-too-frequent deaths. A respected naval officer and graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Commander Hart would have even more lasting impact through his death, which occurred at 4:15 p.m. on June 11, 1863, in the captain’s stateroom as the Albatross patrolled the waters of the Mississippi River near Bayou Sara, just below St. Francisville.  Masonic and naval records list Hart as having “suicided,” died by his own hand “in a fit of delirium.” It had been surmised that perhaps he suffered from dementia induced by yellow fever, for a mere four days earlier his cheerful letter home hardly seemed to exhibit despair, but the surgeon’s log implicates debilitating dyspepsia, perhaps combined with depression. The note left behind by the commander, in those days before antacids and little purple pills to ease the pain of gastric reflux disease, lamented, “God knows my suffering.” Hart was a Mason, and aboard his ship were other officers also “members of the Craft,” desirous of burying their commander ashore rather than consigning the remains to the river waters, especially since a metallic coffin which might have contained the body for safe shipment home to New York could not be found.  A boat was sent from the Albatross under flag of truce to ascertain if there were any Masons in the town of St. Francisville.  It just so happened that the two White brothers, Samuel and Benjamin, living near the river were Masons from Indiana. They informed the little delegation that there was indeed a Masonic lodge in the town, in fact one of the oldest in the state, Feliciana Lodge No. 31 F and AM.  Its Grand Master was absent serving in the Confederate Army, but its Senior Warden, W. W. Leake, whose “headquarters were in the saddle,” was home on furlough and was soon persuaded to honor the request.  As a soldier, Leake reportedly said, he considered it his duty to permit burial of a deceased member of the armed forces of any government, even one presently at war with his own, and as a Mason, he knew it to be his duty to accord Masonic burial to the remains of a brother Mason without taking into account the nature of their relations in the outer world The surgeon and officers of the USS Albatross, struggling up from the river with Hart’s body followed by a squad of Marines at trail arms, were met by W. W. Leake, the White brothers, and a few other members of the Masonic lodge.  They were greeted at Grace Episcopal Church by the Reverend Mr. Daniel S. Lewis, rector, and with full Episcopal and Masonic services, Commander John E. Hart was laid to rest on June 12, 1863, in the Masonic burial plot in Grace’s peaceful cemetery, respect being paid by Union and Confederate soldiers alike.  And soon the war resumed, Lee’s northern invasion turned back at Gettysburg July 3, Vicksburg falling July 4, and Port Hudson finally surrendering July 9, all in one catastrophic week.  But for one brief touching moment, the war had stopped at St. Francisville, and this moment will be marked the weekend of June 11, 12 and 13. The commemorative events begin on Friday, June 11, at 7 p.m., with graveside histories in the peaceful oak-shaded cemetery at Grace Church, where Commander Hart’s grave is marked by a marble slab and monument “in loving tribute to the universality of Free Masonry.” Over the years it was decorated with flowers by members of the Daughters of the Confederacy. W.W. Leake in 1912 was buried nearby after a long and honorable career as state senator, parish judge and bank president. An Open House and presentation of lodge history at the double-galleried Masonic Lodge just across Ferdinand St. from the graveyard follows at 8 p.m. Friday evening. On Saturday, June 12, a lively parade travels along St. Francisville’s historic main street beginning at 11 a.m., followed by lunch at the Masonic Lodge from 11 to 12:30. Visitors will be pleasantly transported back in time during the afternoon, as Grace Church’s parish hall is the setting for a concert of antebellum period music and graceful vintage dancing from 11:30 to 1:30. At 1:30 commences the very moving dramatic presentation showing Commander Hart’s young wife in New York as she reads his last letter to their small son and then receives the terrible news of his death. This is followed by the re-enactment of the burial of Hart, with re-enactors in the dignified rites clad in Civil War uniforms accurate down to the last button and worn brogan. Taking leading roles in this ritual, amazingly, are W.W.Leake’s great-great-grandson Robert S. Leake, as well as Frank Karwowski, member of Commander Hart’s Masonic lodge, St. George’s in Schnectady, New York, and Shirley Ditloff who now operates a popular B&B in W.W. Leake’s Royal St. townhouse. During the afternoon on Saturday, Oakley Plantation in the Audubon State Historic Site offers special related programs, including a Civil War encampment, complete with tents and authentically clad re-enactors, plus black powder and musket demonstrations from 2:30 to 5. From 6 to 8 p.m. costumed dancers perform stylish dances popular during the Civil War period, and Oakley House, which is never lovelier than by candlelight, opens for special evening tours. On Sunday, June 13, Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site from 1 to 3 presents a program on Civil War medical techniques and their all-too-often conclusion, period burial customs. At Oakley, a 1 p.m. talk focuses on Jefferson Davis’ young bride, Sarah Knox Taylor Davis, daughter of President Zachary Taylor, who succumbed to yellow fever on their honeymoon visit to his sister’s plantation in West Feliciana. This will be followed by a Civil War demonstration from 2 to 4 p.m. All of these activities are free and open to the public. Among sponsors are St. Francisville Overnight! (Bed & Breakfasts of the area), the Feliciana Lodge No. 31 F and AM, Grace Episcopal Church, and St. Francisville Main Street.  The St. Francisville area features 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, 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, horseback riding with rental mounts from Cross Creek Stables. There are unique specialty shops, many in restored historic structures, and some fine little restaurants throughout the St. Francisville area. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed and 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 for June gives dates and information on special activities, including the monthly third Saturday morning  Community Market Day in Parker Park) or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com. For additional information and a complete, updated schedule for The Day The War Stopped, see www.daythewarstopped.net.

PHOENIX GREENWOOD PLANTATION—ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA,

by Anne Butler

Greenwood Burning It was a dark and stormy night. Really, it was. When lightning struck the uppermost corner of glorious Greek Revival Greenwood Plantation near St. Francisville on the night of August 1, 1960, the first awareness of the impending tragedy came from a glimpse of the glow of flames in the reflecting pond. And by the time help arrived, the fire had lit up the night so brilliantly, according to one eyewitness, that it was possible to read a book in the glare. Laurie Fisher, 15 at the time, lived just across the road from Greenwood. He vividly remembers that a rare and violent cool front passed through that evening, with the worst lightning he’d ever seen in his life. “Lightning struck all over that Greenwood hill,” he recalls. He had been clipping pastures, but hurriedly drove in from the field, turned on a heater and pulled his big 12-pound cat onto his lap to warm up. Laurie Fisher 50yrs later. Laurie’s aunt and uncle, Naomi F. and Frank Percy, had purchased Greenwood in the early 1900s from the Reed family, restoring the magnificent home and sharing it with the public for tours, magazine features, even as a setting for movies like Drango. The house was called the finest example of Greek Revival architecture in the South, nearly 100 feet square and completely surrounded by 28 Doric columns of slave-made brick supporting a solid copper roof topped by a belvedere from which the Mississippi River was visible. The evening of August 1, the elderly Percys were enjoying a visit from a young grandson, Jimmy Lathrop. He would be the first to spot the reflection of the flames in the pond and sound the alarm. Headlines Local Newspaper Greenwood Today Word spread quickly. By the time the old two-ton 1953 Chevy firetruck lumbered out from St. Francisville, neighbors and relatives had rushed over to help salvage what furnishings they could. Crowds of spectators clogged the narrow country lanes, and the ground was so rain-soaked that the heavy firetruck quickly got stuck. Laurie was sent home to unhook the cutter from his tractor so he could pull the firetruck out of the pond. The heat from the flames, he recalls, was so intense that the firefighters faced an impossible task, with the hollow cypress walls acting like flues to accelerate the destruction. By morning, there was nothing left of Greenwood but the brick columns and several forlorn chimneys stark against the sky. Laurie says the embers from the fire stayed hot for 10 whole days. “We never felt the world was the same after such an enormous tragedy,” he says today, his voice still tinged with sadness. Only the Columns Remained after the 1960 Fire Little did he know that Greenwood would rise from the ashes like the phoenix to become one of the St. Francisville area’s most appealing tourist destinations once again. After languishing untouched (but never unloved) for nearly a decade, the romantic beauty of the ruins resonated with the late Baton Rouge attorney Walton Barnes and his son, Richard. They purchased the house site and 300 surrounding acres in 1968, determined to return Greenwood to its antebellum glory days, when builder William Ruffin Barrow engaged prominent architect James Coulter to build a fine home on family property that would eventually grow to 12,000 acres for the cultivation of first cotton and then sugarcane. Guided by vintage films and photographs, tattered magazine features and fading family recollections, the Barnes spent some 20 years reconstructing the home as close as possible to the original. Today it once again welcomes visitors for tours, overnight stays in a detached B&B structure across the reflecting pond, corporate workshops and functions, beautiful weddings and social events. Hollywood has returned as well, with such films as Louisiana, both parts of North and South, and Sister, Sister using Greenwood as a setting for memorable scenes. Costumed Hostesses Greenwood is but one of six plantations making the St. Francisville area (on US Highway 61 between Baton Rouge and Natchez) a year-round tourist destination. Besides Greenwood, Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, Butler Greenwood, The Cottage and The Myrtles—are open for daily tours, and Afton Villa Gardens opens seasonally. There are unique little shops in restored historic structures, and reasonably priced meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville. Some of the state's most unique Bed and Breakfasts offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; modern motel facilities can accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking, hiking, birding, horseback riding and other recreational activities. The month of May is filled with special events, from a Memorial Day weekend cycling classic to a simple garden stroll, from community market day in the park to nature walks and living history demonstrations at state historic sites, and even a performance by the Baton Rouge Symphony (check the events calendar on the West Feliciana Tourist Commission website at www.stfrancisville.us). This is also the site for online coverage of tourist facilities and attractions in the St. Francisville area; see www.stfrancisville.us or www.stfrancisvilleovernight.com, or telephone (225) 635-3873 or 635-4224.

The Cottage Plantation one of Feliciana’s earliest

The Cottage Plantation one of Feliciana’s earliest

By Anne Butler
         

Its name hints at a rustic simplicity, and indeed this early plantation house was constructed long before the popularity of southern Greek Revival grandeur or Victorian flamboyance. Today one of six historic plantations that draw tourists to the St. Francisville area, The Cottage exhibits instead a sensible sturdiness, and for nearly 150 years it housed the sensible sturdy members of a single family.

In late 1810 or early 1811, shortly after the West Florida Rebellion ousted the Spanish in the area, Judge Thomas Butler purchased lands along Alexander’s Creek granted in the mid-1790s by Baron de Carondelet to John Allen and Patrick Holland. Named by Governor William C.C. Claiborne the first judge of the Feliciana parishes in 1812 after Louisiana became a state, Judge Butler was elected in 1818 to represent the area in the United State Congress, though he found in Washington “nothing like the agreeable social society we have in Louisiana.”

He came from a long line of distinguished military heroes descended from the Irish Dukes of Ormond. His father and four uncles, several under age 17 at war’s onset, fought valiantly on the American side in the Revolutionary War, gaining high rank and a toast from George Washington, with whom they endured the harsh winter of 1777-8 at Valley Forge. General Lafayette also commended the brothers’ bravery, saying, “When I wish a thing well done, I have a Butler do it.”

These brothers also fought in the subsequent Indian Wars, during which Major General Richard Butler, second in command of the US Army, was mortally wounded, tomahawked, scalped, and his heart was eaten by the redskins, while Col. Thomas Butler, father of the judge, was shot through both legs but was saved by a third brother. This same Col. Butler later gained notoriety for stubbornly resisting the famous “roundhead order” issued by General Wilkinson forbidding the wearing of a “queue,” the long pigtail favored by Anglo aristocracy and colonial army officers. After much anguished correspondence with his dear friend Andrew Jackson, the colonel was still under order of courtmartial for resisting what he considered an “arbitrary infraction of his natural rights” when he perished of yellow fever in 1805 in New Orleans, and it was said a hole was cut in the bottom of his coffin so that his queue might hang out in defiance.

Col. Thomas Butler had six children, the oldest being his namesake, born in 1785. Judge Thomas Butler, descending south from Pennsylvania, in 1810 was commissioned a captain in the cavalry of the Militia of the Mississippi Territory, purchased The Cottage soon afterward, and married Ann Madeline Ellis of Natchez in 1813. Together they had a dozen children, expanding the simple early cottage structure to accommodate them, and the judge’s letters to his beloved wife during absences on court duties or in Congress often begged her to “kiss my dear sweet children for me and make them often think of me.” Well educated and well travelled, the family maintained a cultured lifestyle as Judge Butler increased his landholdings to include several sugar plantations in Terrebonne Parish.
The children married into other distinguished plantations families---the Stirlings, the Minors, the Forts, even the family of Andrew and Rachel Jackson. The sons and cousins fought at the Battle of New Orleans with General Jackson, who made an extended visit to The Cottage on his way back to Tennessee, for Judge Butler’s brother was the general’s chief of staff.

The family military prowess continued during the Civil War. Judge Butler’s son Robert Ormond Butler, a Yale-educated physician born in 1832 who studied medicine in Paris, served as Surgeon in Chief under Confederate Brig. Gen. Pratt. He referred in correspondence to the Union troops as “villainous vandals,” describing a heartbreaking midnight march down the Mississippi River below Baton Rouge as “one continued scene of desolation and sadness, nearly every place plundered even to the huts of the poorest creoles, large plantations deserted not a living thing to be seen, the river once so teeming with life and gladness flowing by us as swiftly and silently as that stream said to flow to eternity.”

Dr. Butler’s children and grandchildren were the last generations of Butlers to occupy The Cottage. His daughter Louise, who never married, was a writer and historian of some note, whose published pieces in early Louisiana Historical Quarterlies captured the very soul of southern plantation life in the nineteenth century. When The Cottage was sold by the Butler family in the 1950s, an effort was made to preserve other vivid images of life in the early days through the donation of priceless vintage books to the LSU Library, significant correspondence and records to the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection at LSU, and an incredible collection of early 19th-c. garments to the university’s Textile & Costume Museum. Even portions of the once-extensive gardens surrounding The Cottage were shared, with one enormous white azalea more than 100 feet in circumference shipped by railroad flatcar to Houston.

Today The Cottage, long and rambling, peacefully presides with unpretentious charm atop a bluff overlooking Alexander’s Creek, the multitude of French doors opening from the long front gallery admitting cooling breezes and the huge live oaks providing plenty of shade. To the rear, one of the state’s most extensive and fascinating groupings of original plantation dependencies--the judge’s office/schoolroom, smokehouse, saddle room, commissary, kitchen/laundry, dairy and well house, greenhouses, carriage house with Judge Butler’s Philadelphia-made 1820 carriage, slave quarters used in filming The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brick-walled family cemetery--collectively provide a clear picture of life on functioning plantation communities of the early 19th century.
Now occupied by Harvey and Mary Brown, its present-day economic viability stems from tourism, and visiting writers wax eloquent about The Cottage as a state of mind, its antebellum ambience evoking the serenity of a bygone era. When The Cottage was purchased in the fifties by Harvey’s uncle J.E. and Eudora Brown of Chicago, a number of improvements were effected, including an inside kitchen, swimming pool, and raised automobile bridge over the creek to replace a scary hanging footbridge and low-water ford. Mr. Brown was an innovative inventor and pioneer in the television industry, but both he and his wife threw themselves wholeheartedly into community preservation efforts by opening The Cottage for tours and Bed & Breakfast in rooms with fine four-poster beds and morning demitasse served on a silver tray before guests are called to a hearty plantation breakfast in the antique-filled dining room. The Cottage was the first B&B to open in the St. Francisville area, and remains one of the most popular.

With six plantations—Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, Butler Greenwood, The Cottage, The Myrtles and Greenwood--open for daily tours, and Afton Villa Gardens open seasonally, the St. Francisville area (located on US Highway 61 between Baton Rouge, LA, and Natchez, MS) is a year-round tourist destination. There are unique little shops in restored historic structures, and reasonably priced meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville. Some of the state's most unique Bed and Breakfasts offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; modern motel facilities can accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking, hiking, birding, horseback riding and other recreational activities. For online coverage of tourist facilities, attractions and events in the St. Francisville area, see www.stfrancisville.us or www.stfrancisvilleovernight.com, or telephone (225) 635-3873 or 635-4224.