Flags Over St. Francisville
By Anne Butler

Market Hall photo by Gail Chisum

The St. Francisville area is so incredibly scenic that since the days of Audubon it has inspired artists and writers, photographers and painters. It still does. Several local artists have galleries in the historic district downtown, and the West Feliciana Historical Society’s museum-headquarters on Ferdinand Street displays a nice selection of coffee table photography books with glorious images of the area’s landscapes and architecture.

Being released this month is yet another, Flags Along the Way: A Pictorial Journey Through the History of West Feliciana, which promises to supplement the current crop of picture books nicely. Just as every good painter has his own unique style, so every good photographer has his own eye. There can never be too many books preserving parish history in images and print, particularly since fragile old plantation homes are so vulnerable to fires and storms and other destructive elements. What’s here today may well be gone tomorrow.

Methodist Church photo by Gail Chisum

Both text and photography in this new book are by Gail L. Chisum, who was born in Oklahoma, raised in Maryland, and attended Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas on a photo journalism scholarship. After serving in Viet Nam, he returned to the states, where he had a distinguished career in insurance and financial services with Farm Bureau all over the state of Louisiana.

Retirement brought a renewed passion for photography, especially with the advent of digital photography which found him, 40 years after doing college sports photography, now carrying a digital 35mm with 400mm lens at LSU football games. His dream in 2011 was to produce a book on LSU’s season all the way to a national championship, but in the title game Alabama put an abrupt halt to those plans.

By the 1990s Chisum and his family had settled in West Feliciana, where the sense of history is palpable and the numerous historic signs whet his appetite to learn more. After sharing with Farm Bureau colleagues his enthusiasm for combining his interest in parish history with his passion for photography, he found himself the recipient of a fine new Canon camera as a retirement gift. As he says, “I walked out the door of one career to begin another, as an author and photographer of history of the area where I lived.”

Afton Villa Gardens - photo by Gail Chisum

A full year of painstaking research and reading, home visits and interviews with property owners followed. Museum director Helen Williams was a tremendous help, and eventually Chisum filled over 250 pages with fine photographs and in-depth histories. He very sensibly divided the book into chapters according to the many flags that have flown over the area---France, England, Spain, Republic of West Florida, Louisiana, Confederacy, United States.

Flags Along the Way will be available in downtown St. Francisville at the West Feliciana Historical Society museum and at Bohemianville Antiques, where the author will have a book signing on May 3. His next project is even more ambitious: photographing the 59 National Parks across the country, so be sure to catch him while he is still in town!

Beginning April 24, the twenty-first annual Cajun Jeep Jamboree brings off-road enthusiasts to the St. Francisville area for two days of guided trail rides through the challenging hilly terrain of West Feliciana. The event is open to all Jeep brand vehicles, and registration information is available at www.jeepjamboreeusa.com.

Oakely House - photo by Gail Chisum

The Angola Prison Rodeo always draws big crowds of visitors to the St. Francisville area in April; this year’s spring edition is April 26 and 27. From the time the mounted black-clad Angola Rough Riders race at break-neck speed into the arena, flags streaming and hooves flying, visitors are on the edges of their seats through events pitting inmates against pro-stock Brahma bulls and wild-eyed bucking broncos. Ladies’ barrel racing is the only non-inmate event in what is called the longest running prison rodeo, begun in the 1960s and now celebrating half a century of thrills and spills.

Crowd favorites are the events unique to Angola, including the crowd-pleasing "Guts and Glory", an arena full of inmates on foot trying to remove a $100 chit tied between the horns of the meanest Brahma bull around. Rodeo events begin at 2 p.m., but the grounds open at 9 a.m. for a huge arts and crafts sale showcasing inmate talent in hobbycraft like jewelry, hand-tooled leather, paintings and woodwork both large and small, from children’s toys to garden furniture. Special activities for children include pony rides and an antique carousel, space walks and carnival games. Inmate bands perform throughout the day, and a large number of concession stands offer a variety of food and drink, with the stands providing shaded seating for more than 10,000 cheering spectators. Tickets ($20 premium, $15 regular seating) should be purchased in advance (online at www.angolarodeo.com or by telephone on weekdays 8:30-4 (225) 655-2030 or (225) 655-2607).

Visitors should allow time to tour the fascinating prison museum just outside the front entrance gates to learn more about the history of this enormous maximum-security penitentiary. It should be noted that there are specific regulations with which visitors must comply when entering prison grounds; no food, drink, cell phones or cameras are allowed through the rodeo entrance gate, and on prison property no weapons, ammunition, alcohol or drugs are permitted; purses and bags will be searched and all vehicles must be locked when unoccupied.

Museum - photo by Gail Chisum

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, and spring is definitely the season for spectacular bloom. 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 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 West Feliciana Tourist Commission and West Feliciana Historical Society’s museum and tourist information center 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).

Writers and Readers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Located on US Highway 61 on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge, LA, and
Natchez, MS, the St. Francisville area is a year-round tourist destination. A number of restored plantation homes are open for tours daily: Cottage Plantation, Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens and Imahara’s Botanical Garden are open in season. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation and Oakley Plantation in the Audubon state site, which offer fascinating living-history demonstrations some weekends to allow visitors to experience 19th-century plantation life and customs (state budget constraints have unfortunately shuttered Oakley Sunday and Monday).

The nearby Tunica Hills region offers recreational activities in its unspoiled wilderness areas—hiking, biking, birding, photography, hunting. There are unique art galleries plus specialty and shops, many in restored historic structures, and restaurants serving everything from ethnic cuisine to seafood and classic Louisiana favorites. For overnight stays, the area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, including historic plantations, lakeside clubhouses and beautiful townhouses right in the middle of St. Francisville’s extensive National Register historic district; there are also motel accommodations for bus groups.

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