St. Francisville’s Longtime Mayor Retiring After Half-Century of Public Service

 

Mayor D'Aquilla by D. Chitty

St. Francisville’s Longtime Mayor Retiring After Half-Century of Public Service
By Anne Butler

You wouldn’t think growing up in an isolated little community of a hundred or so occupants would be good training for a career in politics, but for St. Francisville’s longtime mayor it provided exactly what he needed as the basis for his half-century of public service…an appreciation for history and an ability to get along with everybody. Those two must have served him well, for he has been elected and re-elected since he moved to St. Francisville in 1959.

 

 Mayor Billy D’Aquilla grew up in tiny Fort Adams, Mississippi, at a time when there were three wood-frame stores (two owned by his father and uncle) where trappers sold pelts and hunters or fishermen purchased provisions and all the country folks 

from cotton plantations and small farms piled into wagons to come into town on Saturdays, sitting on the store porches and shooting the breeze. This was after the Mississippi River channel shifted away from town. Originally Fort Adams had been the important US port of entry before the acquisition of New Orleans. A Jesuit mission had been established there around 1700 to bring Christianity to the local Indians, and in 1798 a military post named for President John Adams was established overlooking the river near the international boundary established between Spanish West Florida and the Mississippi Territory. There was a steep one-mile road down to the port at Fort Adams where cotton from across the central part of the state was hauled for shipment on paddlewheelers to factors in New Orleans during much of the 19th century.

 Working in his father’s store for $3 a day, Billy D’Aquilla recalls not having electricity until he was in the third grade, and listening to the Grand Old Opry on Tuesday nights after it had been broadcast on Saturday. When he left home at age 17 to join the National Guard, he’d already learned the skills he would put to use in the first job he got after moving to St. Francisville in 1959, working as a butcher in Vinci’s IGA supermarket and treating everybody the same…behind the counter, in front of the counter, and on the front porch shooting the breeze. After six years there, he opened his own grocery on US Highway 61, along with some rental houses behind the store, before advancing to travelling sales jobs.

 Meantime he was elected to the town council in 1972 and served for twelve years, 8 of them as Mayor Pro Tem, before running for mayor himself. He winces as he recalls those early days of raw sewerage running in the streets of St. Francisville. Once elected to that demanding position in 1984, he has been returned to office ever since, 12 terms counting the town council, mostly without opposition. Why? He absolute loves his town and absolutely loves his job. He also serves on numerous boards and commissions like the Capitol Region Planning Commission and the Louisiana Municipal Association for which he has served for years as Vice President At Large for communities of 1,000 to 5,000 residents.

 Proud of the many accomplishments made during his lengthy tenure, he says he has always had great people to work with, helping to implement many progressive improvements, including a new sewage system, 500,000-gallon water tower, new fire trucks, ball fields, enhanced tourism promotion. He’s especially proud of the downtown development plan that facilitated the placement of bricked sidewalks, public restrooms, and a lovely oak-shaded park with bandstand gazebo in the center of town, Parker Park, that hosts a myriad of festivals, marketplaces, and other entertainments. He has worked hard to get millions of dollars in grants to carry out projects in town, as well as lots of capital outlay money through the state legislature. He also convinced the state to turn over those portions of both highways (LA 10 and US 61) running through town, but only after the state overlaid both streets and shared $500,000 in surplus funding.

 “We did a lot for the town,” he says, working with a top-notch Main Street program, historic district commission, planning and zoning commission and different boards to whom he gives a lot of credit, including the Zachary Taylor Parkway commission of which St. Francisville was a charter member, so influential in placement of the new Audubon Bridge across the Mississippi. “We used to have a Class Six fire rating, and improved it to a Class Three, quite an accomplishment with a small mostly volunteer department and a real savings on fire insurance costs. Next up is a new waste-water treatment plant, a $5 million project in a new location safe from the increasingly regular floods on the Mississippi River, to be financed by a half-cent sales tax that will be on the ballot in December.”

 Tourism has for years been an economic mainstay for the downtown economy, with visitors coming from around the country to admire the small-town heritage and the preservation of its historic structures in a National Register-listed downtown district. As mayor, D’Aquilla certainly has been the head cheerleader and supportive of projects benefitting not only those within the town limits but also the parish as a whole. Steamboat visitors from around the world get off buses at the Town Hall and often stop in for a chat with the mayor, who is always welcoming. Hospitality as well as history keep this little town at or near the top of regional and national lists of Favorite Small Towns, and the patronage of out-of-town visitors means the difference between surviving and thriving for all the little downtown boutique shops and galleries. A spruced up docking facility planned for the steamboats that regularly visit St. Francisville will provide space for three vessels at once, as well as safe and spacious boat launching for recreational fishermen.

 Age and back troubles have slowed the mayor, and he needs to spend more time with his family, especially wife Yolanda, whom he married in 1962. But as he approaches retirement, he looks back over his long career with the satisfaction of having made many improvements, with incredible help from his devoted staff and town employees. What is he most proud of? “I have always treated everybody fairly,” he says, “no matter what age, color or status in life. I think I am most proud of that.”

 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; check locally for coronavirus mitigation requirements, please. Several splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours: The Cottage Plantation (weekends), Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens is open in season. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation (a National Historic Landmark) 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 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 in 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.stfrancisville.us, www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com, or www.stfrancisville.net (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).
 

Touch of St. Francisville Travels to New Orleans Museum of Art

Touch of St. Francisville Travels to New Orleans Museum of Art
By Anne Butler
 It is called one of the South’s best preserved formal Victorian parlors, and the New Orleans Museum of Art now has it on permanent exhibit. Moved in its entirety from English Plantation Country in St. Francisville, it is shown not only as a perfect representation of an era in history, but also as a tribute to those skilled craftsmen, both free and enslaved, capable of creating such beauty.
 On a plantation established in the 1790s by her father, the area’s first physician, Harriett Flower Mathews began assembling the room’s elegant furnishing and decorations as clouds of Civil War gathered. The ninth generation of direct descendants occupy the property now, but it was five generations of strong women who preserved the parlor intact.

In the 1850s, widowed upon the death of her husband Judge George Mathews of Louisiana’s first Supreme Court, the determined Mrs. Mathews refused to be inconvenienced by the rumblings of war, ordering deliveries from fine merchants across the country: marble mantels from Kent & Fuller in St. Louis in 1855, wall-to-wall floral strip carpeting (53 7/8 yards) with a central medallion made most likely in England from Bayou Sara retailer I. Meyer & Hoffman, 9-foot-tall gilded pier mirrors and silk lambrequin curtains from the New Orleans retailer C. Flint & Jones but no doubt also imported from Europe.

The day before Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, a large order was placed for a sumptuous rosewood parlor suite from Hubbell & Curtis of Bridgeport, Connecticut, beautifully carved in the Rococo Revival style with flowers, fine fabrics, carved scrolls and fruit clusters. Harriett Mathews may well have visited the manufacturing site on visits to her son, who attended Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., as she also patronized a number of early nurseries Up East to order plants and ironwork for landscaping. In all, the parlor would contain a 12-piece set of rosewood furniture including several sofas, several styles of chairs, marble-topped tables, and a fine mahogany etagere beside the pier mirrors and lambrequins held with calla-lily tiebacks.

The Mathews family could well afford such grandeur, owning in the 1850s four extensive productive cotton and sugar plantations across the state. But then came wartime troubles. In April of 1861 a letter was received from Hubbell & Curtis, requesting acknowledgment of receipt of the furnishings. “We are aware that troublesome times are come to all parts of our country, and the largest part of the calamity must fall on the manufacturing interest of the country. Our business is nearly ruined. But if our friends who are able will pay us…”

Succeeding generations kept the parlor intact with careful use, in the exact setting and in the original fabric, until the present generation, mindful of how rarely do our children want our old things, began to fret about its future. She didn’t want it divided; she didn’t want it to be auctioned off; she didn’t want it to go to an inappropriate place. Since the property had never been sold outside the original family, the attic remained full of trunks and trunks of original invoices and journals; many records were placed in the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley collection of histories at LSU, but some were still on site.

Along came the late New Orleans attorney Paul Haygood and his interns from the Classical Institute of the South, doing an inaugural summer study of plantations in the St. Francisville area, where they were incredibly impressed with the sheer volume and quality of preserved material culture as well as the documentation through invoices and correspondence from providing merchants. And working closely with Mel Buchanan, the RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the perfect solution was found. After all, there had always been close ties between St. Francisville and the Crescent City, with planters and their families travelling by steamboat south to handle business matters, socialize and shop, attend carnival festivities and board ocean-going vessels for trips to the East Coast or Europe.

In 2014 a fleet of climate-controlled eighteen-wheelers parked on the front lawns of Butler Greenwood Plantation, while inside, an army of professional fine-art movers made crates for every single piece of the parlor furnishings…carpeting, sofas and chairs, etagere, towering pier mirrors, lambrequins and delicate calla lily tiebacks. This was all carefully transported to the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park and given a light conservation for an introductory exhibit in October 2015. Now, as of December 20, 2019, it has been opened as a permanent exhibit for all to see.

Cognizant of current sensibilities, museum staff made sure that this is a celebration of all segments of society during the antebellum period, including the labor of the enslaved who made many more important contributions than picking cotton…there were skilled craftsmen, knowledgeable horticulturists, blacksmiths, seamstresses and weavers, culinary artists and many more whose talents and hard work provided the backbone and underpinnings for the cotton culture, and who are just now getting their due recognition. In the NOMA parlor exhibit are displayed small iron nails, obviously forged on the place. Examples of the skill of plantation blacksmiths, these tacks were used to secure the strips of carpeting to the cypress floor below, just a tiny reminder that there were contributions both great and small.

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived,” said author Maya Angelou, “but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

For information on hours and fees, look online at www.noma.org.

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. Several splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours: The Cottage Plantation (weekends), Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens is open in season. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation (a National Historic Landmark) 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 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 in 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 o r 225-635-4224, or St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873; online www.stfrancisville.us, www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com, or www.stfrancisville.net (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).

Photos by Rich Johnson

St. Francisville’s Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site: Story of Survival

St. Francisville’s Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site: Story of Survival
By Anne Butler


“Of all the houses in the world it seemed to be the beloved of its own trees and gardens,” said Mississippi-born writer Stark Young when he used Rosedown as a picturesque setting in his acclaimed Civil War novel So Red The Rose, written a full century after Rosedown was built in 1834. That charm and appeal continues unabated today, the house folded in the embrace of 27 surrounding acres of 19th-century gardens and live oaks grown to immense size, and indeed the beauty of the glorious gardens has saved the house itself more than once through the generations.

In 1829 Martha Hilliard Barrow and her husband Daniel Turnbull acquired the Rosedown property from the estate of her father for $60,000; the couple had married in 1828 when Martha was 18 years old and Daniel 28. Here they would erect a stately double-galleried home, all 8,000 square feet of it costing a mere $13,109.20 and completed in just six months, November 1, 1834, to May 1, 1835.
Much of the labor was performed by slaves during the winter months when planting chores were few. Built of cypress cut from the surrounding woods, the Rosedown house featured Doric columns, double galleries, and a fanlight over the entrance doorway to remind the mistress of her own homeplace, Highland; its style was called transitional Federal Greek Revival. The “workmanship and stile (was) not to be surpassed in the state,” according to the contract with carpenter W. Wright, who had been a contractor for the West Feliciana Railroad, the country’s first standard-gauge line.

The young bride planned a housewarming party for only some thirty guests, but the menu included 6 chickens for chicken salad, 2 turkeys, 2 ducks, 1 ham, 1 tongue, 1 roast mutton, 2 roast chickens, 1 pig, cakes made from 12 dozen eggs, 6 eggs for salad, 16 pints for cream, jelly, blancmange, 23 bananas, 6 pineapples, 2 hogsheads ice, 4 decanters wine, 4 decanters brandy, 2 bottles brandy, 8 bottles champagne, 4 pounds candy fruit, 2 ornamental pound cakes of 12 pounds each, 1 10-pound fruitcake, macaronas, lady fingers, 1 jar grapes, 2 neuga ornaments; “costs 74 dollars, musicians 60 dollars, indeed to induce everything it cost 224 dollars.”

On their lengthy wedding trip through Europe in 1835, Martha fell in love with Versailles and other great landscapes of the Continent and gleaned the inspiration for her own grand gardens. Only such expansive yet orderly grandeur could adequately complement the fine plantation house. Initially five acres of rare shrubs on each side of the avenue, the Rosedown plantings were continually expanded into one of the great gardens of the 19th century and early proving grounds for the exotic flora of the Orient.

Camellia japonicas, for example, planted at Rosedown as early as the 1830s or ‘40s, were natives of the Orient and Far East, known to thrive in the gardens of Japan and China centuries before they were seen by Europeans. They were initially carried to other lands by missionaries and early medical men, travelling first afoot and then across the seas after trade with the Orient was first opened in the early 1500s by the Portuguese and their infamous Black Ships. Soon trading groups like the East India Companies were formed, dealing in spices, silks, porcelains and other Oriental treasures. It was often the medical officers of these trade companies who first studied the native plants for their medicinal propensities, then introduced the botanical oddities back home.

The gardening journals of Martha Turnbull are a testament to the importance of plantings in early southern life and the amazing variety of not just ornamental but also edible plants she set out…eggplants and tomatoes, turnips, cabbage and lettuce, celery, broccoli, beets and spinach, parsnips, carrots, kale, leeks, potatoes, garlic, onions planted at the full moon, peas, dewberries and raspberries, beans, watermelons, cucumbers and cantaloupe, cauliflower, squash, rutabaga, figs and pears and apples, quince and peaches, plums, artichokes, pineapples in the greenhouse, tobacco and rice.

Here along the Lower Mississippi River where more than half of America’s 19th-century millionaires were to be found before the Civil War, Daniel Turnbull acquired additional lands for an extensive cotton operation. His more practical journal of cash crops and work details, preserved in the LSU Department of Archives and Manuscripts, includes such entries as: “Shipped 308 Bales; killed 20 hogs, weather cold; Rosedown gin running, 6 hands digging holes for trees in orchard; teams hauled pork from landing; 6 men cut up and salted hogs, 4 men whipsawing; heavy freeze last night; new smokehouse, new woodhouse; carpenters and 2 men in the swamp getting out timber for new cabins, 2 ox teams hauled the same, 7 hands worked in orchard, 5 men pressed 14 bales in Rosedown gin.” In 1860 a New Orleans newspaper called West Feliciana one of the richest parishes in the state, and among the largest planters were mentioned Daniel Turnbull of Rosedown and William J. Fort of Catalpa.

The Turnbulls’ seven-year-old son James Daniel died in 1843 of yellow fever, and their grown son William, who with his wife Caroline S. Butler had several children, drowned in the river while herding cattle. Their only daughter Sarah, beautiful “National Belle” of 1849, married James Pirrie Bowman, the son of Audubon’s pupil Eliza Pirrie of Oakley. Sarah was the center of brilliant entertainments and social life at Rosedown prior to her marriage, making the rounds of resorts, dancing the night away at fancy dress balls, touring Europe, and excelling at athletics as well. One account, written later by one of her daughters, tells the story of Sarah in attendance at drills at West Point on horseback when an officer dared her to take a hurdle. A fearless equestrienne, she sat erect and replied, “A Southern girl was never known to refuse a dare,” and gracefully leaped the hurdle. The cadets saluted her and the band played Dixie in her honor. It would be her eight daughters, four of them spinsters, who would struggle to maintain Rosedown after the Civil War through some very lean and difficult years.
In one particularly poignant scene from So Red The Rose, a Confederate cavalryman rides along the 660-foot oak allee from the plantation house based on Rosedown, tipping his hat to each of the marble statues lining the drive, a final farewell to a vanishing way of life. And indeed life would never be the same at Rosedown, and yet the plantation persevered through struggling years of genteel poverty. After 30 years of recording daily experiments and plantings with unlimited labor and funds, the diaries of Mrs. Turnbull dolefully record the disintegration of the gardens into melancholy wildernesses of sedgegrass during the difficult years of the Civil War, while she tried to save them by paying the help with plantation produce and often working by their side.

Wartime diary entries show the determination of Martha Turnbull, who had been mistress of hundreds of slaves, to do whatever it took to save her garden: “Julia one week at 40 cents…Penny and Lancaster 2 days each, $1.60…Penny cleaning front yard, gave her 2 lbs. coffee, 2 lbs. sugar, pint molasses…Ben hawled all leaves from the Avenue…Kitty and children cleaned up with Clabber paying.” The entry of January 1864 reads, “Up to this time, since the Federals landed in May neither field or Garden has been worked.” In January 1869: “Not one speck of ground yet plowed. Hay all over the truck patch & no manure yet hawled…all work that ought to have been in October and November yet to be done…Very cold & damp-deep snow today-can do nothing-no hands yet in garden but John Prenter & he’s worse than nothing.” And times worsened: “August 23…cleaned up my yard entirely by my own hands and now hawling manure and trash from Eliza’s side,” reads one entry in 1872.

In 1874 she initiated a Civil War claim for property confiscated by Union forces in June of 1863, including 300 hogsheads sugar, 600 barrels molasses, 200 mules, 100 horses, 700 head of cattle, 80 wagons, 300 hogs, 6,000 bushels of corn, 50 bales of cotton, 100 barrels of pork, 3000 pounds of salted meat and 20 sacks of coffee. She never received compensation. And yet annual inventories of household items like the one of August 1867 still show remarkable treasures: “24 fingerbowls, 11 flower and 13 dark blue; 24 breakfast forks; 24 dinner forks; 1 asparagus knife; 1 buckwheat knife; 1 custard spoon; 1 gravy spoon; 21 teaspoons; 6 STB coffee spoons; 6 egg spoons; 17 dessert spoons; 17 dinner spoons; 1 cheese knife; 1 cake knife; 2 salt spoons; 1 sugar tongs; 2 butter knives; 12 nut picks; 1 sugar sifter; 23 fruit forks; 24 fruit knives; 1 fish knife; 16 old things in drawer; 6 nut crackers; 1 ham hock; 1 crumb brush…” Census of the labor force and of the animals from the same era, compared with the claim for property confiscated by federal troops, shows the decline: “40 sheep, 2 bulls, 1 old and 1 young, 6 oxen” and “little negroes 105, hands 248, no accounts 12.”
On September 1, 1895, Martha Barrow Turnbull entered her last posting in her garden journal: “My pension came. I had not one dime to pay Emma $2 this month, August or any debt whatever.” Her pension, as a widow of a veteran of the War of 1812, was a monthly check of $8.

Martha Turnbull died at age 87 in 1896, her daughter Sarah, mother of ten, in 1914. The slim Bowman sisters of the next generation, spinsters Corrie, Isabel, Sarah and Nina, inherited the place and all its accompanying responsibilities at the worst possible time, as the boll weevil destroyed the cotton empire upon which the house was built; the parishwide harvest of 1853 had been 24,000 bales, but by the early 1900s only 400 bales of cotton were harvested in West Feliciana. But the sisters did the best they could, selling poultry and cuttings of garden plants, and timidly offering postcards for 25 cents to inquisitive tourists who were allowed in to the house to see only the parlor and dining room.

It would be the gardens that touched the hearts of the Milton Underwoods from Texas when the plantation home and acreage were put up for sale after the last of the Bowman sisters, Miss Nina, died in mid-1955. The detailed gardening diaries of Martha Turnbull span nearly 60 years and prove that she was one of the first to introduce azaleas and camellias to the South beginning in 1836. These records were invaluable restoration tools when oil heiress Catherine Fondren Underwood, after attending a Garden Clubs of America event in Natchez, purchased the property in 1956, her keen eye recognizing the lush beauty of the gardens and haunting dignity of the house even through the creeping undergrowth and peeling plaster.

Prior to opening to the public, a meticulous 10-year restoration, overseen by noted New Orleans architects Richard Koch and George Leake and landscape architect Ralph Gunn of Houston who was succeeded by Dr. Neil G. Odenwald, salvaged the house and its unique collection of plantings. A 1930s WPA architect’s survey of Rosedown aided immeasurably in the location of paths, potting shed, conservatory and greenhouse. Century-old sweet olives, cypress, camellias, azaleas, and other flowering shrubs and trees were preserved, and a propagation program regenerated old-fashioned roses, rare hip gardenias with their seed pods glowing like bright orange lanterns, and lace-cap hydrangeas from the original 19th-century stock.

For decades Rosedown was the strong draw for tourism in St. Francisville, nationally recognized, well publicized, admired by preservationists and gardening enthusiasts for its attention to historical accuracy, a generous community partner for the entire area. But after the death of the Underwoods, the house with several thousand surrounding acres was purchased in 1994 for $3.75 million by a most unfortunate owner, who sold the cattle, sold the timber, sold some of the property, removed the marble statues lining the avenue, replaced knowledgeable tour guides with audiotapes and made visitors look through plexiglass rather than entering the rooms at an exorbitant entrance fee which generated tremendous ill will. He divided and sold the enormous Gothic Revival Henry Clay bedroom suite for which an entire wing had been added to one side of the main structure, balanced on the opposite side by a library; Daniel Turnbull purchased the immense set, which had been ordered for use in the White House, after Clay lost his bid for the presidency in 1844. The bed alone was sold to the Dallas Museum of Art for $450,000, matching side chairs went to Houston’s Bayou Bend museum, while the dresser, wash stands, massive armoire and cheval mirror went in different directions. Other purported contents of the house, seemingly everything that wasn’t nailed down, were sold at auction on the grounds, where local preservationists tried to purchase what they could so the items could be returned to Rosedown.

He even tried to evict the little black Rosedown Baptist Church, on property well removed from the main house, given to the congregation way back in time and surrounded by a cemetery. That threat caused outrage in the entire community. Eventually the one-acre church property was purchased by an anonymous local resident and the deed handed over to the rector, the Reverend Lafayette Veal, Jr., a heartwarming recognition that any appreciation of area history and heritage must of necessity include the major contributions of black community members and of the importance of black churches to life through the generations. Rev. Veal, whose father pastored the church before him, recalled the night Rosedown’s new owner came to break the bad news to the congregation: “I was thinking and praying at the same time, ‘What is wrong with this man?’ Then it came to me: Satan is in our midst.”

Maybe it could have been worse. Sotheby’s International Realty had listed the property---2100 acres of woodlands, pasture, gardens and plantation house, with this sales pitch: “Currently maintained as a museum, Rosedown Plantation is well suited for a number of possible uses such as a hunt club, horse or cattle farm, private school, spa/health club, hotel/restaurant or residential development.”

Finally the State of Louisiana stepped in and purchased the house, gardens and close to 400 acres for $5.7 million in November 2000. Today Rosedown, magnificently furnished and now a State Historic Site and National Historic Landmark, represents one of the South’s finest examples of antebellum culture, a picture of life along the River Road during the Cotton Kingdom. Rosedown’s grand gardens remain one of few extant 19th-century gardens in America. Rows of live oaks form a vaulted canopy above the entrance allee, considered one of the most beautiful approaches in the South. On the grounds, a compelling collection of original outbuildings—barn, plantation doctor’s office, milk house, latticed gazebos—provide further understanding of the operations of the early plantation communities, and here Rosedown’s staff periodically demonstrates early plantation skills like down-hearth cooking in the detached kitchen, using actual recipes from the Turnbull family and their descendants.

One of the area’s iconic events, a fall tradition for gardening enthusiasts across the south organized in tribute to the glorious 19th-century gardens still extant in the St. Francisville area, is the Southern Garden Symposium October 18 and 19th, when nationally renowned speakers conduct programs in plantation settings including Rosedown, Afton Villa and historic churches on Friday; a Saturday symposium at Hemingbough features outstanding lectures, autographed gardening books and tools. For information and ticket information, online southerngardensymposium@gmail.com.

Other fall events drawing visitors to the St. Francisville area include the Feliciana Hummingbird Festival at the National Wildbird Refuge in Tunica on September 15, the Angola Rodeo and Craft Show every Sunday in October, the popular Yellow Leaf Festival in Parker Park on the 27th and 28th of October, and the Myrtles Plantation Halloween Experience weekends throughout 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. Several splendidly restored plantation homes are open for tours: The Cottage Plantation (weekends), Myrtles Plantation, Greenwood Plantation, plus Catalpa Plantation by reservation; Afton Villa Gardens is open in season. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation (a National Historic Landmark) 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 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 in 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 o r 225-635-4224, or St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3873; online www.stfrancisville.us, www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com, or www.stfrancisville.net (the events calendar gives dates and information on special activities).

Colorful Azaleas and Costumes of the 1820s Welcome Spring in St. Francisville, LA

Colorful Azaleas and Costumes of the 1820s Welcome Spring in St. Francisville, LA
By Anne Butler

The forty-eighth annual Audubon Pilgrimage March 15, 16 and 17, 2019, 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 nearly half a century of experience under their belt, society members put on one of the South’s most professional and enjoyable pilgrimage presentations.

Featured this year are three historic plantation homes in the countryside and two townhouses, plus lots of extras.

Sunnyside, built in 1838 in Pointe Coupee Parish, was disassembled, trucked across the Mississippi River bridge in 1997, then meticulously reassembled on the Tunica Trace, retaining its original footprint. A fine example of vernacular architecture, its bluffland design is eminently suite to the historic Weyanoke community and its period landscaping anchors house to site as if it’s been there for centuries. Historian David Floyd and wife Marla have raised two children there.

Laurel Hill Plantation was purchased in the 1830s by Judge Edward McGehee, founder of the early standard-gauge West Feliciana Railroad that hauled cotton through this plantation country to the Mississippi River port at Bayou Sara. In the 1870s daughter Caroline and her husband Duncan Stewart enlarged the original small Carolina-I structure to accommodate their growing family. Beautifully restored, it is now the property of Jimmy and Mary Farrar Hatchette.

Puente Largo, built in the 1850s in Tangipahoa Parish and moved to West Feliciana in 1997, is a handsome raised Creole cottage with four large rooms and spacious hallway on the upper premier etage, above what had been an unfinished ground-floor storage for wagons and buggies but is now closed in. Broad front stairs access the upper gallery. Used as a field hospital during the Civil War, Puente Largo has been beautifully furnished and landscaped by owners Mike and Krista Dumas.

In St. Francisville’s downtown National Register-listed Historic District is the Brasseaux House, quintessentially charming cottage complete with Victorian gallery trim, picket fence and climbing roses. It was built in 1895 by Albert Sydney Brasseaux, who was named for his father’s commanding general in the Civil War. Its architectural style is called southern dogtrot, and its extensive sloping back yard shows why St. Francisville is called the little town that’s two miles long and two yards wide. It is now home to a vibrant young family, the Magruder Hazlips.

And then there’s the Coffin House, tiny stepped-roof structure built around 1903 right on St. Francisville’s main thoroughfare, proving history is nothing if not dynamic and showing the amazing adaptability of even the most unassuming of historic structures. Previously used for strictly utilitarian purposes including the storage of coffins, it is now a delightfully cozy pied-a-terre for visiting doting grandparents, Don and Harriet Ayres.
In addition to the featured homes, pilgrimage visitors are also welcomed to Afton Villa Gardens, Audubon (Oakley) and Rosedown State Historic Sites, three 19th-century churches and Temple Sinai in town and beautiful St. John’s and St. Mary’s in the country, plus the Rural Homestead with lively demonstrations of the rustic skills of daily pioneer life.

Audubon Market Hall hosts an exhibit of the West Feliciana works of the late Charles Reinike (1906-1983), one of New Orleans’ most respected landscape artists. Passionately in love with South Louisiana from New Orleans through the wetlands and the hills of rural plantation country, Reinike and wife Vera opened an art school in the French Quarter in the 1930s-1940s and brought their students to summer art camp on their West Feliciana property where their daughter lives today. Reinike’s paintings are nostalgic but not saccharine, his son Charles III explains; “he liked the grittier side of things...depicting rural Louisiana and chronicling the early African-American cabins and lifestyle for their honesty and simplicity, as well as the residential and industrial scenes of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, and the beauty of the bayous and shrimp boats.”
An impressive exhibit of Audubon’s Birds of Feliciana hangs at Oakley Plantation (Audubon State Historic Site). Other special events called Exploring Nature and Birding remind of continued ties to the birdlife so beloved by the artist: Friday bird walk is led by local artist Murrell Butler at his Oak Hill property; Saturday the Wildlife Hospital of Louisiana offers a glimpse of live-and-in-person rehab survivors (Red-Winged Scarlett, Red-Tailed Hawk, Mississippi Kite, Broad Winged Hawk, Eastern Screech Owl); Sunday’s bird walk is led by LSU avian vet Dr. Tom Tully at Oakley.
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, Graveyard Tours at Grace Episcopal cemetery (last tour begins at 8:15 p.m.), and a wine and cheese reception at the newly restored St. Francisville Inn showing off the exquisitely detailed 1820’s evening costumes, nationally recognized for their authenticity. Light Up The Night, the fun Saturday evening soiree, 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 . New this year is a package including daytime tours, all evening entertainment Friday and Saturday, and a Saturday picnic lunch. Tickets can be purchased at the Historical Society Museum on Ferdinand Street. For information on St. Francisville overnight accommodations, shops, restaurants, and recreation in the Tunica Hills, see www.stfrancisville.us, www.stfrancisville.net, or www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com.

Beautiful oak-shaded Parker Park in the midst of St. Francisville’s National Register-listed Historic District is the scene for two other special activities in March. A Walk In The Park on Saturday, March 2nd, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. will feature live music plus vendors offering varied crafts, art and culinary specialties, while March 30th from 10 to 10 the Tunica Hills Music Festival and Jam has professional musicians performing on stages but also dispersed throughout the park to encourage pop-up jams everywhere. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own instruments and join in the free fun.

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 is open in season and is spectacular. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation (a National Historic Landmark) 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. 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).

Old-Time Medications...weird but they worked!

Old-Time Medications...weird but they worked!
By Anne Butler

There’s a wonderful new full-service hospital and a number of physicians practicing medicine in St. Francisville now, but back in the days when money was scarce and doctors were even scarcer in rural areas, folks doctored themselves with a wide assortment of home remedies.
Of course every early plantation had its kitchen garden, where herbs and culinary additives were supplemented by treasured medicinal plants, with every housewife worth her salt knowing the value of each. But well into the 20th century, isolated country folk continued to rely on time-honored traditions of home remedies passed down through the generations. And current doctors admit there was something to be said for at least some of these folk cures.

The late Reverend H.S. Pate, pastor to a rural flock, always insisted, “Those old sayings and remedies held true in the old days, and they hold true today. Used to be, you had to ride horseback through the woods to get to a doctor, if you could get to one at all, so folks did their own doctoring.” And it wasn’t simply a matter of money; they really believed that the folk cures worked.

JC Metz and Amy having a tea party

Now in his 90s, J.C. Metz, one of many sons of a pioneering logging family which during the Depression got their sustenance as well as their remedies from the swampy areas bordering the Mississippi River, remembers many cures his mother utilized. Pepper tea, made of hot water and black pepper, would sweat the fever out of anybody, coughs were cured with a syrup made by boiling wild plum bark with sugar and lemon, while whiskey and honey remedied the worst sore throats. Sinus problems were cleared up with a mixture of honey, whiskey and apple cider, and an application of catfish fat rendered into oil was used to treat the common cold. For cuts, turpentine and iodine reduced the danger of infection, and bleeding was stopped by applying spider webs to the affected area. Tobacco juice took the sting out of insect bites, and for thorns or boils, a poultice of okra blossoms or salt meat would draw out the offending article. Warm honey in the ear was used to soften wax and cure ear aches. And each spring, the blood was purified with a tonic of sassafras root or vine boiled into a tea.

Other elderly folks swore by other practices, especially teas made of various ingredients. The white leaves of the sassafras bush cured fevers and colds, while tea made from ordinary cornshucks was said to cure measles. Tea made from life-everlasting weed or bitterweed helped reduce fever, and another cure for colds was tea made from scrapings from hogs’ hooves, also said to be effective for pneumonia.

Sardine oil rubbed on the jaws, which should then be bound with a scarf, would reduce the pain from mumps. Aching limbs could be soothed by application of hot Epsom salts and turpentine or boiled cedar, which could also unstop the most stuffed-up nose. Palm of Christian leaves, applied directly to the affected area straight off the bush, drew out headache pain, while tea made from the leaves of the Jerusalem bush cured worms. Lighter fluid was another recommended rub for arthritis pain, as were poultices of boiled mullin leaves to reduce swelling and pain, and could cure dropsy as well. For rheumatism, a bottle of table salt mixed with red pepper could be rubbed onto the limbs, while coal oil and turpentine was applied under the throat and on the chest to cure colds.

Bit by a snake? Old folks would kill a chicken and extract the gall bladder, then apply it to the bitten area. No chickens available? They could draw out the snake poison with coal oil or kerosene and soda.

For small infants and children, there was a whole list of do’s and don’t’s to be observed. To stop hiccups, cross two broomstraws in the crown of the baby’s head. To cure whooping cough, ride a stud horse until he gets real hot, then let him breathe in the baby’s face. Cutting a baby’s fingernails with scissors meant he would steal, while putting his dirty diapers on the floor would give stomach pains. Colic could be cured by blowing smoke from a pipe into the baby’s diapers and onto the soft spot on top of the head. But if the top of the head was covered, the baby wouldn’t get colic in the first place.

Bitterweed

For chest colds, heat tallow and camphorated oil and rub onto chest and bottom of feet, or brown a piece of flannel to put on chest. For worms, hang a sack of garlic around the baby’s neck; to cure hernia, tape a quarter or 50-cent piece over navel. To ease the pains of teething, bore a hole in a silver dime and tie around neck with string. Bitterweed, boiled and steeped, was used to bathe a child with malaria. For diarrhea, tea made from white planton leaves was said to be effective, as well as a scorched spoonful of whiskey.
Besides the curatives, there were many practices and prohibitions to be kept in mind before and just after birth. A baby born with a veil (membrane) over its face would always see ghosts, it was thought. And don’t attract the baby’s attention from behind or above; looking back and up could cause crossed eyes. Strange sights, seen by a pregnant mother, might mark a baby, as could a mother’s strong cravings during pregnancy. If a child-bearing-age woman in her menses held a baby, it might cause bowel strain, to be cured by putting a piece of that lady’s silk underdrawers on the baby.

The baby was said to turn out to be just like the first person to take it outside and walk all the way around the house. And the nicest tradition of all was the belief that when a baby smiled in his sleep, you knew the angels were playing with him.

Even with more modern medical facilities available today, there are some elderly people in the rural reaches of West Feliciana who turn to the time-honored maxims and cures practiced through the generations. They know they can count on them to work, and they are as close as the nearest wooded field or forest or barnyard. They don’t have office hours, and they’re free. But in this wintry month, in the midst of colds and flu season, if you don’t have any hogs or hard-breathing stud horses and can’t identify bitterweed or Palm of Christian leaves, feel free to avail yourself of more modern medical facilities.
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 is open in season and is spectacular. Particularly important to tourism in the area are its two significant state historic sites, Rosedown Plantation (a National Historic Landmark) 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. 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).

Fall is in Full Swing in St. Francisville

St. Francisville, La., "Happenings Newsletter" -  Entertainment, Festivals and Events.

HAPPENINGS: The newsletter to discover what's happening in St. Francisville and West Feliciana Parish.  Periodically articles from the "Friends of St. Francisville" blog will be added to this newsletter.  Following these article introductions you will find the most updated news on upcoming local events.  A good source to find updates on festivals can also be found on the St. Francisville Festival website.  The Carriage House Restaurant will be open every Sunday in October from 5pm until 8pm.    What’s coming up in St. Francisville Music at The Mag    -  Friday – October 10 – United We Jam                Saturday-October 11 – Clay Parker, Ryan Harris,  Eric Schmit                                         Friday –October 17 – Hard Drinking Lincoln                                         Friday – October 24 – Band on the Run                                         Friday – October 31 – Delta Drifters Historical Society Museum has a new exhibit through the month of October The exhibit features local memorabilia on World War 1.  The museum is open daily from 9am until 5pm and on Sundays from 9:30am until 5pm. Angola Prison Rodeo – every Sunday in October The Wildest Show in the South – gates open at 9am, rodeo begins at 2pm and crafts stay open until 5pm. For ticket information 225 655 2030 or online at www.angolarodeo.com The Myrtles Plantation Halloween Extravaganza – The Myrtles Plantation will host their Halloween Extravaganza every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in October For details please call 225 635 6277 Movie in the Park – Friday October 10  MONSTER UNIVERSITY St. Francisville Main Street and the Women’s Service League are hosting their annual Movie in the Park.  Bring your blanket and lawn chair in Parker Park on Commerce St.  We will have a Halloween craft before the movie.  Admission is one canned good for the West Feliciana Parish Food Bank.  The Service League will have yummy concessions for sale. This year’s movie is MONSTER UNIVERSITY. Southern Garden Symposium – October 10 and 11th. With featured speakers like LSU Ag Center's Dan Gill, award-winning New Orleans landscape architect Rene Fransen, and noted authors Greg Grant and Bill Welch, no other gardening program brings together top quality speakers and historic plantation settings as well as the Southern Garden Symposium in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Known as much for its engaging social events and historic venues as for its outstanding gardening lectures and workshops, the Southern Garden Symposium - now in its 26th year - has become an annual tradition for garden enthusiasts from across the south.  For detailed information please visit www.southerngardensymposium.org Warrior Dash – Saturday October 11th at the Sports Park Mud, Sweat and Beer.  For detailed information visit www.warriordash.com Audubon State Historic Site Presents – Battle of Baton Rouge 1779 October 11 and 12th from 10am – 4pm on Saturday and 10am-2pm on Sunday Explore Louisiana’s role in the American Revolutionary War.  Special activities include Musket and Artillery drills, Camp life as well as a battle on each day.  Each day visitors will get the chance to learn how the Revolutionay War soldier drilled and what hardships they faced 235 year ago.  For more information please contact 225 635 3739 Rosedown State Historic Site – October 11-Behind the Scenes Tour Behind the Scenes Tour will start at 10:30am.  A guided tour of rarely seen aspects of Rosedown, focusing on the working side of a high-visitation historic site.  Visitors will get to view the attic of the main house and the production greenhouse, learning the “nuts and bolts” of what makes Rosedown tick.  Folk Music Open Mic – Sunday October 19th Hemingbough will be the venue for this free community event.  Bring your guitar, banjo or just yourself! Event will take place between 4pm-6pm Sponsored by “A Celebration of Literature and Art” for more information contact Darlene Reaves dayreaves@bellsouth.net Friends of the Library Book Sale – October 24 and 25 The Yellow Leaf Arts Festival – October 25 and 26 Trick or Treat down Main Street and local Halloween Carnivals – Thursday October 30th. Your Subscription: {tag:subscriptions} {tag:unsubscribe}

Christmas in the Country - St.Francisville, LA

St. Francisville, La.: Whether it's the sights of our historic district buildings, homes and unique shops, the beauty of many historic plantation homes, the art of local artists and past resident John James Audubon, the sounds from the local musicians at our festivals and birds during the spring migration, the wonderful tastes from our numerous restaurants, or the smells of unspoiled outdoors, St. Francisville and West Feliciana Parish of Louisiana has something to entertain your senses. A place of legends, civil war and culture, maintains its rich historical integrity in this small historic town in an unique place of Louisiana. ST. FRANCISVILLE’S CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY DECEMBER 5, 6 & 7 Christmas in St. Francisville, LA, has been a magical time since the 19th century when the little rivertown served as commercial center for the surrounding plantation country, and it’s still that way today. The historic town’s Christmas in the Country celebration on December 5, 6 and 7, pays tribute to its heritage while showcasing its continuing vitality as the center of culture and commerce for the entire parish. Millions of tiny white lights trace soaring Victorian trimwork and grace gallery posts to transform the entire town into a veritable winter wonderland for Christmas in the Country, as special activities throughout the downtown Historic District provide free fun for the whole family. The mayor lights the town Christmas tree Friday evening, Dec. 5, with children’s choirs and fireworks, followed by a Baton Rouge symphony concert at Grace Church and a chance to “Peep into our Holiday Homes” throughout the historic district.    Saturday, Dec. 6, begins with prayer breakfasts, visits with Santa and a fun run.  Parker Park is filled with special children’s activities, music and food vendors all day, and there will be entertainment throughout the downtown National Register-listed historic district, featuring choirs, dancers, musicians, and other performers. A Saturday house tour benefits the parish library, while evening entertainment features a Community Sing-a-long at the Methodist Church, Live Nativity at First Baptist, and candlelight tours at Audubon State Historic Site. The Christmas parade, usually held on Saturday, will be on Sunday this year due to run-off elections and polling places that cannot be blocked. Sponsored by the Women’s Service League, the parade theme this year is “Be There With Bells On” and features gaily decorated parade floats and marching bands, while Santa rides in a sleigh pulled by Louisiana State Penitentiary's prized Percheron horses.  The enthusiastic sponsors of Christmas in the Country are the downtown merchants, and the real focus of the weekend remains the St. Francisville area's marvelous little shops, which go all out, hosting Open Houses with refreshments and entertainment while offering spectacular seasonal decorations and great gift items.  A variety of quaint little boutiques and galleries occupy historic structures throughout the downtown area and spread into the outlying district, each unique in its own way; visitors should not miss a single one.  St. Francisville area is a year-round tourist destination, especially enjoyable in winter when the 19th-century gardens are filled with blooming camellias.  Restored plantation homes are open for tours daily, the nearby Tunica Hills offer unmatched recreational activities in unspoiled wilderness, and some fine little restaurants serve everything from soul food and Louisiana seafood to ethnic specialties. The area offers some of the state’s most popular Bed & Breakfasts, plus motel accommodations for groups. 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. Your Subscription: {tag:subscriptions}

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Fall in St. Francisville is full of Events

St. Francisville, La., "Happenings Newsletter" -  Entertainment, Festivals and Events.

HAPPENINGS: The newsletter to discover what's happening in St. Francisville and West Feliciana Parish.  Periodically articles from the "Friends of St. Francisville" blog will be added to this newsletter.  Following these article introductions you will find the most updated news on upcoming local events.  A good source to find updates on festivals can also be found on the St. Francisville Festival website. What’s coming up in St. Francisville Music at The Mag    -  Friday – September 26th – The Delta Drifters Art in the Park at Rosedown State Historic Site – September 27th. Rosedown Plantation welcomes artists and aspiring artists to come be inspired by the historic homes and gardens for a chalk pastel tutorial.  Chalk pastel was a popular medium in the 19th century.  Learn some techniques and see how messy but fun medium can make you feel like an artist in no time.  For more information 635-3110. Historical Society Museum has a new exhibit through the month of September.  The exhibit features local memorabilia on World War 1.  The museum is open daily from 9am until 5pm and on Sundays from 9:30am until 5pm. October brings cooler weather and a month full of great fun for everyone. Angola Prison Rodeo – every Sunday in October The Wildest Show in the South – gates open at 9am, rodeo begins at 2pm and crafts stay open until 5pm. For ticket information 225 655 2030 or online at www.angolarodeo.com Myrtles Halloween Extravaganza – The Myrtles will host their Halloween Extravaganza every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in October For details please call 225 635 6277 St. Francisville Symphony Association-First performance for the 2014-2015 series Friday – October 3 at 7:30pm at Grace Church – “The Guitar in the Baroque”.  The concert will be preceded by a wine and cheese tasting in Jackson Hall.  Tickets will be available at the Bank of St. Francisville, the BRSO box office or at the door.  Individual tickets will be $25.00 and season tickets (4 concerts) are $80.00 Rosedown State Historic Site- Garden Tour Fridays – October 3 At 10am Rosedown will offer a guided walking tour of the historic Rosedown Gardens and Outbuildings.  Program occurs every first Friday of each month.  For more information 225 635-3110 Southern Garden Symposium – October 10 and 11th. With featured speakers like LSU Ag Center's Dan Gill, award-winning New Orleans landscape architect Rene Fransen, and noted authors Greg Grant and Bill Welch, no other gardening program brings together top quality speakers and historic plantation settings as well as the Southern Garden Symposium in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Known as much for its engaging social events and historic venues as for its outstanding gardening lectures and workshops, the Southern Garden Symposium - now in its 26th year - has become an annual tradition for garden enthusiasts from across the south.  For detailed information please visit www.southerngardensymposium.org Warrior Dash – Saturday October 11th at the Sports Park Mud, Sweat and Beer.  For detailed information visit www.warriordash.com Rosedown State Historic Site – October 11-Behind the Scenes Tour Behind the Scenes Tour will start at 10:30am.  A guided tour of rarely seen aspects of Rosedown, focusing on the working side of a high-visitation historic site.  Visitors will get to view the attic of the main house and the production greenhouse, learning the “nuts and bolts” of what makes Rosedown tick.  Folk Music Open Mic – Sunday October 19th Hemingbough will be the venue for this free community event.  Bring your guitar, banjo or just yourself! Event will take place between 4pm-6pm Sponsored by “A Celebration of Literature and Art” for more information contact Darlene Reaves dayreaves@bellsouth.net Friends of the Library Book Sale – October 24 and 25 The Yellow Leaf Arts Festival – October 25 and 26 . Your Subscription: {tag:subscriptions} {tag:unsubscribe}