St. Francisville Says Goodbye and Good Riddance to 2020, Welcome to 2021

St. Francisville Says Goodbye and Good Riddance to 2020, Welcome to 2021
By Anne Butler

While we grieve for loved ones lost and celebrate those medical personnel and essential workers who have helped us preserve some semblance of living, we must remember that over the ages civilizations have somehow managed to survive pandemics and other atrocities. As Ashley Sexton Gordon reminded us in In Register magazine’s December issue, in the year 1347 the bubonic plague wiped out some 60% of Europeans, leading Italian writer Boccaccio to mourn that victims “ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors.” At least, she points out, they didn’t eat their friends, as did guide Alferd Packer, lost in a snowstorm in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado in 1874, when he apparently cannibalized the five goldseekers in his starving party. And Smiley Anders’ contributor Marvin Borgmeyer brought up the Middle Ages, when survivors celebrated the end of each pandemic with wine and orgies (“Does anyone know what is planned when this one ends?” he asks).

As the new year opens, with vaccines and continued mitigation measures revealing the light at the end of the terrible tunnel, St. Francisville has much to celebrate and look forward to, for 2021 marks the 200th anniversary of the artist John James Audubon’s inspirational stay in the area. Hired by Lucretia Pirrie, mistress of Oakley Plantation, to tutor her young daughter Eliza for the summer, Audubon arrived at the Mississippi River port of Bayou Sara by steamboat in June of 1821. His arrival marked a pivotal point in his career. The artist who was “bereft at that time of not only funds but incentive” was about to be introduced to the rich flora and fauna of the Felicianas, teeming with birdlife, that would renew his enthusiasm and artistic inspiration to continue on his staggering quest to paint all the birds of this immense fledgling country..

The artist, penniless but rich in talent and dreams, was immediately struck by the beauty of the countryside, as he related in his journal: “The aspect of the country entirely new to us distracted my mind...the rich magnolia covered with its odoriferous blossoms, the holly, the beech, the tall yellow poplar, the hilly ground, even the red clay I looked at with amazement...surrounded once more by thousands of warblers and thrushes, I enjoyed nature.”

He recorded in his journal that the rich lushness of the landscape and flourishing birdlife “all excited my admiration,” and he would find the inspiration to paint dozens of his bird studies while residing at Oakley. The arrangement called for him to be paid $60 a month plus room and board for himself and his young assistant Mason, with half of each day free to collect and paint bird specimens from the surrounding woods, where he certainly must have cut a dashing figure in his long flowing locks, frilly shirts and satin breeches.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of his arrival in the Felicianas, the West Feliciana Tourist Commission is planning an Audubon Interpretive Trail program, tracing his footsteps as he walked from Bayou Sara to Oakley Plantation, recording the amazing number of structures he would have seen and interacted with that are still standing in St. Francisville. These historic homes and businesses, governmental locations, churches and cemeteries have been preserved due to the area’s abiding sense of place, allowing visitors to experience at least partially what Audubon must have seen during his stay in 1821.

Of course there is nothing left of the little port city of Bayou Sara, washed away by continual Mississippi River flooding, but atop the bluffs of St. Francisville it is amazing how much is still around...the Catholic cemetery where Oakley’s neighbor rests in peace after Audubon had sat up with his body all night, the structures housing the mercantiles and marketplaces patronized by Audubon and his wife Lucy, the home of Audubon’s acquaintance whose horse he borrowed for a desperate ride to check on his wife Lucy during a yellow fever epidemic, the Episcopal church presided over by his pupil Eliza’s second husband, the sunken roadways and verdant countryside still teeming with birdlife, and of course Oakley Plantation, now a state historic site and popular tourist attraction with a wonderful visitor center full of all-inclusive exhibits bringing to life the early days on this extensive cotton plantation.

A 1937 biography by colorful Louisiana historian/author Stanley Clisby Arthur described Audubon’s aura of mysterious charm: “a gifted artist, quasi-naturalist, sometime dandy, quondam merchant, unkempt wanderer, many-sided human being...A halo of romance surrounds his entire career, and he was generally regarded as mad because of his strange self-absorption, his long hair, tattered garments, and persistence in chasing about the countryside after little birdies.” The good-looking and graceful young Audubon had a decided way with the ladies, played the flute as well as flageolet and violin, danced a mean cotillion, fenced, and was partial to snuff and a liberal helping of early-morning grog.

In 1820, following a string of failed business ventures, he set out for New Orleans aboard a flatboat with only his gun, flute, violin, bird books, portfolios of his own drawings, chalks, watercolors, drawing papers in a tin box, and a dog-eared journal. As he wrote in his journal, “Without any Money My Talents are to be My support and my Enthusiasm my Guide in My Difficulties.” He earned a meager living painting portraits and giving lessons in drawing, dancing and more scholastic subjects, but by the following year Audubon was established at Oakley Plantation near St. Francisville and well on his way to accomplishing his dream.

Audubon would spend only four months at Oakley, but managed to produce at least 32 of his bird paintings there and upwards of 70 in the area, from the Tunica Swamp to Little Bayou Sara, Beech Woods and Sleepy Hollow Woods, Beech Grove, and Thompson Creek. He did more of his bird studies in Louisiana than in any other state, and often referred to it as his favorite part of the country. He would mourn his departure from “the sweet Woods around us, to leave them was painfull, for in them We allways enjoyed Peace and the sweetest pleasures of admiring the greatest of the Creator in all his Unrivalled Works.”

In 1826 the artist started for Europe in search of a publisher; he had 240 bird drawings and $1700 his wife had saved from her earnings. He went first to England, then to Scotland with his “Birds of America,” and there the William H. Lizars Company of Edinburgh etched on copper plates the first ten drawings. After difficulties caused by colorists delaying production by going on strike in Scotland, Audubon took his drawings to the London company of Robert Havell and Son. It took eleven years to complete the copper plates of all, first run off in black and white, then hand colored to exactly match the original drawings, all under the supervision of Audubon. The original prints of “The Birds of America” measured 39½” by 29½” and were known as the Elephant Folio because of the size, bound in sets of four books; just under 200 complete bound sets were made up, sold by subscriptions costing $1000, and they represented 1065 lifesized birds. One of these original sets is in the rare book collection at LSU’s Hill Memorial Library.

Audubon died in January of 1851 in New York at the age of 66, some 30 years after his summer at Oakley set him on the road to recognition as one of the greatest bird artists and naturalists of all time, his bird studies characterized as “the greatest monument erected by art to nature.” As he would write in his journal on March 1, 1828, “The reason why my works pleased was because they are all exact copies of the works of God, who is the Great Architect and Perfect Artist—nature, indifferently copied, is far superior to the best idealities.”
And in the year 2021, the St. Francisville area will celebrate the colorful artist, his amazing bird studies, and hopefully the end of a devastating global pandemic. This might be a good year to give gift certificates from struggling small businesses in the St. Francisville area...the restaurants, overnight accommodations, gift shops and mercantiles, antiques co-ops, bookstores, art galleries, museums, historic tours, boutiques and all the other little indie businesses that have suffered from closures and limitations to keep customers safe.

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 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; note that Clark Creek Natural Area with its waterfalls just across the Mississippi state line will not reopen until spring, but other fine options for hiking include Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, Mary Ann Brown Nature Preseve, and the West Feliciana Parish Sports Park. 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 St. Francisville Main Street at 225-635-3688 or West Feliciana Tourist Commission and West Feliciana Historical Society at 225-6330 or 225-635-4224; online www.stfrancisvillefestivals.com or www.stfrancisville.net.

Oakley Plantation inspired artist J.J. Audubon to Greatness

Oakley Plantation inspired artist J.J. Audubon to Greatness
By Anne Butler
Established on a 1799 Spanish land grant of 600 acres to Ruffin Gray, Oakley Plantation is fascinating in its own right, not just because of its close associations with artist John James Audubon, who in 1821 was hired to tutor the 15-year-old daughter of the plantation in dancing, music, drawing, math and French, plus domestic skills like hair plaiting.
Gray’s wife Lucretia Alston was the daughter of John Alston. who had obtained large land grants from the British near Natchez. When the Spanish governor of Louisiana ousted the English, Alston led an unsuccessful revolt in 1781 and then fled for his life. Sending his wife and three small children overland to safety, Alston was captured and imprisoned. His wife was killed when her horse fell during the flight, but the children were hidden in a one-room cabin on a friend’s Pointe Coupee plantation, cared for by a faithful family retainer named Mammy Patt. At least that’s the family tradition, and in John Alston’s will there is grateful mention of Mammy Patt; other versions place Lucretia in a convent school in New Orleans until her father’s release.

The Oakley house was planned as a simple, sensible structure of colonial architectural style as adapted to the southern climate; originally it had divided Spanish-style steps to the raised front gallery and predated the grand Greek Revival architecture of the mid-19th century. It was a splendid West Indies-style three-story-plus-attic structure, with double galleries shaded by jalousies to block the harsh hot sunlight while permitting cool breezes to blow through the rooms, all of which opened to the outside. Exterior stairways and an interior one on a back gallery long enclosed have such narrow treads that one resident family member called Oakley “a house for warm weather and little feet.”

Lots of live oaks were planted to eventually provide the shade which would make Louisiana summers bearable. But Ruffin Gray would not live to see the fruits of his labor. He died within a year, and in 1801 his widow married millwright James Pirrie of Scottish descent and moved into the Oakley house when it was completed.

It was the focal point of a plantation that was well established by the time Irish-born traveler Fortescue Cuming visited the area in 1809. In his travelogue “Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country,” Cuming records a visit to the Pirries’ fine plantation, with a hundred slaves “and the best garden I had yet seen in this country.” He was somewhat less enthralled by local culinary practices, finding gumbo “a most awkward dish for a stranger,” the okra making it “so ropy and slimy as to make it difficult with either knife, spoon or fork, to carry it to the mouth, without the plate and mouth being connected by a long string.”
By 1824, records show that the Pirries had 5,656 acres planted in cotton and owned 106 slaves. They could well afford to hire a live-in tutor for daughter Eliza. Feliciana planters and their families often travelled by steamboat to New Orleans--on business to check with cotton factors about the sale of crops, or for social events and carnival season, or purely for pleasure and shopping. It was on such a trip to the Crescent City that Lucretia Alston Pirrie came into contact with the struggling artist Audubon and offered him temporary employment at Oakley as tutor for young Eliza.

Like all early plantations, Oakley is illustrative of the interconnections of homes and families. Audubon’s pupil Eliza Pirrie would marry three times. Her first marriage was an 1823 elopement, encouraged by secret romantic correspondences like the following, written on May 7, 1823: “My dear Eliza, The situation in which we are both placed is a sufficient apology for my adopting this method of making a communication to you ...I have borne with much patience the many and constant attempts, and apparent incessant watchfulness, to prevent any intercourse between us...You know Eliza there is but one way of avoiding and defeating this opposition—Your own feelings are the best prompting, in your making a decision on that point. It becomes necessary that we should throw away all reserve in our feelings, and embrace every and any opportunity that offers, for a safe conveyance of our feelings...A Few words would be gratefully received by one whose heart and its affections are, Truly thine, Rob. H. Barrow.”

And so, despite parental objections, Eliza eloped with her dashing 28-year-old cousin Robert Hilliard Barrow of Greenwood Plantation, who would not live to see 29; he contracted pneumonia, supposedly while carrying his young bride across the flooded Homochitto Bayou on their honeymoon, and died six weeks later; born posthumously, his son would carry on his name. Eliza’s last marriage was to an attorney disparaged by her friends as “a trifling sponge,” lured away by the Mexican War and the 1849 Gold Rush, and not even present when she died of childbed fever in 1851.

It was Eliza’s second marriage in 1828, to the eminently respectable first rector of Grace Episcopal Church, which produced the descendants who were still struggling to keep both Rosedown and Oakley Plantations going into the 20th century. Her son James Pirrie Bowman married the beautiful Sarah Turnbull of Rosedown where they made their home and had a large family which included eight daughters, and Eliza’s daughter Isabelle Bowman married William Wilson Matthews and remained at Oakley.

It was in 1947 when a few determined dowagers of West Feliciana, namely the Misses Mamie and Sarah Butler along with Mrs. James Leake Stirling of the Alexander Stirling Chapter of the DAR, persuaded the state of Louisiana to purchase Oakley. Courtly longtime state representative Davis Folkes, called the Dean of the Legislature, pushed it through. The property was in dire need of attention, but its historic connections with Audubon cried out for preservation as a state property accessible to the travelling public.

There was no running water or electricity inside when the state acquired the house and 100 acres of land for $10,000 from the unmarried grandchildren of Eliza Pirrie through her daughter Isabelle. The last resident heirs, Ida and Lucy Matthews, had done the best they could, but massive restoration work was required. Garden clubs, Colonial Dames, Daughters of the American Revolution and other groups as well as interested individuals generously provided help with furnishings and landscaping.

Mrs. Stirling served as the first curator, but longstanding disputes over park management led to her resignation at a time when the state auctioned off many of the home’s contents, property of the original Pirrie and Matthews generations, at very little profit. The Division of Administration noted the two auctions brought in little more than $1,000 for some 36 items of furniture. A half-tester bed went for $15, an armoire for $15.50, a piano for $25, a sideboard $15, 5 Eastlake chairs $26.25, and an entire bedroom suite of mahogany furniture including a tester bed for $186. A rocking chair was eventually sold for 50 cents.

Popular today as the central focus of the Audubon State Historic Site for more than half a century, Oakley has been beautifully restored and carefully furnished in the late Federal style of 1790-1830, reflecting the appearance of the home when Audubon was in residence. On the ground level is the brick-floored dining room, the second floor was the main living space with central parlor, and bedrooms took up the third floor.
Oakley was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The West Feliciana Historical Society sponsors an Audubon Pilgrimage celebrating the artist’s stay, and Oakley is always a popular part of this annual event, with visitors especially appreciating seeing the tiny bedroom where Audubon himself slept and worked during his summer sojourn in what he called his ornithological paradise, a significant period that altered the course of his life.

Within its hundred wooded acres are the detached plantation kitchen reconstructed on original foundations around the early chimney and containing a weaving room and wash room; a barn full of horse-drawn vehicles and farm implements; and several rustic slave cabins. These dependencies are periodically utilized to augment the house tour with demonstrations of old-time practical skills and fascinating living-history events, many catering to school groups. Oakley also has a picnic pavilion, hiking trails and extremely interesting visitor center/museum.

Old houses are bottomless pits, and there’s never enough funding for preservation. A lengthy lead-abatement project and general sprucing up have recently been completed at Oakley, but the current goal of the state parks hierarchy is for all state sites to be self-supporting, not entirely unreasonable but perhaps not entirely realistic either for some sites. Private-public partnerships are being explored in hopes cooperative endeavors might help.

Oakley’s sister state historic site, Rosedown Plantation, has higher head counts of visitors, being closer to town within easy reach of bus tours full of steamboat passengers, and has also leased unused fields for row-crop farming. Rosedown is open daily except holidays; Oakley, at one point in danger of being closed completely, is now open only five days weekly.

Possibilities being discussed for enhancing Oakley’s appeal include an on-site micro-distillery (in a non-historic storage building) that might convince Mississippi River boat tours to include the place on itineraries as passengers disembark to explore the historic Felicianas. Would this be appropriate? Audubon, of course, was not a drinker other than his morning grog, but recall his observation of Squire Pirrie as “when sober, a good man,” and he also records an occasion when he was awakened to accompany Mrs. Pirrie to the home of a dying neighbor: “We went, but arrived rather late, for Mr. James O’Connor was dead. I had the displeasure of keeping his body’s company the remainder of the night...the poor man had drunk himself literally into an everlasting sleep; peace to his soul.” Ever the artist, Audubon continued, “I made a good sketch of his head...”

Perhaps straight history is no longer sufficient to command the interest of tourists, so that plantations must now become commercial resorts embellished with restaurants and spirits, even thousands of inmates at the former plantation now serving as the state penitentiary which has become the most unlikely of tourist attractions. But there are also properties of such incredible historic significance that care must be taken not to detract from what they have to teach us.

Highlight of the summer social season in St. Francisville is the seventh annual Wags & Whiskers Gala at Hemingbough on Saturday, July 27, 2019, from 6 to 9 p.m. This is the West Feliciana Animal Humane Society’s primary fundraiser for the local animal shelter, offering finger foods and cash bar, dancing to the Delta Drifters, silent auction, bargains on gift cards and wine, kissing booth, and a parade of prospective pets from the shelter. Tickets are available at bontempstix.com or at the Bank of St. Francisville.

The James L. “Bo” Bryant Animal Shelter opened in 2012 and is as close to no-kill as you can get. The dedicated volunteers and staff have cared for a total of 2,055 dogs and cats (plus the occasional horse or pig) since computerized record-keeping began in 2014, and of that number, permanent homes were found for 1,573, over 90%. Many lost pets are reunited with owners, sometimes years later thanks to implanted chips. The shelter also has some crackerjack volunteer photographers, whose appealing portraits led a California couple to adopt homely hounddog Ole Red and fly all the way to Louisiana to get him. And then there is Rowdy, Catahoula mix turned school therapy dog and unlikely current “cover girl” for the “Dog Days of Summer” issue of Baton Rouge’s social commentator In-Register magazine!

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