May Travel Highlights in St. Francisville, Louisiana by Anne Butler The lovely little 19th-century rivertown of St. Francisville was the cultural and commercial center for the cotton plantations dotting the rolling hills and verdant pastures of the area known as English Louisiana. Planters and their families descended upon the town by the buggyload to do all their shopping at the dry goods merchants and emporiums hawking wares from around the world, and while in town they indulged in multi-course meals in the fine hotel dining rooms and small cafes. Mississippi River paddle wheeler arriving in St. Francisville, La. Visitors still descend upon the area, the groups traveling by van or coach now instead of horse-drawn wagons, and the little town and its environs are still uniquely suited to accommodate their needs. Group travel these days takes the hassle out of visiting new locales, leaving the visitor with nothing to do but enjoy the trip, and St. Francisville offers certain features available only for groups, particularly those with special interests. The Mississippi riverboats still disembark passengers here for group shore excursions through historic plantations, while other passengers choose to linger awhile downtown, browsing through the quaint shops and galleries. The Best Western St. Francis Hotel on the Lake can accommodate busloads overnight, as can The Bluffs golfing resort, and other groups choose to divide up between several of the wonderful B&Bs in the area to stay. Artists and creative souls have long since discovered the scenic beauties of the area, and painting or drawing classes often congregate on the oak-shaded grounds of historic Grace Episcopal Church or one of the old plantations to create and then critique works on the spot. Writers' workshops are held at Butler Greenwood Plantation, where the resident author joins other professionals from across the country to offer hands-on instruction and also gives book-review house tours for book clubs and other groups. The art galleries in town host exhibits and visiting groups, and wildlife artist Murrell Butler allows groups to tour his studios and join him for guided birding or nature walks on his extensive acreage in the Tunica Hills. Birdman Coffee and Books, in the creative little corner of town called Bohemianville, hosts a regular poetry group and periodic arts festivals, is the setting for an artists' retreat May 15 (space still available) and will have the whole town hopping with its accordion workshop in June; for those having withdrawal pangs since Magnolia Café burned down in December, lunchtime samplings of Mag cuisine can be savored at Birdman and at Audubon Café on US 61 in Audubon Antiques, enough to tide one over until the one and only original Magnolia can be rebuilt. Arches of Live Oak Trees welcome visitors to Afton Villa Gardens Buses filled with passengers from around the country and around the world tour the historic plantations of the St. Francisville area daily, and besides the regular museum-house tours, specialized interest groups can often request a particular focus to a visit. A large German tour company, for example, sends bus groups a dozen times yearly for barbeque dinners and gospel music, specially arranged upon request by their hosts at the St. Francisville Inn and Butler Greenwood Plantation. Groups of ghost seekers thrill to the eerie weekend evening tours of The Myrtles, which has been called the most haunted house in America. Gardening groups particularly enjoy the horticultural series offered at Rosedown State Historic Site, where the presentation of slides and lecture precedes a guided walking tour through the 28-acre formal 19th-century gardens and extensive greenhouse. Afton Villa Gardens, developed on the crumbling ruins of one of the area's more flamboyant mansions which burned, is another favorite destination for gardening groups, especially during the fall gardening symposium with national and international horticulturists presenting lectures and demonstrations. There is also a specialized camellia tour through some of the extensive antebellum plantings of this popular winter-blooming shrub throughout the town and parish as well. Youth ponders the National Champion Bald Cypress at Cat Island NWR School groups are enthralled by the living history demonstrations presented at the state historic sites; Audubon State Historic Site offers fascinating hands-on re-creations of antebellum life and times geared particularly toward the young, interpreting history and making it come alive in ways not possible on the pages of dry scholarly schoolbooks. The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola also offers student-oriented group tours through the state's maximum-security prison as well as the fascinating museum of prison history and lore at the front gate, tours sure to make an impression on at-risk youth. St. Francisville Tours provides step-on guides for buses or smaller groups for individually customized tours, which can include visits to historic plantations and churches, breakfast and lunch either in restaurants or open-air picnics, shopping in St. Francisville's wonderful array of little specialty shops, and candlelight dining in the evening. For the more active, Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge hosts group tours through this unspoiled wilderness area with its huge old-growth cypress trees and large population of waterfowl and wildlife. A carriage visit to the St. Francisville Inn Most of the larger restaurants in the St. Francisville area welcome groups with advance reservations, and other facilities like the St. Francisville Inn, Greenwood Plantation and Hemingbough cater meals strictly for pre-arranged groups. Hemingbough also often hosts group events, concerts and shows, meetings and conventions, as does The Bluffs, the golf course resort on Thompson Creek. Special events in the area are ideally suited for group visits, including the spring Audubon Pilgrimage, April Audubon Birdfest, June Civil War re-recreation of The Day The War Stopped, fall and spring Angola Prison Rodeos, and Christmas in the Country. Within a few miles of St. Francisville are half a dozen of Louisiana's most interesting plantations, each representing a different period of life in this unique corner of the state. The earliest plantations…The Cottage, Butler Greenwood and The Myrtles…are all listed on the National Register of Historic Places and date from the 1790's, when the first valiant efforts were made to tame the virgin Feliciana woodlands and till the rich river bottomlands to plant vast fields of indigo and then cotton, prospering sufficiently that the growers along the Great River Road from New Orleans to Natchez comprised a large percentage of America's millionaires by the mid-1800's. The houses they built reflected their status. The land grant for The Cottage Plantation is dated 1795, and its long, rambling main house began as a simple structure of virgin cypress, expanded so skillfully over the years that the front gallery eventually had four French doors and nine windows opening onto it. The house is surrounded by one of the area's most complete plantation complexes of original dependencies, including the outside kitchen and laundry room, commissary, milk house, smokehouse, carriage house containing an 1820 state carriage, several tenant houses and the law office of Judge Thomas Butler, US Congressman and first judge of the area when it became part of the United States in 1810. A "Red Hat Club" tours Butler Greenwood Plantation. Butler Greenwood Plantation is another early raised, rambling English-style cottage on lands granted in the 1790's to Samuel Flower, earliest physician in the area, whose daughter would marry the Chief Justice of the first Louisiana Supreme Court. The house contains the area's finest original formal Victorian parlor, its twelve-piece set of carved rosewood furniture still in the original upholstery, complemented by floor-to-ceiling gilded pier mirrors, floral Brussels carpet, Sevres vases and half a dozen family portraits. Butler Greenwood is still owned and occupied by the original family, and its lawns and 19th-century gardens are shaded by a huge grove of 200-year-old live oaks. When David Bradford, Pennsylvania judge and wealthy businessman, obtained the land grant for The Myrtles in 1796, he was a fugitive from justice because of his role as leader of the Whiskey Rebellion protesting a tax levied on spirits and other governmental abuses. The small portion of the house Bradford built was purchased and expanded by Judge Clark Woodruff, whose enthusiasm waned upon the untimely deaths of his wife and small daughters in a yellow fever epidemic, and by 1834 The Myrtles had been sold to Ruffin Gray Stirling, who commenced an extensive remodeling which enlarged and formalized the home. A Reconstruction-era murder on the front gallery has given rise to chilling tales of unquiet spirits, and the weekend "ghost tours" are immensely popular. These three early plantation houses in the St. Francisville area are similar in style, unpretentious raised cottages typical of the first-generation structures. Oakley Plantation, completed in the early 1800's, is decidedly atypical, showing West Indies influence with two full stories and an attic atop a raised basement of brick, its jalousied galleries on both top floors connected by exterior staircases. Oakley was built by Ruffin Gray, whose widow married James Pirrie, and it was their daughter Eliza whose need of a tutor brought the flamboyant artist-naturalist John James Audubon to the plantation in pursuit of his dream of painting all the birds of the young country America. Audubon was to receive $60 per month plus room and board in exchange for instructing young Eliza in dancing, music, drawing, math and French; he would have half of each day free to devote to his own painting, and he executed a number of his famous bird studies at Oakley in the 1820's. By the time the second and third generations of these plantation families built homes in English Louisiana in the 1830's, they had prospered sufficiently to afford grand Greek Revival structures, much more formal and elaborate than the first-generation houses. Rosedown Plantation remains an outstanding example. Built in 1835 by wealthy cotton planter Daniel Turnbull, the lavish double-galleried house is approached by a magnificent oak alley and surrounded by 28 acres of formal gardens designed by Martha Barrow Turnbull to equal the grandeur of Versailles and other great continental gardens she'd seen on her honeymoon. Mrs. Turnbull was without doubt one of the great early southern horticulturists, and her gardening records proved invaluable in the restoration of the grounds, the formal plantings, and the 13 original historic outbuildings. Another of the great Greek Revival plantation homes in the St. Francisville area was Greenwood, built in 1830 by William R. Barrow and designed by noted architect James Hammon Coulter. Nearly 100 feet square, the home was surrounded by brick Doric columns, its copper roof topped by a belvedere from which Barrow could survey his lands and look out to the Mississippi. From the time it was opened to the public in the early 1900's by the Frank Percy family, Greenwood was toured by thousands and beloved by Hollywood as a superb setting for movies. During a storm on August 1, 1960, lightning struck the house, and within three hours nothing was left but 28 columns and a few forlorn chimneys. This was enough to touch the heart of the Walton Barnes family, who purchased the site and set about a 15-year reconstruction project to rebuild the home and re-open it to the public as well as the movie industry. Audubon State Historic Site - Oakley House Plantation These six plantation homes are open for daily tours for individuals as well as groups. Rosedown and Oakley are State Historic Sites and offer special interpretive programs throughout the year. On May 15 and 29 and June 12 and 26, Rosedown features its summer horticultural series of gardening programs beginning at 10 a.m. on herb culture, vegetable and floral varieties of plants, heirloom plantings, harvesting and preserving techniques, and medicinal and culinary applications; for information, telephone 225-635-3332. Audubon State Historic Site has special living-history programs (school groups are welcome and should pre-register) beginning at 9 a.m. on May 14 concentrating on Spanish West Florida from 1803 to 1810 and including black-powder musketry and craft demonstrations, and beginning at 10 a.m. on May 15 featuring a real Spanish Colonial Encampment and other demonstrations; for information, telephone 888-677-2838 or 225-635-3739. Several special exhibitions are scheduled for St. Francisville area art galleries in May. Featured artist of the month at the St. Francis Gallery, the local artists' co-op, is Fay Milligan, exhibiting watercolors and painted porcelains, while Backwoods Art Gallery opens an exhibit featuring works by Mississippi folk artist Louise Gray on the 25th. May 22 brings to town the St. Francisville Open Car Show and Spring Swap Meet, sponsored by the Ramblin' Oldies of Denham Springs at Parker Park from 9 to 5. Food vendors will add to the enjoyment of the outdoor automotive exhibit and hot competition for prizes among some very special vintage automobiles. For information, telephone Lee Laurent (225-673-8562) or Steve PoPovic (225-654-2608) or go online to www.streetrods.org. The St. Francisville area is a year-round tourist destination but is especially lovely this time of year, the cold woes of winter forgotten as antique roses clamber up Victorian porch posts and gardens rush to summer's lushness. Besides the six historic plantations open for daily tours, Catalpa Plantation is open by reservation and magnificent Afton Villa Gardens opens seasonally. Reasonably priced meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville, eclectic shops fill restored 19th-century structures throughout the historic downtown area (third Thursdays feature extended evening hours and special bargains), and some of the state's best Bed and Breakfasts offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; a modern motel has facilities to accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking, hiking, fishing, birding, horseback riding and other recreational activities. For online coverage of tourist facilities, attractions and events in the St. Francisville area, including special group offerings, see www.stfrancisville.us, www.stfrancisville.net or www.stfrancisvilleovernight.com, or telephone (225) 635-6330 or 635-3873.