Louisiana town mixes tourism, slave history

By Elaine McArdle, Globe Correspondent, 01/08/03

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		Printable version How to get there St. Francisville is about 40 minutes north of Baton Rouge on Highway 61. From New Orleans (served by most major airlines), it's about two hours via Interstate 10 to Highway 61. The lowest upcoming round-trip fares from Boston to New Orleans at press time started at $211 on Delta Air Lines. What to do The ferry ride across the Mississippi River is a necessity. For more information: www.stfrancisville.com www.stfrancisville.org West Feliciana Parish Tourist Information, at 800-789-4221 Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site 12501 La. Highway 10 888-376-1867 www.lastateparks.com Includes original furniture, an oak alley leading to the house, and a 28-acre formal garden. Admission of $10 includes free admission to other state sites including Oakley; special rates for seniors, children, and groups. Open daily, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Oakley Plantation at Aububon State Historic Site 11788 Highway 965 225-635-3739 Where Audubon tutored in 1821. The plantation includes two former slave cabins. Open daily, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Free to senior citizens. Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum at Angola (23 miles north of town) 225-655-2592 www.angolamuseum.org Where "Dead Man Walking" was filmed. The site hosts the Angola Prison Rodeo in October and April. Admission is free; rodeo is $10. Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge 5720 Commerce St. 225-635-4753 Hiking, bird-watching, canoeing. Where to stay Butler Greenwood Plantation 8345 US Hwy 61 225-635-6312 www.butlergreenwood.com Has eight cottages with fireplaces and Jacuzzis. $125-$175. The Shadetree Royal at Ferdinand Street in the historic district 225-635-6116 www.shadetreeinn.com On a hilltop, with three suites with Jacuzzis. $145-$195 includes cocktails, appetizers, and breakfasts. The Myrtles Plantation 7747 U.S.61 800-809-0565 www.myrtlesplantation.com Built around 1796, this mansion is said to be haunted by several ghosts. $115-$230. Where to eat The Magnolia Cafe 5087 Commerce St. 225-635-6528 The social hub of town, it offers local and eclectic cuisine and live music on Friday nights. Average lunch $10; dinner entrees $10-$20. Arceneux's 5632 S. Commerce St. 225-784-2640 Frog legs, fried seafood platters, crawfish bisque, and other local delicacies. Entrees $5.95-$19.95.

ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. - For decades, tourists fascinated by the antebellum South have flocked to this tiny town on the banks of the Mississippi, with its many plantation homes, lush natural beauty, and small-town friendliness.

Settled by British families after the Revolutionary War, the area - distinct in culture, terrain, and architecture from the French-influenced flatlands across the river - once held more millionaires than anywhere in the country.

St. Francisville today retains a grace, a dimension removed from the energy of New Orleans, two hours south. It's a favorite destination for honeymooners and other couples for whom the six-minute ferry ride across the Mississippi River is part of the romance.

But the mansions, formal gardens, and avenues of moss-dripping live oaks are only part of the story. What was life like for the slaves who sustained this world? Ask that question, and for decades, you would get an embarrassed silence. No one knew the details because there was so little research into local slave history.

Now that's changing, and tourism is changing with it. The state has begun an archeological dig of slave quarters at one plantation, and a task force of townspeople is compiling oral histories of the town's oldest residents with an eye toward creating an African-American heritage museum. There is also talk of adding a black perspective to the annual Audubon Pilgrimage, held every March as a tribute to John James Audubon, who painted bird studies here in the 1820s after serving as a tutor to a plantation owner's daughter.

The projects' original impetus was to boost tourism while uncovering a long-neglected aspect of local history, but they are having another result: Frank discussions about slavery, the most divisive issue in US history, are bringing blacks and whites together.

"I think we're about to cross racial walls through what we're trying to do," says the Rev. Ronald E. Hardy, the pastor of Faith, Hope and Love Fellowship and a member of the African-American Heritage Task Force, formed last spring with equal numbers of blacks and whites. "We want people to really get a whole view of what took place in St. Francisville during those times. And when we get together at meetings, we're able to openly discuss things without anybody taking offense to it. It's great," he says.

Not that it's been easy. Pyschological wounds from slavery and its aftermath run deep here.

"We decided to be open and candid," says Ken Dawson, whose grandfather led efforts for black education in St. Francisville. "We'd say, I'm black and I have an ancestry of slavery, and you're white and you may have ancestry of slave owners. But we're going to discuss things good and bad, and when we say things that may hurt a little bit, we're going to talk about it, good and bad. The result - whether it's a museum or a restaurant - is going to be something that can celebrate the diversity that exists today."

That the town can address this painful issue without rancor reflects the commitment of its 1,700 residents to preserving what makes it special.

"This area is so magical. There's no traffic, no crime. It's like a fairy tale to live here," says Kenwood Kennon, a former lawyer who owns the Shadetree Inn, a pre-Civil War house turned bed-and-breakfast.

The town moseys along one main road, which connects such historic sites as the Grace Episcopal Church, damaged by federal gunboats during the Civil War; the Wolf-Schlesinger House, built in the 1880s by a prominent member of the town's thriving Jewish community; and the Barrows House, whose owner negotiated a brief truce to the war so he could bury a Union soldier, a fellow Mason.

At Jr.'s Food Mart, the only convenience store in town, a quart-sized can of Miller beer sells for $1.09, and locals patiently await a fresh batch of fried chicken ("the best you'll ever taste in your life," says one). Another politely points the way to the Magnolia Cafe, which offers fried green tomatoes, crawfish-stuffed quail, and live music on Friday nights.

Tourism has been crucial for decades as a way to maintain the plantations. In the 1930s, the four unmarried granddaughters of the original owners of Rosedown Plantation, one of the most beautiful antebellum sites in the country, eked out a living by giving tours of their home for a quarter. Other historic homes are now open to tourists, including about a dozen that are bed-and-breakfasts.

"You absolutely cannot support an old place like this without letting it help support itself. Tourism is the salvation of this whole area," says Anne Butler, who is part of the seventh generation of her family to live on Butler Greenwood Plantation, a former cotton and indigo plantation that is now a bed-and-breakfast.

In the past few years, a business group investigated new ways to increase tourism, including relying on the area's abundant wildlife - white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, egrets, and heron - to attract hikers and bird-watchers. This year, a hummingbird festival and a second bird festival were launched. And the Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, which includes the largest and oldest cypress tree in the country, opened last year to bird-watching, hiking, and canoeing.

But the idea of cultivating black history was even more attractive. Several other Louisiana sites - including an African-American museum in Donaldsonville, the Laura Plantation in Vacherie, and the Evergreen Plantation in Wallace - include slave history and have attracted increasing numbers of tourists.

Still, progress was slow until two years ago, when the state of Louisiana purchased Rosedown, where as many as 450 slaves lived during peak cotton years.

"As the state of Louisiana, we feel compelled to tell whole story. And slavery is part of whole story of Rosedown," says manager W. Park Moore III.

It was no easy task, given the paucity of written records about the slaves and the fact that their quarters at Rosedown were razed 40 or 50 years ago. Last winter, an archeologist began work, and the project has uncovered what looks like the site of the slave homes.

"We're developing information to fill in the gaps - and there are many - as to where the slaves lived on Rosedown, how they lived on a daily basis, what became of the people. Individual histories, if you will," says Moore.

Louisiana draws more black tourists than any other state, he notes, and Rosedown attracts 30,000 visitors a year, a number he hopes to double in a few years.

One innovative program is already a hit with tourists. One day each week, October through April, Rosedown employees take on the roles of former house slaves by preparing breakfast and lunch. They use historic utensils to cook on the kitchen's open hearth.

Meanwhile, the African-American Heritage Task Force plans to complete about 20 oral histories before the end of the year. Its members say they've been delighted by how positive the experience has been. "It's mind-boggling, but it really is happening," says Hardy. "I've never seen anything like it, to see so many from both races come together with one common goal."

Elaine McArdle is a freelance writer who lives in Belmont.