Rest Day, St. Francisville, LA April 14

The dovecote at Butler Greenwood

Alphonsa Rose, the resident cat

Yellow flag Iris on the pond

a live oak tree on the grounds

Humphrey, the resident peacock

Oakley Place where James Audobon worked and sketched

Gus, the resident turkey who greets everyone in the parking lot at Oakley Place

I started my day off by sleeping in until almost 8:30- a real luxury since we are usually up at 6:00 and on the road by 7:00. Revived by coffee and cereal (the breakfast part of the B&B in Butler Greenwood B&B) I made it up to the main house in time for the 9:00 AM tour. The current owner Anne Butler Greenwood is an author of several cookbooks, local history, several children's books and two serious studies of Angola Prison which serve as textbooks in some of the schools. She takes justifiable pride in being part of a continuing legacy of history and human stories of the area and region. The house still contains many of it's original furnishings, and has been maintained in the traditional furnishings and decor. We toured only the downstairs, which is kept furnished in the traditional style with the original furniture, floors and carpets with only the formal parlor being of a later pure Victorian decor. The family lives in the upper floors, but still has most of the original furnishings that are not on display, in storage, or in use around in the guest houses.

It was interesting to hear about the varied histories of the three different sections of Louisianna, the French, the Spanish and the later Spanish English sections and the influences of the groups that settled in each section. The Felicianas, east and west Feliciana parishes were settled by the Spanish land grantees who were later replaced by well established "English" or American farmers and business men who held office under the Spanish and then took over after the Spanish gave up the territory. In later years, this meant thaat most of them had a second business or resource to fall back on, and so when the Civil War broke out and the cotton crops failed, most of them managed to hold onto their lands.

After the house tour was complete, I changed into a used pair of bike shorts and a dirty t shirt and tackled field stripping, cleaning, greasing and lubing my bike. From the Mississippi tour that I did two year ago, I have a friend , Martha, in Baton Rouge who is also a bike rider as well as being a hand spinner who had made arrangements to come down and take me out to lunch and transport me back into town to see whatever I wanted to see. since we had made arrangements to meet at the main house at noon, I finished my bike in time to take it back to the Dovecote and change into clean, going to town clothes.

We drove into St. Francisville and had lunch at one of the two eateries in town that were not pizza or fast food or attached to a gas station. After lunch we walked around the main part of town. St Francisville is quiet, very picturesque in a white building Victorian cottage and older smaller historical homes type of way. The graveyard of the Episcopalian church has generations of the same name, indicating when the yellow fever and malaria outbreaks swept through the town as well as the damages from all the wars and battles in the town history. The historical society has a nice small museum and the shops in the historic district are mostly antique shops.

After poking around town a bit, we drove out to Oakley Place Plantation where we were greeted in the parking lot by Gus, a large wild turkey who loves to follow people around in full feathered glory, dragging his wings on the ground and trying to look scary but losing the effect if you turn to face him as he scurries sideways to try and get behind you again.

We made it just in time to take a tour of the old house.

Oakley Place's main claim to fame is that it is where James Audobon was engaged as a tutor for the 16 year old daughter of the family, and where he painted 23 of the original birds of America illustrations. Apparently it was an engagnement of limited success as he was there less than a year.

The most interesting feature of the house was its structure of a rectangle on top of the original square of four rooms that the Spanish land grant had stipulated.The original four rooms were a kitchen, a bedroom, a living room and or a general purpose room. Later additions were a smoke house next to the kitchen which was then extended the width of the house and stairs leading up to porches on the second and third floor which were then enclosed. As was typical of most of the homes in the area, the house was two rooms deep, with floor to ceiling windows on either side which were kept open to allow a full flow of air. The most interesting addition, added at the beginning of the 1800's was a wall of wooden louvres slanted at a 45 degree angle across the entire top two floors across the front of the house. These provided horizontal shade for the sleeping porches as well as protecting the house from heavy rain. the curator leading the tour said that even during the recent hurricane season, little or no rain had blown in through the louvres.

After touring the grounds and visiting with prissy, the resident pig, and watching a plein air class painting out in the grounds, we headed back to Butler Green and said goodbye.

After Martha left, I sat in the sunset for a while, chatting with other ladies as they prepped their bikes and enjoyed the evening air. Early to be because tomorrow is another start of a five day riding stint and a long day as well. Here's hoping the weather is as beautiful tomorrow as it was today. Sunny, a few high puffy clouds, remnants of the storm front that passed, a light cool breeze andd temperatures in the mid 70's with little or no humidity. It was a perfect day.