St. Francisville
December 22, 2025
We awoke this morning anchored near St. Francisville, once briefly capital of Louisiana, (or rather West Florida when it seceded from Spanish rule), but today a cute tourist town of 1590. Like many river towns on a bluff, it used to have a port on the Mississippi, Bayou Sara. At one time it was the busiest port between New Orleans and Memphis. Like most lower towns, Bayou Sara was a rowdy place, basically abandoned after the floods in 1927. Bayou Sara today is a local beer.
Many of its remaining buildings were moved up the bluff to St. Francisville
, which as a consequence has 140 houses on the national register. Carolyn and I went to one, Rosedown (restored in 1950), an antebellum mansion that an heiress fell in love with. She spent $10 m on it and around 90% is original furnishings. Once 3000 acres of cotton or sugar cane, with over 400 enslaved people, the original family lived there until the 1950s. After the war, the plantation devolved to share cropping, but the house was badly in need of repair ($10 million in 1950s dollars!)
Eventually it became a 300-acre state park. The house escaped destruction during the Civil War when the wife went upstairs and told the Union soldiers not to disturb a woman getting dressed.
With its high ceilings and narrow staircases, I wondered how the elderly fared. The guide said they turned first floor parlors into bedrooms or built smaller homes nearby.
Interestingly, the Mississippi River valley here is hilly on one side and flat on the other. Hence, cotton was grown on one side, sugar cane on the other. Great gardens and some smaller buildings were on the grounds at Rosedown.
Also, near here is Port Hudson a promissory that withstood a 6-week siege in the Civil War, longest siege in USA history, surrendering after Vicksburg fell. It was another point on the river that for a while blocked trade down the Mississippi. The Union plan to strangle the South through blockade and squeezing (“Anaconda”) needed the Mississippi opened to also block trans Mississippi trade from West to East.
We woke up here in a thick fog, which lasted till we drove to Cajun Pride, operator of a swamp boat operation. We boarded a pontoon looking for wildlife. Alligators lurked looking for Captain Hook. Wild razorbacks rooted, scarfing corn thrown by our
captain, from racoon families. Surprisingly, no mosquitoes sought our Yankee blood, despite 78-degree weather.
home with a 38-acre garden decked out for Papa Noel, a Cajun version of St. Nick. Papa Noel arrives in a pirogue, drawn by alligators. Seems appropriate.
