HOME TOURS
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 HOME TOURS
Throughout the years men from elsewhere have come to West Feliciana. Their reasons for coming were as varied as the houses they built; homes that can be seen as monuments to the lives they made for themselves here.
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GARDENS TOURS
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 GARDENS
The cluster of notable 19th-century gardens in West Feliciana are outstanding examples of what unlimited time, wealth, labor, and horticultural knowledge, combined with the rich loess soil and a happy climate, could produce in antebellum culture. These gardens remain monuments to past glories and to the hardiness of plantings.
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CHURCH TOURS
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 CHURCHES
Churches were monuments of order in the disorderly frontier landscape. Throughout the 19th century the settlers strained to build and support them.
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CEMETERY TOUR
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 CEMETERY TOURS
The peaceful dead of Grace Churchyard stand beside their handsome tombstones and tell their stories,
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ENTERTAINMENT
EVENTS Daytime Revel on Royal Street, night social |
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 John James Audubon, volatile Frenchman, talented artist, unkempt wanderer, and trying husband, set himself the task of painting all the Birds of America. He was West Feliciana Parish’s most famous visitor, and it is to him that the Audubon Pilgrimages are dedicated.
Though he spent less than 23 months here from 1821 until 1830, he painted no less than 80 of his famous folios here. When he arrived at the Bayou Sara Landing on that June day in 1821, he was penniless, his future clouded by past failures, his wife and sons far away.
Hired to tutor Eliza Pirrie at Oakley, Audubon was allowed freedom of the woods to roam and paint the birds he found. He perfected his art but not his temperment, and was summarily dismissed in October. In 1823 his wife Lucy began teaching at Beech Woods; when Audubon joined her, her firmness of character strengthened his resolve and together they earned the money needed to seek publication abroad. He returned to Feliciana and Beech Grove, where Lucy then taught, in 1829, assured of success. |
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The Audubons departed on New Year's Day, 1830, never to return to what the artist termed his Happy Land.
West Feliciana shares its history with Pilgrimage visitors, perhaps less famous, but no less welcome than was John James Audubon.
The Republic of West Florida
In 1810, the Anglo-American settlers in West Florida, troubled by a weak colonial presence, rebelled against Spain. For 74 days the first Lone Star flew bravely over the capital, St. Francisville. Annexed by the United States, the small Republic became a part of Louisiana.
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