Saint Francisville

Located 2.2 miles north of St. Francisville on U.S. 61, Butler Greenwood remains a working plantation and is still in the original family, according to innkeeper/owner and Louisiana author/historian Anne Butler. Anne adds that the huge live oak trees that shade the grounds came from the nearby LeJeune oaks, brought as acorns from Haiti in 1799 by a planter fleeing the slave insurrection there. Sunken gardens are in the hollows on either side of the drive from the highway, and many of the formal plantings date from the 1840s. Wrought-iron urns and garden benches from the same period match those in the White House Rose Garden in Washington, D.C., dated 1842.

The main house has no front door. In the 1850s, the original French doors across the front were replaced by Victorian floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, the formal Victorian parlor contains gilded pier mirrors, oil portraits of many family members, and a rare, complete twelve-piece set of Louis XV rosewood furniture still in its original scarlet upholstery. Anne has the 1861 bill for the set plus a dining table and china cabinet—$467. The nineteenth-century Brussels strip carpet remains intact. Another room has a photograph of Anne’s great-grandfather in uniform when he was a student at Virginia Military Institute in 1870, the year that Robert E. Lee died. The young cadet was chosen as a member of the Honor Guard at Lee’s funeral and given a sword, which also now hangs on the wall.

The detached kitchen, where Anne has one of her bed and breakfast accommodations, dates from 1796 and is older than the main house behind which it stands. The brick building has been restored with exposed beams and skylights and includes a full kitchen. The nineteenth-century cook’s cottage nearby contains a stove top, toaster oven, and refrigerator and overlooks a pond where ducks paddle and deer and other animals often water in late evening.

Newer cottages include a six-sided Gazebo, Pond House, Tree House, and the three-story Dovecote. Breakfast is self-catered in the cottages. A complimentary tour of the main house is available. Birding tours can be arranged for an extra fee. LBBA member, inspected 1996. Pays commission to travel agents.