By Anne Butler

Its name hints at a rustic simplicity, and indeed this early plantation house was constructed long before the popularity of southern Greek Revival grandeur or Victorian flamboyance. Today one of six historic plantations that draw tourists to the St. Francisville area, The Cottage exhibits instead a sensible sturdiness, and for nearly 150 years it housed the sensible sturdy members of a single family.

In late 1810 or early 1811, shortly after the West Florida Rebellion ousted the Spanish in the area, Judge Thomas Butler purchased lands along Alexander’s Creek granted in the mid-1790s by Baron de Carondelet to John Allen and Patrick Holland. Named by Governor William C.C. Claiborne the first judge of the Feliciana parishes in 1812 after Louisiana became a state, Judge Butler was elected in 1818 to represent the area in the United State Congress, though he found in Washington “nothing like the agreeable social society we have in Louisiana.”

BUTLER GREENWOOD PLANTATION ONE OF FEATURES ON ANNUAL AUDUBON PILGRIMAGE IN ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA

By Anne Butler

Samuel Flower was one of the earliest English settlers in the St. Francisville area, a Quaker physician who emigrated from Pennsylvania in the 1770’s when the area was British territory; later, when Spain gained control, he treated Governor Manuel Gayoso. When Dr. Flower died in 1813, his eight heirs would divide thousands of arpents of land in the Felicianas, Rapides Parish, along Bayou Manchac, and in the Mississippi Territory. The family residence bordering Bayou Sara, appraised in the estate division at $12,300, was left to Dr. Flower’s 20-year-old married daughter Harriett. Now known as Butler Greenwood Plantation, the property is still owned and occupied by direct descendants of the original family and will be one of the featured tour homes on the Audubon Pilgrimage March 19, 20 and 21, 2010, as the West Feliciana Historical Society opens the doors to antebellum mansions and glorious gardens in celebration of artist John James Audubon’s stay in the parish in 1821.