Red Stick and Oysters

 Leaving New Orleans in the morning allowed us one more sample of local food. Driving around to find the breakfast place exposed us to the tiny crowded streets of Bywater. We almost decided to stop our trip and hang out here - surely there was a bookstore, a coffee shop, a corner bar, and front porch we could just sit and fan ourselves on. Frady's One-Stop is an example of an unpretentious local establishment and mixed in well with the Bohemian nature of the area. Erin and I did decide that the next trip we were just going to come to New Orleans and do nothing.

Our day was to end in St. Francisville, halfway up Louisiana, and to get there we would have to go through Baton Rouge ("red stick"), and specifically the downtown. I had been downtown a couple of times in the last few decades and was not looking forward to its grim, 1950s vibe. But we had some places to go in order to fill in a few holes in the family history, and they were in the capital city.

I had done some cursory research about Baton Rouge. For me, that means looking at lots of maps. It was clear by comparing historical maps and then Google Street View - the greatest invention in travel since the overnight bag - that much of what had been in Baton Rouge was still in Baton Rouge. One constant in American history has been that when a town has been passed by development and booming industry (whether it be tourist, retail, or industrial) most of what was there once never goes away. It just gets forgotten. While Baton Rouge is the capital and does have that Exxon plant, it has grown slowly and seen its downtown emptied out. So what we were looking for was bound to still be there. (We had a lovely lunch with every member of Erin's extended Baton Rouge family. Crawfish are a requirement when we visit and we crawfished with the best of them!)

One key stop was the "Rex House" on Royal Street. Erin's great-grandfather, Frank Rex, owned this home and left his mark on the name. Erin had somehow found out that the house was being renovated, had reached out to the Houston-area couple doing the work, and had arranged for a tour of this home. The home is in an area known as Beauregard Town - laid out in 1806 and with many of the original homes intact. It is about five blocks from the heart of downtown. In any prosperous town, these homes would be renovated to within an inch of their lives. But here, in Baton Rouge, they were cleaned up but some clearly not loved very much. It was a small town feeling in the shadow of mid-range high-rises and government offices.

We met the couple on the porch, exchanged pleasantries, then received a tour of the place. It had been over 100 years since the Rex's had occupied the house. There was little left of their imprint, but it is always fun to see the insides of houses when they are gutted. I took many many many pictures, but only share two here (above) so you can see that it was pretty, is still pretty, but there is a lot to do on the innards of the place. The house was a few blocks south of our next stop in the downtown, so we had a sense of the grocer Rex kissing his wife farewell, putting on his grocer's apron, and walking to his shop on North Boulevard.

The grocery store itself still stands but serves primarily oysters and booze these days as the Jolie Pearl. We found the building through a combination of city records and photographs and persistence. Our palpable excitement was met with indifferent shoulder-shrugging once inside. We breathlessly told the server that yes, this was Erin's great-grandfather's grocery store. She asked us if we wanted a table and to order oysters. But, we said, this was his place, where he worked! Isn't that cool? She wandered away to serve less eager customers. Photos of the inside and outside later, we left, undaunted by her reserve.

After walking around a rejuvenating Baton Rouge (we decided that we would have to come back next year with at least a little time in the city) and identifying former family establishments by the parking lots that covered their souls, we headed for the famous Magnolia Cemetery. This is apparently a big deal in Baton Rouge - so much so that there was an actual battle fought on the grounds during the Civil War. I noticed at the entrance that we a) were not allowed to bury anyone here without notice (hadn't thought of doing that) and b) we couldn't stack the vaults. Both of these are practices I am unfamiliar with. We weren't sure who we would find here, so we attached the Cemetery in quadrants. This 10-acre piece of ground has a lot of quadrants. Erin walked all of them. We found the former grocer and family and a few others of note.



Here is Erin  capturing what has to be the opposite of a selfie on the left. In the photo on the right is something I noticed that concerned me: either someone escaped from this vault or someone else is trying to get in. Either circumstance is not one I want to be involved with. After paying our respects - such as not standing on any vaults and taking photos - we headed north for our last stop of the day.

 But wait! Just before we hit what passes for a highway north out of town we saw the street on which Erin's father lived as a boy - right off the road! We returned to the place, and found a lovely mid-20th Century home clearly fixed up. Erin had a wonderful encounter with three local folks sitting on chairs out front, who once it was determined that we were not real estate agents or unsavory individuals, were given a name to use ("Robert D. Jones") if we were ever in the neighborhood and in some trouble. Just saying his name like an incantation would protect us from any dangers that might befall us. Protected as such, photos in hand, we headed up to St. Francisville, wherein most of our research would be conducted and the bulk of our days would be spent.

This is a picture of the inn we stayed at. Best feature was the provision of all that we would need for creating cocktails, right there in our room, and based on our personal preferences. It was going to be a good five nights!

New Orleans and Isleno Culture - Day One

Visiting New Orleans for even a few scant hours is always worth it. Erin and I have been here multiple times - for conferences, family, and even Katrina-related work - and have always enjoyed it. March weather leaves little to be desired, as it is cool, dry, and the start of a riot of plant color. We only had a brief time to revel in New Orleans and weren't sure how to use the time well in pursuit of our genealogical needs. Turns out we needn't worry.

Our lodgings were in the river edge town of Arabi - go to the French Quarter, then slide along to the south and east to Fauborg Marigny, then Bywater, then the Ninth Ward, and then you get to Arabi. Hilariously, the town is actually named for an Arab sheikh who had some notoriety in the 1800s. The town itself is quiet, full of small residential homes and few remarkable cottages and bungalows. The high school, pictured to the right, was a stunning display of design prowess - tiles and bricks in perfect harmony. No longer used as a school, it serves the community as a gathering space. The inside must be impressive - but we didn't get there.

Down by the river, where every self-respecting Louisiana burg makes its living, was a classic 'Jim and Erin' tourist attraction: the Domino Sugar Plant. The picture to the right tries to capture its enormity, but for reference this is the largest sugar plant in the US and has been in operation for over a hundred years. I am not sure what they needed the 10-story building in the back for, but the whole complex felt like a massive chemical plant designed to make my coffee palatable. Next door was an unsung Ford assembly plant from 80 years ago; designed by Albert Kahn (a god of industrial design) it looks today like a truck inventory lot. Back in the day this was one of the major American assembly plants for Fords; today it is a hidden, decrepit site with no signs of attention or a future.

What made this an even more interesting day was that we were apparently in St. Bernard Parish (County) on the day of the Isleno Cultural Festival. We found this out by hand-crafted signs lining the streets. Islenos (there is a tilde over the 'n' for the classic "ny' sound but I am not motivated enough to find the right key!) is the name given to the Canary Islanders who came over in the 1770s to populated four towns in Spain's American colony, as well as to defend it. Their descendants and family names are found to this day in the exact places where they first landed. Think about any other ethnic group that landed, made a town, and never moved - this is a rarity in our history.

The drive to the Festival down St. Bernard Road showed us how narrow and wet is this land. This parish has just a few areas that are elevated enough to plant houses, and all of these are occupied. The Festival took place at the Isleno Museum, a collection of traditional houses in the heart of the parish. It was similar to a lot of county fairs - there was a bandstand with non-stop music, a series of deadly carnival rides, lots of stands selling, and some only in Louisiana sights. Chief among these was the casual guy with the alligator skins in the picture. Turns out he is an international business who harvests thousands of alligators a year from his farm, owns helicopters to scout out nests in the bayous, and sells around the world. His is the largest alligator farm in the world. I would love to go there, but not on this trip.

While not much made Erin feel deeply connected to the culture, there were some rustic buildings that didn't seem too out of place and conveyed a sense of quiet purpose. One was this representative home (yellow siding) with the typical front porch. Porches are big in Louisiana, but I presume they are more useful when it is blisteringly hot outside. The other building pictured here is a 1920s barroom, which looked on the inside exactly what you think a rural whiskey joint in the backwoods would look like. Wooden bar, creaky floor, piano on one side. And this being Louisiana, people were still using the bar, purchasing their drinks and standing outside on the porch to share their good will.

My final picture here turned out to be a primary element of Isleno culture here in St. Bernard Parish - the local dance troupe. The dance was folkloric and at first I thought it was merely a European group that was sharing their moves with the locals. Turns out they were the locals. The dance was very sedate, with lots of dosidos and choreographed moves, but it was well appreciated by the crowd.  The crowd was substantial, hinting at much rowdier music as the evening wore on. But we were worn out, so we left the Islenos for another trip and prepared to head out the next morning for Baton Rouge.

Travels with Erin to Crawfish Land

In March, 2018, I traveled with my wife, Erin McVadon Albright, to central Louisiana to visit the real world context of her family history. The trip was planned over nine days and was based on many months of research into her admittedly fascinating family story. We planned to journey from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, on to St. Francisville and Pointe Coupee Parish, and finally swing up through southern Mississippi. We were chasing many different threads, often many in the same day, and have throughly enjoyed ourselves so far. And it is spring, the weather is delightful, and the seafood is to die for.

This series of posts will attempt to document the where of our trip and the what of what we see. I'll try and flavor it a bit to give you a sense of our days. You will read about a mixture of events and connections which will not come together in this particular series. This is a research trip, and the story needs to be written up fully; this part of the blog is the travelogue that accompanies the trip! H

I will give you, in a nutshell, the basics. As Erin is the more detailed oriented of the two of us, I will give her access to this blog and encourage her to correct me as we go along. Look for a few pictures to be posted here that might give you the lay of the land. I'll go over what we looked for and what we found.

Erin's family has four different main streams: a Spanish branch that came from the Canary Islands in the 1700s and never moved an iota from the landing site; a French Acadian side that came from Nova Scotia by way of the Caribbean in the 1700s and moved only a little bit from the landing site; a northern US branch that moved South to take advantage of a range of business opportunities in the 19th century and did move around a bit but still within hailing distance of each other; and finally, a mystery branch no more than three generations old that arose from, we think, a young man trying to remake himself in Mississippi and concealing his background. That last branch is Erin's father's grandfather and is the one that has generated the most heat over the years because in genealogy we study the men. Who was he? Where was he from? The other three branches have been sitting in plain sight and attracting less attention, although their lives and loves are strewn across the landscape and small towns like seeds.

For our research trip, we focused on the northern branch and the mystery group; the French and Spanish get a little bit of love but will have to wait for more comprehensive study. But good news on that front - since they didn't move in over 150 years there is less ground to cover! That will wait for the next trip, I guess.

Finally, a little of the physiology of this beautiful land. Above and beside all is the Mississippi River. It can't be avoided, even though almost all views of it are obscured by levees on both sides. New Orleans stretches alongside the river, playing out fascinating neighborhoods one after the other but all close to the water. Many times dangerously close. The city still looks shell shocked from Katrina 12 years ago, and it is decidedly emptier. There is something eery about looking up from below the level of the levee and seeing the top masts of great ships cruising past.

The Mississippi dominates southern Louisiana, leaving a flat and wet land at every turn. Given that descendants of Europeans and Africans have lived here for three centuries, the amount of vacant land is remarkable. On this trip we forsook the journey along the river and past the great chemical plant developments that overwhelm and went straight to Baton Rouge. This little city, the capital of the state, is difficult to capture in a few words. There is an ancient town, bedraggled and worn, awaiting refurbishment to fill the heart of the downtown. There is a business district with impressive civic buildings and some energy. And then there is an immense Exxon refinery that somehow is physically the yang to Baton Rouge's yin. A giant, riverside complex, it starts right north of downtown and seems to occupy an area just as large as the city. The river here is less present, in that there is a great amount of land on either side of the river that is developed and interesting.

Just north, where we concentrated most of our work on this trip, is a bit of southern uplands that comes right up to the edge of the river. There is a 60 foot hill and then rolling valleys that stretch off to the northeast. The river snakes its way across the huge Louisiana delta and then, right at the edge of the town of St. Francisville, it slides over to the hill, brushes up against it, and then peels off to the northwest and the vast flatlands further north. The hills and river are the reason for the town, of course, as a different type of crop can be grown in the hills, and the plantations and farms desperately need the transportation provided by the river. Historically, the town of St. Francisville and the benighted, twin city of Bayou Sara, were at one time the second largest port of trade in Louisiana. No longer. What is left of St. Francisville is sleepy, quaint, historic, beautiful. Busy and large it is not.

The last bit of our journey will take us up into Mississippi from the south, and while I have yet to go there at this writing, one fact stays in my mind. Unlike my first impressions, Mississippi was settled from the south - families coming up from Louisiana - and the towns across the part of the state are its oldest. I am looking forward to what that means.

Please read on for a daily transcription of what we find, what we don't find, and what we are asking ourselves as we go along. Feel free to comment. This is fun for us.

Hey, family of mine. I decided to try and put some of our family history in a single, over-designed spot. This one. I am going to convert the genealogy information collected about 15 years ago into some readable posts that we can share together. Heck, you might even want to add some stuff here as well. I will figure out how to do that later. For now, let me build the blog and see where it takes us.

Taking something as multi-dimensional as a family genealogy and making it accessible in this format feels like it will be a little tricky. I have to add the basic tree outline in someway that is dynamic. I need to add little write-ups about our family. I might have a musing or two on some of the less noble branches of our family. How will it fit in here?

Since this is a free blog, it has a pretty conventional format. I write (someone writes) and the information flows sequentially. One way to not make a long running train of thought document is to create separate pages and use what are called "widgets" - sort of mini-apps - to spread the information around. I think I will keep a main page (this one) running with updates of process (maybe this is the last one, who knows?) and then have branching pages and links where the information wanders.

One thing that makes this worthwhile for me is that I like to read your comments. At the end of a post you are given the opportunity to give a comment on the post. We could do extensive threads about certain topics, or you could just say hi!, or you could challenge some assumption. But please use the comments so this blog can become robust and a family record. I would also like this place to become a repository of stories - what it was like growing up in Houston, or Hot Springs, or Oregon, or Mexico. What we remember from snippets of the past - didn't Dad used to mention a third cousin who was on trial for homicide (this is a fake example!)? What was San Angelo like? I know Suzanne and I shot some video of Donald Albright a year or so ago; we need to put that on here, too.

Finally, I am going to start with the Albrights - those denizens on the earth today that are directly descended from Otis Powers Albright, Jr. I will include in this inaugural run an email to those that I know that this would all be relevant to.

One thing to keep in mind - the "Albrights" are just one thin slice of our heritage. There are Powells and Clevelands and so forth - all of whom contributed equally to our little DNA stew. It is just that the Albrechts from 1742 Pennsylvania have a name we share today, so we think of them as the first. But there might be a surprise or two lurking in our files (I know I found one a while back). So . . . once more, into the breach!