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.
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