St. Francisville, LA Celebrates Bicentennial...

By Anne Butler

The quaint little Mississippi River town of St. Francisville, LA, has always been a happy marriage of residential and commercial structures, its gingerbread-trimmed Victorian dwelling houses co-existing shoulder-to-shoulder with vibrant small businesses, houses of worship, schools and other structures. Thus it is no surprise that its 200th birthday celebration this month should be just such a mixture, an appreciation of the past joined with enjoyment of the present and anticipation of the future.

Highlight of the bicentennial observation will be an Open House on Sunday, November 11, at Julius Freyhan School just off Royal St. in St. Francisville. A splendid sturdy brick structure overlooking the Mississippi River, it was opened in the early 1900s as the first public school in town, its construction funded initially by a bequest in the will of one of the area’s earliest Jewish immigrants, Julius Freyhan. Freyhan had arrived in this country a penniless peddler in the 1850s and prospered sufficiently as a supply merchant to the cotton empire that he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the state at the time of his death.