Tales Tall but True of Woodland Plantation

John Berendt said it best. Following a visit to Woodland Plantation late last year, the celebrated author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil wrote, “There is something heroic about loving a house enough to tow it three hundred miles along winding back roads in order to rescue it, restore it and put it in a better place.”

That’s what Cammie and David Norwood did when, ten years ago, Cammie spied a stately but abandoned antebellum home on a rural St. Landry parish byway, and the couple undertook to relocate it to ancestral property near St. Francisville.

As the crow flies, only about thirty-five miles separate Woodland’s past and present sites. But so large and tall was the building that it had to travel 375 miles of roads and bridges before finally coming to rest in West Feliciana. Although Woodland is separated by several parishes and 160 years from the place it was in 1850, those that visit during this month’s Audubon Pilgrimage will discover that the tale of how this house came “home” involves more twists and turns than the roads it traveled to get here.

Woodland’s story begins in St. Francisville, where during the first half of the nineteenth century, one Major Amos Webb prospered as a theatre owner and postmaster before ultimately relocating to St. Landry Parish. There he chose to build a fine home—part Greek Revival, part French Creole—for his son, Lewis Archibald Webb, and chose for it the name “Woodland.”

But by the time Cammie Norwood came across it, the house had gone through multiple changes of ownership and name, and ultimately been abandoned. The house was now named Macland and in serious disrepair, with a deteriorated cedar shake roof and massive water damage. Nevertheless the Norwoods—both ardent preservationists—were attracted to it. So it must have seemed like serendipity a year later, when a Baton Rouge neighbor showed Cammie a photo of the same house and divulged that it was about to be torn down. “Woodland was where her grandmother had been born,” recalled Cammie. “She was a Thistlewaite; they bought the house in about 1900.” While researching, the Norwoods discovered not only the historical threads between the home’s builder and St. Francisville; but also that there were connections between Major Webb and David Norwood’s ancestors, the Barrow family, that owned or built many of the historically significant homes that still stand in the St. Francisville area (Webb had lived at the magnificent home Live Oak, prior to its being acquired by the Barrow Family in 1824).

In a massive undertaking that involved cutting the house in two and removing the roof and central hall, the Norwoods moved the structure to family property adjacent to Highland Plantation, which is also on tour during this year’s Audubon Pilgrimage. A two-and-a-half-year restoration followed. The house was raised a foot-and-a-half and its lowest floor was rebuilt. But the core of the home, which retains all of its original doors and millwork, was preserved.

Also preserved were the stories, which would seem to be in good hands so long as David Norwood is telling them. Clearly the longtime illustrator, whose cartoons were a fixture in the Baton Rouge Advocate for decades, relishes the details of Woodland’s colorful history as much as he does the original millwork. One tale that dates from the Civil War years recounts the widow of Lewis Webb (who died in the war) dissuading passing Union soldiers from replenishing their water supplies from the plantation cistern by telling them that it had been polluted with dead cats. So taken was Norwood with this story that he built a replica cistern at Woodland to help him with its retelling. Whether it contains any cats or not we could not say.

No surprise, then, that a master storyteller like author John Berendt should find much to admire during a visit to Woodland. Berendt divides his time between New York and New Orleans and has made several visits to St. Francisville, drawn by the rolling topography, its unusual number of historic plantation houses, and as he puts it, “a few extremely odd attractions that appeal to me—like the Angola Prison Rodeo.”

I have enjoyed getting to know John Berendt since being asked to escort him around town a couple of years ago. So when he called to invite me to attend the Angola Rodeo the same weekend as my interview at Woodland, I invited him to come along.

The Norwoods were excited to meet the man behind Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. “David sat at the kitchen table and read your book to me,” exclaimed Cammie. “We had the best time reading it!”

“We liked it so much we went to Savannah for New Year’s Eve!,” David revealed. “And even ate at the café.”

Appreciation, it seems, flowed both ways.

“The house is clearly loved, and it seems to know it,” wrote Berendt in an email following our visit to Woodland. “You can almost feel a sigh of relief wafting through its center hall and spacious rooms.” He continued, “Historic houses appeal to me because, when you think about it, most of them are beautiful. The passage of time ennobles most old houses, no matter how modest they are. Generations that have passed through the house leave an accumulation of wear and tear, creating a patina you won’t find in any new house—and that, for me, is the most appealing thing about historic houses: the stories that played out in them still linger as ghosts, or simply as atmosphere.”

Nowhere is this truer than at Woodland, a house where—even after 160 years, multiple generations, and three hundred miles—new stories are still being written.

Details. Details. Details.

This month, visit Woodland Plantation during Audubon Pilgrimage, March 16—18.

Other homes and gardens on tour this year are Highland Plantation, Hillcroft, Prospect, three nineteenth-century churches, Oakley Plantation at Audubon State Historic Site, Rosedown Plantation at Rosedown State Historic Site, the Rural Homestead, and Afton Villa Gardens. Daytime tours from 9:30 am– 5 pm each day. Friday and Saturday night entertainment includes candlelit graveyard tours, music, and a street dance. See the related calendar listing on page 25 or visit audubonpilgrimage.info for more information.

Ellen Kennon is an interior designer who moved from Manhattan to a little cabin in the woods in West Feliciana Parish over twenty years ago. She developed her own line of Full Spectrum Paints that has been featured in numerous national publications, including Architectural Digest, House Beautiful Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. www.ellenkennon.com.