Live oaks in this category were encountered and recorded during our travels to locate and document the Live Oak Society’s founding members and “Top 100”. The age and girth of the trees was apparent, which warranted a stop (and measurement, when possible).
Along Louisiana State Highway 1 traveling toward New Roads, not far from the west bank of False River, the alert driver can spot one of the largest and most beautiful live oaks in the state—the Randall Oak. Located in the front yard of the home of David and Madeline Breidenbach, this massive species of Quercus virginiana has a circumference of approximately 35 feet, eight inches, a height of 68 feet, and a crown spread of 156 feet. Continue reading
Each year, thousands of tourists visit St. Martinville, Louisiana, in search of the roots of Cajun culture—to experience the food, music, and to visit the places associated with the story of Evangeline. The Evangeline oak is undoubtedly the most famous oak in Louisiana, though oddly it’s not a very old or exceptionally large tree. And according to some sources, it’s the third oak in the St. Martinville area that has been designated as the “oak under which the Cajun lovers Emmeline and Louis were reunited” after their long separation when the Acadians were exiled from Canada. (Emmeline and Louis are reported to be the real-life characters upon which Longfellow’s fictitious Evangeline and Gabriel were modeled.)
The Evangeline Oak is located on the edge of Bayou Teche at the foot of East Port St., next to the Old Castillo Bed and Breakfast (which I can personally state is very haunted—but that’s another story!).
The Gabriel Oak, a lesser known and larger tree, is located in the Longfellow Evangeline State Historic Site, a wonderful historic park well worth visiting, just a mile or so north of St. Martinville on Hwy. 31. The park showcases several historic buildings and gives a broader realistic view of the historic period of the Cajun settlement of Louisiana.
Gabriel Oak, panoramic view
Gabriel Oak, view toward Maison Olivier Creole cottage
In the St. Martinville graveyard next to the Catholic Church of St. Martin de Tours, you can find a tomb for Evangeline, topped with a bronze metal statue. The grave bears both the name Evangeline and Emmeline Labiche, but in actuality, the tomb is empty. The statue is modeled after Dolores Del Rio, the Hispanic movie star, who played Evangeline in the 1929 silent movie adapted from Longfellow’s poem. The statue was a gift from the movie cast and crew to the people of St. Martinville after filming was completed.
So what’s true and what’s fiction about the Evangeline story?
The details of this “folk tale” of Evangeline are extracted from two sources—the epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1847, and a subsequent story written in 1907 by Judge Felix Voorheis. The judge, a St. Martinville resident, recounts a story by his grandmother in which she claimed to be the adoptive mother of a girl named Emmeline Labiche. Voorheis claims that it was Emmeline’s life story that Longfellow had heard and reshaped into the poem of Evangeline.
Longfellow’s poem, published under the title, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, describes the betrothal of the fictional Cajun girl named Evangeline Bellefontaine and her beloved Gabriel Lajeunesse. The poem recounts their separation when the British forcibly removed the Acadian people from the present-day Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and part of the state of Maine—an area also known as Acadie or Acadia.
In Longfellow’s poem, the Acadians were resettled in small numbers in cities across the Eastern seaboard, and Evangeline searches from city to city for her Gabriel. She eventually gives up, settles in Philadelphia, becomes a nun and works at a hospital. Years later, she finally encounters Gabriel again—though he’s now a sick old man. In the poem, he dies in her arms and within a short time, she follows him to the afterlife. In the mid-1800s it was the perfect Romeo and Juliet tale and was hugely popular.
In Judge Voorheis’ account of Emmeline Labiche, the separated lovers reunite not in Philadelphia but in St. Martinville, under a live oak tree whose branches stretched over the dark waters of Bayou Teche. The reunited lovers embrace passionately but then Gabriel (whose actual name was Louis) remembers that he is already married. Eventually, Emmeline (Evangeline) goes insane and dies.
The “Great Expulsion” or Le Grand Derangement (1755–1764) as it was known historically, occurred during the French and Indian War as part of the British military campaign against New France. The British deported approximately 11,500 French Acadians to weaken the resistance to their rule. In the first wave, Acadians were deported to the British colonies (the original 13 colonies of the U.S.). During the second wave, they were deported to Britain and France, from where many migrated to Louisiana. (source: Wikipedia)
A good reference for a more factual history of this area and its settlement by the Acadians can be found at the St. Martinville website.
In a November 2009 post, we gave background on the first President of the Live Oak Society—the Locke Breaux Oak.
Locke Breaux Oak, circa 1956, Southern Dairy property in Taft, LA
Since that post, I’ve received a series of emails from a reader named Brad whose mother lived next to the Locke Breaux Oak for more than a decade. Brad sent me several photographs from his mother’s archives and shared some personal stories and remembrances about his mother’s time living next to the old oak. I am adding those to the 100 Oaks Blog in memory of the Locke Breaux Oak and the people whose lives were touched by this magnificent tree.
Brad’s mother, Ruth Fahrig, was born on a dairy in Pevely, Missouri. At about the age of four, her family moved from Missouri to Louisiana where her father took over management of Southern Dairy in Taft. The family (Ruth, her parents, and two siblings) lived in a huge house owned by the dairy, and the Locke Breaux Oak stood within 100 feet of their home. Ruth and her family knew the old oak simply as “The President” and it was a familiar neighbor and daily part of Ruth’s life for more than a decade.
One of Ruth’s fond memories of “The President” was climbing to what she called the “crow’s nest”—a point in the crown of the tree where you could climb no higher. From that point, some 70 feet in the air, she could see for many miles around and look down on the ship traffic in the Mississippi River. Though there was less ship traffic in those days, it was still a treat when she could sit in her lofty nest and watch a ship slowly make it’s way past her home. She said that she only made it up to the crow’s nest a few times because it was quite scary going up, and even scarier on the way down, when you are less able to see where to put your feet.
Ruth and her family lived in the Southern Dairy home for more than a decade before her father took over management of the Rex Dairy in Luling, about six to eight miles downriver from Taft.
The photograph (above) is dated 1940 and features Brad’s mother in front of the Locke Breaux Oak.
Another excerpt on the history of the Locke Breaux Oaks is taken from the book Louisiana’s German Coast: A History of St. Charles Parish, 2nd edition by Henry E. Yoes III. “St. Charles Parish held a national attraction within its boundaries, the Locke Breaux Oak named after one of its owners, Samuel Locke Breaux. Breaux was a prominent New Orleanian, a one-time president of the New Orleans Board of Trade. Before the tree was given his name, it was known as the Providence Live Oak, after the plantation that it had watched over in another era.” The Providence Plantation was later bought by the Southern Dairy Products, Inc., around 1935. One man, Leon Weiss, dominated the company. Weiss was the architect and builder of the present state capitol.
This 1965 photo (below) shows the dramatic decline of the tree in its very last years.
The next two images show the Southern Dairy house in the background. It also shows the picnic area around the oak.
The last image titled “Under the Big Tree” and dated 1940, is an example of just how huge the tree was in terms of trunk girth. What you see in the photograph is only a little more than half the width of the trunk. You can also see a significant bare bark wound, perhaps from a lightning strike.
At some point, the Southern Dairy changed names to the Colonial Dairy. It’s unclear from St. Charles Parish records if Southern Dairy was purchased by the larger Colonial Dairy, but that’s a possibility since at one point Colonial was reportedly the largest dairy in Louisiana.
Then, around 1966, the property was sold to the Hooker Chemical company (the same company made infamous by the Love Canal chemical waste tragedy in Niagara, New York, publicized in the late 1970s. After that point, the old tree began a slow decline in health, possibly as a result of groundwater and air pollution from the Hooker Chemical Company operations or else more natural causes. In either case, it’s a sad day when Louisiana loses a grand old oak such as the Locke Breaux.
E.A. McIlhenny Oak
Bill and McIlhenny historian Shane Bernard at E.A. McIlhenny Oak
When Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens founded the Live Oak Society in 1934, he included 43 live oaks as the Society’s original members. These were familiar trees to Stephens, oaks that he had visited frequently and had personally measured to determine the 17 ft. girth minimum he set for Society membership—a size that he estimated would make the age of the tree greater than 100 years.
Of those original 43 inductee oaks, three were located at Avery Island, which for Dr. Stephens was a short day trip from his home in Lafayette. There were several sites within a short distance of Lafayette where Stephens and his wife Beverly would take friends and visiting dignitaries to introduce them to his favorite century-old oaks. These sites were part of what he called his “live oak tours.”
Through his friendship with Tabasco company president Edward Avery (“Ned”) McIlhenny, Dr. Stephens made Avery Island one of the stops on his oak tours. The Cleveland Oak (named after U.S. President Grover Cleveland) and the E.A. McIlhenny Oak were two of the original inductee trees for the Live Oak Society.
Grover Cleveland Oak, Jungle Gardens
Grover Cleveland Oak, view 2, showing scale with Cyndi
Ned McIlhenny was born on Avery Island in 1872 and traveled extensively during his life. He was an arctic explorer, a naturalist and conservationist. Growing up, he studied the plants and animals on Avery Island and in the surrounding salt marshes. In 1895 he founded Bird City, a private bird sanctuary for the once-endangered snowy egret.
In the 1920s, Ned found time from his business role as president of the McIlhenny Tabasco Company to transform his private Avery Island estate into Jungle Gardens. He converted the natural marshy landscape into lush gardens planted with exotic botanical specimens from around the world including more than four hundred varieties of camellias, over a hundred varieties of azaleas, fifty plus varieties of juniper, more than one thousand varieties of iris, and several species of Asian bamboo—all are plants that thrive in south Louisiana’s semitropical summers and mild winters.
Gradually Ned expanded the gardens until it reached its present size of more than 170 acres. In 1935, he opened Jungle Gardens to the public. Since then it has been a favorite tourist destination along with the Tabasco bottling factory on Avery Island.
Jungle Gardens today is home to several Live Oak Society member trees as well as one of the largest and most beautiful stands of mature live oaks in Louisiana. A few of the oaks that Dr. Stephens brought guests to see can still be found today at Avery Island’s Jungle Gardens.
Barrow Oak, near ruins, end of entrance alley
This is another lesser-known old oak and one of my personal favorites. It grows on the grounds of Afton Villa Gardens, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. It is in the 23’ to 24’ circumference range, and was reportedly planted between 1820 and 1839 by Bartholomew Barrow, the first member of the Barrow family to purchase and settle this land. The oak is registered with the Live Oak Society and has a distinctive shape, size and bushy texture formed by the thick resurrection fern growing profusely on its limbs. It’s located in front of the Afton Villa ruins near the end of the ½ mile long alley of oaks leading from Louisiana state Highway 61 to the gardens.
100 Oaks Project 