Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

'Gold dust wedding' makes oak alley

by Jim Bradshaw

You are in the land of Longfellow's "Evangeline," a place rich in Acadian history. But this is also a place settled by noblemen fleeing the French Revolution and from Madame Guillotine (although there were fewer of these noble folk than some, local historians and legends would suggest). Aristocratic families built huge sugar plantations here that would stand with those of the Creoles along the Mississippi. St. Martinville was called Petit Paris then--a place where, at least for a short while and at least according to local lore, ostentatious display was a way of life for the rich.

Francoise Bossier visited Petit Paris as a young girl, and recorded in her diary what she found. Men bedecked themselves in court attire, women in wigs and costly jewels. Francoise and her sister were guests in a home with a drawing room, wide galleries, and a garden "crossed and recrossed with alleys of orange and jasmine." Servants in livery bore platters of fruit, while the hostess--said to be a countess--played at her harpsichord. During a soiree on a bayou bank, musicians played from a barge covered with flowers and greenery, while couples ashore danced on a pavilion decorated with potted, blooming magnolias joined by garlands of flowers.

The grand ball

Gerome Charles Durand appeared in this society in the early 1800s. He, or perhaps his parents, brought a fortune from France, and he amassed another one on the sugar plantation he built. It was he who would have his slaves plant the 3-mile oak and pine avenue that led to his mansion, and folks who knew him said he sat up at night trying to devise new ways to outdo his aristocratic neighbors. He usually succeeded, and created a life on his plantation that was as gay and carefree as money could make it.

He traveled in gold-ornamented carriages drawn by horses bedecked in the fanciest of harnesses. His home was ornamented by fine furnishings brought from the continent.

It is said that he gave standing orders that he and his family were to be awakened each morning with delicate sprays of perfume. Liking that so much, he then installed the daily ritual of perfumed baths, attended by slaves to pour fragrant crystals and oils into the steaming bath waters.

There was plenty of family to keep the bath tubs busy. Durand fathered 24 children, 12 by each of his two wives. He is said to have justified his large progeny with the remark, "I could not be unfair to either lady." When his first wife, nee Amelie LeBlanc, died in December 1845, so goes the tale, the grieving husband swore he would never remarry, and he spent much of his time each day--rain or shine--at her grave side. He placed a statue of himself before the tomb so that he would never be away from it.

But another woman's charms soon erased the sorrow He was married again with in a year, lavishing upon the second Madame Durand, nee Alida Eloise Verret, the same extravagances he had bestowed on the first.

But all of this was just prelude to the grand gesture for which he is most remembered.

It seems that just after the Civil War, two of the Durand daughters became engaged at the same time: Marie Lucille Heloise Durand to James E. Mouton, and Corinne Marie Philomene Durand to Zachary Fournet The proud father promised his daughters the most beautiful elegant, and unusual wedding ever seen in Louisiana.

To fulfill his promise, as the romantic (and perhaps embellished) tale is told, he ordered a million spiders sent from China and sent couriers to California to fetch hundreds of pounds of silver and gold dust. (A less romantic version claims the spiders came from nearby Catahoula Lake, but their work would be nonetheless impressive.)

Shortly before the wedding day, the spiders were set loose, and soon had spun millions of yards of delicate webs among the limbs and mosses of the oak and pine trees leading to the mansion. On the morning of the wedding, May 21, 1870, servants armed with bellows filled with silver and gold dust sprayed the cobweb canopy to set it glittering in the sunlight like something from a fairy tale.

Other servants placed elegant carpets beneath the trees, leading to an open-air altar. Tables set between the trees overflowed with rich food and drink, served by as many servants as Durand could muster. Musicians played from hidden spots up and down the avenue.

Two thousand guests attended the marriage ceremony. Toasts, dancing, laughter, and song lasted until dusk, when a steamboat chugged up Bayou Teche to take the newlyweds to New Orleans honeymoons. The crowd shot off fireworks to bid the young couples au revoir. Even the sated folks of Petit Paris were impressed.

Durand's last months

During his last months, he sometimes rambled on about money that he had hidden somewhere, perhaps beneath the oaks and pines, perhaps somewhere else. He never told where. When he died, one of his sons dug for months beneath the trees, finding nothing.

Over the years the plantation manor fell into disrepair and eventually tumbled down. The Flood of 1927 washed away what remnants of it there were. Today nothing remains of the grand mansion. The only reminders of Durand's opulent life and death is the mile-long stretch of oak and pine trees he planted.

There is little else there. But, once in a while, in the early morning, when the dew is still bright on the trees and rays of golden sunshine strike them just right, there is a fleeting glimpse down that oak and pine avenue of just what it might have been like that festive day in May, when Charles Durand made his last and grandest gesture.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).