Wednesday, October 24, 2012

On the way to New Orleans...

On our way to New Orleans this summer Jen and I rode the Natchez Trace Parkway south.The parkway is very scenic and untouched by development. Towns just off the parkway are accessible, but not abundant so we were very conscience them and of filling stations! This little town of French Camp in Mississippi was one of those stops, a cool little historic town...


Construction of the Colonel James Drane house began in 1846 using a water powered saw. The foundation and framing are secured with wooden pegs and the ceiling with squared nails. Moved to this location in 1981, the house is now owned and operated by the French Camp Academy. You are invited to visit the Drane House. The information station is in the 1840 Huffman Log Cabin. A sorghum mill adjacent to the cabin operates during the fall sorghum season. Open Monday through Saturday 8:30 to 5 p.m. Restoration of the Colonel James Drane home, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places has been funded with assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior National Park Service under the provisions of the Jobs Bill Program of 1983.
Louis LeFleur first traded with the Choctaw Indians at a bluff now part of Jackson, Mississippi. About 1812, he established his stand 900 feet to the northeast on the Natchez Trace. Because of the storekeeper's nationality the area was often called "French Camp", a name retained by the present village. LeFleur married a Choctaw woman. Their famous son who changed his name to Greenwood Leflore, became a Choctaw chief and a Mississippi State Senator. For him are named the city of Greenwood and the county of Leflore.
A stone memorial marks a stage of the Natchez Trace at French Camp. The first highway opened through the lower south by the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830 between the American government and the Choctaw Indians. The surrounding country became a part of the state of Mississippi. Here Andrew Jackson's Tennessee and Kentucky commands rested on their way to join him in his coast campaign in the War of 1812, during which second struggle for American Independence, Mississippi took a heroic part. Presented to the town of French Camp by the Mississippi Daughters of the American Revolution, November 10, 1915. (from the National Park Service)






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