Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, is pictured Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St. Martinville, La. A religious icon is displayed on an oak tree a the head of Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St.
Martinville, La. Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, is pictured Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St. Martinville, La.
Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, is pictured Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St. Martinville, La. Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, is pictured Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St.
Martinville, La. The legend of Oak and Pine Alley speaks of a wedding party, trees dripping with Spanish moss and golden cobwebs, and a bride — or maybe two — advancing toward a home at the end of a lane that feels like winding one's way through a verdant fairy tale. This is the story associated with the erstwhile Oak and Pine Plantation of St.
Martin Parish. A marker on La. 96, just east of St.
Martinville, gives the particulars: The alley is credited to Charles Durand, a Frenchman and planter with upward of 15 children, a plantation along the Bayou Teche, and the means to drape imported gold- and silver-dusted cobwebs along the lane for his daughter’s wedding. An historical marker is displayed at the turn off to Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St. Martinville, La.
Looking up at the pines it's easy to imagine the lavish affair taking place, even though the Durand family home has long since disappeared. Alone in the middle of a sugarcane field, a gravel-paved alleyway buffeted by mature trees still stands as a memorial to the past. It looks like the kind of place that must have hosted a celebration or two under a canopy of natural splendor — but according to Patricia GuteKunst, historian and genealogist for the St.
Martin Parish Library, the true story bears little resemblance to the legend. She says that the Durand family emigrated from France around the turn of the century, on the heels of the arrival of the first Acadians. Charles Durand bought the property from the Judice family, and the alley originally led all the way from the house to the bayou.
The home would have been filled with children — Durand had six surviving children with his first wife, Marie Amelie LeBlanc, and possibly 12 or 13 with his second wife, Alida Verrette. Much of the lore surrounding the glittering event states that it was a double wedding. According to church records, the only double wedding that took place in the family happened on May 21, 1870, for two of Durand's daughters from his second marriage — Marie Eloise and Marie Philomene.
And while it’s possible that the wedding was hosted at their home, GuteKunst says that’s as far as history agrees with the fairy tale. For starters, the wedding date is disputed. Some think it took place as early as 1850, when Durand would have been at the height of his wealth.
That's the date cited in the 1999 book “Memories of St. Martinville” by Charles Larroque. He wrote that the wedding featured displays of extravagance “rivaling even those of Versailles.
” According to Larroque, “Durand’s slaves decorated the arboreal alley in a manner befitting his most eccentric nature. Prolific web-spinning spiders were brought in (some say from the nearby Atchafalaya Basin, others say from as far away as China) and were released in the trees to go about their arachnidan business. Then slaves went to their task of coating the dewy, billowing webs with gold and silver dust blown from bellows.
And under this splendidly shimmering canopy proceeded the ethereal promenade of the wedding party and its two thousand guests.” GuteKunst thinks otherwise, because while there are records of marriages in the family prior to the Civil War, there were no double weddings. "Two of his daughters from his first marriage had weddings in 1853 and 1859, it's possible they were outside, it's possible the trees had spiderwebs in them," she says.
"There's no record of the kind of extravagance that people assume." What's more, the Civil War brought significant change to the family's fortunes. “By 1870, the family was no longer living at the property, so the wedding probably didn’t take place there.
Charles and Alida had lost the land, and they were living in a home given to them by their neighbors, the Barras.” Charles Durand died in November of 1870. “He died a broken man,” according to GuteKunst.
“By 1870, he had no money. It’s just a nice story, continued down through generations.” Oak and Pine Plantation, along with two others in the area — Banker Plantation and St.
John Plantation — went into default after the war. Jean Baptiste LaVert, a land agent from New Orleans, took possession of the properties and kept them in agricultural production. GuteKunst says that this land, and more across South Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, is still owned by descendants of the LaVert family.
After the Durands left Oak and Pine, the house was abandoned and eventually removed at an unknown date. Today a few smaller, occupied homes are nestled at the end of the alley, likely built much later by the new owners. Pine Alley Drive, also known historically as Oak and Pine Alley, is pictured Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in St.
Martinville, La. A beautiful story, regardless of its veracity, tends to take on a life of its own. The origins of the imported spiders and gold dust are a bit murky, but GuteKunst says there's a file on the Durands in the library's genealogical records that contains a few clues.
One note in the file, by an unknown author, discusses the family's history and biographic details. It references a family member, Stella Marie Durand, who had a bent towards the fantastic and loved telling stories about Charles Durand. "I remember Aunt Blanche would reprimand Stella many times for 'telling such tales,'" the note reads.
"But Stella enjoyed telling them and the writers wanted to hear such things. They never doubted her stories and never researched them, so her tales about the spider webs over Pine Alley, etc., survive in many novels of the time and even in special articles which appeared at various times in Life magazine and in the Readers' Digest.
" It goes on to say, "Long before the famous wedding is supposed to have taken place, Charles — who evidently was a big spender (giving credence to the fact that they must have brought money and resources from France) had lost the home by the time he died." The Stella Durand stories were likely told around the 1940s or 50s, based on her communication with Harnett Kane, a New Orleans-based journalist and novelist who wrote extensively about South Louisiana. Later, the artist George Rodrigue further cemented Oak and Pine Alley’s place in local lore.
His 1974 painting, “The Cajun Bride of Oak Alley,” features a solitary woman in white next to a tree painted in his “dark oak” style, with a cobweb suspended in the branches. : Men participating the annual Cursillo Walk stop to pray at Oak and Pine Alley Friday, June 7, 2019, near St. Martinville, La.
The group of men are spending three days walking dozens of miles in prayer as an act of suffering and sacrifice. On Friday they walked the twelve miles from the Community of Jesus Crucified in St. Martinville to St.
Rita Catholic Church in Catahoula, stopping at various points along the way, which represent the stations of the cross, to pray, rest and re-hydrate. On Saturday, they will continue their walking journey, and on Sunday they will gather with others at the Prairie Ronde Cursillo Center for the annual Pentecost Sunday prayer and worship. In the 1950s, an actual wedding was held at Oak and Pine Alley that brought the legend to life.
Two Durand sisters married in a reenactment ceremony at the alley — but it’s doubtful that even that occasion attained the heights of luxury that have been attributed to the mythologized wedding. With all the stories attributed to this site, Oak and Pine Alley has become a cultural marker in its own right. In a community largely populated by Catholic descendants of Acadian and French settlers, it is now a stop on the annual Way of the Cross pilgrimage that sees adherents traveling for miles to pray at each station of the cross, typically before Easter.
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