Chretien Point: The Widow Who Shot a Pirate

A few miles outside the town of Sunset, down a live oak lane in the St. Landry Parish flatlands, there is a Greek Revival mansion with a story that sounds like it came from a novel, and in a sense, it did.

Hippolyte Chretien began building the house in eighteen thirty-one and finished it in eighteen thirty-five. It was twelve rooms, two stories of warm brick, with a grand staircase rising from the entrance hall, an extravagance on a cotton plantation that by then covered several thousand acres. Four years after the house was done, Hippolyte died of yellow fever. He was in his forties.

His wife Felicite was left with the plantation, the debts, and the children. She managed to turn things around. She expanded the landholdings to ten thousand acres. She doubled the enslaved workforce. She became known for the gambling parties she hosted, and for not suffering fools.

The most famous story about Felicite involves a pirate. The tale goes that a brigand arrived at the front door of Chretien Point, pistol drawn, intent on robbery. Felicite reached into the folds of her skirts, produced a pistol of her own, and shot him in the head on her front steps. Whether the story is literally true is debated, but it was believed widely enough to become part of the plantation's identity.

During the Civil War, the main house served as a hospital after a skirmish on the property in October of eighteen sixty-three. Confederate and Union soldiers both passed through.

The mansion's most unexpected legacy involves Hollywood. Film historians have long noted that the grand staircase at Chretien Point, the same staircase where Scarlett O'Hara shoots a Union soldier in Gone with the Wind, is often said in local lore to have inspired the Tara staircase, though that is not documented.

Chretien Point still stands, still takes visitors, and still holds that staircase. Felicite would probably approve of the attention.