Southern Accents Magazine
By Patrick Dunne
January 2001
On the edge of a primordial Louisiana swamp an abandoned house starts a new life.
Who can write the secret life of old houses, catalog their wiles or understand their seductions? Neither they who fall under the power of such enchantments not those impervious to them can fully explain this profound inanimate will to survive. People succeed eventually in owning ordinary houses, but a truly great house possesses its owner. Such places are not always grand. They need only to have acquired a soul while surviving their rambling histories.
Madeleine Cenac always imagined she would build a French-inspired house on a magnificent property once owned by her family. Destiny however has a way of swatting down our plans like August insects. Cenac, whose ancestral roots run deep in Southeast Louisiana, understands enough about Acadian magic to heed the voices that whisper through the cypress. That’s why one afternoon it did not seem particularly odd to her, while standing at the edge of a county road liking through a ruined sugarcane field, that an old house beckoned her. Like most Southerners who rank trespassing as a sin only slightly less grave than forgetting a dinner party, she hesitated. Then, oblivious to caution, she waded through the cane to take a closer look. The house had only fragments of porches, no window glass, and a beautiful sweep of roof. After an hour it became so hard to leave, she knew something serious had happened.
Only a short time before, she had discovered a little-known lake formed some 5,000 years ago by a meander of the Mississippi River. Land there was hard to come by and rarely changed hands. Then, miraculously, a parcel became available, and she acquired it without any clear purpose. The apparition in the cane field provided the answer. Within a few months the house that had been abandoned for nearly 70 years was mounted on a flatbed and moved 50 miles to Lake Martin.
Today, when someone asks Cenac why she embarked on such a foolhardy project, she smiles and shrugs. Then the softest of shadows crosses her face an she murmurs, “I was blind, just blind. Most love blinds us, and it was love.” The house remains something of an enigma.
This story-and-a-half cottage with graceful chimneys and walls of bousillage, which is Spanish moss mixed with mud and filled in between timbers, is typical of Creole construction of the early 1800s. But the evidence of circular saw marks indicates it was actually built after 1840. So was it a small manor house or an overseer’s house? No answer seems definite, but Cenac characteristically favors the more modest interpretation. “It came partially furnished, you know,” she says. “There were plows, fencing, crayfish traps, and most intriguing, a child’s dollhouse candelabra, but a dore’ one.” That toy has become a sort of talisman, reassuring her through the difficult moments of the project and, in a sense, lighting the way.
Cenac supervised the renovation with the help of her beloved, Mark de Basile, an accomplished musician and carpenter. Having no intention of being away from the project, she surprised friends by moving a trailer onto the land. With the help of gardener Judith Bott Gonzalez, Cenac laid out a formal parterre in the front and a kitchen garden on the side, requiring burly construction workers to be as sensitive as ballet dancers.
While every step of the renovation has proceeded in a meticulous fashion, Cenac can be the inpatient sort when it comes to decoration. Even before the windows had been replaced, she installed an antique French canopy, a cabriole supper table, a gilded mirror, and a dozen candlesticks in the salon. Then, to the despair of the carpenters, she was having candlelit suppers for a few friends. Later a large Caribbean-Creole ironwood bed was moved in so she could experience the house as it had been without any modern amenities. “You learn something about yourself and your house when you experience it in its elemental and original state,” she says.
She is also raising her teenage son, Armand, along with a passel of dogs and cats that have found their way to her domain. Lake neighbors often stop by, sometimes bringing freshly caught fish. They gather in the newly added kitchen wing. De Basile breaks from his labors to play the accordion and sing Cajun songs, while a thousand different birds swirl overhead before returning to their own nests at the swampy edge of the lake. The solitary ways of an old house that issued the irresistible siren some three years ago are vague memories and now the house can hardly contain all the life asking for shelter in its reincarnation.
Teche News, By Hal Pen
August 20, 2003
“We wondered how we got the courage to begin. We were blinded by the romance of rebuilding an old house. And we did not see how much work it would take, not realizing it would take five years of our lives,” Madeleine mused. I sat and talked with her and Mark in the living room of their 160 – year-old restored home at Lake Martin.
In five years Madeleine Cenac and Mark de Basile – a musician carpenter and friend – had transformed a deteriorating 19th century house used as a storage barn into a “glorious” five-room overseer’s cottage. Madeleine’s three children – Joseph, Sasha and Armand – helped with the restoration of the house on holidays and during the summer months.
The house was beyond the cane field, not visible from the main highway. There was no road leading to it, so on a mild November day in a community south of Abbeville called Perry, Madeleine found herself hopping from one cane row to the next to get to the house. She was joined by James Fontenot, an Abbeville attorney who had told her about this 160 -year-old house owned by Martin Noel. Mark had gone on ahead with a ladder. He wanted to be there first.
“I didn’t know where Perry was,” Madeleine recalled.
“We went up and down the rows to get to the house.” “What took you so long?” Mark shouted from a second floor window when they broke into the clearing. He had examined the upstairs room called the garconniere, which was where the teen-age boys stayed and which is her teen-age son’s room now.
Mark could smell the strong scent of cypress as if it had been cut yesterday. “Good material,” he said to himself. The skeletal part of the house was all intact, and the ceiling and floor joints and rafters were all in good shape. The perimeter walls would have to be replaced and they would have to learn how to make bousillage, a mixture of clay, mud and moss used by early Cajun builders to insulate the walls.
“This was meant to be,” Madeleine broke into the conversation. “I was looking for an old house. The owners said that it would not make it through another hurricane and here I came, knocking on their door wanting to buy their house.
“Martin Noel had owned the house since 1925. He never used it as a home. People wanted to buy things out of it but he would not sell. He didn’t want to live in it but did not want to sell it piece by piece either. It was used as a storage barn in which they had crawfish traps, air compressors, and mule and horse drawn implements.”
The floor plan of the house is simple. The two front rooms open to the front porch and also have doors leading to three smaller back rooms. There is no center hall and not closets.
“The room we thought was the girl’s room was right off the master bedroom, so the girls would have to go through their parent’s room to get outside,” says Madeleine.
This room is now the bath and dressing room. The beams throughout the house are plain but the wraparound mantels in the main bedroom and living room are highly sophisticated, adorned with a diamond pattern on the facing. The large living room, measuring 16 by 23, has two doors at the rear leading to the two remaining back rooms.
The center back room had an outside door and was thought to be the dining room or receiving room for tenants. In the 19th century people were waked in their own homes and it is believed that this center room was where the body might be set out. The other back room was another small bedroom.
The attic room/garconniere is accessible from the front porch. This room, which ran the width of the house, has been rebuilt into a two-bedroom area with a bath and office section dividing the two rooms.
When Madeleine stepped through the last sugar can row and into the clearing in Perry, she found a house with no front porch or decking. The exterior walls and window sills were deteriorated and in disrepair.
“It was in the middle of a field on a large piece of property next to century old oaks that are as big as the St. John Oak in Lafayette. It looked like a postage stamp, like a small little house. But once we got it to Lake Martin on a level foundation, sitting up straight three feet off the ground, it became a glorious house. It was like a crippled person cured. It sat up straight for the first time in many years.”
 Brick by Brick
“Before we could move the house,” Madeleine explained, “we had to remove everything and take the chimney down.” During the Easter break all three of Madeleine’s kids helped in cleaning out the house. In the summertime they worked on the sills.
“We wanted to save the original bricks. To take the chimney down we used a two bucket system with eight bricks in a bucket at a time. Someone upstairs put eight bricks in and someone down below unloaded eight bricks placing them in a trailer to be hauled to the Lake Martin site.”
“It was an emotional experience for me to put my finger in the thumb print in the soft bricks, thinking that these bricks which were made on site were probably formed by a slave. This house was virginal: what it was 150 years ago without electricity, indoor plumbing or a kitchen, it was when we brought it to Lake Martin. We were the first ones to put a light bulb in the house.”
The reconstruction and restoration of Maison Madeleine was orchestrated by Madeleine, but the master carpenter was her boyfriend and Acadian musician Mark de Basile.
The original kitchen was detached from the house and did not survive the years. The new kitchen was “phase two” of their project and took them two years to complete. It is connected to the original house by a hallway and includes a large dining area with a brick fireplace constructed for cooking and a domed brick bake oven. The new area has a loft on the opposite end of the fireplace wall, a kitchen and two porches all made with lumber and bricks acquired from suppliers who deal with old house restoration.
A Child’s Candelabra
The artist sketched the back of the house as he remembered it. Madeleine and Mark had sought him out. “On the day of the sale,” Madeleine recalled, “Martin Noel told us that an artist had drawn a picture of the house and we were eager to get any information. When he had finished the back view he drew in the figure of a cross and told us a story about a little girl who had died in the house after she had eaten some bousillage. They had buried her outside the back window. After I heard the story I felt like her spirit was still around. We thought nothing more about it until much later.”
The house had to be jacked up in order to load it onto trailers to transport it to Lake Martin. An underground water cistern called a beehive, which was a bricked dome with the crown only above ground, prevented the movers from placing the final jacks.
“It had to be moved or dismantled,” Mark said. “We wanted to see if there was anything of value thrown down there. Madeleine had envisioned some fine household objects like candlesticks holders may have been hidden there. I rented a pump, drained the underground cistern and was left with a foot of muck. I rummaged around in there with my feet looking for candlesticks or other things of value and found nothing. We collapsed the beehive, lifted the house onto a trailer and hauled it to Lake Martin.”
“It was right before Halloween that we moved the trailer to Lake Martin,” Madeleine picked up the story. “And that weekend Mark had a band engagement in Seattle.”
“Here we are,” Mark interjected, “trying to cover the house with plastic sheeting to keep the rain out and she is digging dirt out of the walls.”
I couldn’t wait to sweep,” Madeleine retorted defensively.
“So she was sweeping dirt out of an empty space along the wall to the upper floor,” Mark interrupted, “and out pops this little thing. It is a child’s candelabra, a toy piece that goes with a doll house.”
“It is a treasure that came with the house,” Madeleine corrected. “Some little girl was up there playing in the attic and lost it. After the artist told us the story of the little girl we all felt like her spirit was still around and when this child’s play toy popped up I looked at Mark and said “She has come with the house. She has given us this child’s candelabra.”
By Jan Richer, The Advertiser
April 18, 2004
The house was originally built in Perry, Louisiana, in 1840. Though some might think of it as “Acadian Style,” it is not. Madeleine Cenac, owner and chief restorer, fondly refers to the home and details within as “in the Creole taste.”
When Cenac first saw the old house in 1996 in the middle of a sugar cane field, she immediately knew this was the one she had been searching for. Uninhabited since the 1920s, the structure would have seemed beyond repair to most, but her approach to the restoration project was not typical. She was a mother looking to create deep roots for her children, Joseph, Sasha and Armand.
“I did this so my children could have a home. Each of them worked hard to make this our home. Now they have that experience imprinted in their brains,” Cenac says.Looking through photographs of the pre-restored house, lesser mortals might question why anyone would ever attempt such a feat.
But Cenac smiles and says, “We were in love.” The Restoration took Cenac and Mark Meier de Basile five years to complete. They worked every day, all day, as if it were a real job. The group effort didn’t go unnoticed. In 2002, the American Institute of Architects Louisiana chapter recognized the project with its Honor award in the Restoration Category (the highest award in the category). Cenac’s house was competing with huge restoration projects in New Orleans and throughout the state.
The original house, also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, didn’t offer all the space Cenac wanted for her family. The need for additional space created a problem unique to buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.“The National Registry frowns on additions which simply made an existing building look larger. They wanted the addition to be obvious. In fact, they would have preferred this one to be modern, but I decided to go in the other direction,” Cenac explains.
Cenac describes the addition as “new” construction of old materials” based on the footprint of another bousillage home from the Cankton area (probably built in the mid-19th century.) A glassed-in hallway acts as a bridge from the old house to the new.The addition’s “working kitchen” features more bousillage walls, along with hand-hewn beams. The working fireplace is designed with cooking in mind. The fireplace features a crane to lift heavy pots, a brick bake oven and a potoger to keep items warm.
Cenac is very pleased with the results. With her own hard work, combined with that of friends and family, she has created a place that she and her children can surely always call home.
Reprinted from Country Roads Magazine,
Bird's Eye View
by Nolde Alexius
January 2006
Both man and beast enjoy easy access to Lake Martin, the largest nesting area of wading birds in the United States.
Any day of the week, any time of the year, bird watchers, naturalists, and photographers can travel approximately six miles south of Interstate-10 at Breaux Bridge and embark on a leisurely drive down Rookery Road, a dusty route that hugs the east side of the lake and, during bird watching season, affords nature lovers proximity to the rookery itself.
As for the beasts, Louisiana is geographically positioned perfectly for migration seasons. Bill Fontenot, a naturalist at Acadiana Park Nature Station, notes that of the 450 species of birds that have been recorded in Louisiana, including migrants, Lake Martin has hosted approximately 250 species. “And of those, probably 175 species on a regular basis,” he said. Because Louisiana experiences both spring and fall migrations, the state’s recorded list of birds is relatively large.
Fontentot, who writes a weekly column for The Daily Advertiser, and guides nature hikes at Lake Martin for groups organized by Elderhostel programs, expects little change in these numbers for the 2006 bird watching season, which could begin as early as the last week of January and will continue through May – the month all the eggs have hatched and the babies leave the nest.
Fontenot explained that in spring “…the focus is on the nesting of the herons and egrets and ibis and roseate spoonbills. ‘Water birds’ would be the catch-all phrase for them. The season begins in the first week of February when great egrets begin constructing nests and begin their courtship rituals. And then finally by the end of February, sometimes earlier, the females are sitting on eggs. It’s really cool by that time of the year. It’s still so stark. We have a primarily deciduous forest. The new leaves have not come in yet, so the trees are brown and drab. But whenever a single great egret sits up in the nest or trades places with her mate, you get a chance to see the eggs.”
So during this time, the nesting birds are Rookery Road’s main attraction. Many drivers pull over to the side of the road and gaze at the nests which lie in the tops of the cypress and buttonbush trees. Other visitors take the opportunity to snap a few photographs. But those who keep driving may see an alligator, beaver, or otter raise its head from nearby waters. Occasionally, one of these nocturnal animals may decide to cross the road to experience life on the opposite side, prompting curious drivers to halt obligingly.
Some nature lovers want a closer look, according to Norbert Leblanc of Leblanc Swamp Tours. “It’s nice to see the birds [from] the road, and a lot of people stop there and take pictures,” he said. “But you have to combine the boat ride with the car ride, too, because that will give you a compete shot of the lake….”
In March, April, and May, Leblanc offers “extensive rides” in his green 16-foot flat bottom boat with swivel seats and a quiet engine. “We can talk and hear all the other sounds,” Leblanc explained, “the birds, the crickets, the bullfrogs, whatever other animals are out at that time.”
Leblanc needs only 15 minutes notice, usually, to meet a group of six or fewer at the boat landing on Rookery Road. Sometimes he appears wearing his homemade turtle shell hat and bearing fruit from his garden, such as oranges and peaches. Perhaps he will share a taste of his 100-year-old family recipe for moonshine.
In fact, he prefers his tours to be spontaneous. “When you do it in the moment, you enjoy it more,” he said. In the past, tours that have been reserved for months have had to be cancelled at the last minute due to rain. “I hate to disappoint people,” he declared.
Though Leblanc is available most hours of the day for tours, he did note his preferences. “The best time to see all the birds is early morning or late in the evening,” he said.
During the day, the birds move busily around the lake. “One bird stays on the nest and one forages for food,” he explained. “When he gets back, the other bird forages for food. They take turns feeding the babies. Just at dark, they’ll all come in there to roost and they’ll spend all night. In the early morning, before anyone even thinks about getting up, they’re gone.”
But he added that on any given day, “every part is different and you never know what you’re going to see.”
Leblanc willingly stops his boat whenever a customer identifies a good photograph subject, such as an alligator floating shyly some feet away; or, Leblanc’s favorite, a roseate spoonbill passing its bill from side to side in the water, panning for food. “The roseate spoonbill is about the most beautiful bird we have right here,” he said.
Perhaps one of the many reasons the rookery draws so much interest from locals, international visitors, photographers from magazines like National Geographic, and journalists such as Charles Kuralt – all of whom have taken a tour with Leblanc – is the identification people feel with the birds’ efforts to nurture their young and prepare them to leave their nests.
Now that she’s lived a quarter mile from the rookery since 1996, Madeleine Cenac has had ample time to identify with the birds that fly in and out of her neck of the woods.
Cenac offered a simple explanation for her decision to live in the area. “It was all about having a home for my children,” she said.
Having seen her youngest child to college this fall, Cenac also understands what it means to empty her nest.
As of October, Cenac is proprietress of Maison Madeleine, the bed and breakfast she established in her home when she learned that relief workers for Hurricane Katrina needed housing. Now that her inaugural visitors have moved on, Cenac believes bird watchers, photographers, and nature lovers who want a convenient trip to the rookery both at dawn and dusk will fill her guest rooms this spring.
But Cenac’s partner, Mark deBasile, added that Maison Madeleine’s parterre garden also offers a spectacular view at sunset. deBasile explained that guests can spend twenty minutes or so standing in shadow, watching the birds. “In the evening, when the sun is coming down at a certain angle but still high enough to illuminate the birds flying over, they look like gold,” he said.
And in addition to providing an overnight stay near the rookery, the 1840 Creole cottage that houses the bed and breakfast is itself a destination. Guests can admire the mortis tenon construction method where pegs are used instead of nails, and the walls of bousillage and brick. Bousillage is a construction material made of Spanish Moss and mud. The same authentic materials used in the original structure, were used in the carefully constructed addition which provides a kitchen, dining room, and access to a spacious back porch. Cenac noted that the construction of the addition wouldn’t have been possible without lots of help from friends and family, including a local boys basketball team. Having taught that group of 16-year-olds how to make bousillage, Cenac learned that where some see hard labor, others see big fun.
“Most of the furniture I had collected over my lifetime was earlier than 1880,” Cenac said, indicating her professional experience in construction and interior design. “I felt like I wanted to find a house that had the appropriate style and age for the furniture I had collected.” With the help of a friend in Abbeville, she found the cottage, and moved it from its location on the Vermillion River to Lake Martin.
As with the rooms her family occupies, Cenac designed all three guest rooms with period furniture. The single occupancy guest room, La Petite Chambre, is appointed with a 1790 Louis XVI painted bed. Two upstairs rooms, Vue des Bois and Vue de la Coulée, each accommodate two people comfortably. A Louisiana cypress armoire and a French buffet bas heighten the charm of vue des bois. Guests in the adjoining vue de la coulée may choose to sleep in the lit clos, or “closed bed,” made of cherry and oak.
Maison Madeleine guests leave one world and enter another with the vehicle of historical accuracy while the age-old comings and goings of a great natural event persist in time.
Chapter from the book "The Nature of Things at Lake Martin"
by Nancy Camel
Maison Madeleine is the story of an abandoned 19th Century French-Creole Style home that was resurrected in a new location by a beautiful Louisiana woman of French heritage. It took five years, a lot of physical labor, the efforts of family and friends, sometimes even a basketball team. But in 2001 a dream became a reality for Madeleine Cenac. The restoration of Maison Madeleine was completed and she moved into 1015 John D. Hebert Dr. at Lake Martin with her three children, several dogs and a real sense of satisfaction.
When Madeleine became single in 1994, she wanted to restore and live in an old home; to establish a “sense of place” for herself and her children. Madeleine contacted Abbeville Attorney James Fontenot (now deceased) who had restored the hotel in Washington, La.
He recommended a house in Perry near Abbeville that was built in 1840 and originally was part of a 700-acre plantation. The Gerard DeCuir family owned the house until 1899; rice farmers and share croppers lived there until the 1920’s; then it remained empty. Madeleine bought the home in 1997 and lived in a trailer with her children on the Lake Martin property during restoration. The house that Madeleine selected stood forlornly in the middle of cane fields and was overgrown with weeds. There were no roads to the house, just rows of sugar cane and huge oak trees. It was like going through a jungle just to get to the house. Eight months of conditioning were required in order to move the structure to Lake Martin without damaging its historical value. That meant working without electricity and plumbing; hauling materials, water and food across bumpy cane rows.
A former owner of the home noticed that Madeleine’s vehicle was taking a beating driving over the cane rows, so he loaned her a huge, old tractor. The tires on the tractor were bigger than her son but it served a valuable role while the house was readied for the move. Madeleine, her beloved Mark de Basile and her children did much of the work except take off the roof, build the new foundation and design a way to insulate the attic. Mark plays the accordion with “Lafleur et Basile,” a traditional Cajun music band. His band plays twice a week on the American Queen River Boat and he restores French antiques. Madeleine’s children are Joseph, Sasha and Armand Kopfler. Joseph is a paint and sculpture artist in graduate school at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro; Sasha is studying painting and drawing at ULL after transferring from Seattle Central in Washington State; and Armand, a senior at Teurlings Catholic High in Lafayette and basketball player, lives at home. During the restoration, Armand’s basketball team from Cathedral Carmel grade school was recruited to help make the bousillage. Reportedly, a memory indelibly imprinted into their minds.
The abandoned house was in good shape except for the back left corner where the sill had to be changed. The chimney had to be taken down and reassembled which was complicated because the soft, home-made bricks were fragile. “We must have handled those bricks seven times before it was over,” Madeleine recalled. A pulley system was established; the bricks were loaded in a bucket and lowered down to the ground, cleaned, stacked then loaded onto a trailer to be off loaded at the new house site. Madeleine laughs when recalling all that they went through to move and restore the home. “We were crazy,” she said, vowing this one would be the last.
In 2002, Maison Madeleine received the Honor Award, the highest award given, by the American Institute of Architects in the restoration category in a statewide competition. Project Architect Edward J. Cazayoux, AIA, submitted the project for consideration. Although Madeleine self-contracted the restoration, it was a joint venture with EnvironMental Design. The house is now on the Register of Historic Places not because of any important event or person who lived there; but because it is so typical of the French-Creole style and it survived. Madeleine pointed out that few such examples remain. Madeleine feels confident that the house dates back to the 1840’s because of the circular saw marks on the wood. However, it is a throw back to an earlier period because of the wrap around Directoire mantel from the 18th century. The main room was unusually large probably because the owner was probably a Creole of means who produced a cash crop, Madeleine speculates. The 26 x 40 structure was “virginal” inside absent layers of modernization (no electricity or plumbing) and the original color scheme had only been changed once. The wrap-around mantels and doors were original; there was only one coat of paint on the ceilings, the cypress floors were in good shape as well as the beams. The original porch overhang did not droop although the posts were missing because of the strong red cypress rafters holding it up from the attic. However, a new porch floor, steps and posts had to be installed. The glass on the front of the house is original.
Project Architect Cazayoux used unique techniques in order to insulate, ventilate and provide a radiant barrier to the roof without changing the edge and interior profile. The rafters are left exposed and the attic is finished for bedroom use. Although unusual for the period of construction, the house has two types of infill in the walls. The interior walls are in-filled with brick while the perimeter walls feature “bousillage” in-fill.. The restoration required Madeleine and her son’s basketball team to mix mud balls of moss, mud and water to put back into the outside walls; they had to replace the brick in the walls and plaster the walls. We were really good at plastering by the time we finished the project!
The original home was restored so that visitors could “go back in time” yet experience the convenience of the 21st century. Receptacles, light switches and air conditioning vents are hidden. A conditioned walkway adjoins the original house with an 18th century-styled structure that incorporates the kitchen, dining room, utility, glassed in porch with a view to the woods and sleeping loft.
The family actually moved into the house in 2000 before it was ready because it became harder and harder to go back to the trailer. The house had water and electricity but no bath tub or washing machine. So the family lived in the house and used the trailer for bathing and washing clothes. There was no air conditioning; in fact, the house was pretty much open-air for a while.
The home is furnished with furniture, textiles and decorative objects appropriate to the early Louisiana period. Although for all practical purposes Louisiana-made furniture from those early days is unavailable for purchase, the solution was to use antique French-made furniture of the same period. Gradually the house started feeling like a home to Madeleine. The home is called Maison Madeleine because she has never able to determine the name of the original builder. The choice has been narrowed down to three possible landowners. Unfortunately parish lines were moved three times—from St. Martin to Lafayette, Vermillion. Then in the 1880’s the Vermillion Courthouse burned down leaving charred documents written in French that are difficult to read. However, Madeleine does know that the house was built on a league of land (about 4200 “arpents”) originally sold to Marin Mouton by Attakapas Indian Chief Bernard for the equivalent of $50. After DeCuir got the property, he was able to hold onto it through the Civil War. Because there were no male heirs, his wife sold the property after DeCuir died in 1899.
A wild garden flourishes outside the picket fence and a par terre garden designed by Madeleine duplicates the diamond-shaped theme of the main room fireplace mantel. Birds and butterflies abound. Large pieces of art sculpted by her artist son dot the landscape. She loves the tranquility of living in a natural environment; likes to look out her windows and not see another house or human. Madeleine does not want Lake Martin to be commercialized or sanitized. She says the only negative to living in the area is that her car is always dirty—either dusty or muddy. But that seems a small price to pay.
Home to Madeleine started in Houma, La, where she was born and raised with a sister and four brothers. Her great grandfather Pierre came to Louisiana from France in 1860 and established the C. Cenac & Co. Seafood business near Houma in Bayou Sale. Some of his 14 children used sail boats to farm oysters which were brought to New Orleans to be sold. Her grandfather William Cenac could not oyster because he had an injured arm so he became the company bookkeeper. Madeleine’s father broke tradition by becoming a doctor. He worked at Texaco to earn enough money to come to LSU where he made all A’s except for a C in English. The story goes that the teacher gave him a C because he had a French accent in his English.
Madeleine Cenac invited her extended family for Christmas dinner in her restored home for the first time in 2001. The walls were unfinished, there was little only faint lighting by candlelight but Madeleine recalled, “It was glorious! The house has always had a good feeling.”
Things remain to be done in the ongoing process of restoring a historic home. There is a smokehouse on the drawing board. But Madeleine Cenac has done it her way and her life is exactly as she envisioned it could be, nurtured in return by her beloved, her children and her little piece of paradise. |
