Unusual Writing Tips...

This 76 Year Old Has Better Beauty Hacks Than You Do, --- [Fascinating!!!]...

Chiricahua Memories...

Chiricahua Memories

Descendants of Apache Warriors Revisit Cochise’s Final Battleground

Reprinted courtesy of the Tucson Weekly December 10-16, 1998

By Sam Negri

ON OCTOBER 9 Berle Kanseah loaded his pickup truck and left the high country of the Mescalero Apache Reservation in western New Mexico.  In the next six and a half hours he drove south and west 362 miles to Tucson, the first leg in a  journey that would take him 129 years back in time.

Kanseah is a Chiricahua Apache.  Like all other Chiricahua Apaches who were evicted from southern Arizona at the end of the Indian wars in 1886, his ancestors were shipped to an overcrowded camp in Florida as prisoners of war, later to Alabama and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  In 1913, the U.S. government said the Chircahuas were no longer prisoners of war and gave them a choice of remaining at Fort Sill or moving in with the Mescalero and Lipan Apaches on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico.  The majority, 181 of them, chose Mescalero, an area almost directly east of the mountain ranges in eastern Arizona that had been their homeland.

Kanseah, 59, was born on the Mescalero Reservation.  What he knew about his ancestral past in Sonora and Arizona came from his grandparents and other relatives who still had relatively fresh memories.  Anthropologists refer to many contemporary Indian groups as memory cultures, meaning that while they may not live like their ancestors or practice esoteric rituals, they share common memories and stories they’ve all heard at family gatherings.  For the most part, the stories are the strongest link to their past and distinguish them from other ethnic groups who, of course, have their own memories and stories.

As a child, the stories Kanseah heard were about southern Arizona and northern Sonora. What he knew of his ancestors came from the stories of his grandparents who had warm memories of the terrain that had been home to them and their ancestors.

“For years, our grandparents indicated they wanted to go back to Mexico and eastern Arizona,” he said over dinner one night in Benson. “They mentioned the country was so beautiful, and it had everything.  They also missed relatives.  As we grew up, going back to Mexico was a foreign idea. It wasn’t do-able. We wouldn’t know how to administrate the trip.” Kanseah  paused and smiled, adding: “We needed someone who could say, ‘It can be done, Mr. Indian, and this is how we’ll do it.’ ”

Over the last 20 years or so, two people have filled that role to one degree or another.  One was Neil Goodwin, of Massachusetts, son of the famous anthropologist Grenville Goodwin, who took some Chiricahua Apaches to Mexico for a documentary film he was making in 1988; and the other was Alicia Delgadillo, who lived four years near a national forest recreation area called Cochise Stronghold, on the eastern slope of the Dragoon Mountains, and who now lives in Tucson.

Delgadillo said she first met Kanseah and other Chiricahua Apaches at a ceremony at Fort Bowie, in 1986, marking the centennial of Geronimo’s surrender, the capitulation that ended the Indian wars of the last century. **

“After that,” she said, referring to the Chiricahuas, “it just happed to us; we became interconnected, for whatever reason. I always accepted what came my way insofar as being linked to them and did not question why our paths seemed to keep crossing.”

One of the reasons that relationship thrived, she speculated, is that she is “not an anthropologist and they know I have no personal agenda, such as publish or perish. All I can say is that we just seemed to click.  In the beginning I was involved in just the nuts-and-bolts logistics, but over the years our relationship became increasingly personal.  I think I have a good understanding of their goals and objectives about re-establishing their presence here in Arizona.  I believe the Chiricahua who participate in these on-going public programs gain information to add to their oral tradition. Also they are reaching out to the non-Indian community to educate them about Chiricahua philosophy.”

The excursion to Arizona, which a dozen Chiricahua Apaches made in October, was the kind of program to which she referred.  It began with a small gathering at the University of Arizona and led, over a two-day period, to sites in the Chiricahua and Dragoon Mountains where their ancestors had lived and fought, and had the effect of converting stories and memories to palpable experiences.

There is, perhaps, some irony in the fact that non-Indians were there to flesh out the picture for the visiting Apaches. History, as it has often been noted, is written by the victors, and many of the troopers who fought the Apaches kept journals which historians and anthropologists have been sorting through for many years. Over time, much of what was written by the troopers and their officers has been scrutinized by scholars and writers less emotionally involved in the actual events.

One of those is Edwin Sweeney, an amicable accountant who grew up near Boston and now works as the comptroller of a company in St. Louis. In recent years, following an interest he developed as a child watching western movies, Sweeney wrote an award-winning biography of Cochise, and most recently edited Making Peace With Cochise, the 1872 Journal of Capt. Joseph Alton Sladen. Sladen was one of the army officers present when Cochise agreed to stop fighting.

ON a Sunday afternoon in October, Sweeney stood before the small contingent of Apaches who had come to Arizona from the Mescalero Reservation. Among the Indians was a gracious old man-Frank Sladen, Lt. Sladen’s grandson, who had come all the way from Michigan. The scene was Rucker

Canyon on the west side of the Chiricahua Mountains, a place which neither the modern Chiricahua Apaches nor the elderly Frank Sladen had ever seen. Cedar-covered hills rose up to a rocky promontory behind them as Sweeney and others vividly unraveled a tale about how it happened that Apaches and white men had gone at each others throats with a vengeance.

In a distinct Boston accent, Sweeney explained that the battle that occurred in the hills behind him marked the beginning of the end for Cochise. The old warrior had been fighting white men for nine years. He was tired, outnumbered, out-gunned. He could see that this was not going to end for his people, but he was not yet ready to give up. The date was Oct. 20, 1869. There was a battle in those hills behind him, Sweeney said, that had its roots some 50 miles to the west, near Dragoon Springs, at the north end of the Dragoon Mountains.

On Oct. 5, 1869, a Col. John Finkle Stone, the 33-year-old president of Apache Pass Mine, near Ft. Bowie, headed back to his home in Tucson aboard a mail coach. He had an escort of four. When they approached an abandoned stagecoach station at the north end of the Dragoon Mountains, a bunch of Apaches camouflaged with weeds jumped out of a gully and hit them fast and hard. Stone, the coach driver, and all of the soldiers were killed. The news stunned Tucson, where Stone-for whom Stone Avenue was later named-was well-known and admired.

Within hours of this attack, Cochise and his band encountered a group of cowboys in the Sulphur Springs Valley. The men were moving a herd of cattle from Texas to California when Cochise and his band came upon them. The Apaches attacked, killing one of the men and stealing the cattle.

One member of that group, named Scott, managed to escape and fled to Ft. Bowie to ask for help.

Lt. William H. Winters and some 26 troopers left Bowie in pursuit of the Apaches, but before they reached the site they encountered another rider who told them of the attach on Stone and the mail coach. Winters had to decide which way to head. Finally, he declared, “I can’t do anything for the dead, “but I sure can do something for the living,” and turned towards Dragoon Springs.

Horrified by the carnage he found there, Winters took off after Cochise who, he knew, was driving his stolen cattle toward Mexico. When Cochise saw Winters and his troopers in the distance, he realized he’d never outrun them and make it across the border, so he changed course and headed into Rucker Canyon……

IT IS 129 years later and the Apaches with their small children are bunched together in rapt attention. “In the 1860’s,” said Sweeney, motioning to the pastoral wonderland at his back, “this was Cochise’s principal Stronghold.” This hideaway is not the same as today’s Cochise Stronghold Campground. That’s many miles to the west, in the Dragoon Mountains, and was where Cochise lived in old age.

In 1869, Sweeney said, Cochise fled into this earlier stronghold between Red Rock and Turtle Mountain, above Rucker Canyon, and the army followed. Lt. Winters was quickly joined by another contingent from Ft. Bowie, led by Capt. Reuben Bernard, but the whole battle was essentially a storm in a glass of water, doing very little to advance the cause of peace or understanding.

Among the guests present to flesh out this picture for the Apaches in 1998 was a tall and articulate man from Tucson named Sandy Vandenberg. Sandy is more formally known as Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Jr., a major general in the Air Force before his retirement. Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is named for his father, who was also a general and had been Air Force Chief of Staff. Sandy, a West Point graduate, has a special interest in U.S. military history, and specifically in military strategy.

The Apaches formed a caravan with their trucks and vans, following Vandenberg up a torturous road to where the fighting had taken place on a cold and rainy afternoon more than a hundred year earlier.

The Apaches stood quietly, their faces concealing whatever they might have been feeling. “I’ve been to this site at least 85 times, Vandenberg told them, “trying to recreate a map of precisely what had happened in 1869.” He said he found shell casings which told him the Indians were much better armed than anyone would have expected at the time. The soldiers had Spencer carbines and revolvers. Under normal circumstances, most Apaches carried bows and arrows and spears, but in this case some also carried weapons stolen from the victims in the mail coach massacre. These included single-shot Springfield rifles as well as 7-shot Spencer repeating carbines and at least one Henry 16-shot rifle. Vandenberg had found the evidence by walking the terrain where the battle occurred.

The battle in Rucker was called The Campaign of the Rocky Mesa. Two soldiers who tried to ascend the mesa in pursuit of the Apaches were killed immediately. Various attempts to ford the hill-even placing sharpshooters on a nearby hill and trying to lob shells on the Apaches-were fruitless. The Apaches suffered 18 casualties, according to Bernard’s account, but Bernard’s credibility (as we shall see) was questionable.

Brief though the battle was it was a miserable confrontation for all involved. It was cold, rainy, and the light was fading fast. In the skirmishes that followed over the next week or so, Apache scouts assisting the Army and various Apache warriors were shouting to each other in their native language, the Indians inquiring about the possibility of coming to some kind of peaceful settlement, the Army officers responding through the scouts that the Apaches had to put down their arms and come in before any talks could begin.

Nothing was accomplished. Bernard, who, according to Vandenberg, clearly stayed with the horses while ordering his men to  the dangerous battle on the hill above him, later recommended that 31 me be awarded the Medal of Honor. “These are the men,” Bernard wrote, “who went up the rocky mesa with me.”

“Hell,” Vandenberg declared, “he never went up the mesa.” But, Washington was a long way off, so who would know the difference? The medals were awarded. They constituted, said Bill Gillespie, an archaeologist with the Coronado National Forest, “the most medals awarded at any single battle during the Indian wars.”

As Vandenberg held forth, creating a vivid picture of the battle, Chiricahua Apache toddlers-no doubt distant descendants of some of the Indians who fought 129 years ago-sat on the ground gathering twigs. they stuck them in the ground like candles, and sang “Happy Birthday”….

IT WAS a bright morning in West Stronghold Canyon in the Dragoon Mountains near St. David. Some 24 hours had passed since the Chiricahua Apache visitors had left the battlefield at Rucker. There was a hint of excitement in the air as the Apaches approached the jumble of huge granite boulders, perhaps because they knew that in the idyllic settling Cochise was not only a fighter but a leader of community, someone with a family. Kanseah said his grandfather remembered seeing Cochise when he was a child. Perhaps these modern Apaches remembered a description of Cochise left behind by an Army doctor, Anderson Nelson Ellis, who had been an eyewitness to a meeting in 1871 between Cochise and Gen. Gordon Granger.

“While he was talking,” Ellis wrote of the 56-year-old Apache chief, “we had a fine opportunity to study this most remarkable man…His height, five feet en inches; in person lithe and wiry, every muscle being well-rounded and firm. A silver thread was now and then visible in his otherwise black hair, which he wore cut straight around his head about on a level with his chin. His countenance displayed great force. Cochise spoke through an interpreter. He spoke in his language to one of his warriors who also spoke Spanish. The warrior repeated the words in Spanish to a Spanish speaker in Gen. Granger’s contingent, who then translated them into English for the general.

Cochise declared: “When I way young, I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it.” “How is it? Why is it that the Apaches wait to die, that they carry their lives on their fingernails? They roam over the hills and the plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The Apaches were once a great nation. They are now but a few, and because of this they want to die, and so carry their lives on their fingernails.”

Nobody present among the modern Chiricahua Apaches had heard those sad and lyrical words, and yet still there was a sense of wonder and wistfulness as they meandered into the thick tangle of boulders where Cochise had lived with his family and the warriors he commanded.

At noon, Sweeney and Gillespie again faced the dozen Chiricahua Apaches in a clearing near the mouth of the canyon. It was on this spot, they said, that Cochise me with Gen. Oliver Otis Howard and agreed to make peace. Not only was it the same spot, it was the same day, October 12, only 126 years later.

About a half hour earlier, as Kanseah stood in a shallow cave that was covered with petroglyphs, he had paused in his speculations to remark, “I wonder what it all means. If only the rocks could talk!”

Now we are in the middle of other rocks where lions and snakes lie hidden and-for all we know, because no on knows-Cochise may lie buried, and the air is pregnant with possibilities. Standing in the group are a handful of Chiricahua Apaches who have heard stories about this place from their grandparents. Sitting next to one of the Apaches is 78-year-old Frank Sladen, who had grown up hearing another version of the same stories (During final peace negotiations, his grandfather had been kept as a sort of hostage by Cochise for 13 days, an incident which increased his respect and admiration for the Apache leader he’d originally regarded as “a bloodthristy chief.”)

Time may not heal all wounds, but it seems sometimes to have an uneasy leveling effect. In that particular spot on Oct. 12, 1998, the progeny of the Indian wars emerged from an abstraction as a handful of aging people looking for connections that might link the past with the present in some meaningful way. Kanseah’s words came to mind one again, resonant and full of wonder: “If only the rocks could talk.”

Joan Baez, -- "The Wild Mountain Thyme," --- [My favorite version of this song!!!]...

The Spirit Of Crazy Horse...

Michael Greyeyes...

"Crazy Horse," [1996 movie clip, with Michael Greyeyes as Crazy Horse], -- The Fetterman Massacre...

David Thomas, –- "Listen To Your Heart." --- [Images taken from the 1966 movie, "Crazy Horse"]...

"Into the West Trailer" - 1992, --- [This was a superlative mini series, produced by Steven Speilberg]...

Apache song, - "Tatank"...

Native American Flute song for Lipan Apaches performed by Ruben Chato...

The Lost Adams Diggings, --- The Apache's Gold...

Adams, for whom the legend became known and whose first name forever has been lost to history, was born in Rochester, NY July 10, 1829.^[2] In August 1864 he was journeying in his wagon from Los Angeles to Tucson.^[3] After Apaches set his wagon on fire, Adams drove a dozen saved horses towards Sacaton, Arizona, with the hope to sell them. In Sacaton, Adams met a group of twenty one miners led by John Brewer traveling together in search of the gold fields. The party also accounted the Pima-Mexican guide who promised the prospectors to lead them to the valley of gold :“I know a place where canyon walls cry tears of [gold] every day! And those tears are larger than your coins!” Supposedly, In 1862, the young Pima-Mexican had gone on an expedition with the Apaches when those attacked Pueblo Indians in western New Mexico. While on the expedition he had seen gold nuggets that were larger than oak nuts. The young man had appreciation for works made out of silver and turquoise but had no knowledge of gold value. The miners made a bargain with the guide who only asked for a horse, a saddle, a weapon and some of the gold in exchange. The group was badly in need of horses, and when by fate Adams appeared in Sacaton with his twelve head, Brewer struck a deal with Adams on the terms that Adams would share leadership with him in exchange for donating his horses.

Twenty-two men set out on August 20.^[4] Along with their guide the group followed White River and its east fork into the White Mountains and entered western New Mexico. The guide paused and pointed to two mountains that were shaped like sugar loaves. “The gold canyon lies at the foot of those peaks,” the guide said. According to Adams, from that mountain lookout the miners were able to observe San Francisco Mountains. Adams thought that this mountain range was located on Mt. Ord, or on one of the mountaintops nearby. The miners entered a canyon with a fantastic gold deposit through 'the Little Door', as Adams referred to it. He said that the passageway was so narrow that the riders had to enter it one by one. They descended a canyon via a Z-shaped trail. At the bottom of the canyon was a spring with a low falls above it.^[5]

Within a few days the group collected a fortune of gold nuggets that they hid in a corn-grinding basin left by ancient Indians. The young guide left the miners on the first night after the discovery and after being paid. Before leaving the guide issued a warning. He told the group not to stay long in the canyon that was a campsite for Apaches. Apache Chief Nana and 30 warriors appeared the second day. The chief told them not to go above the falls. Some of the men started construction of a cabin. A cache of the gold was hidden under the cabin's hearth stone.^[6] The miners continued to mine the gold until they ran out of supplies. The party decided to send Brewer and five others to buy more supplies at Old Fort Wingate, west of modern Grants.

After Brewer's party left, some of the men began secretly searching above the falls. They returned to camp with large nuggets. Adams warned them against it but the nuggets were kept.^[7]

Nine days after the provisions party did not return, Adams became concerned about their safety. Along with another miner named Davidson, Adams climbed out of the canyon to discover five bodies on the trail, Brewer was not among them. They raced back towards camp, but it was too late. A large party of Indians had reached the camp and killed the remaining miners. The cabin had been set on fire, making the hearth stone too hot to move.^[8] Thirteen days later, Adams and Davidson were found by a military patrol out of Fort Apache, AZ.^[9]

Upon recovery Adams settled in California and when the Apache Wars ended, he led several expeditions to find the canyon and the basin filled with gold. Adams must have had a terrible sense of direction, after so many years of searching his quest proved hopeless. But in his search he inspired others to joint the hunt.

In July 1949, 83-year-old Robert W. "Bob" Lewis, who said he had known Adams when he had been a cowpuncher and law officer in Socorro County, New Mexico, stated that he and Adams searched for the gold together in 1889 twenty five years after the massacre in 1864. But it was not until 1918, that he claimed to have single-handedly found the skeletons and Adam's cabin at the mouth of a canyon 35 miles northwest of Magdalena, New Mexico. Lewis said that everything was there just as Adams had described except for the gold. He said he later found out the missing gold had been found by a Magdelena Sheepherder who received $20,000 for it with which he bought a ranch in Albuquerque, New Mexico.^[10]

Possible locations

For decades the Zuni Mountains were considered the most plausible location of the diggings. Thousands of prospectors, ranch-hands, and men-of-fortune searched this area and the rest of southwestern New Mexico prior to World War II, as the Adams diggings became the most sought-for gold in the country. Only Frank Dobie's 1939 book Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver adequately describes how renowned the Adams legend had become. The combination of the depression and the deregulation of the gold market prompted the most unlikely people to search for the diggings. Between 1895 and 1930 several large logging communities flourished in the Zuni Mountains, several with schools and post offices; wide-gauge railroads crisscrossed the mountains. The loggers were well aware of the Adams legend, as it had become a nationally known story. Between running logs nothing was more common than prospecting except for drinking. Rumors of gold in the Zunis had become so common that the U.S. government ordered several geological expeditions in the years between World War I and World War II to verify whether this claim could be supported. The geologists found nothing. In the 1950s the area was thoroughly re-explored for uranium during the uranium boom around Grants, New Mexico. Eventually the obsession with the Zuni Mountains as a host for the Adams diggings faded. It was also around the mid-century that the popularity of the Adams legend began to diminish and the Lost Dutchman Mine became America's most sought-for lost gold mine. The Adams diggings were beginning to seem a hoax or a mine unlikely to ever be found.

Geologically, the Adams diggings could only be in the southwestern quadrant of the state. Adams himself spent most of the remainder of his life searching the areas in and around Reserve, New Mexico. This area was the largest gold producing area in the state, and hosted several small mining booms, including the rich strikes at Silver City and Pinos Altos. The areas that could conceivably host the diggings in this region (containing several large mountain ranges that remain sparsely inhabited) are numerous, as minerals and evidence of previous mining can be found throughout the area. Local folklore will tell you that the gold is at the headwaters of either the Black River, the Gila River, or the Prieto River. Spanish Lore will tell you to look to the Blue Mountains. Dozens of mining camps in this region of New Mexico were thought to be the Adams diggings for brief periods, until each proved itself to be less rich than at first indicated: egregious hopes followed by rapid disappointment. That seems to be the story of gold in the desert southwest.

The Datils and Gallinas Mountains and the basins to the north of these mountains were considered possible locations for the diggings that increased in popularity as the other locations lost appeal. Dick French, in his book Four Days from Fort Wingate,^[11] places the diggings in this area. It has become known as "Dick French’s area," although his location was known to have been found by others in the 1950s, if not earlier. A follow-on work by Dick French, Return to the Lost Adams Diggings: The Paul A. Hale Story^[12] published in 2014 uses historical, artifactual, geographical, and geological data to demonstrate the viability of the location in the new book as the locality of the Lost Adams Diggings. The new book demonstrates the presence of significant gold mineralization, adds a wrinkle to the story by presenting evidence of colonial Spanish activity in the area dated to the 1600s, and identifies and locates every critical landmark. The new book contains maps, pictures of artifacts, assay reports, and is written in a conversational format with Dick interviewing the re-discoverers Paul Hale and Ronald Schade.

A similar but geographically less plausible location was found in eastern Arizona by Don Fingado near Clifton. The site contains features described by Adams much like the area favored by Dick French; however, the gold remained undiscovered.

In some minds the gold was to be found on either the Zuni or Navajo reservations, but the laws preventing the acquisition of mineral rights in these regions have discouraged searching.

There are other sites, but the leading candidates in the popular imagination are mentioned above. If it really exists, its traditional location remains within "Apacheria" or the southwest quadrant of New Mexico and bordering areas in Arizona. The complexity of the story is detailed in Jack Purcell's definitive book on the subject, The Lost Adams Diggings: Myth, Mystery, and Madness. This work, unlike its predecessors, is a serious attempt to give historical perspective supported by cited research. Purcell believes that the gold exists and is perhaps somewhere in the mountains just south of Quemado, New Mexico. Perhaps gold will be found someday, but in the minds of most, the legend is fading away among the other items in the forgotten annals of American lore.

Legacy

The many stories arising or deriving from the lost diggings have inspired many to search for lost Apache gold ever since. Its legend has supplied many folk tales, stories and books with ample fuel for fantasies of lost treasures, hidden canyons, Apache secrets and gold "somewhere out there" in the wilds. Another supposed Indian name for the mine was "Sno-Ta-Hay," which supposedly means "there it lies" i.e. the gold is on the ground and can be picked up or panned as a placer mine. Chief Nana supposedly called it that when he first warned the Adams party before the attack. As previously mentioned, J. Frank Dobie devoted half of his book "Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver" (now in its ninth printing) to the story of the Lost Adams Diggings and considered it to be the greatest "lost mine" story of US history. The amount of mail being sent to western New Mexico during the 1930s prompted the government to create a new post office in the area affectionately named "Lost Adams Diggings, NM;" the post office has since closed.

The 1963 novel MacKenna's Gold by Heck Allen is loosely based on the Adams legend. The novel was made into a film in 1969 with the title Mackenna's Gold. Numerous other books about, or based on, the diggings have been written.

The Whistle Stop Cafe - Juliette, Ga., - ["Fried Green Tomatoes"]... :D

"Fried Green Tomorrows," --- The Town Of Juliett, Georgia, where the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" was filmed...

Ummm, --- yeah...

"New Orleans Ladies," By Louisiana Le Roux...

Yes...

The Man Who Cherished a Rotting Corpse...

The Embalmed Girl Mannequin 'La Pascualita' The Corpse Bride...

J.K. Rowling's Top 10 Rules For Success...

Anne Rice Generously Gives The BEST Advice On Writing I've Ever Heard!!!...

Anne Rice's "The Witching Hour" made into a video detailing the 13 witches, - [If you read the book you will probably see how good this video is.]...

I LOVE the music!!!...  It's just perfect!!!

The House at 1239 1st Street, New Orleans, - [From the Official Anne Rice Website]...

 

Built  in 1857, 1239 First Street is "transitional" in style, containing both Greek Revival and Italianate elements. The double galleries have Corinthian columns below and Ionic columns below, set between square pillars at the corners. Albert Hamilton Brevard, who commissioned the house, was a wealthy merchant with a taste for the finer things in life. At the time of its construction, the house contained many conveniences, such as hot and cold running water in all four of its bedrooms. However, Brevard had little time to really enjoy his mansion; he died there, only two years after he moved in. The Reverend Emory Clapp acquired the house from Brevard's daughter in 1869 and contracted with architect Charles Pride to add the hexagonal bays. They were designed to enlarge an existing room for use as the Episcopalian clergyman's library. But Rev. Clapp found more pleasure in tobacco, and his library quickly became his smoking room. As newlyweds, the Clapps wanted their residence to reflect their style and refinement, so they began their occupancy by installing massive, beveled French mirrors in the double parlors downstairs.

After Rev. Clapp passed away, his wife continued to occupy the house until 1934, taking a loving interest in maintaining it. In her later years, Mrs. Clapp enclosed part of a gallery and installed an elevator on the Chestnut St. side of the house. From 1989-2004, the house was the home of Stan and Anne Rice.

This house is also the inspiration for Mayfair Manor, the Garden District home of Anne's Mayfair Witches. Pictured here are the swimming pool and the side porch. Both of these locations figure prominently in Mayfair Family history. In Anne's Mayfair Family, the swimming pool in the backyard garden was installed by Stella Mayfair in the wild years of her youth. It is the pool that Michael Curry is found floating in on Christmas morning, 1989, after suffering a heart attack while fighting Lasher.

Deirdre Mayfair sits on the side porch in silence for over thirty years, refusing to speak so as not to allow Lasher to enter her thoughts. During this time, Lasher is often seen standing beside her rocking chair, whispering into her ear. The side porch is two stories high with very ornate cast iron decorations. It fronts on two attic windows on the third story of the house. Ancient Evelyn, when she was a young girl, paid secret visits to Uncle Julien by climbing this iron balcony to the second story. Antha Mayfair climbed through one of the attic windows onto the porch roof, where she jumped to her death rather than become part of the Mayfair legacy. Behind those windows, Carlotta Mayfair poisoned private investigator Stewart Townsend, and then wrapped his body in a rug bound with chains, and stored him in the attic for fifty years to be discovered by the engaged Rowan and Michael. Michael also throws Lasher, in a Taltos body, from one of these windows to his death on the flagstones below. 

"Anne Rice no longer owns property in New Orleans; please be aware that all properties featured here are now owned by others. We have provided these photographs for historical purposes, and we ask that everyone be respectful of the privacy of the new owners.” 

An Excerpt From My Novel, - "In The Land Of The Dreamy Scenes"...

  Pretty Charlezza Le Velle was sitting on the back steps of Mahogany House scratching the sole of her foot and taking lazy sips from her tall glass of very sugary lemonade.  It was refreshing, even though the drink wasn’t a bit cold; at least it was wet!  The ice man came every  weekday in the summer, at seven o’clock in the evening, with his big blocks of ice caught between tongs to deliver them to Madame Lulu’s leaky wooden icebox, but afterwards Madame Lulu was very stingy with the ice.  Her girl weren’t supposed to drink chilled beverages unless they were with clients, and, naturally the ice was gone by morning.  

  Charlezza rolled her round chestnut-colored eyes, batted her spiky black lashes by learned, --- uh, --- habit.  It was okay if there wasn’t anyone watching, dang it, --- so what?  Acting the unpredictable Creole coquette got very tedious, at times...  Besides, business was slow in the sub-tropical Louisiana  August heat when tempers were itchy and everything a girl touched felt clammy and clingy, --- ugh, especially flesh against flesh, sort of stuck together and, yet, amazingly, still sliding back and forth and threatening to chafe, even with Mama Lorraine’s homemade jasmine and sage powder applied regularly!  Charlezza was happy that Madame Lulu partly closed the place down in the summer in New Orleans, in good old Storyville.  That was sensible, --- yeah, darn sensible of her!   It was mid morning and Charlezza knew, oh --- heck, heck, heck!  She knew that she should be getting back to Billy Bart Zager who was still asleep in the little brass bed upstairs because Billy Bart had paid for her till morning, but he was snoring so loudly that she just couldn’t stand it!  She thought she’d lose it and knife him with the letter opener that sat in the silver tray in Madame Lulu’s private parlor...  Yes, knife him right though his little pot belly if she heard just one more liquidy snort from his open drooling, buck-toothed mouth!  And, besides, he was still a little stinky from vomit, even though she had cleaned him as best she could after he threw up all over one of Madame Lulu’s new couches that she recently imported from Calais, France, the chartreuse silk brocade one with the twisted cord fringes.  Charlezza hoped that she wouldn’t have to pay for cleaning it!  She didn’t think she made enough money, --- not ever, and the cleaning of the couch's delicate fabric would make her practically broke, again, again this month, just like the last!

   Charlezza pursed her lips, even thinking of Pierre Junot...  She could almost feel his silky and wavy dark hair sliding through her fingers, his broad muscular shoulders under her palms.  Sure, she knew that she was being silly; Madame Lulu told her that often enough.  She told her and told her that a whore, even one as young, lovely and classy as Charlezza, couldn’t actually BELIEVE that she could have a regular boyfriend like other girls, a boyfriend made out of one of the clients, --- “You are dreaming fluffy pink clouds and shitting out stones, ma petite angel!,” Lulu had sternly warned her.  She scowled, “No man who frequents my place is ever going to marry you!”

   But, Charlezza had  the precious dreams of any normal romantic twenty year old girl, even if that girl had been born the descendant of women who had included the fancy mistresses of aristocratic men who lived in the French Quarter’s double gallery mansions and who set up the young women in little exquisite apartments on North Rampart Street.  These gentlemen contracted virginal girls through the old and antiquated system of Placage, or short term “marriages”.  In fact, the sweet and pretty girls were carefully brought up in the tradition of Southern belles for when  they would be put on display during their debuts at Octoroon Balls, set up by the venerable Auguste Tessier, their nurse-sponsors, who were often their mothers, hoping they’d catch the eye of a rich and easy-living gentleman.   

   Now, Chalezza slammed her glass of lemonade down so hard on the brick steps that it broke and the drink splashed all over her.  She shook her hand in the air, spraying specks of blood, sucked two of her fingers, hard.  The sting annoyed her more than it hurt.  Charlezza kept her fingers in her mouth as she rose from the steps and entered through the back door of Lulu White’s scumptuous castle-like place at two thirty five North Basin Street, actually, on the corner of North Basin and Bienville, that enormous and unique building that cost forty thousand dollars to put up, built of marble with it’s fan-shaped stained glass window over the front door and it’s distinctive tower, it’s two thousand dollars worth of furniture, it’s custom made two hundred dollar cut glass chandelier and it’s plush velvet drapes.  It had fifteen bedrooms and five parlors, and was four stories high, counting the bottom floor that was used as a storage area.  Yes, Lulu White’s place was very tall, like some of the other most elegant brothels of the thirty eight blocks of Storyville, which were bounded by Iberville, Basin, Saint Louis and North Robertson Streets and named after New Orleans Alderman Sidney Story, to his dismay.  It was careful and cautious Sidney Story who came up with the infamous guidelines for the prostitution that had been legal in the Tenderlion Distict ever since July sixth, eighteen ninety seven, a tiny bit over fifteen years ago and counting, --- now....  

Anne Rice's House At 1239 First Street, New Orleans...

...This house was the setting of my favorite of her books, --- "The Witching Hour".  This was the Mayfair House.  [But, I believe it has sold.  I would have LOVED, LOVED, LOVED to have it!!!...  SUCH a house!!!]

Top 10 Badass Historical Women You Probably NEVER Heard Of!!!...

The History Of Hot Dogs, --- National Geographic Documentary...

When This Firefighter Was Asked To Pose With A Rescue Dog For A Calendar...