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HANCOCK COUNTY EAGLE, t
, Story oi Gulf Coast Camellias Told In i The ?American Camellia Year Book? 1 By Mrs. Eugene E. Mogabgab
Appearing in the ?American Camel-i lia Year Book? for 1950 is an article
?	entitled ?Old Camellias of the Gulf ' Coast,? by a Bay St. Louis resident,
| Mrs. Edwina N. Mogabgab.
Mrs. Mogabgab has been actively interested in garden club work for the past ten years and is well known both locally and throughout the stale in j garden circles.
The article is as follows:
As far back as one can remember, there have been camellia trees on the j Mississippi Gulf Coast. Many of them wero brought from France by the early i settlers and plantation owners. They were always known as camellias and only in the past ten or fifteen years has the name Japonica become famil-I iarly associated with the camellia.
About this time they became popular and were bought by the hundreds and planted, mostly as small bushes, in the gardens of the Coast and the surrounding areas. Many, not knowing of their beauty before this time, thougth they were a new shrub as they were called ?Japonica.? It was some time before they rightfully became known as the ?Camellia-Japonica.?
Nurserymen and agents from large gardens in the east bought many of our oldest and largest trees at fabulously cheap prices, many were found growing on dilapidated properties and the owners were dilighted to sell a pretty flowering tree for, what to them, was an exorbitant price. In this way, the Coast lost some of her oldset and most beautiful camellia trees.
In the front garden of Art Fifield?s home and tourist court, a few yards from the highway in Ocean Springs, Miss., and in full view of the passing traffic, is a thirty-two foot ?Sarah Frost.? This tree is the largest tree on the Coast as far as is known. It is a healthy plant and growing under the huge branches of an old oak tree. Mr. Fifield chaims this tree to be approximately eighty years old. Some years ago he refused seven hundred dollars for it. In full bloom, this tree is a beautiful picture.
In Memorial Park, situated in the heart of Pass Christian, Miss., on the coast-line, a healthy twelve year old plant stands seven feet high and proudly sways in the Gulf breezes. It deserves to be proud and haughty for it is the off-spring of an old and historical plant still growing in the front garden of the old McCuthean property on the beach front.
According to records, this mother plant, a mere slip at the time, was brought to the coast from Mt. Vernon. Mrs. Frances Park Lewis Butler, a grandniece of George Washington and a great granddaughter of Martha Washington, brought this plant to the coast and planted it in her front garden sometime in the 1870?s. She is burried in the Live Oak Cemetery in the town and her tombstone states that she was born in 1793 and died in 1874.
The blossoms of this tree are a semidouble red and to this day have not been identified as to name. Like a person, she has begun to show her age, perhaps, due to neglect and the whipping she has taken from the three large
magnolia trees that flank her on three sides. The height of this tree is about eighteen feet. One wonders how she has withstood the lashing of the winds and the surf from tropical hurricanes and storms that visit our coast from time to time. Over one hundred years of age it is no wonder she has lost her girlish figure and is a bit lop-sided. Regardless of her age and abuse, she still bears many lovely blossoms each year.
A few hundred yards from the beach, is the front garden of the old Monroe and Leany property, now owned by Mrs. Margaret Gack, is another old camellia tree. This tree, so far as can be ascertained, is between eighty and one hundred years of age. It is twenty feet in height and about eighteen feet wide. It was also grown from a cutting from the historical ?Mother plant?. Pass Christian?s famous camellia has many children scattered throughout the town and the townspeople say that flowers from the ?mother plant? are of a deeper shade than those of the offspring.
Moving westward along the coast and across the old Bay of St. Louis, we come to the towns of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. So closely are these towns tied together in civic and social contacts that it is said, ?only the politicians can find a dividing line."
In the front garden of the Charles A. Breath, Jr. home on North Beach, a large and healthy old camellia tree is growing. This tree, twenty feet in height is a tradition in the Breath family and 8S far as they know, is about seventy years of age. It has been identified as ?Mission Bell?. Mr. B?s mother, as the bride of Captain William Boardman, brought it as a young plant from her home at Elmwood Plantation near Bay St. Louis, and planted it in the yard of her new home. Here it has thrived and given of its blossoms to hundreds of people these many years. It stands beneath a large oak and has withstood the salt spray and winds from year to year. During its blooming season large branches covered with blooms are given to the church for decoration and to the owner?s many friends. The tree is cherished and yet generously shared with the neighbors.
Over one hundred years ago a small potted ?Alba Plena? was bought from Indian peddlers at the French Market in New Orleans, La., and planted in a very small garden at 218 North Beach in Bay St. Louis, then owned | by the Saucier family. The home is still standing and is now owned by the Horton family. The plant, growing not more than a few feet from the porch of the home is situated about twenty feet from the beach road. At one time it was almost tree size but with age and the constant whipping from salt spray it is now in very poor condition and not more than five feet high. Each i year, however, it still gives forth large and beautiful blossoms. In the 1947 hurricane that hit the Coast, this bush withstood the force of twenty-foot j waves which hit the sidewalk and swept over the house behind it. The 1 street, or beach road in this section, was completely swept away. Deposits
of salt and sand six inches deep were left on the grounds. It would seem this delicate white-flowered camellia has proven the stamina of its kind.
In Waveland, Miss., a few blocks away from the beach or Coast line on Jeff Davis Avenue, there is an unpretentious little white house with a small garden almost filled with camellia bushes. The owner proudly points to the bush nearest the house and claims that thirty-five years ago he picked it up from a wayside ditch. /I was a rooted cutting someone had thrown away. This bush bears large semi-double red blossoms.
A trip to tiie home of Miss Annette Koch in Logtown, Miss., is an inspiring and treasured memory. Miss Nettie, as she is affectionately called by all who know and love her, is 92 years old. She lives alone except for the caretaker and his wife who tend both home and grounds.
Logtown, situated on the banks of Pearl River, a few miles north of Highway 90 and west of the town of Bay St. Louis, is a ?Ghost Town.? Sometime around the turn of the century life in this section was busy with the hum from two lumber mills. The main excitement for the inhabitants was the landing of the mail boat which plied up the river from a small station on the L&N Railroad called English Lookout, later named Dunbar. The boat carried mail, express, supplies and passengers and constituted the main touch with the outside world for the citizens of the town and its surrounding communities.
Miss Nettie's father was a sea captain who came to this country from
Denmark. About seventy-five years ago he purchased the first camellia tree to be brought and ? planted in the town. This camellia was purchased from a nursery situated)at Pine Hills, a few miles north of Pass Christian, Miss., and later the beautiful Pine Hills Hotel was built on the spot where this nursery was located.
This camellia has grown and flourished through the years and has reached a height of about 40 feet and is 32 feet in diameter. It is growing under a huge oak; its topmost branches reach around and over a huge limb of the oak. It bears semi-double red flowers in profusion during the blooming season and is known and loved by the people who through the years have had some association with this town.
A few hundred feet from the house. , and on the Koch property is the family burial ground. Here are many small marble crosses bearing the names of the deceased members of the family. A little apart and under dense shadp from oak and magnolia trees are the ^J&ves of Captain Koch and his wife and two of their children who died in infancy.' At the foot of Captain Koch?s grave is a fifteen foot Sarah Frost Camellia.
The ground on the opposite side of this tree slopes steeply about 12 feet to a thickly wooded narrow vale. It is a beautiful setting for such a lovely thick and bushy shrub. This camellia was planted in 1886 after her mother?s death. According to Miss Nettie, as a small bush it was planted over her mother?s grave by her father. For fear it would grow too large, she and her brothers moved it to where it now , stands in 1894 after her father?s death, j j-st'	..- I
I Miss Nettie has never let anyone cut more than short stemmed flowers from her camellias?they have never been sprayed and are fertilized only by the leaves from the surrounding oak trees. Lifting the lowest branches that just escape the ground and looking up through the top branches?one finds no evidence of scale or other plant disease.
Upon leaving this beautiful old home and garden where in the past years people were always welcomed?where many picnics and weddings were held under the beautiful oak trees, knowing that Miss Nettie, at ninety-two years of age, is still able to walk through and supervise her beloved grounds? one stops and considers many things? soil tests, acids, vitamins, fertilizers, spraying and many of the numerous / things so many of us employ in our camellia gardens; could it be that camellias are like some of us humans who thrive best in quiet places with- ( out too much fuss and bother?