The DOXEY Home, Grand Chenier, Cameron Parish History, Louisiana 
Submitted by Nancy Bell @nb7020@bellsouth.net
Source: From the "Lake Charles American Press", Sunday, 8/13/1972
Submitted Aug. 2001

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"Oldest area Gulf coast home standing since 1840"

By Geneva Griffith
American Press Correspondent

Grand Chenier - The oldest home still standing on the Gulf Coast of Southwest
Louisiana or Southeast Texas is located here.

And after some 132 years of existence, it still has never had salt water from
any sea storm on its floors.

The old DOXEY home was built about 1840.  It was the first home built on Grand
Chenier of dressed lumber.

Situated on the highest point of land on Grand Chenier - some 11 feet above sea
level - and set on brick piers more than three feet high, the house was built by
William M. DOXEY, one of the first settlers on Grand Chenier.

Even the waters of Hurricane Audrey which flooded lower Cameron Parish in June
of 1957 failed to wash into the DOXEY house.

A bit of history handed down through generations of the DOXEY family relates
that when William DOXEY and Milledge McCall came to the island they found only
one human here.  He was a shipwrecked sailor named Bill Beazley, who had saved
himself by clinging to a mahogany table from the wrecked schooner.

Beazley was spending each night in oak trees to keep away from wild bears in the
area, it is related.

The mahogany table which served as a life raft for Beazley stood in the kitchen
of the DOXEY house and served four generations for 108 years.  No one knows its
whereabouts today.

The DOXEY house was also occupied by a cigar factory in addition to serving as
living quarters 20 years before the Civil War.  It was remodeled and enlarged in
1890, again in 1917, and once more in 1948 by its present owner, John Paul
CRAIN.

CRAIN has carefully preserved the historic house and restored it to its original
look.

When it was renovated in 1890, a team of carpenters from Abbeville did the work,
using cypress throughout.

In 1917, the second floor was expanded with four bedrooms and a hall, the
staircase from the ground floor entrance hall was revised, and two additional
gables were added, making four gables facing South toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The last of the DOXEY descendants to occupy the house were the Andrew DOXEYs. 
Mrs. DOXEY was known as "Grandma DOXEY," and she was famed for never letting a
visitor leave without some gift, usually food that she had canned or preserved
herself.

The old house was a shelter for generations of Grand Chenier and Cameron
residents seeking refuge on higher ground during the storms that came in from
the sea.  People would come from Oak Grove and other parts of the island to stay
in the two-story house until the storm had passed.

Thanks to careful preservation and restoration, the house is as sturdy today as
when it was built.

And it should remain for many generations to come as the oldest standing house
on this section of the coast.