Glass. 
 
 
 :if^ 
 
 Book - ^"^3^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 EAST FELICIANA. 
 
 RISE AND PROGRESS OF A COLONY OF THE CAROLINAS. 
 
 Clinton, La., October, 5, 1889. 
 
 Mr. Kilhourne : 
 
 My Dear Sir— I contemplate a work germain to the title 
 "role" in the performance of which I shall need the "Patriot- 
 Democrat" as my coadjutor. 
 
 Inasmuch as the census of 1890 will, as is customary, com- 
 pile and publish all needed statistical information relating to our 
 material progress, the occasion appears to favor a systematic, 
 well-considered endeavor on our part to attract the gaze of the 
 home-seekers to our large area of waste and uncultivated fields, 
 which are laying idle for want of laborers, and which are dirt 
 cheap and are easily renovated. 
 
 A pamphlet containing a synopsis of the census statistics 
 for East Feliciana would be brimful of valuable and reliable 
 information; but would the average home-seeker read it unless 
 it is accompanied by some pleasant pictures of the social life to 
 which he is invited ? 
 
 Those pictures, it is my design to draw in connection with a 
 map of our parish by wards, giving to the history and genealogy, 
 the social characteristics and progress of each geographical divi- 
 sion, a separate sketch. As the sketches are drawn I venture to 
 hope that the Patriot-Democrat and the other parish newspapers 
 will aid in submitting them for inspection, amendment and revi- 
 sion, to the people of the ward sketched. If the papers will 
 help me to that extent before the close of 1890, I expect to have 
 compiled all the historical and genealogical material for a more 
 than usual interesting immigration pamphlet. 
 
 It is universally conceded that we are badly in want of agri- 
 cultural recruits, and it is almost as generally desired, while we 
 will cordially welcome capital and labor from any quarter of the 
 compass, that our agricultural recruits should be drawn from 
 the ancient seats of the race which planted this colony early in 
 this century. , , • 
 
 In tracing back to the fountain head, it is as well to have it 
 understood, that we make no pretension to a genealogical shield 
 emblazoned with heraldic legends in panels of gules, argent or 
 azure, resting not upon the fanciful creations of bards and his- 
 
 -: / 
 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AXD PKESENT. 
 
 toriaas — owing nothing to fabricated genealogies — nothing to. 
 the miraculous apparitions which usually usher in the birth of 
 states. 
 
 Nevertheless we, have a line of ancestry for which we en- 
 tertain affectionate reverence and cordial admiration, a line of 
 ancestry, which unlike the shoddy and codfish aristocrats, we 
 are anxious to trace out to its remotest antiquity. 
 
 Vast schemes of colonization were generated in the older 
 settlements when Mr. Jefferson made proclamation, in October, 
 1803, that a boundless fertile unpopulated empire had been 
 transferred the previous April by France to the United States. 
 That famous state paper found eager readers among our imme- 
 diate ancestors. A population clinging to the sides of the 
 mountain ranges of the Carolinas and Southwestern Virginia, 
 cultivating the narrow valleys of the Clinch and Holston, rugged 
 as the crags; impetuous as the torrents of their native moun- 
 tains, still full of the military spirit inspired by the camp fires 
 and on the battlefields of the Revolutionary w^ar— still rehears- 
 ing by the light of their pine torches, the shame of Camden 
 and Guilford Courthouse and the glory of Saratoga, King's 
 Mountain and Yorktown — ^still burning with patriotic fires 
 which lighted Sumpter, Pickens, Laurens and all the heroic 
 chiefs of cavalier and Huguenot strain the path to glory, and 
 many a tory minion of King George the way to dusky death. 
 
 On such a population, restless and ill at ease, environed by 
 the dull monotonies of peace paying unwilling homage to the 
 authority of the law — relying more on their own valor and trusty 
 rifles for that protection rarely extended by the laws in those 
 early days to segregated and remote communities. On such a 
 population the stirring announcement that a boundless and 
 fertile empire, larger than the original thirteen states, for which 
 they had risked their lives and freely shed their blood, lay to the 
 south of them waiting to be peopled; — And the promise of 
 homes in the genial south — land dazzled their imaginations, 
 as did the spoils of England, the restless imaginations of the 
 bold Feudal Chieftains who rallied to the standard of William 
 Duke of Normandy. 
 
 Still hunting our genealogical source which is common to 
 the population of each of the eight wards without groping in 
 the dark, we can inquire a step farther back for the origin of the 
 sturdy mountaineers, who colonized East Feliciana. We can go 
 back to a settlement on the shores of Albemarle sound by the 
 Cavaliers, fleeing from the cruelties and oppressions of Cromwell, 
 — back to the settlement along the South Carolina sea coast by 
 the persecuted Huguenots who after the siege of Rochelle, 
 sought an asylum in the new world for the freedom of conCience 
 denied them by Cardinal Richelieu and the Pope of Rome. 
 
 When the sea coast hives of the Cavaliers in North Carolina 
 
\ 
 
 EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 and the Huguenots in South Carolina became overpopulated, 
 they spread out in search of homes, the two Hues of home 
 seekers crossed and commingled among the mountain ranges of 
 the Carolinas. From the commingling of these two lines sprang 
 Marion, Sumpter, Laurens and Pickens, and many of the great 
 southern chiefs of the Revolutionary war; and from the com- 
 mingling of these two historical lines, we claim lineal descent. 
 
 If here amid the cain-brakes and vine clad forests of these 
 southern wilds, we have constructed a civilization characterised 
 by all the virtues of both lines of our haughty aristocratic fore- 
 fathers, we arrogate to ourselves with pardonable pride some 
 little credit. 
 
 If under the enervating influence of southern heats, our 
 progress and development has been slow, when contrasted with 
 the more populous, faster moving northern societies still we 
 claim to be the better, happier, purer civilization, because we have 
 maintained uncontaminated and undefiled the moral and social 
 characteristics of our patriotic high strung ancestors and be- 
 cause no new fangled "ism" foreign or native has ever taken 
 root in our societies which we have always jealously guarded 
 against the poisonous preachings of visionary enthusiasts who 
 come from abroad to teach them to be freer who know and feel 
 that they are already as free as they ought to be — as free as they 
 want to be. 
 
 By these cautionary acts of vigilance we have maintained 
 our civilization, socially and politically free from the turbulent 
 teaching of Irish saloonists and free from the socialistic heresies 
 of the beerguzzling Germans. Happy would it be for our 
 country if the older and more trumpeted colonies of Jamestown, 
 Plymouth Rock and Manhattan Island had preserved the civiliza- 
 tion entrusted to them by their ancestors as jealously as we have 
 guarded ours. 
 
 I send the Patriot Democrat this preparatory chapter of the 
 more extended work I have in contemplation, hoping it will not 
 prove too long for your space. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 H. Skipwith. 
 
 Clinton, La., October 10, 1889. 
 
 I am enabled, Mr. Editor, to send you this week, a few 
 authentic incidents relating to the earliest movement of 
 population in Ward No. One, first in antiquity, first in 
 fertility, first in population, and therefore entitled to be 
 first of my series of AVard Sketches. Tradition, corrob- 
 orated by vestiges of a decayed Fort, Mission House, 
 Cemetery and Store House, tell of a small centre of popula- 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 tion settled between Murdock's Ford on Thompson's Creek, and 
 the great river and along the public thoroughfare leading 
 from Baton Eouge, the metropolis of the political and ecclesi- 
 astical Power of Spain, in West Florida to St. Francisville, 
 and the Church of St. Francis. An old blotter or day book, of 
 Cochran & Rhea, an adventurous firm doing business in Sep- 
 tember, 1802, in the old store house now decayed, informs us 
 from day to day until the close of 1803 who were the clients of 
 that earliest commercial venture within the borders of our 
 parish, and likewise discloses the names of many of the old pio- 
 neers who first awakened the primeval forests of East Feliciana 
 with the echoing thuds of the woodman's axe. 
 
 Inasmuch as the junior partner of the old store on Thomp- 
 son's Creek, by his marriage with one of old Dr. Raoul's (a 
 French "Emigre") lovely daughters, founded a family which has 
 played a prominent part in the material and social develop- 
 ment of Ward One, and has moreover fastened his name and 
 deeds conspicuously on the pages of history, I will devote a 
 short paragraph, to keep green the memory of old Judge John 
 Rhea, who in 1802 was merchant, planter and alcalde for Feli- 
 ciana (an officer about the equivalent of parish judge in our 
 system). The King of Spain's jurisdiction, as it was adminis- 
 tered by his mild and benevolent old Anglo-Saxon alcalde, was 
 doubtless equitable and paternal, and the people of that day 
 lived contentedly under it. When, however, a few years later, 
 the country began to fill up with the fiery Huguenot and cava- 
 lier immigrants from the Caroliims, and loud protests against 
 monarchial government, began to stir the hearts of the Anglo- 
 American communities, I am afraid the King of Spain's old 
 Anglo-Saxon alcalde, blinded by the hot love of liberty char- 
 acteristic of his race, forgot his royal master at Madrid, and in 
 1810 the alcalde figures prominently as member and president 
 of the convention which founded and governed the free and 
 sovereign State of West Florida. 
 
 From the old blotter of Cochran & Rhea's Thompson 
 Creek store, I select the names which I conjecture became per- 
 manent factors in the advancing civilization of East Feliciana, 
 many of them founding families which became identified with 
 the development of the wards. While the old blotter rescues 
 from oblivion the ancestors of many of the powerful and hon- 
 ored families of our parish, I notice, nevertheless, some notable 
 omissions of pioneer names of Ward No. One who contributed 
 largely and faithfully to the social elevation and agricultural 
 development of that modern garden of Eden. Those notable 
 omissions 1 shall endeavor to supply after preparing an alpha- 
 betical catalogue of the names of the clients of Cochran & 
 Rhea, selected from the blotter of 1802 and 1803, to- wit: 
 
EAST FKI.U'IANA PAST AND PUKSENT. 
 
 Adville Aitkens, Giles Andrews, A. Brozina, James Bran- 
 non, Thomas Brannon, Asa Brashiers, Zadock Brashiers, Sam- 
 uel Brashiers, Philip Brashiers, Henry Bradford, Sr., Henry- 
 Bradford, Jr., Nathan Bradford, John Buck, Peter Busky, 
 Baily Chaney, James J. Chaney, James Clarke, James Cooper, 
 Madam Como, Thomas Carney, Sr., Thomas Carney, Jr., Daniel 
 Carney, Guy Carney, John Carney, Sr., John Carney, Jr., Thom- 
 as Carpenter, John Dortch, Doctor Flowers, John Gale, Llew- 
 ellyn Colville Griffith, Baltor Hanmer, Battle Hanmer, 
 Thomas Irwin, James Jackson, Watkins James, Michael Jones, 
 Thomas Jones, John Keats, Peter Keller, Sr., Peter Keller, Jr., 
 Nathan Kemper, Ira C. Kneeland, James Loudon, David Miller, 
 William Miller, John McDonald, Manuel Montegudo, William 
 Marbui-y, John Murdock, John McArthur, George Neville, Sy- 
 bil Nash, John Nolan, Phoebe Owens, James Owens, Robei't 
 Owens, John Patterson, Vincente Pintado, Policarpio Rogillio, 
 Amos Richardson, Zachariah Richardson, Henry Richardson, 
 Theophilus Richardson, William James Richardson, William 
 Reames, William Stewart, John Stewart, David B. Stewart, 
 Abraham Speers, John Simms, Hugh Smith, Laban Smith, 
 Jeremiah Smith, Abraham Smith, W^illiam Taylor, Mary Taylor, 
 Thomas Vaughan, Robert Vaughan, Thomas Williams. David 
 W^hite, Elizabeth Waltman, David Waltman, William Walker, 
 Thomas Young. 
 
 Parsons Carter, whose name is not in the blotter, a scion 
 of the Carters of Shirley Hall in old Virginia, migrated from 
 Natchez, certainly before the country passed from under the 
 Spanish jui'isdiction, and founded a home on the Baton Rouge 
 and St. Francisville road, just where it emerges from Buhler's 
 Plains. And nearly at the same time, Benjamin Kendrick, the 
 maternal ancestor of the Flukers, began a clearing at Aspho- 
 del, the j)resent ancestral seat of the Flukers. W^illliam D. 
 Carter and Gen. Albert G. Carter lived near the oldest family 
 seat, useful, public spirited citizens, warmly honored and loved 
 by their neighbors. Many of the descendants of Gen. A. G. 
 Carter still uphold the social prestige of the family, in close vi- 
 cinity to their ancestral seat. The same honorable character- 
 istics have developed in the line of old Mr. Ben Kendrick's 
 de'^cendants. At a later day, there came into the ward Gen, 
 Felix Huston, of Texas "Crab Orchard" fame, and his next 
 neighbor, Capt. James N. Chambers, an "eleve" of West Point, 
 who having married a daughter^of the rich and powerful Relfs, 
 of New Orleans, opened a large plantation along the banks of 
 Thompson's Creek, over the site of the old Fort, Mission House 
 and store. These two comparatively new comers became able 
 and zealous coadjutors of the Carters and Flukers and the pio- 
 neers who figured on the old blotter of 1802. 
 
 It is a merited tribute to the wonderful fertility and dura- 
 
8 "east FELICIANA past AND PRESENT." 
 
 bility of the fine old ward, to emphasize the statement that 
 notwithstanding its cultivation commenced with the present 
 century there is scarcely an acre of land under fence that is 
 not producing, in this year of grace, 1889, its bale of cotton. 
 
 I found in the old blotter of Cochran & Rhea the follow- 
 ing entry: "To Robert Owens, $1.00 for taking care of goods 
 at the landing," and I am admonished by it that Ward No. One 
 has a history which has a commercial side as well as a social 
 and agricultural side, and its commercial development will 
 form the staple of the sketch which I intend to send you next 
 week. 
 
 Clinton, La. October 9th, 1889. 
 
 Very suggestive is the following entry from Cochran & 
 Rhea's blotter of 1802, to wit; 
 
 "To Robert Owens, $1.00 for taking care of goods at 
 landing.'' 
 
 Inasmuch as East Feliciana had before 1832 scarcely 
 enough front on the Mississippi river to afford a vvharf for an 
 ordinary sized flat buat, and that small river front was her only 
 port for imports and exports in the da_\s of flat boats and keel 
 boats, as carriers for the produce, transported by ponies, along 
 bridle paths through the cane thickets, and raised by primitive 
 "scooter" plow with wooden shovel boards and hoes, both of 
 which were cherished because they had been "compagnons de 
 voyage" all the way from the Carolinas and as further more the 
 cotton production was limited to the consumption required by 
 hand looms and spinning wheels, it stands to reason that the 
 increase of the tides of commerce which flowed in and out of our 
 only gate, signified when the area of production was increasing; 
 that the laborers in the Eastern Wards had gathered into the 
 harvest field in larger numbers, that the bridle paths had been 
 widened, and that therefore the demand for flat and keel boats 
 had increased. 
 
 Tradition has kept us of the present generation well posted 
 regarding the primitive methods of agriculture and commerce 
 which supplied the simple wants of our ancestors. There is not 
 a doubt that the store of Cochran and Rhea on Thompsons 
 creek did receive its stock of western produce from descending 
 flat boats at the "Landing" at the foot of the Bluffs, on the top 
 of which at a late date was built the "Town of Poi-t Jackson," 
 and it is equally apparent that the Thompsons creek store 
 received its supplies of family groceries and general merchan- 
 dise by ascending keel boats loaded by the New Orleans house 
 of Cochran & Rhea and cordelled up stream. 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT.' 
 
 As the area of production was enlarged in the Eastern por- 
 tion of the parish, thex'e arose in the interior two formidable 
 commercial rivals of the Thompsons creek store, Mr. William 
 Silhman, the founder of the reuownd seat of education "The 
 Female Colegiate Institute" of Clinton, and Mr. David Pipes, 
 who migrated at an early date from Natchez. Both estabUshed 
 a store in the Northeastern portion of the parish. Mr. David 
 Pipes was the father of the present State Treasurer and of one 
 of our members of the general assembly. 
 
 The cheap and primitive methods of those old merchants, 
 in conducting the agricultural and commercial affairs of the 
 parish are worthy of a detailed description. Either Mr. Silli- 
 man or Mr. Pipes would buy a flat bout and cargo moored at 
 Port Jackson, flying at her peak the Wabash coat of arms an 
 emblem which needed neither Hoosier nor Garter King at arms 
 to interpret. Its realastic legend was symbolized by a flag staft" 
 with a mammoth Irish potato, a big ear of corn, a golden hued 
 apple and a side of bacon pendant, and at the topmost peak, a 
 bottle of whiskey, rampant. This purchase was notified to all 
 their clients through all the Eastern wilds, and a day appointed 
 to send in the years catalogue for Western produce, and for 
 the delivery of a corresponding amount of cotton at the "Land- 
 ing " As the long train of wagons dumped their cotton bales, 
 the drivers were called into the flat boat, and the articles desig- 
 nated on the owner's list were loaded on his empty wagon; as 
 the cotton passed down the Western produce passed up, and 
 when the ark of the Wabash was discharged of its original cargo 
 it was reloaded with cotton bales. The whole transaction would 
 be completed in a few hours, and, than with Captain Silliman 
 or Captain Pipes at her helm and with three or four stalwart 
 Africans at the oars, the clumsy old Wabash "Broad Horn" 
 would leave behind her the Bluffs of Port Jackson and soon be 
 wafted out of sight by the ceaseless currents of the great river 
 on their way to the Sea. Ordinarily the voyage was uneventful, 
 but on one occasion, Captain Pipes tied his rich load of fleecy 
 staple to the New Orleans shore, too late at night to make a sale 
 of it, which added another night to the risk of his voyage. 
 "That was the longest night and the most unpleasant I ever lived 
 through" as the old gentleman used to tell. "I was awakened 
 during the night by the whi tling of the tempest, the deafening 
 roar of the wild waters and the violent bumping of the boat 
 against the bank. I jumped out of my berth, gi-abbed a lighted 
 pine torch, and forgetting my pants, in the hurry and excitement, 
 rushed ashore yelling like a wild Indian to wake up the sleepy 
 headed negroes. I danced almost a hornpipe up and down, 
 brandishing the flambeau and yelling to wake up the sleeping 
 Africans. At last one wave bigger than its fellows, lifted the 
 
10 "east FELICIANA PAST AND I'RESENT," 
 
 old flat boat on the levee, and there she lay next morning,* like 
 her ante type on mount Ararat. 
 
 "After the storm abated and the waters became calm" con- 
 tinued the narative of Capt. Pipes," I became conscious that I 
 was wet as a drownded rat by the sprays from the surging waves, 
 and moreover that I was a "sans calotte's for the first time." 
 
 Pursuant to custom a sale of the flat boat and cargo was 
 made to those merchant princes, Nathaniel and James Dick, the 
 largest and almost the only cotton buyers in New Orleans, and a 
 flat boat and cargo in those days passed to them without any 
 labored figuring for freight, insu ranee, drayage, tare, sampling, 
 scalage, storage or stealage. Under the influence of such 
 cheap, honest and equitable methods, the country prospered, 
 and as wealth poured in, production increased with magical 
 celerity. 
 
 COMMERCIA.L PROGRESS OF WARD NO. ONE. 
 
 About 1832 the exports and imports through Port Jackson, 
 had become too large for the carrying capacity of the slow go- 
 ing flats and keels; the old wagon roads between the Amite 
 River and the "Landing" were growing into desuetude, too slow 
 for the fast ideas developed by an era of great prosperity. A 
 railroad from Clinton to the river was projected; Port Jackson 
 had too small a port and was too closely identified with the slow 
 methods of the olden times. An Act of the Legislature of 1832 
 wiped out famous old Port Jackson and a landing more commo- 
 dious, with a larger front was captured by Statute from East 
 Baton Rouge in anticipation of the vast streams of commerce 
 which were to flow from the construction of the railroad from 
 Clinton. In 1834 three regular steam packets were plying in 
 the Port Hudson trade. "With the development of the new river 
 port, came a new set of merchants under whose adventurous 
 and enterprisiag spirit arose, parallel to the river, a densely 
 crowded row of handsome and costly warehouses, stores, saloons 
 and hotels, between which and the steamboats a long line of 
 loaded country wagons plied almost incessantly. 
 
 As memory calls up for review the familiar features and 
 forms of the thrifty, bustling, scheming guild of old Port Hud- 
 son merchants who were shaping, with so much sagacity, the 
 commercial rise of their youug town by the side of the great 
 river; and who were like skilfuU alchemists converting the 
 streams of commerce which touched their wharves into golden 
 bars; it would be singular if the burly figure of Robert W, 
 Troth were to be omitted from the line under review. He was 
 thff most intricate and involved character study, I ever met, and 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 11 
 
 he was endowed with more conflicting qualities — more irrecon- 
 cilable characteristics — more warriug forces than ever human 
 tenement was equipped with. Nevertheless with many weak 
 and inconsistent sides, Mr. Troth had no mean side. He was a 
 liberal giver and ever had an open hand and heart for melting 
 charity. He carried within his big burly frame two distinct 
 individualities. Indisputably he was a dashing and bold devotee 
 of the fascin itiug game of Draw Poker, a game then much in 
 vogue at Port Hudson, and he was moreover when breathing 
 the pure and qalm atmosphere of the church, a sober, devout 
 and reverent christian, e irnestly sincere, I always thought. 
 
 And besides these commendable traits, Brother Troth had 
 ingratiated himself with the congregation as a fervid, eloquent, 
 persuasive leader in prayer, who could lift his hearer in imagin- 
 ation from above the petty schemes of this transitory sphere. 
 But as soon as the fervor of his fiery exhortations cooled down — 
 as soon as our impulsive brother could escape the espionage of 
 the "rigid righteous" — as soon as he had left behind him the 
 salutary influence of the church our brother, Alas ! would make 
 an unconditional surrender to the Demon of Draw Poker ! 
 
 Often have I watched Brother Bob impatiently pacing up 
 and down the guards of our Sunday packets, with troubled 
 frowning brow, revolving perhaps the knotty question, "How to 
 break down the inconvenient barrier between Piety and Sunday 
 Draw Poker f" at last the troubled, thoughtful brow would be- 
 come smooth, and Bro. Troth, with a bland smile, and the ingen- 
 uity of a skilled casuist, would announce as a maxim, incontro- 
 vertible, "There must be somewhere a limit to the jurisdiction 
 of the church. I tix it at three fathoms depth, just as Vattel 
 fixes three miles from the shore as the limit of the jurisdiction 
 of nations." Henceforth a small garue of "Draw" up in the 
 Texas would receive from Brother Troth unreserved acquies- 
 ence and approval and lively participation. 
 
 Notwithstanding Brother Bob's manifold treasons to the 
 church, perpetrat-d under the cloak of his ingenious "three 
 fathoms" theory, his usefulness as a class leader continued unim- 
 paired until one memorable night, when his avenging Nemesis 
 overtook and assaulted him in the very sanctuary while clinging 
 devotedly to the horns of the altar. And thus it happened: In 
 the calm and peaceful twilight of a Sibbath evening, Bro. Troth, 
 in the midst of one of his most fiery and stirring invocations, 
 paused to pump a fresh supply of air into his exhausted lungs 
 preparatory to a higher flight. During the ill-fated pause there 
 came from one of the open windows a voice, in basso piyyfundo 
 inquiring: "Who won that Big Pot at two o'clock this morn- 
 ing ?" and from an opposite window there came in shrill, clear 
 tones the incriminating answer, " Bob Troth \ Bob Troth !" 
 Amid such embarrassing aspects, the orator lost the thread of 
 
12 *' EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PKESENT." 
 
 his eloquent and fiery discourse; the sobs and tears of the ex- 
 cited congregation gave way to smothered sniggers and indig- 
 nant groans, and a star f fell that night from out of the galaxy of 
 exhorters, "like Lucifer never to rise again." 
 
 Having, in the preceding sketches of the Fird Ward of 
 East Feliciana, shown how old Port Hudson rose rapidly in com- 
 mercial importance as the shipping point for the products of a 
 big, fertile back country, and as the distributing point for the 
 western produce floated down en the broad horns out of tb-e Wa- 
 bash and Ohio valleys, and having shown, how, by the foimation 
 of a batture in front, its harbor has filled up, its wharves have 
 disappeared under the deposits of the Mississippi's slime, bow 
 its warehouses are rotting down, 'given over to the bats, snakes, 
 and frogs, and how, alas! its commercial glory has faded, and its 
 bustling merchants have become dust. It is a pleasure to turn 
 to the rise of a compensating social and commercial centre, to 
 supply the missing influences which old Port Hudson used to 
 exercise on the growth of the First Ward. These compensating 
 influences are developing rapidly in 
 
 THE TOWN OF SLAUGHTER, 
 
 a thriving, fast growing, incorporated town of two hundred 
 houses, situated on both sides of the Louisville, New Orleans 
 and Texas Railway, just on the dividing line between the First 
 and Second Wards, 300 yards north of the line which divides 
 East Feliciana from East Baton Rouge, 108 miles north of New 
 Orleans, nineteen miles north of the capitnl of Louisiana, thirteen 
 miles southwest of the seat of justice of East Feliciana, the point 
 of jtmclion of the Woodmlle and Bayou Sara B. B. with the main 
 trunk of the L. N. O. and T. R. R. Besides its railways centre- 
 ing on it. Slaughter's geographical position is so favorable as to 
 promise rapid future growth and a large aggregation of com- 
 mercial capital and population. It holds under natural tribute 
 without a competitor, all the country west of it, between it and 
 the Mississippi, and by the same natural ties, all the country 
 east of it, between it and the Amite river, and bids fair with such 
 advantages to become a formidable rival to its older commercial 
 comi)etitors, viz: Clinton, Bayou Sara, Port Hickey and 
 Woodville. 
 
 Slaughter is situated on a well-chosen rolling site with 
 great natural advantages redounding perceptibly to the health 
 and longevity of its bustling throng of energetic citizens; its 
 natural drainage is so perfect that the heaviest downpours of 
 rain, pass out of sight as if by magic, leaving its streets and side- 
 walks clean and dry in a very few minutes. Its architecture, 
 which bears the stamp of the useful and solid, consists of a num- 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 13 
 
 ber of large and commodious warehouses, storehouses, the rail- 
 road depot, and Mr. Oscar Howell's renowned Windsor Hotel, 
 a Methodist and a Baptist church, Kernan Institute and two or 
 three preparatory schools, some public and some private. And 
 its suburbs are adorned by many handsome, pleasant private 
 residences and cottages. 
 
 When its tributary country, east and west, becomes fully 
 developed by the inflow of immigrants and capital, its present 
 productive capacity will soon increase ten-fold, and in that event 
 it is not unreasonable to predict that Slaughter will grow iuto a 
 populous and prosperous centre of commerce and population. 
 
 Clinton, La.^ November 23, 1889. 
 
 SKETCH OF THE SECOND WART). 
 
 If a landscape painter, with pallette, brush and canvass, and 
 an artist'^s eye for the beautiful in Nature, would take his stand 
 on the highest hill of the dividing ridge between Comite river 
 and Redwood creek, and half way between Pine Grove Church 
 on the North, and Olive Branch Church and camp ground, on 
 the South, his admiring gaze would be attracted on his right 
 hand by a scope of country 17,500 acres in area, its surface 
 marked by curvatures and undulations, as gentle as the waves 
 of old Ocean, at peace in a calm; and in the trough of each 
 of these graceful undulations he would decern the tops of the 
 tall, waving ever green canes which fringe the margins of the 
 dry bayous, marking their course towards the eastern or west- 
 ern stream of living wnter, indicating to a practiced eje, deep 
 pockets which serve as cisterns, beneath the umbrageous canes, 
 •which carry a water supply failing only in periods of prolonged 
 drouth. These same green curtains often conceal from view a 
 rippling, gurgling dancing stream of living waters, fed by per- 
 petual springs gushing out of the dividing range of hills. At 
 the same glance he would behold a surface nearly equally divid- 
 ed into forests, pastures and cultivated fields. In this ''coup 
 d'oeil" he would find spread on his canvass one half of Ward 
 Number Tico. 
 
 To make a more faithful and complete picture he would 
 paint on the wai'd^'s eastern boundary a small river, meandering 
 through dense screens of canes and forest trees on its cease- 
 less course towards the sea — ^i-eceiving invigorating contributions 
 fi'om Widow's creek, Knighton's Branch and Olive Branch — 
 watering and fertilizing along its wide margin of fertile valley, 
 many generous acres, each, with its native, unaided forces 
 capable of producing 500 lbs. of lint cotton, or 50 bbls. of corn, 
 or 40 bushels of rice, or two hogsheads of sugar. Far away 
 
14 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND l-RESENT ." 
 
 to the South, he would paint a long line of slow-moving, cot- 
 ton laden wagons toiling westward from Olive Branch Church 
 and Camp Ground to the thriving little railroad town of Slaugh- 
 ter. On the Ward's extreme Northern line he would bound 
 the landscape with a long train of railroad cars, heavily laden 
 with cotton bales piled as high as safe carrying would allow, 
 flitting speedly from east to west, from beautiful Clinton to 
 busy, growing Ethel. On its extieme tmsterii boundary he 
 would spread upon his canvass heavy screens and curtains of 
 canes and forest trees, denoting the rapid, winding movement 
 of a large stream of running water, and paralel and close to 
 the stream he wcuild paint the bustle and stir of a great rail- 
 road, which has carried to market in one day Tweloe Thousand 
 Bales of Cotton. 
 
 And then continuing his line of vision by the aid of a 
 powerful telescope he might take into his landscape the twelve 
 miles of snow white fields of Ward No. One lying between the 
 railroad and the Father of waters — the ever moving interminable 
 lines of steam boats and barges, bearing to the sea the pro- 
 ducts of the Pennsylvania and West Viroinia mines, the har- 
 vests of eighteen powerful, prosperous and happy common- 
 wealths; and carrying on its ascending lines back to St. Paul 
 and Bismark the fruits of the Northern and Eastern looms,; 
 the silks, hats, gloves, laces and gewgaws of the old worlds 
 metropolis of taste and fashion and huge hogsheads and bar- 
 rels of sugar and molasses of Louisiana. Wiih such a tout 
 ensemble he would have a picture lovelier and grander than the 
 scenery that greeted the admiring gaze of the inspired Hebrew 
 Prophet and Law Giver, when he ascended from the pi lins of 
 Moab to the top of mount Pisgah, to see the beautiful land 
 that was promised to the deceudants of Abraham, Isaac and 
 Jacob, and die. 
 
 This was the scene, with the railroads and steamboats left 
 out, whose genial climate, generous soil and lovely features, 
 attracted with its miraculous beauty, the roving Carolina home 
 seekers of 1804-'5-'t>, appealing to them with resistless elo- 
 quence to abandon their restless, roaming methods of life and 
 settle down to permanent home building, this was the lovely 
 land in which those bold adventurers from the Carolinas; the 
 Kirklauds, Westons, Hanseys, Brashiers, Chapmans, Haj'S, 
 Kuightons, Ingrahams, Griffiths, Crofts, Gables, Edwards, Over- 
 tons, Packers, Whites, Clarks, Burnetts, Bradfords and Rheams 
 founded their seats and raiserl their home altars and settled 
 down to permanent home building. 
 
 I know there are doubting Thomases, who will question 
 the fidelity of such a lovely panorama in the heart of a "decay- 
 ing communit}" like East Feliciana has been errcmeously styled. 
 But thej can see for themselves all the ma,terials for just such 
 
" EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. ' 15 
 
 a picture in traversing any fair day the thirhj-five thousand acres 
 of th« second ward, of which " 'tis true, 'tis pity 'tis true" there 
 are twenty-s^-even thoumrid acres, of forest and field, lying, to- 
 day, waste, idle and unproductive. Because when the war of the 
 sections closed, the bones of the former proprietors and thfir 
 sons lay bleaching on the battle fields, and the eniaucipated 
 race, left to shift for themselves, without the fostering cave of 
 "old Massa" and his gallant sons, migrated to the sugar fields. 
 
 In candor and in simple justice I will add to correct the 
 impression which is made by the fact of such an immense body 
 of uncultivated land that there is some chronic incurable cause 
 for it, thiit the decay and desolation which seems to hover like 
 a black pall over so many seats of former wealth and prosperity 
 is more apparent than real, which is clearly demonstrated by the 
 achievements of a few German farmers, who, a few years ago, 
 bought, at a very low figure, some of the abandoned lands, and 
 have already restored them to their pristine vigor and fertility 
 and have harvested from the present years crop a little more 
 than 500 lbs. of lint, cotton, and over 50 barrels of corn to the 
 acre. In further demonstration it may be added that these 
 German farmers have paid with the generous products of the 
 renovated soil, the purchase price of their possessions, they 
 have protected their holdings with good strong fences, under 
 which they have constructed comfortable dwellings, barns, sta- 
 bles and out-houses, gardens and orchards, and are surrounded 
 by fat horses and mules, and fat cattle and hogs. And while 
 doing all this they have erected a commodious German 
 Methodist Church, which likevpise serves as a school house, for 
 the flaxen haired, blue eyed little Teutons. 
 
 Will the toiling, overburdend, ill requited tillers of the 
 worn out fields of the Carolinas still turn a deaf ear to the 
 urgent appeals of the children of their children, to come and 
 help restore the homes which their children founded in 1804- 
 '5-'6? Will the heavily handicapped and mortgaged farmers of 
 the West still hesitate to abandon the inclement climate which 
 shortens life and impairs all its brief pleasures, to bring his 
 money and labor to a climate in which the Orange tree was 
 once an indigenous growth, and ripened its fruit in the open 
 air just as any other orchard tree — to a climate and soil, where 
 there is fertile laud for a multitude of workers at prices rang- 
 ing from $1.50 to $10 per acre? Before closing this long 
 sketch of one eighth of East Feliciana, I desire to say a few 
 words descriptive of the movements and methods of the early 
 pioneers. 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS. 
 
 The pioneer days of the second ward — the days of hand 
 looms, spinning wheels and scooter plows with wooden shovel 
 
16" " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 boards, developed some rare and estimable characters. Amongf 
 the firot to come and the last to leave was old "Uncle Daniel 
 Cleveland," a lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell, the Great 
 Protector. He laid down a constable's staff in South Carolina 
 to found a new home to which he brought all his household 
 effects, farmini*- implements and kitchen utensils, stored care- 
 fully in a tobacco hogshead. In his new home he lived and 
 raised a numerous and powerful family which multiplied and 
 prospered exceedingly, and in which, after seventy years of 
 useful, virtuous and happy life, he died. Old Uncle Daniel 
 was moreover a model Democrat of the "'Old Hickory" type,, 
 who never kicked nor scratched a ticket and in his later days, 
 bad a word of forgiveness for all his enemies — except "the silk 
 stockinged, ruffle-shirted whigs," of which this writer was one. 
 
 The religious movement developed early. The first house 
 of worship was built in the centre of the neighborhood in which 
 the Bradfords, Rheams, Clarkes and Tubbervilles settled. It 
 was built of logs near Redwood crpek and was probably served 
 by those two admirable types of Wesley's itinerants. Rev. Da- 
 vid Pipes, of the 5th Ward of KasL Feliciana, and Rev. Barnabas 
 Pipkin, of St Helena. 
 
 Later, after Olive Branch Meeting House and Camp 
 Grounds were founded, the Rev. Isaac Wall, another earnest 
 and marked type of Wesley's itinerants, came to garner in the 
 harvest fields. 
 
 When civilization came into the i>rimitive forests and cane 
 brakes, with luxury in its train, the early pioneers built them 
 saw mills along the Comite and Redwood and registered an 
 edict of banishment against the old log house, with its rough 
 puncheon floor. The first progTessive step towards the luxury 
 of civilized architecture in the ward Avas taken by Mr. Joseph 
 Kirkland, who had come into the wilderness as early as 18U2, 
 commissioned, perhaps, like the two spies of Joshua, "to view 
 the land of Canaan," and who ha\dng reported back to the 
 South Carolina Procurators that it was a good land for them 
 to come to and bring their wives, their little ones and their 
 cattle, to build a home and divide an inheritance; remained and 
 commenced the work of development, a year or two in advance 
 of the arrival of the main column of immigrants. Mr. Kirkland 
 having access to no better lumber supply, commenced at a very 
 early day with cross cut saw and whip saw to manufacture the 
 material for the first frame building ever erected in ward number 
 two. That venerable pile of hand manufactured lumber has a his- 
 tory coeval with the progress of civilization in the ward. It is not 
 only the most durable, best constructed, but the cheapest pile 
 of lumber ever modeled. Tradition laughingly describes the 
 closing scenes in the construction of this renowned old edifice. 
 Ml-. Joe Kirkland, a gentleman of lavish and hospitable tastes, 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PKESENT.'' 17 
 
 sent couriers into all the neighborhood as his splendid man- 
 sion approached completion to invite the neighbors to a house- 
 warming fiolic on a stated day. 
 
 When the guests, attired in all the primitive finery of the 
 cane brakes, ascended to the second story, with the fiddles, and 
 filled the spacious corridors and rooms with mirth, music and 
 dancing, the architects, painters, plasterers and glaziers, all 
 creditors of the hospitable giver of the feast, stood around 
 dressed in their homely every day working garb, quite uncon- 
 sidered and neglected by the fine birds up-stairs. In this 
 unpleasant predicament the thrifty ancestor of the Kirkland« 
 spied his hungi-y creditors and commiserating the undeserved 
 neglect which had left them out of the programme of amuse- 
 ments, considerately invited them into a small room in the 
 basement and proposed as a pastime a game of "Old Sledge" 
 or "Draw." The same gossiping tradition goes on to say that 
 Mr. Kiakland devoted all that night, in the little basement 
 room, to hospitably administering to the amusement of his 
 little band of mechanic friends, and that the next morning 
 their liens had been miraculously extinguished by amicable 
 process known to the law as "confusion" and very early next 
 morning the late lien creditors were out canvassing the part- 
 ing guests for a new job. 
 
 The liens being thus extinguished, the title to the house 
 passed, soon afterwards, clear of incumbrance, to Gen. E. W. 
 Ripley, the renowned hero of Bridgewater battle and the first 
 commander of this military department after Chalmf^tte. At 
 the death of Gen. Ripley, the fine property of which I have 
 been writing, which stands in perfect repair to-day two hun- 
 dred yards north of the line of railroad from Clinton to Ethel, 
 became the propertj'^ by purchase of the late B. M. G. Brown, 
 a native of Darlington District, South Carolina, for many years 
 the honored and trusted sheriff of East Feliciana. At Mr. 
 Brown's death Mr. C. C. Brown and his co-heirs became the 
 owners. 
 
 In conclusion let me emphasize the fact that Nature has 
 so equitably distributed her choice gifts as to endow nearly 
 every quarter section of these abandoned lands with winter 
 pasturage and shelter of evergreen canes, shading a sufiicient 
 water supply for cattle. And furthermore there is scarcely a 
 quarter section that has not its valley affording a few acres of 
 land capable of producing a hale of coflon to the acre without fer- 
 tilizers. Hoping my picture will attract capital and labor from 
 harsher climes and less productive soil, I am, yours truly, 
 
 H. SKIPWITH. 
 
 Note. — Since the above sketch was closed, ready to hand 
 to the publisher, Mr. A. J. Hawsey, grandson of the hardy old 
 
18 "east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT,"" 
 
 pioneer, Zadock Hawsey, informs me that he fenced in last 
 winter a piece of abandoned land in his vicinity and has this 
 year, with one hand working thirty acres on shares, harvested 
 200 barrels of corn and twenty-three bales of cotton! These fig- 
 ures incontestibly demonstrate that farming on the abandoned 
 lands of Ward No. 2 does pay. H. SKIP WITH. 
 
 ETHEL. 
 
 »j 
 A town of about 50 houses and about 100 inhabitants 
 situated at the junction of the Clinton Bend with the main trunk 
 line of the Louisville^ New Orleans and Texas Railroad seven 
 miles west of Clinton (the Court House,) and five miles east of 
 Jackson a prosperous and popular commercial and educatioual 
 seat, for which it is the principal shipping, I'eceiving and dis- 
 tributing "entre pot." 
 
 Ethel is just on the line dividing of the First, Second and Third 
 Wards, seated on an eminence which slopes for half a mile, 
 gradually, on the east toward Redwood, a creek fed by perpetual 
 springs, and which rewards the fisherman with fine strings of 
 perch, trout and blue cat lish. It boasts a Post office, commodious 
 depot, fine school, a Presbyterian church, a good hotel and livery 
 stable, and several enterprising merchants,^ engaged in receiving 
 and forwarding their freights, to the surrounding farmers, and 
 in buying or shipping their crops. Contiguous to Ethel are 
 many large bodies of abandoned lands, which were once highly 
 esteemed for their great productive capacity, but which have had 
 a rest of twenty-five years, since the old system of labor w^as 
 abolished; those abandoned lands; are mostly fertile patches which 
 wei'e never worn out, and can be easily and cheaply, restored to 
 their full productive capacity Avhich they originally had, and can 
 be bought on very reasonable terms. All the territory, tributary 
 as a feeder to the commerce of Ethel, ranks among the best in 
 East Feliciana. Its tributary, territory, now laying waste, idle 
 and unproductive when fostered and regenerated, by a fair sup- 
 ply of capital and labor, each acre will produce 50 bushels of 
 corn and 2000 Ihs. of cotton in the seed, and all other agricultural 
 productions suited to the climate in the sime proportion. The 
 character of the lands tributai-y to Ethel for health, for pictures- 
 que scenery, and abundant good water for man and beast, is 
 uot excelled in any other locality in East Feliciana or any other 
 place in Louisiana. 
 
?# 
 
 tffllf '^i ^ HiliL 
 
 HEADQUARTERS FOR 
 
 COMMERCIAL MEN, 
 
 BOARD # LODGING 
 
 AT REASONABLE RATES. 
 
 Livery and Feed Stable. ^ 
 
 Mail hack leaves hotel twice a day for Jackson. 
 
 Express and Baggage promptly delivered, 
 
 HOISIS Al® iUGGIIS 10 111.1 M i©WEST PBJCES, 
 
 W. W. WOUTHY, Propr. - - ETHEL, LA. 
 
 W. W. WORTHY, 
 
 DEALER IN 
 
 Staple and Fancy Dry Goods, 
 
 GROCERIES and GENERAL SUPPLIES. 
 KTHKL, - - - L^. 
 
PxEV. W. L. C. HUNNICUTT, D. D., PRESIDENT, 
 
 Rev. W. L. C HUNNICUTT 
 G. H. WILEY, A. M., 
 R. H, McGIMSEY, A. B., 
 J. M. SULLIVAN, B. A. ■ 
 A. R. HOLCOMBE, M. D. 
 Rev. B. M. DRAKE, A. B. 
 Rev. ROBERT H. WYNN, 
 Mrs. E. M. HUNNICUTT 
 Mrs. R. H. McGIMSEY, 
 
 FACULTY. 
 
 , D.D. Professor of Mental and Moral Science. 
 
 Professor of Aucietit and Modern Languages. 
 
 Professor of Mathematics. 
 
 Professor of Chemistry and Physics. 
 
 Professor of Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 Professor English Laza and Literattire. 
 
 B. A. - Principal of Preparatory Department. 
 
 Assistant in Preparatory Department. 
 
 Teacher of Vocal Music. 
 
 CHARGES. 
 
 $30 on 
 
 - 20 00 
 
 2 m 
 
 - 5 m 
 10 00 
 
 Board in Private Families, all things furnished, $13.00 to IG 00 
 
 College Classes, 5 months. 
 Preparatory Classes, 5 months, 
 Contingent Fee, 5 months. 
 Matriculation (College Class,) 
 Tabl>8 Board, per month, 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 21 
 
 Centenai'y College was founded in 1839, tlie centenary 
 year of Methodism; hence its name. It»was first located near 
 Brandon, Mississippi, but was moved to Jackson, Louisiana, 
 in 1845, and calltd ''Centenary College of Louisiana." 
 
 Its grand center building, erected shortly before our civil 
 war, and the two wings, containing dormitories, make it a very 
 commodious collegiate establishment. 
 
 Previous to the late war it was prosperous, having several 
 hundred students. In common with all monetary interests in 
 our Southland, the endowment and property of the college 
 suffered much from the effects of this war. Fur some years its 
 fortunes waned and its hopes languished; but more recently 
 it has shared the reviving prosperity of the country and its 
 prospects are annually brightening. 
 
 Its plan of endowment, relying largely, though not wholly 
 upon the interest-bearing notes of individual friends, has al- 
 ready put new life into the college, and promises to be the 
 means of establishing it in permanent prosperity and useful- 
 ness. 
 
 Besides the general tone of good morals prevailing at this 
 college, the Biblical instruction of all the students and espe- 
 cially the oppoi'tunities afforded to students for the ministry, 
 of whom there are annually about twenty in attendance, are 
 marked features of the institution. The literary societies, the 
 libraries and the Y. M. C. A. are powerful auxiliaries in the 
 work of the college. Its faculty now numbers ten professors 
 and teacheas, and the majority of its students are orderly and 
 studious. Its list of graduates, running back as far as the year 
 1825, contains the names of many of the most worthy and dis- 
 tinguished men in Louisiana and the adjacent States. 
 
 Such an institution is at once a blessing and an honor to 
 the Parish of East Feliciana and to the State of Louisiana. 
 
22 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 PIONEERS OF THE THIRD WARD, 
 
 A moving panorama truthfully depicting the march of civil- 
 zation in the Third Ward of East Feliciana would lift the cur- 
 tain in 1802 and disclose the Carneys and Rogillios felling the 
 canebrakes and tightin|;' the panthers and bears over the identi- 
 cal land novp^ included within the corporate limits of the town 
 of Jackson. 
 
 That was the nucleus that attracted the Scotts, Winters, Mc- 
 Kneelys, Kellers and McCants from Union District, South Caro- 
 lina in 1805, the Brians from Darlington District, and Benj. 
 Fauvre and Temple Nix, from Edgefield District, S. C, in 1806; 
 the Easts, also from Edgefield District, in 1812, and from the 
 same source the Singletarys; the Fishburns from Connecticut 
 and the McQueens from the pine woods of North Carolina lying 
 between Wilmington and Fayetteville. Many of whom found not 
 only good lands but good wives among the primeval canebrakes 
 and forests in Jackson and its immediate vicinity and many of 
 those who have been conspicuous in shaping the civilization of 
 the ward trace their genealogy to a graft of the South Carolina 
 blood upon the old Carney and Rogillio stock. 
 
 To attempt to sketch the progress of civilization in the third 
 ward without keeping Jackson conspicuously in the foreground 
 of the picture would be as absurd as putting the play of Hamlet 
 on the stage without the eccentric Prince of Denmark. So es- 
 sential to the picture is an authentic memoir of the growth of 
 Jackson that I have postponed the preparation of my sketch of 
 the ward in order to find out when Jackson became the seat of 
 justice of the County of Feliciana. Many people erroneously 
 believe that the county of Feliciana had no larger boundaries 
 than those which now include the two parishes of East and West 
 Feliciana. 
 
 Inasmuch as it confers added metropolitan dignity upon the 
 oldest third ward center of population and school of civilizatioa, 
 I will call atention to the proclamation of Governor Claiborne 
 issued at St. Francisville, December 7th, 1810, defining the Hmits 
 of the county of Feliciana to be "all the territory lying west of 
 the Perdido river and east of the Mississippi river, bounded 
 north by the line of demarkation and south b}^ the sea, the lakes 
 and Bayou Mauchac'" and fixing the seat of justice at St. Fran- 
 cisville. And in St. Francisville the judges, Martin, Mathews 
 and Lewis, held terms of the Superior Court of the Territory of 
 Orleans coatinuonsly until 1812, in which year the judges were 
 compelled to abandon their regular term of court by threats of 
 violent resistence from the people of St. Francisville and vicinity. 
 Hence I deduce the conclusion that Jackson was selected as the 
 seat of justice, of the largest county in the United States, in 
 1813, and thereby became the depository of the judicial records ^ 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 2S 
 
 of a territory larger in area than Rhode Island or Delaware. 
 That is an episode in the history of the oldest seat of third ward 
 civilization not generally known. It may however have had a 
 tendency to enhance the social and political influence of the 
 center over the extremities and may have conducted, in after 
 years, to bring to a small and inland town the first educational 
 foundation and grandest charity of Louisiana. The Insane Asy- 
 lum is still in Jackson and needs no further notice in this sketch, 
 "College of Louisiana" which was established in 1825, having 
 for alimony $5000 per annum, all the school funds of both Feli- 
 cianas and all the monies derived from gaming licences in New 
 Orleans, having equipped students from evei-y part of Louisiana 
 for many years, among whom the late Judge John McVea and 
 the late Colonel Preston Pond have not yet passed out of the 
 affectionate remembrance of East Feliciana, has been super- 
 ceded by another seat of learning, which the Methodists founded 
 in their centenary year, which, though as efleetive in equipping 
 students for the battle of life, may not be quite as richly endowed 
 as its predecessor. 
 
 This old and fertile hom« of th^e South Carolina colonists, 
 who came when this century was yet in its infancy, has still re- 
 maining upon its allotted area some heavy bodies of undisturbed 
 forests and much idle and abandoned land — many fields which 
 after emancipation were thrown aside because they were errone- 
 ously thought to be exhausted. There are however so many 
 notable instances of the restoration to their primitive fertility of 
 the abandoned seats of the old pioneers, — so many instances in 
 which those discarded fields are by good treatment made to 
 yield crops far in excess of the production of ^'ante bellum" slave- 
 ry times, that these idle and unproductive lands are increasing 
 in reputation and while perceptibly enhancing in price are still 
 held at prices ridiculously cheap, considering their intrinsic value. 
 Before closing my picture of the achievements of the glorious old 
 pioneers of the Third Ward, I beg leave to submit a few 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS. 
 
 Within sw; miles of three railroad stations and within twelve 
 miles, by good wagon roads, of three receiving and forwarding 
 points on the Mississippi river; with one railroad penetrating its 
 borders from east to west, and another railroad running its 
 whole breadth from north to South, the farmers of the ward and 
 the merchants of Jackson have always successfully resisted the 
 levying of extortionate tribute upon production and commerce 
 and their spirit of independence and consistent opposition to 
 oppressive exactions have maintained for them the advantages 
 of a "zona ibre.'' 
 
24 "east FKLICIANA PAST AND l-EfStNT."' 
 
 Jackson's cheap, easy and free intercourse with the outside 
 world and her exceptionally good educational advantages have 
 attracted from abroad numerous accessions of capital and labor, 
 which falling readily into liue with the genius of the old fam- 
 ilies have done their devoir in holding higher the standard of a 
 pure and polished civilization and have advanced the material 
 standards to a point bigger than they reached in ante helium 
 times. 
 
 With her contiguity to the great river, her railroads, col- 
 leges and renowned female schools, the third ward would seem 
 to have all that is needed for a pi^osperous career and a fuller 
 development. There is however in her economy one potent 
 factor missing. 
 
 She produces enough cotton to feed two first class factories 
 and Jackson is therefore adjacent to a cotton seed supply, large 
 enough without extensive forageing around, to keep a big cotton 
 seed mill at work the year round, and the beds and fields of 
 snow white sand on Thompsons Creek, if convertible into glass, 
 would furnish the raw material to run a dozen factories for fifty 
 years. 
 
 As a manufacturing centre the former seat of justice of the 
 biggest county in the United States is still a virgin experiment. 
 Her exceptional advantages hove never been fairly tested but we 
 hope and have a right to believe that a people so earnestly in- 
 tent on making their society powerful and prosperous, will ere 
 long bring Manufactures to the aid of Commerce. Agriculture 
 and Education. Hoping it may come before the century dies, 
 
 I am, etc., 
 
 H. SKIPWITH. 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 25 
 
 LONGEVITY IN THE PARISH OF EAST FELICIANA. 
 
 A REMARKABLE SHOWINCt OF THE HEALTHFULNESS OF THIS PART OF 
 
 LOUISIANA. 
 
 EXCELLENT HEALTH, LONG LIFE, A LOVELY CLIMATE THE CAUSE. 
 
 CAN ANY PARISH OR COUNTY MAKE A BETTER RECORD 
 
 Editor of Mirror : 
 
 Some time ago I promised 3'ou the result of some investi- 
 gations I had been making in regard to longevity in East Fe- 
 liciana Parish. My attention was first attracted to this subject 
 irs rendering a pastorate of sixteen years in the parish — I v^as 
 struck with the number of aged persons it had been my duty 
 to lay away in the grave — my record showed twenty-nine per- 
 sons whose ages ranged from 70 to 90 years. Three other per- 
 sons belonging to my congregation had died during my absence 
 and had b(-en buried by other ministers. The average age of 
 these thirty-two persons exceeded 74 years. Struck with so 
 remarkable a fact I began a series of inquiries as to the old 
 persons deceased in this parish within the past twenty years. 
 The results so far gathered gives a list of ninety-nine j)ersons 
 whose aggregate years amount to 7385, an average age of 
 nearly 74 years. Of these, 6 ranges from 90 to 95; 30 from 80 
 to 90; and 63 from 70 to 80 years; am sure that many others 
 died during these years of which I am ignorant and there are 
 many yet living who equal in age those given above. 
 
 This record presents among other remarkable facts that 
 ninety-nine persons have died in East Feliciana parish within 
 20 years whose aggregate age (add year to year) would extend 
 fourteen centuries beyond the creation of the world (according 
 to the common chronology) or putting the years together would 
 reach back to Adam and returning down the centuries would 
 bring us to the time of Noah. 
 
 But the most important fact is its bearing upon the health- 
 fulness of the parish. We do not believe this record can be 
 beaten by any parish or county in America. It must be remem- 
 bered that these were all white, no colored persons being con- 
 sidered in the list. Not having the census statistics, I cannot 
 make comparisons. The argument to be drawn from this re- 
 markable record of longevity is a strong one for those seeking 
 homes and a green old age. 
 
 We subnit the list, hoping that any error may be pointed 
 out and any additional names may be added. 
 
M 
 
 EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 NAME. AGE. 
 
 Mrs. M. A. S.Uiman... 90 
 
 Mrs. Johnson 91 
 
 Mrs. Kuth Calfield 70 
 
 Mrs. Poole .,.,... 85 
 
 Mr. Guth 79 
 
 Mr. Wash Chapman 78 
 
 Mr. Zuggs 70 
 
 Mr. Hugh Lucas ... 75 
 
 Mrs. Sallie Kicherts 70 
 
 Mrs. Morgan 75 
 
 Mrs. Maley 75 
 
 Mrs. L. Chairman 70 
 
 llev. John Higginbotham . . 75 
 
 Mr. Bird 70 
 
 Judge Hughes 70 
 
 Mrs. Collins 70 
 
 Mrs. Kist,., 70 
 
 Rev. James Stratton 74 
 
 Mr. Henry Marston 90 
 
 Mr. Benj. Brown 80 
 
 Mrs. Overton ^. 75 
 
 Mrs. J. A. Harris 73 
 
 Clem Gore , 75 
 
 Mrs. Gore 83 
 
 Capt. McCombs 73 
 
 '^Tttrs. M. L. Skipwith 78 
 
 Mrs. M, J. Tilden 85 
 
 Mrs. Freeman 88 
 
 Mrs. Mary Guth 78 
 
 Mr. S. A. Dubose 78 
 
 Dr. Chas. Wood. . .. 70 
 
 Mrs. James 80 
 
 Mr. Mike Richerts 80 
 
 Mr. Eli White 90 
 
 lte&. Knox 90 
 
 Dr. P. Pond 82 
 
 Mr. Jas. King 80 
 
 Capt G. C. Comstock 75 
 
 Mr. Wm. East 80 
 
 Mr. Welsh .. 75 
 
 Mr. Wall 73 
 
 Mr. Wm. Silliman 92 
 
 Mr. David Pipes, Sr 84 
 
 Mrs. Katie Norwood. 80 
 
 Mr. W. M. Jordan 70 
 
 Mrs. Jas. King 80 
 
 Mr. P. Fishburn . 90 
 
 Robt. Vaugan 70 
 
 Tim Rog-ers 70 
 
 NAME. AGE. 
 
 Mr. Wm. Patterson 70 
 
 Mr. Frank Hardesty 70 
 
 Mrs. Adams .... 7^ 
 
 Mr. Andy Tomb 75 
 
 Prof. Holcombe 70 
 
 Mrs. Wiley 70 
 
 Mrs. Irwin 70 
 
 Mr, Evans White 71 
 
 Mrs. Hatcher 70 
 
 Mrs. Kitchen 70 
 
 Mrs. Jenet Richardson 75 
 
 Mrs. Lucas .70 
 
 Mr. DeLee 80 
 
 Mrs. Green 80 
 
 Obediah Thompson 70 
 
 Dan'l McLean . .72 
 
 Miss McLean > . . 80 
 
 xMr. Charles Trotter 70 
 
 Mr. Booker Kent 70 
 
 Capt. Grifiath 80 
 
 Judge Scott 84 
 
 Mr. Wicker 73 
 
 Mr. Allen 70 
 
 Mr. Aaron Robinson 10 
 
 Mrs. Kent 70 
 
 Mrs. Story 80 
 
 A. Worms 71 
 
 Mr. McMurray 70 
 
 Mrs. McMurray 70 
 
 Mr. Worthy ..70 
 
 Mrs. E. Miller 74 
 
 Mr. Hewey 70 
 
 Nancy Wisdom 80 
 
 Mr. Lipscomb 80 
 
 Mrs. Bethany 95 
 
 Mrs. Ann Gleason 81 
 
 Mrs. H. Lambert 78 
 
 R. L. Brashear 82 
 
 Mrs. S. Seals 75 
 
 Ed. Story 82 
 
 Mr. Hej man 74 
 
 Mrs. Heyman 80 
 
 Mrs. Oppenheimer 81 
 
 H. B. Chase 70 
 
 Wm. Irwin 70 
 
 W. H. Green 70 
 
 Char. Crane 70 
 
 Mrs. Weil 74 
 
 Wm. Austin 80 
 
 Mrs. Cassie Harrell . . 80 
 
 We request any parties in the parish to add any facts known 
 that would perfect this record. Yours, M. B. SHAW. 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 27 
 
 Siuce handing- you the'above I have obtained the following 
 additional names: 
 
 NAME." AGE. 
 
 W. W. Jones 73 
 
 Rev. A. G. Miller 74 
 
 J. M. Young 72 
 
 Mrs. Austin 74 
 
 Jas. Reams, Sr 80 
 
 Jas. Reams, Jr 70 
 
 Mr. Tabor 90 
 
 Mr. Drawdy 75 
 
 Robt. Tucker 73 
 
 Jas. Chapman 80 
 
 Allen Chapman 76 
 
 NAME. AGE. 
 
 Mrs. Butternauth 72 
 
 Mrs. L. Perkins 75 
 
 Cullen McCarstle 70 
 
 Gen. A. G. Carter 75 
 
 J. R. Ceambers, Sr 73 
 
 Mr. Mattingly 70 
 
 Sandy Spears 70 
 
 Archie Palmer 70 
 
 Mrs. S. Palmer 70 
 
 Mrp. Ellen Kernan 78 
 
 Mrs. H. Levi 72 
 
 Mrs. Wieker 80 
 
 Thus the agggregate ages would instead of stopping at 
 Moses, would come down the ages to nearly eight centuries be- 
 fore Christ's advent on the earth. M. B. S. 
 
 Clinton, La., June 9, 1890. 
 Rev. M. B. Hhaw : 
 
 Dear Sir — I enclose you a list of names of persons not on 
 your list published in The Mirror of May 22, 189U, who lived in 
 this parish and died here since the close of the war, all of them 
 I think within the last twenty years, and all of whom were 70 
 years of age and and over. Their exact ages I do not know. 
 Yours, very respectfully, F. D. BRAME. 
 
 NAME. AGE. 
 
 Mrs. F. Welsh 
 
 Mrs. Ann Brian 
 
 Mrs. McQueen 
 
 Lawrence Morgan 
 
 W. H. Potter 
 
 Mrs. W. H. Potter 
 
 J. C, Jackson 
 
 Hardy Saunders 80 
 
 Mrs. Nancy Payne 
 
 Mrs . Gintha 
 
 Teos. F. Noone 
 
 Mr. Hoffmeister 
 
 Mrs Waddil 
 
 Mrs. C. B. Kennedy 
 
 Mrs. Jane Chapman 
 
 Mrs. Pence 
 
 Mrs. Cain 
 
 Mrs. Campbell 
 
 Mrs. Zilpha Chance 
 
 Mrs. Rebecca Whittaker . . . 
 Mrs. Daughty 
 
 NAME AGE. 
 
 Mrs. Ellen Flyn 
 
 Mr. S. Heap 
 
 Thos. N. Northam 
 
 James Pratt 
 
 Mrs. Eliza Kelly 
 
 Miss Nancy McCall 
 
 Mrs. Mary Pearse 
 
 John O. Perry 
 
 Mrs, John O. Perry 
 
 Wm. J. Hayden 
 
 Dr. J. H. McWhinney ... . 
 
 JohnB. Taylor 
 
 Billington Taylor 
 
 Reuben Nash 
 
 Davis Gore 89 
 
 Miss Nettie McFall 100 
 
 Nancy McQueen 89 
 
 Miss Fannie Pond 
 
 Mr. Delpiani 70 
 
 Mr. Morgan 80 
 
28 
 
 "east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Clinton, May 24, 1890. 
 Dear Mr. Shaw — Below you'll find a few names to add to 
 your list: 
 
 NAME. 
 
 AGE. NAME. AGE. 
 
 Miss Eliza Mills 70 
 
 Mr. Isaac Taylor 75 
 
 Rich Dreher 75 
 
 Howell Cobb <,. . 70 
 
 Nelson Nesom 75 
 
 Mrs. Jane Boarman 73 
 
 Mrs. Hayney 70 
 
 Mrs. Davis 75 
 
 Mr. Jno. Richards 69 
 
 Mrs. Wm. Stone 68 
 
 Mr. M. Schurer 70 
 
 Eli Norwood ... 68 
 
 Mrs. Kennedy 70 
 
 Mrs. Kahn 68 
 
 Mr. Jno. Elder 75 
 
 Mr. Wm. Lockwood 70 
 
 Mrs. Patrick 70 
 
 Mr. Henry Broadway 70 
 
 Mr. John Dunbar 70 
 
 Mrs. Mary Lawson 80 
 
 Mrs. Guinther 70 
 
 Mr. JohnRist 80 
 
 Mrs. Maddell 80 
 
 Mrs. Emma Jones 75 
 
 Mrs. Strickengoss 75 
 
 Rev. David Pipes 70 
 
 Mrs. David Pipes 70 
 
 Mrs. Mary Broadway 75 
 
 Mr. Wm Hay den 70 
 
 Mr. Green Edwards 68 
 
 Mr. Lee Hardesty 70 
 
 J. H. Muse 70 
 
 Sam. Lee 70 
 
 Noel Norwood 70 
 
 Mrs. Norwood 68 
 
 Zack Norwood 68 
 
 Mrs. Margaret Woodward . . 80 
 
 D. S. Rhea ...70 
 
 Mrs. Rhea 68 
 
 Jno. J. Flynn 75 
 
 J. B. Taylor 70 
 
 Mr. Bethard 70 
 
 Langston East 75 
 
 Rev. John East 70 
 
 Judge John McVey 68 
 
 Stith New 68 
 
 Mr. Pratt 70 
 
 Wm. Gurney 68 
 
 Bailey Chaney 80 
 
 Mr. K. Harrell 70 
 
 A few of the above died after leaving the parish a short 
 time. Two-thirds of their lives was spent in this parish. 
 
 Yours, F. HARDESTY. 
 
 PIONEERS OF THE FOURTH WARD. 
 
 There were tivo tidal waves of Southern immigration, each 
 bearing on its foremest crest explorers into the wilds of East 
 Feliciana adjacent to the line of demarkation between the United 
 States and the King of Spain's Province of West Florida. 
 
 The Chickasaw lands, called the Yazoo Purchase, included 
 for the most part within the borders of what is now the State of 
 Mississippi, being opened for settlement attracted roving bands 
 
" KAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 29 
 
 of home seekers from all parts of the old original thirteen States, 
 in the closing years of the last century, and the treaty made 
 with Spain, October 27th, 1795, fixing the boundary line on the 
 81st parallel of latitude, which boundary line was run by Capt. 
 EUicott and Spanish commissioners, according to treaty, as early 
 as 1797, and which commencing in the middle of Bajou Tunica' 
 where it empties in the Mississippi river came due east, dividing 
 the fourth ward from Wilkinson County, Miss., and likewise the 
 seventh and eighth wards of East Feliciana parish from Amite 
 County, Miss. 
 
 The second tidal wave of immigration was set in motion by Mr. 
 Jefferson's announcement in October, 1803, that all Louisiana 
 had been bought by the United States, brought home seekers by 
 battalions, whole families and neighborhoods. 
 
 On the foremost crest of the first of these tidal waves, and 
 therefore in advance of either column, came into the undisturbed 
 canebrakes and forests adjacent to Keller Town — now a small 
 hamlet right on the line of demarkation, taking its name from 
 the ancestor of the old influential Keller family of East Felici- 
 ana, who founded there a new home to replace the one he aban- 
 doned in South Carolina — was old Mr. John Palmer, an Irish 
 gentleman of education and refinement, who, like Blanuerhasset 
 and Thomas Addis Enimett, after the Irish rebellion, fled from 
 the storms of his own country to find quiet in ours, 
 
 Having coasted through the Carolinas and the Chickasaw 
 purchase, he found the quiet he sought in the solitudes of the 
 forests and canebrakes of the wilds of "Possum Corner," a soli- 
 tude which was unbroken unless the Irish ex-rebel had a turn 
 towards the sentimental which could find "tongues in trees, . 
 books in the running brooks, and sermons in stones;" unless the 
 old fellow, provoked by the growling bears, the screaming pan- 
 thers, or the sneaking pilferings of the multitudes of possums — 
 for which oleaginous animals the corner is, and always was, re- 
 nowned — resorted to use of his trusty rifle. Amid these lone- 
 some environments the benevolent old Irish recluse and alcalde 
 administered Spanish law and justice, and trained his three sons 
 Archilbald, Adam and Nechemiah, who were all prominent 
 workers in the advancement of a pure christian civilization. And 
 side by side with the old Irish rebel, the first to penetrate the 
 canebrakes in which he was lying perdue came the ancestor of 
 Drury and Isaac Smith. Attracted by the noises of civilization 
 made by these two earliest explorers, came early in the present 
 century, the ancestors of the Kellers, Whitakers, Gauldens, No- 
 lands, Jeters, Higginbothams, McKneelys and Boatners, some 
 with a permit and grant of land from the King of Spain, most 
 of them uninvited squatters building their homes close to the 
 line, equally prepared for a monarchical or republican denoue- 
 ment, retaining the right of choice for either destiny. 
 
30 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Early and conspicuous in the Keller Town community was the 
 tall, straight figure old Ben Graves, who was not old then, but a 
 handsome single gentleman from SouthCarolina, who brought with 
 him the family cow and diminitive pony, and founded his home 
 where the fourth and seventh wards meet on the line of demark- 
 ation, and where Wilkinson and Amite counties, corner on the 
 line. His ritle kept him abundantly supplied with panther steaks, 
 saddles of veniscn and haunches of bear and the ubiquitous, 
 oleaginous possum. When sugar, coffee, salt or flour was need- 
 ed, the pony was saddled with an empty sack and as many dry 
 skins of deer, bears and panthers as could be strapped on, and 
 thus equipped Mi*. Graves would strike into a bridle path lead- 
 ing to St. Francisville where he would exchange his peltries for 
 supplies — which was better than giving «. lien on the crop. On 
 his return from one of these annual pilgrimages Ben and the 
 pony received the hospitalities of a settler who had cut down an 
 acre or so of canes and started a clearing close to the line of the 
 bridle path, and in that settlers log cabin was a lovely little 
 barefoot beauty of the canebrakes, the settler being like Jeptha, 
 Judge in Israel, who had one fair daughter and no more. Tra- 
 dition pleasantly relates that the heart of the tall, handsome 
 Carolinian was not only smitten but completely subjugated, 
 and on blushingly making his doleful dilemma known to his 
 canebrake Dulcinea, she surrendered, not at discretion, but with 
 one important reservation: "She mvist have a pair of wedding 
 slippers to stand up in," 
 
 Most men would have opened negotiations with Paris, New 
 York or New Orleans for a small shipment of dainty wedding 
 slippers the more speedly to raise the embargo on the nuptial 
 ceremony, but Ben trudged home Avith light heart and elastic 
 step, and visiting his tan yard to give the finishing touch to his 
 hides, commenced to model two lasts, one for the bride's dainty 
 slippers and a larger one for the bridegroom's boots. ^When the 
 slippers and boots were finished the old Irish Alcalde' was invit- 
 ed to accompany him to the cabin which enshrined Ben's heart 
 and sheltered his unexpectant bride. The annals of Amite and 
 Wilkinson Counties and the Fourth and Seventh Wards of East 
 Feliciana attest lovingly that none have done more to develope 
 a pure civilization, than old Ben's blushing bride of the cane- 
 breaks although her trousseau was nothing more sparkhng than 
 a pair of home made buck skin slippers. 
 
 Continuing my portraiture of the growing Fourth Ward, 
 which would not be complete if it should stop before depicting 
 its general adaptibility to pastoral and agricultural purposes; its 
 wonderful advantages as a productive home, where the home 
 seeker can chose to dwell amid fertile cultivated fields, on the 
 crown of an elevated plateau with miles of landscape of mira- 
 culous beauty, or down in the green valleys in sight and hear-' 
 
"east ieliciana past and present." 31 
 
 ing of the rippling, joyous waters ; and in each locality find a 
 sweet happy home, with a good living annexed, without ex- 
 cessive outlay of cash or sweat of brow. 
 
 Although not in sight of the cupolas and domes of a 
 great city or in hearing of its hum and noise, if the home 
 seeker be a man of gregarious inclinations he can indulge his 
 tastes in two young and growing centres of population, in 
 which life and bustle give token of rapid future growth. Nor- 
 wood and Wilson lying along the line of the L. N. O. and T. 
 Railway are already rebuking old Keller town for its sleepy- 
 headed ways; already assuming the airs of big trade emporiums 
 just as we have seen the lovely little witches who promenade 
 their streets, discard short dresses and come out, by magical 
 transformation, in long ones with regulation skirts and trains. 
 Two embryo cities, each striving for the crown of wealth and 
 population and good society. 
 
 From behind the green curtains which fringe its northern 
 boundary along the winding banks of Thompsons creek, and its 
 eastern borders which are curtained from the world beyond by 
 the forests and cane breaks which margin the banks of Comite 
 river, the Fourth Ward points with pride to the testimonials of 
 moving and pure society which has developed behind its curtains, 
 and attracts the gaze of the passing streams of home seekers by 
 pointing proudly to her interior jewels. 
 
 Notwithstanding that the beautiful scenery along the line of 
 the railroad has already attracted many investments of capital 
 and labor from abroad there still remains within the borders of 
 the Fourth Ward twelve thousand acres of primeval forests and 
 abandoned fields, lying idle, for lack of labor. And while the 
 Fourth Ward has received so many recruits from abroad, it is a 
 notable fact that the worship around the old altars to God, 
 Home and Country remain as pure to-day as when the Carolini- 
 ans brought it across the line of demarkation in 1804-'5 and '6, 
 etc. Feeling sanguine and hopeful that the waste places will 
 soon be built up, I am yours, etc. 
 
 H. SKIPWITH. 
 
 WILSON, 
 
 ITS NATURAL ADVANTAGES; ITS LOCATION; ITS RESOURCES AND PEOPLE; 
 ITS PURE WATER AND FERTILE SOIL; AS A HEALTH RESORT, ETC. 
 
 Maj. H. Skipwith, 
 
 Clinton, La. : 
 
 Esteemed old Friend — Having learned of your design to ad- 
 vertise the Parish of East Feliciana in the form of a neat read- 
 
32 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 able and attractive pamphlet descriptive of its people, lavdn, 
 Hocial characfenslic>^, and its foums, etc , and feeling desirous that 
 the thriving, prosperous and fast-growing town Wilson should 
 fill the place in the advertisement, which its many attractive 
 features entitle it to, I send you the following portrait drawn 
 from life of 
 
 THE TOWN OF WILSON, 
 
 which is a town of one hundred houses and three hundred in- 
 habitants, and is situated on the main line of the great Louis- 
 ville, New Orleans and Texas Railway, one hundred and twen- 
 ty-two miles north of New Orleans; thirty-two miles north of 
 Baton Rouge, the capital of the State of Louisiana; eight miles 
 northwest of Clinton, the seat of justice of the Parish of East 
 Feliciana, and the same distance from Jackson, La., the oldest 
 center of population, commerce and education in the parish. 
 It is situated partly in the valley of Redwood Creek, along 
 which tbe railroad runs; out of which valley it rises tier upon 
 tier of handsome residences, stores, churches, schoolhouses, 
 lodges, livery stables, etc. On a rise of land from twenty five to 
 fifty feet above the level of the railroad it has already con- 
 structed several fine hotels, two livery stables, a Methodist .and 
 Presbyterian church, eleven general stores, good schools, etc. 
 Wilson is a relay station and on its site is much valuable prop- 
 erty belonging to the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Rail- 
 way Company, viz: the Yalley Hotel, the depot building, 
 repair shops, coal chute, and the large round houses, etc.. 
 with a fair prospect of other public building, being erected 
 in the near futui-e. It is said to be the best place for a cash 
 business between Vicksburg and New Orleans. The morals of 
 the town, which may be pronounced without I oasting, ex- 
 ceptionably good, and it may be truly said to be one of the 
 healthiest localities in the State of Louisiana, with its pine, 
 chalybeate waters, mild and invigorating climate. There are con- 
 siderable vacant lands lying north and east of Wilson that can 
 be bought at reasonable figures, that are susceptible of being 
 put in a high state of cultivation, producing forty and fifty 
 bushels of corn per acre and from one to one and a half bales of 
 cotton per acre, and is well adapted to truck and f.-rm gardens, 
 orchards, etc. All of the smaller cereals grow prolifically. On 
 the southeast, Wilson is makirg a winning fight with Clinton 
 for the trade; on the north, Wilson is making a hard fight with 
 the enterprising and competitive town of Norwood, with its 
 large capital, that is so much needed to build up a town; and 
 on the west by Jackson. I predict that, in the course of fifty 
 years, the four little towns will be blended in one large city 
 with Wilson as its great railroad center. Fiiends, look to your 
 future interest and with open arms invite capital and encour- 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 33 
 
 are imioration. that is so much reeded to build up and develop 
 one of the finest countries on God's green earth. 
 
 By giving insertion of the foregoing special sketch of the 
 Town of Wilson and contiguous country you will do a work that 
 will be highly apprecialed by the good people of Wilson and 
 your obedient servant and well-wisher. 
 
 Truly and respectfully yours, 
 
 E. M. HOOPER, M. D , 
 Mayor of Wilson, East Feliciana Parish, La. 
 
 PIONEERS OF THE FIFTH WARD. 
 
 I am so habituated, Mr. Editor, to chronological arrangement 
 that I think I would not begin writing a history of Rome before 
 making close and critical search for vesfisres of the wall, to build 
 which, Romulns cut down the reeds of Tiber, nearly three thous- 
 and years ago. My present search is limited to the inquiry 
 "Who made the earliest blazings of civilizations in the fifth 
 ward of East Feliciana?." 
 
 Tradition carries us then back, in answer to this question, to 
 the closing years of the last century; when the tbree Yarborough 
 brothers from Georgia, and Joseph Felps, from the same State, 
 in company with his brothers, James, Thomas and David; and 
 as part of the same imraigration movement, those sturdy old 
 frontiersmen, Isaac Tsiylor from Pennsylvania, and Robert Net- 
 tles and Thomas Albritton from South Carolina, who commenced 
 to make their hatchet clearings, to lav off fence rows and to build 
 log cabins with puncheon floors in the heart of the primeval for- 
 ests and cane brakes, the dark green curtains of the water- 
 courses, which irrigated and fertilized the lovely valleys of the 
 Fifth Ward, in the year 1798. 
 
 And two years later came into the same community another 
 colony from Elbert County, Georgia, which included several 
 well-rpm*^mbered pioneers, who figured conspicuously in shaping 
 our civilization, namely: Charles Ingraham, James Higginbot- 
 ham, Matthew Edwards, Natt Cobb and William Blount. 
 
 Mr. Ingraham, who cleared the place now owned by Mr. I. 
 T. Felps, w^as a worker in wood, possessing a large and active 
 mechanical genius, and to him the settlers were indebted for the 
 first grist and saw mill, and he was likewise the owner of several 
 slave mpchanics, workers both in iron and wood, and Ingraham's 
 mill and blacksmith shop were leading land marks for many 
 years, of which there are still some vestiges. 
 
 His old Elbert Couniy neighbor and friend, James Higgin- 
 botham, who likewise was a slave owner, was the Master of the 
 
34 "east feliciatja past and present. 
 
 first lodge of Masons organized in East Feliciana. He lived and 
 died on bis first clearing, but his sod, John B., on his father's 
 death, moved eastward into the Sixth Ward, Dear Nat Cobb and 
 William Blount and the Briants, who had migrated from the 
 banks of the Comite river, in the Fifth, to the valley of the Amite, 
 in the Sixth. Throughout his long and active life, John B. Hig- 
 ginbotham was a strong pillar of the Methodist Church, an 
 earnest and devout class leader. It is one of the traditions of 
 the Elbert County colony, along the Comite, that young Charles 
 Ingraham was the first Anglo American to die, and that his father 
 put him away in a solid lightwood coffin, which was made air 
 tight by ingenious devices without corroding nails. 
 
 As the Felps and Yarborough brothers certainly came into 
 the wilds earlier than the Elbert County colony, those earliest 
 leaders of the column of civilization have had so much influence 
 in shaping the societies which they founded that each may claim 
 a short biographical paragraph. 
 
 James Felps founded the ancestral seat, seven miles east of 
 Clinton, on the Grreensburg road, in the Eighth Ward. His 
 brothers, Thomas and David Felps, founded their family seats 
 two miles south of him, on the banks of Bluff Creek, in the Sixth 
 Ward. 
 
 The fourth brother, Joseph, whoi-e descendants still cling in 
 large numbers around the "clearing" which their ancestor made 
 in 1798, a little south of the present site of Clinton, chose his 
 home in the Fifth Ward. 
 
 The three Yarborough brothers, who came from Georgia 
 with the Felps, founded their homes along the banks of Pretty 
 Creek, in clannish proximity, in the Fifth Ward. Lewis Yar- 
 borough made his hatchet clearing and built his log cabin (which 
 I have seen standing in good repair, in 1825) just between the 
 present store of Mr. E. Carow and the new residence of Henry 
 Hartner. His descendants, not long ago, under the advice of 
 Judge J. B. Smith, contemplated bringing suit for all the land 
 on which the town of Clinton now stands . 
 
 James Yarborough founded his seat on the heights west of 
 Pretty Creek, within 200 yards of the present residence of Mr. 
 H, A. White; and his descendants, of whom Mrs. A. Levi, of 
 New Orleans, is one, have contributed their loyal quota to the 
 social development of their neighborhood. 
 
 The third brother, Stephen Yarborough, was perhaps the 
 most energetic and successful of the brothers. He founded his 
 seat and handsomely improved the heights, on which Hon. T. S. 
 Adams now lives, from which there is a pleasant prospect of 
 green, fertile valleys and forest-clad hill. The career of Stephen was 
 prosperous without any adverse break for jears, during which he 
 added a water saw and grist mill and gin to his possessions, until 
 
"east I*EL1CIA1JA PAST and PliliSENT. 3^ 
 
 he planted his numerous broad and Jertile acres of Pretty Creek 
 bottoms in sugar cane. 
 
 He lost his crop in the futile endeavor to express the juice 
 from his canes with water power, which was totally inadequate. 
 This costly failure and the loss of his first wife suggested to the 
 lonely widower of Pretty Creek the need of a partner to share 
 his sorrows. Nature abhors a void, and so did Stephen, the 
 uxorious widower, who, inspired with the resolution to find a 
 suitable partner to fill the void, spruced up one fine Sunday 
 morning in a glossy broad cloth suit, spotless linen, shiny beaver, 
 tight buckskin gauntlets and patent leather boots, and rode 
 upon a showy charger, prancing and curvetting, to the fence 
 around the mansion in wnich Judge Brame now resides. Inside 
 the building were the bright black eyes of the very pretty brun- 
 ette Widow Morgan, who sat in widowed meditation, fancy free, 
 biding her time. To accompany the bright eyed widow to 
 church was the objective point of Stephen, and to that same ob- 
 ject the widow cheerfully co-operated. The acquaintance thus 
 initiated soon ripened into a rapid exchange of notes, in which 
 the widower's words, carefully selected from that casket of sigh- 
 ing lovers "the complete letter-writer," fairly sparkled with the 
 Pomethean fire, to which the widow, with experience of thirty 
 winters and a former surrender, was coy and very shy, without a 
 soupeon of gush or any of those traps into which soft and silly 
 maidens often fall. As the correspondence developed the fur- 
 naces on the "Heights" became hotter and blighter. In the 
 course of time, when the fire grew dim for want of fuel, and 
 when the flashes from Pretty Creek ceased to illuminate the 
 widow's casket* of epistolary jewels, the thrifty widow unmasked 
 a battery from behind the columns of Judge Brame's brick house, 
 which struck terror to the heart of Capt. Adam's uxorious prede- 
 cessor in his lofty tower on Pretty Creek. The artless, coy, 
 . bright-eyed widow filed with the Clerk of the District Court a 
 suit for breach of promise, and $10,000 damages to salve a broken 
 heart, and founded her suit on twenty odd carefully folded, 
 labelled and numbered proposals of marriage. 
 
 Imagine Falstatf before Henry the Fifth's Chief Justice, de- 
 fending himself from the clamorous asseverations of Dame 
 Quickly, alleging that the oleagenous old scamp had deceived 
 her into various and sundry money loans, and broken her sus- 
 ceptible heart by numberless promises to make her his wedded 
 wife. Imagine the placid and rotund Mr. Pickwick defending 
 himself from the matrimonial aspirations of Mrs. Bardell, and 
 you will have a "fac-simile" of the fat widower of Pretty Creek 
 before the court in .Clinton, on the trial of the suit styled "The 
 widow Morgan vs. Stephen Yarborough. Of all the lawyers, 
 jurors and witnesses in that celebrated case none that I know of 
 are left to tell the tale, except the ex-Chief Justice Merrick and 
 
36 "east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT.*' 
 
 this writer. Recalling the ludicrous incidents of that memor- 
 able scene, in which the two most conspicuous champions of the 
 much damaged widow were the late Tuomas Green Davidson, of 
 Livingston, and the late Henry Marston, Esq. The first pro- 
 claimed himself to be the volunteer defender of injured inno- 
 cence; the latter a knightly old gentlemen from under the shadow 
 .of Faneni Hall, who promenaded the lists, ready to break a 
 lance with whoever presumed to sneer at the aggravated wrongs 
 of the wounded dove, who was seeking salve for a broken heart. 
 As the venerable Tom Green Davidson would extract a letter 
 from the bulky package on which the widow's case rested, lean- 
 ing on his crutch, and holding the letter in the other hand ap- 
 pealing "Gentlemen of the Jury, I crave your close attention 
 while I read to you another chapter of "Stephen on Love," a 
 scene so rich vpas presented which beggars the numerous pre- 
 sentations of Falstaff and Pickwick defending themselves from 
 Widows Quickly and Bardell. The jury gave Mrs, Morgan 
 $1000 damages, which was only realized alter a hard light in the 
 Supreme Court, but the widow died before the decree was ren- 
 dered and Mr. Marston, her chivalrous and steadfast friend, ad- 
 ministered her estate, which was kept unsettled b^ the claim of 
 her volunteer counsel for a fee of $500, which claim was 
 resisted by the administrator on the ground that the volunteer 
 had pui his hand on his heart and solemnly avowed before God 
 and tlie jury he had no pecuniary interest, and old Tom died a 
 few years afterwards, kicking himself because he had once in his 
 life forfeited $500 in good money to impalpable gush. 
 
 Before closing this sketch I desire to add that the water 
 courses that form the eastern and western boundaries of the 
 Fifth Ward and Pretty Creek which courses through it diagon- 
 ally from N. E. to S. W., afford large bodies of fertile meadow 
 land, that its soil on hill and valley can be easily and cheaply re- 
 juvenated, and therefore in its reproductive capacity and splen- 
 did pastoral advantages, it is the equal of the most favored 
 wards. That its area of cheap, idle, waste and abandoned lands 
 is large, owing to the scarcity of laborers, and that in the ruatter 
 of good society, good churches and good schools, it possesses 
 inducements whicU are very attractive to the roving body of 
 home-seekers, for whom this sketch has been written. Hoping 
 it will reach them and attract them, I remain, yours, etc., 
 
 H. SKIPWITH. 
 
''east Feliciana past and present.'* 39 
 
 GDttEatWE IMSTtTUTE, 
 
 For YOUNG LADIES, 
 
 Clinton, Louisiana. 
 
 SESSION 1890-91. 
 
 ADVANTAGES. 
 
 LARGE ENDOWMENT. HEALTHFUL LOCATION- 
 
 MODERATE TERMS. FREE SCHOLARSHIPS. 
 EASY ACCESSIBILITY. 
 
40 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. ' 
 
 BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 
 
 Kev. M. B. Shaw, President - - - Clinton, La. 
 
 Hon. D. W. Pipes, Secretary - - - Clinton, La. 
 
 Hon. W. H. Pipes, Treasurer - - - Clinton, La. 
 
 Dr. L. G. Perkins - - - - East Feliciana, La. 
 
 Judge J. G. Kilbourne - . - - Clinton, La. 
 
 Rev. J. Y. Allison - - - - Baton Rouge, La. 
 
 W. R. MgKowen, Esq. . - - - Jackson, La. 
 
 OFFICERS AND TEACHERS. 
 
 SESSION I»9U-yi. 
 
 GEORGE J. RAMSEY, A. M., President, 
 Ancient Language.^ and Modern Science. 
 
 MRS. GEO. J. RAMSEY, Acting Lady Principal, 
 Vocal 3fHsic and Art. 
 
 REV. F. W. LEWIS, A. B. (W. & L. Univ'ty), 
 Mathematics, Mental and Moral Science. 
 
 MRS. T. S. STEVENS, 
 History and Composition. 
 
 MISS SUSIE G. KILBOURNE, 
 
 English Language and Literature. 
 
 MISS EMMA KILBOURNE, 
 
 English. 
 
 Modern Languages. 
 
 MRS. J. A. WHITE, 
 
 Primary Department. 
 
 MISS O. E. HARDESTY, 
 
 Inst rumen tal Music. 
 
''east FELICIANA PAS* AND PBESEnT.*' 41 
 
 DR. JAMES KILBOURiNE, 
 
 Attendant Physician and Lecturer on Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 MISS JENNIE SCOTT, 
 
 Stenography and Typewriting. 
 
 MRS. S. P. SAUNDERS, 
 
 Matron. 
 
 BUILDINGS. 
 
 These were erected at a cost of $30,000. They are of brick, 
 large, well ventilated, and present a very handsome appear- 
 ance. The grounds embrace ten acres, a large part of which 
 is densely covered with beech and magnolia, and used only for 
 play grounds and rambles. The water is from underground 
 cisterns, caught from slate roofs, and therefore of the purest 
 quality. The buildings have been, during the past three years, 
 placed in thorough repair and furnished anew throughout, 
 and the rooms will always contain every comfort and conve- 
 nience. 
 
 HEALTH. 
 
 The town of Clinton, situated in the "hill country" of Lou- 
 isiana, is one of the healthiest in the State. No local cause of 
 disease exists. No epidemic has visited the town since 1855. 
 On the contrary, the beneficial effect of the genial climate and 
 pure atmosphere upon persons afflicted with pulmonary or ma- 
 larial diseases has been clearly demonstrated by the experience 
 of a large number of pupils during past years. In the interior 
 management of the school attention to the health of the pupils 
 is made a matter of the first moment. 
 
4:2 " EAST FELICIANA tAS* AND PRESilNT.' 
 
 PIONEERS OF THE SIXTH WARD. 
 
 Notwithstanding, Mr. Editor, that this sixth sub-division of 
 East Feliciana has been sneeringly nick-named "the Dark Cor- 
 ner," I find on closer scrutiny that its annals are as full of stir- 
 ring incidents, its settlement as early, its progress as fast and its 
 social development as healthy and steady as in any of the other 
 wards, aud a glance at its admirable distribution of forest and 
 stream, of meadows and valleys and picturesque building sites, 
 on the crown of its lofty ranges of forest clad hills, will convince 
 the home seekers that I am sketching one of the choicest haunts 
 of civilized man; a land conspicuously adapted to the uses of 
 agricultural aud pastoral endeavor. 
 
 The bold and turbulent Amite, with its wealth of broad and 
 fertile bottoms, and its miles of dense primeval forests, is the 
 ward's eastern border, Sandy Creek, a smaller stream of living 
 waters, presenting on a smaller scale the same features as are 
 found along the Amite, is the xcedern boundary of the ward. The 
 same general features likewise attach to the courses of its two 
 diagonal feeders, namely Hunter's Branch, which rises a little 
 north of the centre and flows south-west into Sandy Creek, and 
 Bluff Creek which also rises north of the centre and discharges 
 south-east in the Amite river. It is almost needless to add that 
 the flocks and herds of the Sixth Ward never suffer for water, 
 and the meadows bordering all these streams in large broad 
 bodies of fertile land hold out a promise of rich remuneration to 
 agricultural and pastoral endeavor. It goes, too, almost without 
 saying, that the bold headlands hemming in these streams abound 
 in picturesque sites, calling eloquently to roaming pilgrinls to 
 stop and build and beautify a home. 
 
 It has already been asserted in these sketches that there 
 were two tidal waves, which floated into these wilds; two streams 
 of immigrating humanity; some by single spies, some by fami- 
 lies, and some by whole neighborhoods. 
 
 The first ivave was set in motion by the treaty with Spain in 
 1795, which defined the 31st parallel of north latitude as the 
 boundary between Spain's provinces of Florida and the United 
 States, and also guaranteed to American citizens, for three years, 
 the right of deposit. On this first wave came into the Sixth 
 Ward, to battle with the bears, panthers and wolves for posses- 
 sion and a peaceful home, John Morgan and Morgan Morgan, 
 who having emigrated from Virginia to the wilds of Kentucky 
 with their relative Daniel Boone, soon after the revolutionary 
 war, turned their migratory longing southward in 1796, and in 
 company with the Vardells and Thackers, founded their homes 
 in the Sixth in the broad and fertile Amite valley. Impelled by 
 the same wave, though not quite so early, but before the close of 
 the century, came the Chaneys from South Carolina, the Phelps 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 43 
 
 from Georgia, and John Hobgood from Virginia. These early 
 coDier.s founded seats along the valleys *of Bluflf .Creek, except 
 Capt. James Hobgood, whose early life was so eventful and full 
 of interesting incidents, as to suggest a separate biographical 
 paragraph. James Hobgood was a Virginia lad during the Revo- 
 lution, with strong longings to go and fight for Washington and 
 freedom, but being too j^oung was denied enlistment. After the 
 war closed, the restless, aspiring lad commenced his migrations 
 southward, through the Carolinas, stopping in South Carolina 
 long enough to fascinate a blue-eyed daughter of the Bartiekls, 
 who came with him to found a home on the plantation in the 
 Sixth Ward, now owned and cultivated by Mr. Porter Rowley. 
 The ancestor of the Hobgoods was not only one of the earliest 
 comers, but was for many 3'ears the most conspicuous figure of the 
 early society of the Sixth Ward, especially at "House Raisings" 
 and "Log Rollings" and all other occasions at which physical 
 strength always won the crown of admiratioD. He was a long 
 armed, heavily muscled athlete, and as a jumper, wrestler and 
 fighter had no equal. His son, Mr. W. B. Hobgood, relates with 
 pai'donable pride the feats of prowess of his gigantic ancestor, 
 but he had one weakness, for which Billy, after the lapse of over 
 half a century, has not been able fully to forgive him. When the 
 oats were ready for the harvest the long armed old giant would 
 shoulder his scythe and buckle on his canteen full of whiskey, 
 and his son Billy was summoned to carry a fresh pail of water, 
 and when the day's work was done the canteen was always 
 empty, but Billy had been rigidly confined to the contents of the 
 pail of water, and to this day Billy protests that he was the vic- 
 tim of a most unfair distribution of the fluids. 
 
 Within a year or two of those already mentioned came from 
 G-eorgia, the Cobbs, Higginbothams, Carrolls and Blonnts, 
 and the Barfields from South Carolina, who founded their seats 
 along the Amite river. While these eastern colonists were de- 
 veloping their scattered communities, settlements were being 
 made on the western border, along the valley of Sandy Creek, by 
 the Hatchers, Storys, McMurrays and Gideon White. 
 
 A little later, say about six years, the earliest of that large 
 column of immigration which was set in motion by Mr. Jeffer- 
 son's proclamation of ISOii, announcing the purchase of Louis- 
 iana, came B. M. G. Brown, senior, who brought his wife, his 
 little ones, arid his slaves, and his chattels, in 1804, from Darling- 
 ton District, South Carolina, to found a new home on the banks 
 of Hunter's Branch, in the Sixth Ward, near the line of the 
 Baton Rouge road, where he reared and equipped his four sons. 
 Major Reddin Brown, B. M. G. Brown, jr., Elly Brown and Eli 
 Brown, for active, useful and honorable service in the van of 
 civilization, around their southern homes. 
 
44 " EAST FELICIAXA PAST AND PRESENT.'* 
 
 Nearly contemporaneons with the Browns, the society of the 
 ward was recruited by the Lees, Keddins, Carrolls, and by the 
 mother of Sothey Hayes, and the late Sheriff Jno. W. Hayes, who 
 came, a brave widow frona South Carolina, to found a new home 
 for her sons in the wilds of the Sixth Ward. 
 
 There were two of the early workers prominent in shaping 
 the Sixth Ward society, not yet mentioned. The earlier comer 
 of the two was Ezra Courtney, who came in 1802, in company 
 with liis young wife from Darlington District, South Carolina, 
 by flat boat to Cole's Creek and Bayou Pierre to engage in the 
 work of organizing the scattered, unconnected members of his 
 church. Feeling his way down South he established head- 
 quarters a stone throw north of the line of demarkation, at the 
 bridge over Beaver Creek where the Liberty and Jackson road 
 crosses. While there he contributed largely in founding and 
 organizing the powerful Baptist congregation at Ebenezer Church, 
 and there, too, under shade of a big oak, he est<iblished a Gretna 
 Green for the celebration of marriage rites which were forbidden 
 south of the line to any but Koman Catholic priests. 
 
 After the expulsion of the Spaniards in 1810, the Rev. Mr. 
 Courtney founded his home, in 1812, on the southern border of 
 the Sixth Ward, where he went to work earnestly and effectively 
 to his new field of effort, as is attested by the rapid growth and 
 consolidation of powerful Baptist communities with houses of 
 worship at "Hole in the Water," "Bluff Creek" and "Hephzibah," 
 the two first being in the Sixth, the last in the Eigrhth Ward. 
 
 Notwithstanding Mr. Courtney was so effective in founding 
 the Baptists in the Southern border, the rival sect of the Meth- 
 odists still held the Northern border for the Methodist faith, 
 which had a fiery and zealous defender in the person of the Rev. 
 Jno. B. Higgiubotham. Whether good old Uncle Johnnie was a 
 regularly ordained Methodist minister I am not informed, but 
 he was a power after the order of Wesley's famous itijierants, 
 and his fluent tongue supported by the Carrolls, Cobbs, John 
 George and Jones Booker, rallied many recruits to the Method- 
 ist ffiith, and when Gilead church was rolled on wheels out of 
 the Eighth Ward into the Sixth, old Uncle Johnny and his co- 
 religionists slept much more securely behind the new bulwarks 
 of their faith. 
 
 Before closing my narrative of the religious movement in 
 the Sixth Ward it would be inaccurate not to mention that the 
 religious bodies in the ward were first assembled under a com- 
 mon standard by the famous Lorenzo Dow, who, after a year's 
 notice sent in advance from Alabama, preached on the bill where 
 Captain Lewis McManus now resides, their first sermon to the 
 assembled hermits of the adjacent canebrakes, after which the 
 famous preacher sought the repose of a log cabin on a high 
 bluff, on Mill Creek just before it loses itself in the jungles of 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 45 
 
 the Amite river swamp, the same on which Mr. Robert Perkins 
 now resides, there to give back to bis great taskmaster the mis- 
 sionary staff he had faithfully borne through many lands, and 
 ask his final discharge, and there the bones of the renowned 
 preacher now await the Resurrection. It is a notable instance 
 of neglect and ingratitude, that the grave of the greatest of 
 "Wesley's itinerants should be left without even a Head Board. 
 
 Recurring to the present home of Mr. Porter Rowley, as a 
 famous nursery of two leading Sixth Ward families, namely the 
 Hobgoods and Collins, after the stalwart ancestor of the Hob- 
 goods had moved his home into the Eiohth Ward, just on the 
 margin of the Amite bottoms, old Captain Jack Collins, whose 
 mother and father emigrated from Richland District, S. C, 
 with a large number of slaves and herds, to build a home in these 
 Southern wilds, when the century and their son Jdhn were just 
 two years old, established in the vacated Hobgood home the an- 
 cestral seat of that family. The coining of Captain Jack Collins 
 into his Sixth Ward home was much delayed by the murder of 
 his father, who was killed en route by a drunken Creek Indian, 
 after which his mother fixed her abode in Amite County, Miss., 
 where she reared and educated her son John, who completed the 
 voyage his father commenced in 1802 by founding a home and 
 rearing a family near the Amite river in the Sixth Ward. 
 
 A cursory glance at the vast areas of abandoned fields of 
 this ward would suggest unfavorable conclusions regarding its 
 soil, but there are plenty of once abandoned fields within its bor- 
 ders which have been restored by good farming to their origi- 
 nal fertility, and plenty of demonstrations that it pays to rescue 
 the soil from the debilitating influences of slovenly, ante bellum 
 methods, and there are, moreover, plenty of advanced Sixth 
 Ward farmers who have grown strong and rich while feeding 
 high their old abandoned fields. Of the 25,000 uncultivated 
 acres of this ward, which are held at prices varying from $3.00 
 to $10.00, every acre can easily be brought back to a pitch of 
 productiveness which will } ield a bale of cotton to the acre. 
 
 The dwellers in the ward point gloomily to the latent forces 
 which want of laborers leaves idle and asleep, and they promise 
 cordial welcome and all the amenities of generous hospitality to 
 all agricultuial recruits who will help with capital and labor to 
 restore thtir waste and bald places. 
 
 That the old Sixth Ward is advancing with rapid strides to 
 a better farming system is evidenced by the existence of a Far- 
 mers' Union, at Gilead, which shapes intelligently and stimulates 
 a new school of agricultural effort. With its three Farmers' Unions, 
 its three churches, its school-houses wherever there are children to 
 be educated, and claiming the credit of having contributed to 
 the body politic two good sheriffs and two live representatives, 
 the Sixth presents a record of progress so creditable as to re- 
 
46 
 
 EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 pel with scorn the insinuation of being "the dark corner." On 
 the contrary they point proudly to their achievements in the 
 march of civilization, and deny that there is in all the haunts of 
 civilized man, cheaper, better protected and more productive 
 homes than there are to be found in the Sixth Ward. 
 
 Hoping the recruits so much needed will come ere long, I 
 remain, yours, etc., H. SKIPWITH. 
 
 PIONEERS OF THE SEVENTH WARD. 
 
 About the time when the Yarboroughs and Phelps and the 
 other colonists migrated from Elbert County, Georgia, at the 
 close of the late century, into the Fifth Ward to make their 
 clearings and found their homes along the margin of the Comite 
 river and Pretty Creek, another band of colonists were waking 
 cane brakes and primeval forests of the Seventh Ward which bor- 
 ders the Fifth on the north. These last had commenced their 
 migration from South Carolina soon after the ti-eaty of 1795 with 
 Spain, and meandered through the Yazoo purchase, feeling their 
 way, via Natchez, Gallatin, Liberty, Cole's Creek or Bayou 
 Pierre, down south to the line of demarkation. After Mr. Jeffer- 
 son's proclamation of October, 1808, which asserted a construc- 
 tive claim to the purchase of Spain's province of West Florida 
 the policy of eucournging immigration from "The States" was 
 revoked by the Spanish government, and the wilds, south of the 
 line of demarkation, were hermetically sealed to immigrants of 
 the Anglo-Saxon stripe. Among the earliest comers into the 
 Seventh Ward were David Pipes, Sr., Ben Graves, Jno. C. and 
 Thos. Flynn, and Thos. East, from Edgefield District, S. C, who 
 founded his home on the place familiarly known in after years 
 as the residence of Dr. Isaac Caulfield, and to this list ought of 
 right to be added the names of the ancestor of the Harrell fam- 
 ily, for it is a well attested trarlition that Hezekiah Harrell was 
 sent as early as 1802 by his father, fat old Levi Harrell, of 
 Charleston District, S. C, to explore these southern wilds for a 
 home large enough for his "old folks," the little ones, the slaves 
 and the herris. In discharge of his mission, Hezekiah, having 
 obtained a liberal Spanish grant, commenced a "hatchet clear- 
 ing," in 1802, on the banks of Pretty Creek, just at the foot of 
 "Mount DeLee." While cutting the canes, Hezekiah would pru- 
 dently at night, retire up in the forks of the trees, from which se- 
 cure but uncomfortable roost he would calmly observe the gambols, 
 wrestlings and fights of bears, panthers and wolves, which was 
 as good as a play. His pilgrimage closed by a return to the old 
 folks at home, and his report was so satisfactory that active pre- 
 parations for a general exodus of the Harrells, from Charleston 
 
" EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 47 
 
 DistriH, commencefl and took up the line of travel by flat boats 
 down the head watprs of the Tennpssee river, hravina the hid- 
 den rocks, eddies, cataracts and whirlpools of the Mnscle Shoals. 
 The patriarch of this exodus, Mr. Levi Harrell, died upon his 
 jo':rnev in 1803, and the duty devolved upon Hezekiah to lead 
 the children, slaves and herds, via Natchez, down to his hatchet 
 clearinfy at the foot of "Mount DeLee" on Pretty Creek. 
 
 Finding Jno. C and Thos. Flynn in possession, he passed on 
 higher up alonj? the marofin of Pretty Creek, where he founded the 
 family home (under the g^uarantees of the Spanish crown), thirty 
 acres of which was cultivated this its eighty-sixth year, by his 
 grandson, Mr. W. C. Kent, who, with two hands and two ploNVS, 
 made 25 bales of cotton, several hundred barrels of corn, and 
 several hundred gallons of syrup. 
 
 The colonizing of the Seventh Ward, thus far chronicled, 
 was fostered and encouraged by the policy of Spain, but in 1803 
 that liberal policy was revoked, and that class of settlers which 
 came after 1803 below the line of demarkation, came at their 
 own risk and held their clearings by the strong hand against the 
 prowling wild beasts and prying Spanish soldiers, Alguazils and 
 tax gatherers. 
 
 Of this latter class of unbidden guests, earliest and most 
 conspicuous was old Major Sam Norwood, who came in 1806 
 with his sons, nnmelv: Elias, Noel. John, Ezekial and Abel T. and 
 his daughter Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. George Keller, his 
 slaves, his chattels and herds; a big boned, heavy muscled, true 
 hearted race of men who migrated from Darlington District, 
 South Carolina, in 1804, by the flat boat route, down the head 
 waters of the Tennessee, through the perils of the Muscle Shoals 
 and the Mississippi river, to Natchez, whence they journeyed by 
 land to the wilds of the Seventh Ward, just below the line of 
 demarkation, and founded their ancestral seats along the margin 
 of the Comite river and Richland Creek. In the same line of 
 immigration with the Norwoods came out of Darlington and 
 tJnioTi Districts, S C, the Scotts, Winfers, Eobbins, McKneelys 
 and McCants into the Third Ward, and also old Mr. Henry Dunn, 
 who founded a home for his children and numerous slaves in the 
 Seventh Ward, a mile or two east of the Norwoods. These three 
 families of Harrell, Norwood and Dunn prospered and multi- 
 plied exceedingly, and had large influence in shaping the civili- 
 zation of their community through several peaceful years, which 
 calm was rudely broken by the Au'erican revolt in 1810 against 
 the Spanish authority. After 1806 the tide of immigration 
 ceased to flow into the Seventh Ward until 1814, in which event- 
 ful year John Rowley, a solitary immigrant from Beaufort 
 District, S. C. , commerced to build a log cabin abont a stone's 
 threw from the present residence of Mr. Frank Wood, ps an 
 humble residence for his wife and twin babies, the door of which 
 
48 "east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 was still unfinished when news came by Gen. Cuffee's couriers 
 "That the British had landed!" and that Gen. Jackson in New 
 Orleans was badly in need of men, arms and horses. 
 
 Hitherto my narrative depicts the pioneers developing and 
 expanding the arts of peaceful civilization, building homes, clear- 
 ing, fencing, planting orchards and farms during a period of 
 peace, the calm iufluences of which were only distuibed in 1810 
 by the brief and bloodless revolt which expelled the Spanish 
 authority. Novp, in 1814, the first call is made upon them to de- 
 fend the homes they have built. Gen. Coffee, whose headquar- 
 ters were estabhshed at Baton Rouge late in the snmtner of 1814, 
 had sent his worn out cavalry horses into the East Feliciana pas- 
 tures to rest and recruit. An order to him fiom Gen. Jactson, 
 dated New Orleans, Dec. 17th, summoned him to come with all 
 the men, horses and arras he could raise, and "not to sleep 
 until he got there," caused the sending of couriers with the 
 startling news that "The British had landed, and Gen. Jackson, 
 in New Orleans, was badly in need of men, arms and horses." 
 The news thrilled all hearts in the scattered hamlets of East 
 Feliciana like the sound of the midnight tocsin stiired the emo- 
 tional Parisians. It looked like the land had been sown with the 
 fabled Dragon's teeth to see an armed and mounted man spring 
 out of every canebrake. Gen. Coffee's recruiied cavalry hovses 
 were started in a gallop back to Baton Rouge, each with a bold 
 East Feliciana rider on his back, with his sire's old riflle, which 
 had sent messages of death to the British on the Revolutionary 
 battlefields Even the 12-year-old boys caught up the shaggy, 
 pot-gutted ponies in their canebrake hiding places, saddled up 
 and spurred on to Baton Rouge. Old John Rowley nailed up a 
 blanket as a substitute for the unfinished door of his log cabin, 
 and committing Esther and the twins to the care of God, gal- 
 oped off with his rifle for Baton Ri3Uge- 
 
 On the night of December 23rd, when Gen Coffee sent an 
 answer to his chief's peremptory order of the 17th fiom his camp, 
 fifteen miles above New Orleans, saying: "I am here with fifteen 
 hundred armed and mounted men," all East Eeliciana, from the 
 boy of twelve to the grey beard of seventv slept under the folds of 
 brave Coffte's banner that night. When Cofifee on the 27th 
 and 28th was retiring sullenly, disputing evu'v inch of the 
 way from the shore of Lake Borgne to the famous field of Chal- 
 mette, the sharp crack of the East Feliciana rifle revived the 
 echoes of Guilford Court House, Camden, and King's mountain, 
 in the swamps of Lake Borgne. It is painful to narrate that, as 
 Coffee retired before Packenbam's veteran Itigions, many a saddle 
 was emptied of its bold East Feliciana rider. But it is sadder 
 still to record the manner of the death of Thos. East, who came 
 early into the Seventh Ward from Edgefield District, S. C, and 
 
" EAST FELICTANA. PAST AND PRESENT." 49 
 
 founderl a home on the place afterwards owned by Dr. Isaac 
 Caulfield. 
 
 This Thos. East was the grand father of Dr. A, L. East, of 
 the Plains, and taking service imrler Cofft^e, left his wife and 
 infant child, in the care of his .young cousin, "William East, and 
 fought unscratched through the skirmishes and battles around 
 New Orleans. Afier his disfhtirge, in c< mpany with many of his 
 comrades, he cotnmenoefl his voyage home on a keel boat, to be 
 cord' lied up to the Bluffs of East Feliciana. On the voyage he fell 
 ill with measles, which terminated fatally, just as the boat tied 
 up at the foot of the Bluffs, afterwards renowned as Port Hudson, 
 where his remains repose on battle fields where the cracks of his 
 old Revolutionary rifle was unheard, and where many of his old 
 comrades in a,rius encountered death, defeat and starvation. 
 The son he left in his cradle lived to propagate in many commu- 
 nities the Baptist faith, on which he was a devdted believer. His 
 pretty young wid'ow mariied John L. Delee, of Lincoln County, 
 North Carolina, who after serving in the Creek, Seminole and 
 Chalmette campaign came into the Seventh ward with an hon- 
 orable discharge and there reared a large family which has been 
 conspicious in Seventh ward society. 
 
 In further illustration of the abilitv of our people to defend 
 their homes, although it is a little outside the scope and design 
 of my work, I will presume to revert to two episodes which ar- 
 roused their fears for the security of the homes thev founded in 
 the primeval fores's and cane breaks. In May, 1846, news came 
 that the Western frontier of the Republic was invaded by a Mex- 
 can army under Gen. Ampudia and that Gen. Zachary Taylor 
 had but a handful of troops to encounter him. A company of 
 125 East Felieianians under Capt. H. B Chase and another com- 
 pany of the same number under Capt. Geo. C. Comstock report- 
 ed in New Orleans, many months, in advance of the preparations 
 made by the Government for arms and transportati<^n. The 250 
 m^n were one-third of tlie white adults of the parish and it is no 
 vain boast to say that the other two-thirds would have offered 
 their services had not the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca De La 
 Palma rendered it unnecessary. 
 
 Again, in Nov. 1860, Breckinridge beat the Donglas and Bell 
 and Everet tickets by a large majority but when in less than two 
 months afterwards the question of secession came squarely up, it 
 was negatived by a large vote, when, however the convention of 
 Louisiana adopted an ordinance of secession, and there was no 
 way out but to tight out. East Feliciana threw three full com- 
 panies into the Fourth Rtgiment; one into the 16th; another in- 
 to the 29th and a company into Scott's cavalry; in addition to 
 which, two bodies of scouts, under Col. Edwin A Scott and Capt. 
 John C. McKowen, were kept organized for Home Protection. 
 
50 ** EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 From a military record uuiformly honorable and remarkable 
 for patriotism, I turn to the more peaceful developments of the 
 Cbiistian religion, which commenced in the Seventh ward soon 
 after the expulsion of the Spanish authority. The earliest 
 religious foundation of the ward was a small Presbeyterian 
 House of Worship, named Friendship Church, situated about 
 a hundred yards from Mrs. Currie's residence on Pretty creek. 
 It had a small congregation, organized by the Eev. James 
 Smiley and their pastor, in 1831, was the Rev. John Pat- 
 terson, a >oung Scottisch Divine. This congregation was soon 
 absorbed by their co-religionists of Comite church, which is 
 still the house of worship of a large and powerful Presbyterian 
 body of which the late David Pipes, Sr., and William Silliman 
 were honored and revered members. However predominant 
 the early Presbyterians may have been, th^y have since been 
 confronted by the active and zealous Methodist and Baptist 
 propagandists, if the younger denominations have not actually 
 invaded the territories of the older, tht y have at least held it 
 in check and barred, in a large mcMSure, its expansion. 
 
 The Seventh Ward, though without a foot of ground re- 
 quiring artificial drjiinage, Hnd though it embraces within its 
 bodies as much good, fertile and fairly productive land as any 
 of the other wards, has perhaps a larger area of utilized and 
 abandoned places than any of those I have sketched. Sterility 
 is not the cause of its unusually large bodies of waste and idle 
 lands. Its surface w'as in the beginning of its civilization 
 largely divested of its original forests and cane brakes by nu- 
 merous slaves brought from South Carolina by its early and 
 wealthy settlers. Before these slaves forests disappeared and 
 fields were brought under cultivation on a large scale. When 
 the forests were gone and the fields began to show bald spots, 
 the tenants of the negro quarters had multiplied under a kind 
 and paternal treatment at an amazing rate of increase. Most of 
 the slave increase was transported, before freedom, to open and 
 cultivate the alluvial lands west of the Mississippi, where they 
 have since remained, and the abandoned surfaces of the ward 
 deprived of their natural labor supply still to a large extent re- 
 main uncultivated. The vast surface of abandoned land, say 
 25,000 acres, is not worn out but a little tired from the sloven- 
 ly farming of big slave plantations. This land can be bought 
 at an average price of $5.00 per acre, perhaps lets and the sec- 
 ond growth of j)ines, which clothe all the abandoned acres, 
 will fence them. When fenced, at small additional outlay for 
 fertilizers they can be made to produce a b^le of cotton to the 
 acre. Indeed it may be truthfully added that there are pmall 
 spots, all over the ward, which by its natural strength will 
 bring a bale to the acre. 
 
EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 51 
 
 Before closing my picture of the Seventh Ward it is but 
 simple justice to add that, notwithstanding so many appear- 
 ances of decay its climate and soil are as good as any; its moral 
 and social march has been as healthy as any; its lofty ranges 
 of highlands present as many temptations to the judicious home 
 seekers, as can be found elsewere in East Feliciana. 
 
 Yours, etc., H. Skipwith. 
 
 PIONEEES OF THE EIGHTH WAED. 
 
 "When, in 1800, old Leonard Hornsby took passage on a flat 
 boat aud floated out of South Carolina down the head waters of 
 the TeDuessee river and around by the Ohio and Mississippi to 
 Natchez, with all his father's slaves aud herds, his household and 
 kitchen outfit, his wagons, teams and agricultural implements, his 
 gunsmith and his one-legged shoemaker, his big mastiffs, bull 
 dogs and deer hounds, he was tolerably well equipped to plant 
 and defend and expand an outpost in the vanguard of civiliza- 
 tion, which he did in 1802 in the forks of Beaver Creek and the 
 Amite river, to which his Anglo-Saxon love of running waters 
 had attracted him. This outpost of the Hornsby 's, in 1802, lies 
 in the extreme corner of the Eighth Ward, and is now the prop- 
 erty of Judge W. F. Keruan. When its site was selected there 
 were none within hearing of his cock's crowing for day-break, 
 except the sly, scheming foxes, thirhting for chanticleer's blood ; 
 none to hear the deep-mouthed baying of his big dogs, except 
 the frightened bears, panthers, wolves and deer. No human 
 being was nearer than old Mr. Furlow, a Georgian, who, with a 
 hermit's love of solitude, had planted his sohtary log cabin on 
 the west side of Hepzibah Creek, about half a mile below the 
 high hill, out of the sides of which gush the living waters as 
 fresh and strong and life-giving as those which gushed from the 
 rocks of Horeb when struck by Aaron's rod. The place is cen- 
 tral and has had many different proprietors after old Mr. Fur- 
 low was put away in his grave. His immediate successor was 
 Daniel Eads, of Kentucky, who constructed the first grist mill 
 just above where Hephzibah Church now stands. Two other 
 leaders of Eighth Ward society, Elisha Andrews and Mfijor 
 Doughty, followed Mr. Eads as proprietors of the Furlow place, 
 and in 1812 or 1814 the Rev. Ezra Courtney, having organized a 
 numerous Baptist congregation, selected the portion of the place 
 lying on the east side of the creek for the site of a Baptist house 
 of worship, to which was given the name of Hephzibah . 
 
 Fudow, Eads, Andrews and Doughty, after life's fitful fever, 
 all sleep quietly in their graves, but the head waters of Hepzibah 
 Creek still ripple and gurgle joyously by the foot of holy Hepzi- 
 
52 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 bah Church, the congregation of which multiplied amazingly 
 uuder the zealous miuistratious of its venerable founder. It le- 
 mained a harmonious brotherhood, without any family jars, ex- 
 cept wheu old Chesley Jackson, one of Hephzibali's stock-boldei s, 
 took it into his head to invite a Uuiversalist naiued Rogers to 
 preach in Hepbzibah. Tljis desecration of the Hephzibah pul- 
 pit by an uubaptized heretic who didn't believe m Sheol, was 
 bitterly opposed by another body of orgaiiized Baptists, under 
 the lead of that good CLirif?tiaii and ciiizen, Major Doughty, 
 who locked the heretic out, and carried off the keys m their pock- 
 ets. Then there was war in Hephzibah and the contending 
 factions were not appeased until the Rev. H. D. F. Roberts, 
 from Sumpter District, S C, with a diploma from Columbia 
 College, and Rev. Thomas Adams, an impassioned and learned 
 divine, fi'om Richland District, S. C, came to pour oil on the 
 troubled waters. Uuder ihe impassioned appeals of thes^ two 
 missionaries the conscience of the eighth ward was stirred to 
 its lowest depths and the list of Hepzibah members rapidly 
 doubled. Perhaps it will add to the interest of my narrative 
 to say that Mr. Roberts left the work here to serve a pulpit in 
 a Tennessee church, where he reared four promising sons, of 
 whom our esteemed fellow citizen, J. M. Roberts, Esq., was one, 
 and all of whom have been, from time to time, members of 
 eighth ward society, as guests of their father's older brothers, 
 Messrs. William and Sylvester Dunn Roberts, both immigrants 
 from SumjDter Dis rict, iS. C. The Rev. Thos Adams founded 
 a home and raised a family on the banks of Pretty creek, and 
 continued his ministrations in the East Feliciana church until 
 his death near Clinton in 1859, where he was buried, and over 
 his honored grave the congregations he had so faithfully served 
 united in erecting a handsome monument. 
 
 After Furlow and Hornsby, the dim and scattered germs of 
 Eighth Ward settlers were first recruited by John Chance and 
 James Felps from Georgia, in 1803 and 1804, and probably by 
 the ancestor of Jack, Booker and Smith Kent. Mr Ch;ince made 
 his first clearing on the place in the Seventh ward on which in 
 1806 old Mr. Henry Dunn moved with his family and slaves. 
 This John Chance became conspicuous in the annals of the 
 Eighth Ward, for long and honorable services as a leader 
 through its early struggles, and as the founder of a numerous 
 and powerful family by his marriage with Miss ZilphaDought}^ 
 who came into the ward in 1806 in company with her father, 
 old Mr. Levi Doughty, from Darlington District, S. C. In the 
 same fleet of flatboats which floated the Doughtys out of South 
 Carolina, down the head waters of the Tennessee and through 
 the pexilous Muscle Shoals, down the Ohio and Missi sippi to 
 Natchez, came out of the saiue neighborhood a column of immi- 
 grants with their families, slaves and household goods; and 
 
EAST FELICIANA 1>AST AND PRESENT.'* 53 
 
 from Natchez, on foot and in wagons, probably along the same 
 trace which old Leonard Hornsby blazed out in 1802, to the 
 banks of Beaver creek, near which most of these colonists com- 
 menced their clearings. This large column of colonists coming 
 into the ward in 1806, embraced the ancestors of the Dough- 
 tys, Rentzs, Brians, Morgans and Widtes, who used to tell 
 their descendants some thrilling tales of hairbreadth escapes 
 from shipwreck on the snags, sawyers and hidden rocks in the 
 unknown channels of the French Bioad, and how, appalled by 
 the angry roar of the swift torrents, whirlpools and eddies of 
 the Muscle Shoals, the immigrants frum Darlington District 
 landed their wives, little ones and slaves at the head of the 
 Shoals and trusted the ark contain ng their herds, household 
 and kitchen and plantation outfits to a skilled Indian pilot, 
 who, standing with his long pole at the bow, with his squaw 
 at the helm, would brave the dangers of the perilous passage 
 while the the humnn passengers footed around the shoals bv a 
 "cut-off " ^ 
 
 The Indian pilots brought most of the boats safely to the 
 foot of the Shoals, but sometimes one would be wrecked and 
 an outfit for a home in the wilderness would go to the bottom. 
 
 Of this band of neighbors immigrating from Darlington 
 District to the Eighth Ward in 18u6 there were some famous 
 old pioneers who stamped the growing societies of the ward 
 with the seal of their rugged, virtuous and useful characteris- 
 tics. Old Mr. Levy D. ughty lived to extreme old age, and 
 died honored and revered as a good citizen and Christian gen- 
 tleman, by his friends and neighbois, the Stewarts, Humbles, 
 and McAdams. Old John White, blacksmith, from Timmons- 
 ville, S. C, fonnded the ancestral home of the Whites on the 
 headquarters of Llear creek. He was the venerated sire of Mr. 
 Eli White, who was the first born in the Clear creek hoiue in 
 l8U7. In 1888 he was a venerable gentleman still reading the 
 minion and agate ot the New Orleans Picayune without glasses, 
 and it was from his lips the writer obtained the following vivid 
 picture of life in an immigrant family from 1807 to 1815: "I 
 never," said he, "tasted meat, except bear, venison and an oc- 
 casional panther steak, until I was a good sized boy. The only 
 milk I ever tasted was my mothers's, until my father returned 
 to South Carolina, and brought out with him one of grandfa- 
 ther's old cows. The dairy utensils my mother used were old 
 fashioned, big bellied gourds, sawed in two, my only clothing 
 until I rea. hed twelve years of age, was a long shirt of coarse 
 cotton clo^th woven on mother's hand loom. I always went bare- 
 footed, summer and winter, and my first pair of parts were ob- 
 tained from mother, after pie. ding long and persistently. They 
 were of the fruits of the same old hand loom, made in the old 
 style with broad flap in front, a mile too big in the waist, and 
 
54: " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 couldn't be kept up without suspenders, for which there were 
 no buttons." "These were very discouraging drawbacks," 
 smilingly remarked the old man, "but father, who saw my dilem- 
 ma, molded a set of buttons oat of an old broken pewter spoon, 
 and then I could wear my pants, and I was as proud as a pea- 
 cock. Oar farm in those days was a two acre patch which we 
 planted ia corn and sweet potatoes and cultivated with a little 
 pony and a scooter plow with a wooden shovel board." 
 
 The venerable man who thus called from boyhood's mem- 
 ories these charming details of the simplicity and scanty luxu- 
 ries of frontier life, was the sire of a family almost as numerous 
 as Jacob carried into Egypt to make bricks for Pharoah. In 
 his eighty-third year, with intellect and all his faculties unim- 
 paired, verily this Louisiana scion of a Darlington District stock 
 was one of God's rarest physical conformations exceeding in 
 preservation and endurance the average specimens of humanity 
 in any other part of the globe. 
 
 There was another large column of immgrants starting 
 from Darlington District m 18U4 or 1805 voyaging by flatboats 
 down the Tennessee and its headwaters for East Feliciana via 
 Natchez, composed of the Scotts, Dunns, Perkins, Winters, 
 Robins, McKneelys, all connected b}^ intermarriages with the 
 Scotts of South Carolina who were near kindred to the Scotts 
 of Virginia, from whom the great Winfield Scott derived his 
 birth. Though starting earlier than the column in which came 
 old Levi Doughty and John White, they arrived in the eighth 
 ward later, because, at the head of the Muscle Shoals they di- 
 verged in wagons from the river route around by Nashville and 
 the Hermitage where they were hospitably entertained by "old 
 Hickory." At the head of this last column was Lewis Pei- 
 kins and his daughter Sarah, who was born in South Carolina in 
 1791, aud his son James, born in the same State in 1800. When 
 he reached the Eighth Ward in 180G, Mr. Lewis Peikins made 
 his clearing on the banks of Little Beaver Creek, but soon aban- 
 doned it to remo\e to another clearing just above the line of de- 
 markation, impelled by hereditary and very natural reluctance 
 to live under monarchial government. 
 
 The clearing he abandoned on Little Beaver was soon after- 
 wards developed by old Mr. William Stewart, of North Carolina, 
 into a home for children who have groNvn up with the Ward and 
 have always held an honorable place in its social ranks. 
 
 Coming back to old Mr. Lewis Perkins, who moved at such 
 short notice out of the King of Spain's dominions in 1806; ha 
 lived but a short time in his last home, and died, leaving Saiah 
 Perkins, at fifteen years, at the head of tbe orphaned fauiily. 
 Notwithstanding her mother was a sister of Mrs. Henry Dunn, 
 who lived just below the line, a close neighbor to the orphaned 
 family, all the cares of her two young brothers devolved upon 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT.'' 55 
 
 the iuex^eiieiiced giil of lifteen years. Youug as she was her 
 trust was discharged with good judgment aud couscientious care 
 and won the lastiug gratitude of her young brothers. She mar- 
 ried, in 1817, a worthy and handsoiue young gentleman from 
 Georgia, named Louis Talbert, with whom she reared a large 
 and honored family; but even after the added cares of a grow- 
 ing family began to exact much of her time and duty, she still 
 clung with motherly tenacity to the two boys entrusted to her by 
 her father at his death bed. This magnificent specimen of the 
 highest type of womanhood died in 1888 ic full possession of 
 her faculties which, unimpaired, had withstood the storms of a 
 rough world for ninety-^even years. 
 
 The two brothers, whose early boyhood she had so sedu- 
 lously guarded and so intelligently guided, took high position in 
 society when they became men. Doctor James Perkius became 
 a famous physician, aud so much beloved, that he, an old Hue 
 whig, was elected by a strong Democratic society to the State 
 Senate in 1844. During his term of service, in an investigation 
 of the notorious Piaquemine fraud, by which John Slidell, of 
 the Tammany New York school, and not in any sense a Louis- 
 ianian, stole the vote of the State from Mr. Clay, Dr. Perkins 
 was chairman of the committee selected by the senate to invest- 
 igate the alleged frauds. His searching and incisive scrutiny 
 into the rottenness revealed many facts hitherto unsuspected, 
 and which never have been refuted. His fame as a scientific 
 practitioner of the abstruse mysteries of the healing art has been 
 rivalled by his son, Dr. Lewis G. Perkins, and his two grandsons, 
 Drs. James and Harry Kdbourne, the last of whom left Clinton 
 a short while ago, full of youthful promise aud bright asiDirations, 
 to practise his profession in the parish of Morehouse. He car- 
 ried with him the loving wishes and fond predictions of the 
 young and the old of his native town, and when the wires an- 
 nounced that he had fallen a victim to malaria, there was not in 
 his native town a family circle without sorrow, nor an eye un- 
 dimmed by a tear. 
 
 There have been many fine old characters and families which 
 have been powerful in shaping the trend of Eighth Ward society, 
 and the names of the Stewarts, Kents, Humbles, Geralds, Rog- 
 ers, McAdams and Woodwards are intimately connected with its 
 social annals. 1 regret my inability, from lack of authentic data, 
 to give them a notice better proportioned to their social stand- 
 ing and merit. 
 
 As a faithful chronicler I cannot close my sketch without 
 narrating my last interview with another of the ward's best 
 known landmarks. A lady, fit to be the mother of a race of 
 heroes and statesmen, who came into the ward as Mi^s Zilpha 
 Doughty, from South Carolina, and after rearing a large family 
 as the wife of John Chance, of Georgia, was left a widow with 
 
56 " EAST FfiLIClANA PAST ANt) PRESENT.' 
 
 a large household to take care of. During the war a Missis- 
 sippi regiment under orders for Port Hudson camped near my 
 house in the suburbs of Cliuton one stormy night; the wind 
 blew almost a hurricane and the rain came down in tonents. 
 In the morning the half-drowned, shivering soldiers flocked 
 around my kitchen fires for warmth and food, and all my 
 scanty store were devoured by the hungry crowd In my dis- 
 tress at finding my family without fo )d, I thought of the never 
 empty smokehouse of my thrift}' old friend, Mrs Zilpha Chance. 
 She, compassionating my destitution, took me to her smoke- 
 house, in which the meat was assorted in three piles. She 
 pointed to the largest pile, saying. "That is for the Confed- 
 eracy; nobody can get that." "That," pointing to the smallest 
 pile, she said, "is for my own use." Looking closely at the ^ize 
 of the third pile, she hesitatingly remarked: '"Wt 11, I reckon 
 you can get 150 pounds out of the pile at two bits a pound." 
 The bargain was struck, the meat weighed and loaded into my 
 wagon. When ready to leave, I pulled out a roll of "Green- 
 backs" to settle for the meat. ,The grand old dame (I can see 
 her now) folded her arms with imposing dignity, but witb an 
 eye fiery with withering scorn, exclaimed: 'T have never yt t 
 touched that hateful money, and have no use for it now. If 
 you can pay me in Confederate money, I will take it, because I 
 can pay my taxes with it." I stood humiliated and rebuked in 
 the pi'esence of a "mother in Israel" who regulated her duties 
 to the State by such elevated and patriotic rules of action. 
 Pondering over the memorable scene, as I rode home, I won- 
 dered how many women like Mrs. Chance and her neighbor, 
 Mrs. Talbert, would it take to make a "small State great f 
 Ten years ago I met a matron whose maxims and rules of con- 
 duct were closely akin to the exalted standard held up by her 
 near neighbors, Mrs. Chance and Mrs. Talbert. She was prob- 
 ably a pupil of these two grand examplars; my last allusion is 
 to Mrs. Andrew White. 
 
 Tue Eighth Ward, like all the others, excf^pt the first and 
 third, has large areas of abandoned, uncultivated fields, which 
 once furnished luxury and plenty to the old slaveholders. 
 Most of these have gone to render their last account, and their 
 former slaves have migrated to newer and fresher soils, and 
 their once spacious and comfortable homes await tenants with 
 labor and capital to I'estore and make productive the cheap 
 abandoned fields around them. Abounding as this wai d does 
 in bold streams of living waters, which empty into the Amite 
 river, its eastern boundary, or into Beaver creek, its northern 
 boundary, or into Sandy creek, its western boundarj^ its sur- 
 face pi-esents a broad scope of cheap and fertile lands, blessed 
 with an unfailing water supply, and along its boundary streams 
 and along its small tributaries as well, namely, Poole's creek, 
 
EAST lELlCIANA PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 57 
 
 Clear creek aud Hephzibali creek are to be found manv small 
 parcels of land which Will produce without fertilizing a bale of 
 cotton to the acre. 
 
 The mention of Clear creek in the foregoing paragraph re- 
 minds me that I have omitted any reference to a large, power- 
 ful and growing body of Methodists, who have constructed a 
 commodious house of worship ou the banks of that stream- 
 In a preceding sketch the men of East Feliciana have been 
 described as faithful and loyal to law, in times of peace; and 
 dauntless in war; and ever prompt, as in 1814, when the Brit- 
 ish landed at Lake Borgne; as in 1846 when the Mexicans 
 crossed the Kio Grande, and as in 1861, when the rights of 
 their state was encroached ujDon, ever prompt lo bare the freeman's 
 arm to strike for thi". freeman's home ! Three levies, en masse with- 
 out any summons but the natural pulse beats of native patriot- 
 ism. Three grand spectacles full of cheerful promise and hope 
 to the patriot's heart ! But there remains a fourth pregnant 
 with still grander and more sublime significance Although 
 their homes were sacked by many a pilfering raid; although every 
 house in the parish mourned its dead, whose bones lie bleach- 
 ing on the battle fields of the war of the rebellion; as soon as 
 the tocsin of war ceased to be heard in the disturbed land, this 
 warlike population, charmed by the sweet music of the peaceful 
 church bells on the Hallowed Day flocked to the shrines of a 
 pure faith whose inspiration is 'Peace and good wi 1" and re- 
 nounciug on their knees, the thirst for vengeance, the hatred 
 and discords of four years of civil strife, solemnly renewed their 
 vows of fidelity to a reunited country. 
 
 With a few more words my sketch of East Feliciana and its 
 social 1 fe will come to a close. I know this announcement will 
 be hailed with pleasure by some few prejudiced critics who 
 have already been c >mplaining that "his old legends tiie the 
 ear; they are but the tedious twaddle of a garulous old man." 
 As a class critics are not a new or original type of casuists. 
 Nineteen hundred years ago their prototypes thronged the 
 streets of Jerusalem, injecting into the ears of the wa farers 
 their venomous sneers by asking, ''Is not this the Carpenter's 
 son? Can any good come* out of Nazareth?" From such a pre- 
 judiced judgment seat, I turn to a generous, fair minded pub- 
 lic and ask tbeir verdict; whether my work has been skillfully 
 or bunglingly performed? If their unfavorable conclusions 
 are fairly deducible from my writings, then I have raked among 
 the consecrated ashes of our ancestei'S, in vain. Against such 
 unfriendly conclusions I ^till maintain, that h-^mage for the an- 
 cestral dead is an instinct still alive in the breasts of all except 
 sordid, mean, unworthy people An orator; seeking to warm 
 the heart of his generation to some heroic deed of self-sacrifice, 
 always points back to the tombs and monuments which en- 
 
58 "east feliciaka past and peesent. 
 
 shrine the dust of the great chiefs who have served the state, 
 in camp or in council; so too, have I, in the name of our Hu- 
 guenot and Carolina ancestors, who founded our society, appeal- 
 ed to the living to be worthy of the dead. In such an appeal I 
 pay but merited homage to the rough-hewn symbols and im- 
 ages of frontier life, which, if a little too rude for imitation in 
 a smoother and more polished civilization, are, nevertheless, 
 admirable m my eyes as images of Truth, Honor and Patri- 
 otism. 
 
 I have tried to picture a good land, the home of good peo- 
 ple, with good soil, good climate, good laws, good chuiches 
 and schools; if my picture fails to attract the home seekers, 
 with capital and labor, in that case 'I shall confess that my aim 
 has not been achieved. Such a confession will be made Avith 
 deep regret, but without humiliation, for I honestly feel that I 
 have done my best. With a sanguine hope for better results, 
 
 I am, etc., 
 
 H. SKIP WITH. 
 
 RISE AND PROGRESS OF CLINTON. 
 
 In my sketch of the pioneers of the Fifth Ward of East 
 Feliciana, which, with a similar sketch of the other seven 
 wards of the parish is now in the hand of the publishers nearly 
 ready for publication in book form, but a short incidental 
 glance of the town of Canton was given. This notable omis- 
 sion has elicited some sharp, unfavorable, and I believe merited 
 criticism. 
 
 In atonement for an omission which assumes the complex- 
 ion of intentional neglect and injustice to a widely known and 
 renowned seat of educational, social and religious development, 
 my only apology is that Clinton is the creation of circum- 
 stances in A. D. 1824; whereas, the pioneers who made the first 
 clearings within the border lines which now mark the boun- 
 daries of the Fifth Ward, came into the ward in 1795, 1803-4-5 
 and 6. 
 
 As a full compensation for my omission I offer to His 
 Honor, the Mayor, and town council of Clinton, the following- 
 reliable history of the origin and progress of their town, which 
 is also intended as a supplement to the sketch of "The Pioneers 
 of the Fifth Ward." 
 
 Tha oldest seat of population, commerce and education in 
 East Feliciana is undoubtedly the town of Jackson, which in 
 its palmiest of metropolitan days was the seat of justice of a 
 County bounded on the east by the Perdido river, forty miles 
 east of Mobile Bay; on the north by the line of demarkation 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT." 59 
 
 established during General Washington's administration by- 
 American and Spanish commissioners; on the south by the sea 
 coast, and on the west by the Mississippi river. The biggest 
 county ever laid out since the days of the original thirteen 
 states, and its magnitude existed at a day before steamboats, 
 railroads, telegraphs and telephones. But, alas ! as not many 
 years after the creation of the big "County of Feliciana," with 
 Jackson as its metropolis, Alabama budded from a territorial 
 hoyden into a full grown State and wanted an outlet to the 
 sea, that part of the big county which included Mobile city and 
 bay was added to the dowry of the new comer into the family 
 of states; and so, likewise, when the Territory of Mississipi^i 
 applied for admission as a State, and all the old county of Feli- 
 ciana which lay eastward of the Pearl river between Mobile 
 and Pascagoula, Biloxi, Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis were 
 all wrested out of the county of Feliciana to give our neighbors 
 access to the sea when she was admitted into statehood; and 
 thus crumbled away the vast territory under the county juris- 
 diction of which our ancient and venerable neighbor, Jackson, 
 was the metropolis. 
 
 Between 1813 and 1824 the big county was further dis- 
 membered by the creation of the parishes of St. Tammany, 
 Washington, St. Helena and Livingston, thus reducing the 
 county to the small territory on which the parishes of East and 
 West Feliciana are now seated, and in 1824 the state govern- 
 ment, impelled by complaints that the floods and quick sands 
 of Thomj)sons creek established a barrier to the speedy and 
 cheap course of justice; created the Parishes of East and West 
 Feliciana, with instructions to the Police Jury of the Eastern 
 Parish to establish its seat of justice in the centre of the par- 
 ish. The commissioners ascertained by actual survey the cen- 
 tre, in the middle of an old worn out field about two and a 
 half miles west of Clinton, the old field being entirely destitute 
 of forest or fountain. The commissioners selected the site for 
 the parish seat on which Clinton now stands, because it was 
 well watered by perennial sjDrings and by Pretty creek, and 
 wooded by dense forests of pine and hard woods all around it. 
 
 Two We stern mechanics and speculators, John Bostwick 
 and George Sebor, were the actual, not mythical founders of 
 Clinton after it was selected as the seat of justice for the par- 
 ish. They bought most of the land now within the corporate 
 limits— they built a small temporary courthonse, jail, and hotel, 
 and laid out the streets and squares of a large city in the pros- 
 pective. 
 
 The writer came into Clinton in 1825 from where Wilson 
 now stands by narrow bridle paths, all through dense cane 
 thickets, extending after fording Pretty creek to the top of the 
 hill on which the livery stable now stands. Around the court- 
 
60 " EAST FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT, " 
 
 house square there were two frame houses used as country- 
 stores and saloons, and between Carow's corner and Mr. Henry 
 Hartner's dwelling, tliere stood in 1825, the dwelliner of the 
 original proprietor (Louis Yarborough) and his family. The 
 fertile and extensive back country east ui Clinton soon attract- 
 ed mercantile enterprise and merchants reaped golden 
 harvests; the disputes between landed proprietors, questions 
 •af boundary and the rijiht of way, and the more vigorous col- 
 li-ction of debts soon brought into the Forensic arena just 
 opened a large body of intellectual recruits from the law 
 schools all over the Union; and old Tully Robinson (the father 
 of the East Feliciana bnr), who had been sent out early in the 
 century by President Jefferson as U. S. District Attorney for 
 the Territory of Orleans, and who, alter the Territory of Or- 
 leans became the State of Louisi.na, clung to the county of 
 Feliciana, as the last appanage of his official realm and made 
 his home at the new seat of justice, found himself bearded by 
 a guild of lawyers his equals in all the wire drawn arts of pro- 
 fessional skill, though tbe old Settler still held all his rivals at 
 bay in the brilliant science of rhetorical d splay. Among the 
 aspiring spirits who first flocked to Clinton in search of profess- 
 ional laurels where Lafayette Saunders, who held the parish 
 judgeship and state senatorship, and would have been, had he 
 lived until March ith, 1849, a member of General Taylor's fir.st 
 cabinet; — Thomas L. Aodrews, — John R. Bullard, Jam s H. 
 Muse, — Edwin T. Merrick (afterwards Chief Justice of Louisi- 
 ana) —Thornton Lawson (afterwards District Judge) and R. W. 
 Short, the two last having engaged in a personal controversy 
 which was ended in a duel at Kellertown in which Short met 
 his death at the first fire. Take these all in all the first gener- 
 ation of the East Feliciana bar stood unrivalled in Louisiana, 
 as able, adroit and eloquent advocates, and the second gener- 
 ation of lawyers held up bravely the brilliant record of the first. 
 Among the leading spiiits of the second gent-ration were such 
 masters cf the art of rhetorical fire works as the late Colonel 
 Preston Pomi, the late Jurlge John McVea ai'd the late Judge 
 Charles McVea, Judge J. G. Kilbourne and Judge W. F. Ker- 
 nan, all graduates of the old college of Louisiana at Jackson, or 
 of old "Centenary." 
 
 With such a brilliant Society of Intellectual Athletes it is 
 no wonder that churches and schools were the first wants of a 
 community fast gi owing in refinement and numbers. And with 
 the co-operation of Clinton's old time merchants Clinton grew 
 and prospered amazingly. The religious societies, spying a new, 
 populous and unredeemed field of effort, soon added their mite 
 to the moral leverage which was leavening the precincts of the 
 new court house; churches went up on every spare lot, and "old 
 
"east FELICIANA PAST AND PRESENT.'' 61 
 
 Grocery Row," a second edition of "Natclipz Under The Hill," 
 went down. And now, Cliaton of to day has a Bar, though not 
 so numerous, is probably as gifted as its brilliant ante types of 
 the first and second generations, and to-day the Methodists, 
 Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Roman Cathulic-s (I 
 name them in the order of their coming) have each a handsome, 
 roomy and commodious house of worship. And in proof that 
 educational development is keeping even step with religious de- 
 velopment, there are in Clinton to-day a pros|)erons and growing 
 boys' school in which yonihs are thoroughly giounded in all the 
 walks of knowledge leading to a complete collegiate course of 
 study, — and an institute for girls, with more than a hundied pu- 
 pils, who are being as thorougly educated in all the ornamental 
 and ust-ful branches of knowledge, as they could be in better en- 
 dowed, and more pretentious seats of education. 
 
 In a closing paragraph I desire to submit a few additional 
 remarks essential to round off a faithful Sketch of the Town 
 OF Clinton. 
 
 East and south of Clinton, there are at least 100,000 acres 
 of cleared fields and forests now idle, waste and unproductive 
 for want of a sufficient labor supply. All this area forms a back 
 country naturally tributary to Clinton commerce, in which Clin- 
 ton has no competitors; when all these broad and fertile acres 
 are stimulated to their highest productive capacity by intelligent 
 farming and abundant labor and capital, Clinton will become the 
 "eutrepoi" for a fifty thousand bale crop, which will surely at- 
 tract mercantile and manufacturing capital and enterprise. The 
 distinbution of the contents of the Western granaries and smoke 
 houses to a laboring population sufficient to make fifteen thou- 
 sand bales, will add enormously to our commercial ventures. 
 
 A centre for the distribution of such large quantities of raw 
 material will, as surely as the Pole attracts the needle, attract 
 capital to start a cotton seed oil mill, a compress, and a first-class 
 cotton factory, for Clinton will then furnish water fuel and raw 
 material to run machinery cheap and keep machinery well fed 
 all the year round. 
 
 "When commerce swells, when agriculture multiplies, when 
 the town is alive with steam whistles and the ceaseless run of 
 busy lucrative machinery, with a lailroad equal to all its needs, 
 the dream of its founders and the hopes of this witer will have 
 been fulfilled. 
 
 H. SKIP WITH. 
 
S. LAMBERT. W. LANDRY 
 
 LAMBERT & LANDRY, 
 
 Insurance Agency 
 
 THE LARGEST IN THE CITY. 
 
 INSURANCE IN ALL ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 THE STRONGEST FIRE COMPANIES IN THE WORLD. 
 
 THE STRONGEST LIFE COMPANIES IN THE WORLD. 
 
 Our Patrons Well SatlsUed. 
 
 :W ONES COHSTAt(rLY COMING IN, 
 
 Others Cordially Invited, 
 
 BATON ROUGE, LA. 
 
''east I'ELlCtANA PAS't AND tftESEt^T.'' 37 
 
 "SUPPLEMENTARY SKETCH OF CLINTON." 
 
 Since the foregoing appeared in "The Southern Watchman"' 
 of December 19th, 1890, an old neighbor and friend who is like 
 myself ou the shady side of seventy, has pointed out a number 
 of notable omissions. 
 
 First. In my sketch of the educational advantages of 
 Clinton it was an important, and unpardonable omission not to 
 mention the Finishing school for young ladies' of that renowned 
 and beloved educator Mrs. Sallie Munday, which was founded as 
 an Academy many years ago by the mother of Admiral Gherarde, 
 and which under Mrs. Munday 's able superintendericy has grown 
 in popularity and usefulnes, until, its capacity is heavily taxed to 
 give proper attention to the large number of boarders and day 
 scholars applying for admission. 
 
 Second. The names of many of the lawyers who graced 
 the early Clinton bar, and who have since made famous names 
 and National reputations were omitted in my incomplete and 
 hasty enumeration of the leading spirits of the early Clinton bar. 
 
 Among those omitted were General E. W. Ripley, who after 
 having perfected the system of defences for the Louisiana 
 cousts, retired from the army, with a bullet through his neck 
 received at the famous and bloody battle of Bridgewater; and 
 resumed the practice of his profession (the law), and in partner- 
 ship with Charles M. Conrad afterwards Senator and Cabinet 
 Minister, made Clinton his field of professional efifort. There 
 too, old James Turner, renowned for his adroit methods of sav- 
 ing criminals from deserved punishment, and A. D. M. Haralson, 
 the States briUiant prosecuting oflScer, used to come out to Clin- 
 ton to shiver lances with such expert fencers as U. S. Senator 
 Solomon W. Downes. Joseph E. Johnson and Isaac Johnson, 
 afterwards Governor and District Judge. In the midst of this 
 throng of bright, aspiring intellects, might be seen the burly 
 towering form of James M. Bradford, who started the first n^^ws- 
 paper West of the AUeghanys at the "Falls of the Ohio," the 
 voice of Mr. Bradford, when pleading a case was as loud as 
 the voice of Mahomet's, uncle in the midst of the battles around 
 Mecca; from this distinguishing characteristic he obtained the 
 nickname of "Bull Bradford." 
 
 Third . Reuben Washington Short, adopted son of Lund 
 Washington, was not killed at Kellertown, as was stated in the 
 original sketch; he only lost the plated ruffles on his shirt bosom 
 instead of his life. 
 
a.: 
 
 38 "east FELlClAKA tAST AND PRESENT." 
 
 Fourth. James Holmes; who married a daughter of the 
 grand old Pioneer Baptist Missionary, Ezra Courtney; was part 
 owner with Bostwick of the site of Clinton, and George Sebor 
 was their architect and constructor. 
 
 Fifth. Thomas W. Scott, a farmer, was appointed by 
 Governor Thomas Boiling Robertson, the first Parish Judge, 
 instead of Sheriff as he petitioned to be, always upright, modest 
 and conscientous, he had written, and mailed a letter of de- 
 clination, to the governor, but his friends overruled him and 
 influenced him to accept an office, which was never more satis- 
 factory filled, than it was by the honest unpretending farmer. 
 
 Sixth. I omitted to include in my museum of "antiques" 
 the small brick building in the Court house square, which is 
 now the office of the Mayor of Clinton, but which, until the 
 new Court house was finished in 1838, served as the office of 
 the Parish Judge and Clerk. 
 
 H. SKIPWITH. 
 
Lb My '09