Rev. Paul Leeds, Allen Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller


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Rev. Paul Leeds for over thirty years has been a source of inspiration 
and of valuable missionary work among the Indian tribes of Southwestern 
Louisiana.  His home is at Kinder, in Allen Parish.

He was born in Berrien County. Michigan, December 9, 1869, son of Alexander 
Brown and Susan Tabitha (Armstrong) Leeds, his father a native of New London, 
Connecticut, and his mother of Indiana.  His father was educated at Baltimore, 
was a farmer at Ellicott Mills, Maryland, and in 1843 was a pioneer settler 
in Berrien County, Michigan, where he was a farmer, served as registrar of 
deeds and probate judge, and was active in the republican party.  He was a 
member of the Episcopal Church and a Masonic fraternity.  His death occurred 
in 1893, at the age of seventy-four, and his wife passed away in 1879, aged 
forty-seven.

Paul Leeds grew up in Southern Michigan, attending public schools at Berrien 
Springs, in 1886 he came south to Dallas, Texas.  He was converted by Rev. 
Luther Rees and received into the church by Dr. Cyrus I. Schofield, and 
entered the ministry of the Congregational Church, being ordained in 1893, 
in that year he came to Jennings, Louisiana, and for a number of years past 
has been pastor of the Congregational Church at Kinder.

On September 29, 1901, he organized and began missionary work among the 
Coushatta, Alabama and Choctaw Indians.  No Christian missionary had ever 
succeeded in accomplishing anything among the Coushatta Indians before 
Reverend Leeds, For the Congregational Home Missionary Society he has
prepared the first account of the Coushatta Indians and their conversion 
in an article entitled, "The End of the Trail."  He has established churches 
and Sunday schools, and among these Indian and mixed races found in this 
section of Louisiana he has labored unselfishly for the church for more 
than thirty years.

He married May 1, 1907, Miss Bessie Allen, and they have a daughter, Marie.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 266, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.