Richard Eugene Oden, Allen Parish, Louisiana 
Submitted by Mike Miller  


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Richard Eugene Oden, sheriff and ex-officio tax collector of Allen Parish, 
has been three times elected to that office, and has enjoyed a number of 
other official honors and responsibilities. His participation in public 
affairs began while he was busily engaged in the practice of medicine and 
surgery, and in late years he has largely given over his professional career.
  
Doctor Oden was born on a farm in Talladega County, Alabama, November 4, 1866, 
son of John Lafayette and Nancy Elizabeth (West) Oden, both natives of the 
same locality. His mother died at the age of fifty. His father was a 
Confederate soldier, was a farmer and planter in Alabama and in 1876 moved 
to Louisiana, where he continued the same occupation until his death at the 
age of seventy six. 

Richard Eugene Oden was three years of age when his parents moved to St. 
Landry Parish, and he finished his early education in the common schools 
of that parish and Avoyelles Parish, also attended school at Auburn, Alabama, 
and at Fort Gibson, Mississippi. He completed his preparations for his 
professional work in the Louisville Medical College, where he was graduated 
Doctor of Medicine in 1892. 

Doctor Oden for a brief the practiced in Rapides Parish, three years in St. 
Landry Parish, and in 1896 moved to Kinder, Calcasieu Parish, where he 
performed all the offices and duties of a capable country physician for 
twenty years or more. For twelve years he was mayor of Kinder. After Allen 
Parish was created, his home at Kinder made him a citizen of the new parish, 
and in 1916 he was elected for his first term as sheriff and tax collector.  
He was reelected in 1920 and 1924, and has since given practically all his 
the to his official duties at the county seat at Oberlin. During the war he 
served as a member of the Allen Parish Draft Board, and he is a member of 
the Sheriff's Association of Louisiana.  

Doctor Oden still retains his residence at Kinder, and is a member of the 
Masonic Lodge there. He married at Alexandria, Louisiana, in 1895, 
Elsie Lee Jessup, who was born and reared in Kansas. Her father is 
Lawrence Jessup, a veteran railroad man, who was engaged in railroading in 
Kansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, and now lives retired at Kinder. 

Doctor and Mrs. Oden have eight children: Alma Glyn, Melva, John, Neva, 
Richard Eugene, Andrew Jackson, William Henry and Frederica Elizabeth. The 
daughter, Alma Glyn, is the wife of R. Y. Hancock, a pharmacist at Jasper, 
Texas.  

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 282, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.