Bio: William J. Crowder, Caddo Parish La
Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana
The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago & Nashville,  1890

Submitted by: Suzanne Shoemaker
sueshoe@hotmail.com



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William J. Crowder, planter and stock dealer, Shreveport, La.  Among the
enterprising and successful farmers and stock dealers of Caddo parish, La.,
none are more progressive and thorough than the subject of this sketch.
Mr. Crowder was born in Oglethorpe County, Ga., in 1834, and is a son of
William B. and Elizabeth H. (Ogilvie) Crowder, the father of native of
Virginia, born in 1803, and the mother born in South Carolina in 1810.  The
parents were married at Edgefield Court House, S. C., and later moved to
Georgia, where the father died in 1853.  He was a planter by occupation,
and for many years was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  After
his death, in 1855, the family moved to Caddo Parish, La., where the mother
resides at the present time.  She has been a member of the Methodist
Episcopal church for many years.  The paternal grandfather, George Crowder,
was a native of Virginia, and at an early day removed to Georgia, where he
received his final summons.   He was of English parentage, and was a
soldier in the Revolutionary War.  The maternal grandfather, James Ogilvie,
was born in South Carolina, and there his death occurred.  He was of Scotch
descent.  William J. Crowder, the third of eleven children, was early
trained to the arduous duties of the farm, and received a good academic
education.  He came with his mother to Caddo Parish, La., in 1855, and in
1861 joined the First Louisiana Battalion, Infantry (Dreux Battalion),
serving twelve months in Virginia as lieutenant, and participating in many
engagements from there to Pensacola.  In May he resigned and was placed in
the Twenty-seventh Louisiana Infantry, participating in the siege of
Vicksburg, after which he was made first lieutenant in the Twenty-eighth
Louisiana Infantry.  After the fall of Vicksburg he was on picket duty in
Louisiana until the close of the war.  After this he was engaged in
merchandising at Shreveport for a number of years, and since then has been
engaged in farming and stock trading.  He has a good plantation, and is
prominently identified with the farming interests of this parish.