Bio: Joseph B. Elam; DeSoto, then Caddo Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: 1999-2000





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Joseph B. Elam bears the name of his honored father, the late Joseph B. Elam,
distinguished lawyers and congressman and man of affairs, and Las on his own
part gained a notable place in his home state of Louisiana in the oil
industry, being secretary of the Louisiana-Arkansas division of the
Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, with headquarters at Shreveport.

His father, Joseph B. Elam, Sr., was born in Arkansas, June 12, 1821, and was
five years of age when his parents moved to Louisiana.  His father was James
C. Elam, an educator of Virginia ancestry who taught schools at various points
in the West and Southwest in pioneer times.  On coming to Louisiana he became
tutor for the officer's children at Fort Jessup in Sabine Parish.  There the
Joseph B. Elam acquired his early education, studied law and was admitted to
the bar in 1843, and for a number of years practiced at Alexandria,
representing Sabine Parish two years in the Legislature, during 1851 he
removed to De Soto Parish, was elected delegate to the State Constitutional
Convention of 1861 and signed the ordinance of secession.  He served two terms
in the Legislature during the Civil war, and subsequently was elected to the
Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses.  After leaving Congress ~ practiced
law until his death on July 4, 1885, congressman Elam married Mary Stewart,
who was a member of the first graduating class of Mansfield female College.

Joseph B. Elam, their son, was born at Mansfield in De Soto Parish,, in 1878,
and was educated in public schools there and in the University of the South at
Sewanee, Tennessee.  He was seven years of age when his father died.  On
leaving college he engaged in the newspaper business, becoming editor of the
De Soto News at Mansfield and subsequently for a time followed the business of
buying newspaper plants and after rehabilitating them, selling out.  This
business took him to Oklahoma, and he was in that state when the citizens of
Mansfield, seeing the need of a progressive business man for mayor, requested
that he return and accept the office of mayor.  In the meantime, in
preparation for this, they had secured a special act of the Legislature
increasing the salary of the mayor.  Mr. Elam accepted the office, and under
his administration Mansfield built its first electric light plant, water
works, paving and other improvements of a modern city.

In the early days of oil development in North Louisiana, beginning about 1908,
Mr. Elam was attracted into the industry, drilling several wildcat wells. 
Early in 1922 he was appointed assistant secretary of the Mid-Continent Oil
and Gas Association, Louisiana-Arkansas division, and at that time took up his
duties at the association's headquarters in Shreveport.  In the latter part of
1922 he was promoted secretary of this division.  He still keeps his home at
Mansfield, though his business duties require his presence at Shreveport.

Mr. Elam married Miss Margaret Taylor, of the well known Kentucky family of
that name.  Their four children are:  Joseph B.,  Johnetta,  Mary Stewart and 
Margaret.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 196-197, by Henry E. Chambers. 
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York,
1925.