John Thomas Henning; Alabama, then Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller


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John Thomas Henning.  One of the thriving small cities of Calcasieu 
Parish is Sulphur and the history of that community practically from 
the beginning involves in a prominent measure, the name and activities 
of John Thomas Henning and also his father-in-law, the late Eli 
Perkins.

John Thomas Henning, who is now retired after many years of business 
responsibility, was born in Alabama, September 25, 1830.  His grand 
father came to Virginia with La Fayette during the Revolutionary war.  
John Henning, father of the Sulphur business man, was born in 
Botetourt County, Virginia, May 5, 1812, and died March 12, 1891.  
He was a millwright and carpenter by trade, and as a young man went 
to Alabama and followed his trade, in 1863 went to British Honduras 
and a short time later returned north and was in Jefferson, Texas, until 
1875, when he located in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, and lived there 
until his death.  He was a local minister of the Methodist Church.  His 
wife, Samantha Lovejoy Henning, was born in Alabama and died July 
3, 1903, at the age of seventy-seven.

John Thomas Henning spent the first fifteen years of his life in his 
native State of Alabama, attended Public Schools there, though his 
advantages were very limited during the war period.  He learned the 
trade of carpenter at Jefferson, Texas, and followed it for several years, 
and in 1872 came to the Village of Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he 
was employed in the saw mills of Eli Perkins, whose daughter he 
subsequently married.  He also, took a homestead on the Calcasieu 
River, and cultivated it as a farm for about five years.

It was in 1885 that he located at Sulphur, building the first house in the 
new village.  He conducted a boarding house, a transfer company, 
carried the first sulphur oil from the sulphur mines to the railroad, and 
was also postmaster, ticket agent, express agent, operated a warehouse, 
and from 1893 was a general merchant, continuing in business until 
1910, when he retired with a creditable performance of pioneer 
activities.  He was largely instrumental in constructing the First 
Methodist Church in Sulphur, and later brought about the building of 
the handsome new edifice now occupied by that denomination.  He also 
built the first schoolhouse in Sulphur, and from the very beginning has 
been deeply interested in the improvement of educational facilities and 
has taken much pride in the magnificent showing made by the Sulphur 
Public School System.  Whatever has promised good for the 
community, has enlisted the cooperation of Mr. Henning.  For many 
years he has been a member of time Board of Trustees, and a deacon of 
the Methodist Church and active in the Sunday school.

Catherine Perkins, his first wife, was a daughter of Eli Perkins, a 
pioneer lumberman of Calcasieu Parish at Rose Bluff.  In 1876 Eli 
Perkins made his first venture and started the Town of Sulphur, where 
he was in the grocery business until 1891.  He put up the first store 
building on the site.  He owned a large amount of land, and was a 
successful stock raiser, had served as a soldier in the Confederate army 
and was a member of the Louisiana Legislature.  This honored old time 
citizen of Sulphur died in February, 1917, when he was eighty- four 
years of age.  Mr. Henning by his first marriage has two children:  Eli, 
a lumberman at El Paso, Texas, who is married and has a son, Horace; 
and John L., who for about twenty years was with the Union Sulphur 
Company, becoming its vice president and general manager, but is now 
in the oil business at Beaumont, Texas, and is time father of three 
children:  John L.,  Gloria and  Jean.  Mr. Henning on April 17, 1890, 
married Mary Smith, of Orange. Texas.  She was born and reared in 
Georgia, daughter of Osburne Smith, a Georgia lumberman who died 
while a soldier in the Confederate army.  Mrs. Henning has long been 
active in time Methodist Church.  By his second marriage Mr. Henning 
has one son, William Thomas Henning, a merchant at Sulphur and 
president of the Sulphur Board of Education.  This son is married and 
has two sons named John T. and William Lovejoy.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 267, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New 
York, 1925.