Lawrence Vincent, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller


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Lawrence Vincent represents an old and honored family of Calcasieu 
Parish, and was born in what has been known for a great many years as 
Vincent settlement.  His life has been given to educational work, and he 
has received distinction and success in that field.  He is founder and 
manager of the Lake Charles Business College, one of the most 
efficient institutions of its kind in Louisiana.

Mr. Vincent was born October 22, l884.  His father Joseph M. Vincent 
was also born in Vincent settlement in 1847, was a boy soldier for a 
brief time in the Confederate army, and has spent active life as a 
farmer, cattle raiser and merchant.  He was in the general mercantile 
business at Hockberry [sic - Hackberry intended], Cameron Parish, 
when he died in 1907, he married Josephine Ellender, a native of 
Calcasieu Parish, now living at Hackberry.

Lawrence Vincent was educated in common school in Cameron Parish, 
attended the Lake Charles High School, and having a distinctive talent 
and tendency for commercial work, he trained himself for a career of 
usefulness in the Ransomerian School of Penmanship at Kansas City, 
Missouri, and in the Spencer Business College at New Orleans.  From 
1906 to 1911 he was teacher of bookkeeping and shorthand in a 
business college at Lake Charles.

The Lake Charles Business College was established in 1911 and under 
the presidency of Mr. Vincent, it has steadily enlarged its facilities, and 
has rendered a service demonstrated in the hundreds of its graduates 
who have achieved high positions and responsibilities in the business 
world.  Business men generally speak in the highest terms of the quality 
of instruction and training given in that college.  The college runs both 
day and night classes, and affords a complete business education from 
the special art of bookkeeping, stenography, and similar subjects to the 
broader fields of commercial management and administration.

Mr. Vincent owns a fine home, and furnishes living quarters for many 
of his students.  He is a deacon of the First Baptist Church and 
superintendent of the Sunday school, a member of the Rotary Club, the 
Chamber of Commerce, and a number of civic and social organizations.  
He has taken a number of postgraduate courses and by visiting has kept 
in touch with the most efficient methods of the commercial schools all 
over the country.

He married at Lake Charles, November 2, 1910, Miss Floy Parks, who 
was born at Rockland, Texas, daughter of John Parks, who since 1912 
has been a farmer near Lake Charles.  Mrs. Vincent is one of the 
interested workers of the Baptist church.  Mr. and Mrs. Vincent have 
two adopted children,  Willie and  Lurline.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 302, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New 
York, 1925.