Stephen M. Shows, DeSoto Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller

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Stephen M. Shows since 1014 has been principal of schools at Longstreet 
in De Soto Parish.  He has been the directing head of the local school 
system throughout the period marked by progressive development in the 
educational facilities of that locality.  Since he became principal two 
sets of buildings have been erected to accommodate the school population 
of Longstreet.  The first soon proved inadequate to the demand, and subsequently 
a large brick building was erected and there are also quarters for the 
domestic science department.

Mr. Shows was born at Old Hebron, in Jackson Parish, Louisiana, November 9, 
1890.  The Shows family originated in Holland and first settled in South Carolina.  
It was represented as a family by soldiers in the American army during the War of 
the Revolution.  The parents of Mr. Shows are Stephen Jackson and Emma (Sorrels) 
Shows.  The latter was born in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana.  Stephen Jackson 
Shows was born while his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Shows, were moving from 
Mississippi to Louisiana.  He was born in a covered wagon in 1851.  John Shows 
was one of the pioneer teachers in this section of Louisiana, where he settled.  
Stephen J. Shows owned a farm and store at Old Hebron, and subsequently moved to 
Jonesboro, where he became a merchant and where he still resides.  Throughout his 
life he has been a strong advocate of schools and was responsible for getting the 
first school tax in his district voted he served as a member of the local school 
board; has been a democrat and a deacon in the Baptist Church.  Stephen J. Shows 
and wife after their marriage moved to a tract of railroad land, built a little 
one-room log house with a dirt floor and took their meals outside.  It was here 
that he began his career as a farmer.  In the family were eleven children, ten 
of whom grew up.  The four sons were:  J. M., a justice of the peace and notary 
public at Jonesboro;  G. A., a road contractor at Bunkie, Louisiana;  Stephen M.; 
and  P. F., who died at the age of twenty-seven, while a farmer and cotton ginner 
at Jonesboro,

Stephen M. Shows acquired his early education in a little one-room school at Hebron; 
subsequently graduated from the Jonesboro High School, and while teaching he 
continued his higher education in the Louisiana industrial Institute at Ruston, 
the Louisiana State University and also in the Louisiana State Normal College at 
Natchitoches.  His first efforts as a teacher were expended in a school at Shady 
Grove, three miles from Jonesboro.  It was a one-room school.  Following that he 
had a two-room school at Midway, twelve miles from Jonesboro.  Then after spending 
two years in Normal College, in 1914 he became principal of the schools at Longstreet, 
an industrial community that is one of the most prosperous localities in De Soto Parish.  
During his boyhood he had business experience clerking in his lather's store, and as a 
youth he entertained for a time the ambition of becoming a lawyer.

Mr. Shows married, July 12, 1916, Miss 0. C. Wardlow, daughter of J. P. Wardlow, of 
Red Oak, Louisiana.  She finished her education in the Louisiana State Normal and 
was a teacher for a time.  The two children of Mr. and Mrs. Shows are James Stephen, 
born in 1920, and Mary Katherine.  Mr. Shows is a Master Mason, a member of the 
Baptist Church, and conducted the Bible Class in the Sunday School.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 356, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.