"East Feliciana, Past and Present", Parts 11-13,  East Feliciana, La.
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Part Eleven

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"EAST FELICIANA, LOUISIANA, PAST AND PRESENT."

SKETCHES OF THE PIONEERS,

By H. Skipwith
1892
Hopkins Printing Office, 20 & 22 Commercial Place,
New Orleans

PIONEERS OF THE FIFTH WARD.

I am so habituated, Mr. Editor, to chronological arrangement
that I think I would not begin writing a history of Rome before
making close and critical search for vestiges of the wall, to
build which, Romulus cut down the reeds of Tiber, nearly three
thousand years ago.  My present search is limited to the inquiry
"Who made the earliest blazings of civilizations in the fifth
ward of East Feliciana?"

Tradition carries us then back, in answer to this question, to
the closing years of the last century; when the three Yarborough
brothers from Georgia, and Joseph Felps, from the same State,
in company with his brothers, James, Thomas and David; and as
part of the same immigration movement, those sturdy old front-
iersmen, Isaac Taylor from Pennsylvania, and Robert Nettles and
Thomas Albritton from South Carolina, who commenced to make their
hatchet clearings, to lay off fence rows and to build log cabins
with puncheon floors in the heart of the primeval forests and
cane brakes, the dark green curtains of the water-courses, which
irrigated and fertilized the lovely valleys of the Fifth Ward, in
the year 1798.

And two years later came into the same community another colony
from Elbert County, Georgia, which included several well rememb-
ered pioneers, who figured conspicuously in shaping our civlization,
namely:  Charles Ingraham, James Higginbotham, Matthew Edwards,
Natt Cobb and William Blount.

Mr. Ingraham, who cleared the place now owned by Mr. I.T.Felps,
was a worker in wood, possessing a large and active mechanical
genius, and to him the settlers were indebted for the first
grist and saw mill, and he was likewise the owner of several
slave mechanics, workers both in iron and wood, and Ingraham's
mill and blacksmith shop were leading land marks for many years,
of which there are still some vestiges.

His old Elbert County neighbor and friend, James Higginbotham,
who likewise was a slave owner, was the Master of the first lodge
of Masons organized in East Feliciana.  He lived and died on his
first clearing, but his son, John B., on his father's death, moved
eastward into the Sixth Ward, near Nat Cobb and William Blount
and the Briants, who had migrated from the banks fo the Comite
river, in the Fifth, to the valley of the Amite, in the Sixth.
Throughout his long and active life, John B. Higginbotham was
a strong pillar of the Methodist Church, an earnest and devout
class leader.  It is one of the traditions of the Elbert County
colony, along the Comite, that young Charles Ingraham was the
first Anglo American to die, and that his father put him away
in a solid lightwood coffin, which was made air tight by ingenious
devices without corroding nails.

As the Felps and Yarborough brothers certainly came into the
wilds earlier than the Elbert County colony, those earliest leaders
of the column of civilization have had so much influence in
shaping the societies which they founded that each may claim
a short biographical paragraph.

James Felps founded the ancestral seat, seven miles east of
Clinton, on the Greensburg road, in the Eighth Ward.  His brothers,
Thomas and David Felps, founded their family seats two miles
south of him, on the banks of Bluff Creek, in the Sixth Ward.

The fourth brother, Joseph, whose descendants still cling in
large numbers around the "clearing" which their ancestor made
in 1798, a little south of the present site of Clinton, chose
his home in the Fifth Ward.

The three Yarborough brothers, who came from Georgia with the
Felps, founded their homes along the banks of Pretty Creek, in
clannish proximity, in the Fifth Ward.  Lewis Yarborough made
his hatchet clearing and built his log cabin (which I have seen
standing in good repair, in 1825) just between the present store
of Mr. R. Carow and the new residence of Henry Hartner.  His
descendants, not long ago, under the advice of Judge J.B. Smith,
contemplated bringing suit for all the land on which the town
of Clinton now stands.

James Yarborough founded his seat on the heights west of Pretty
Creek, within 200 yards of the present residence of Mr. H.A. White;
and his descendants, of whom Mrs. A. Levi, of New Orleans, is
one, have contributed their loyal quota to the social development
of their neighborhood.

The third brother, Stephen Yarborough, was perhaps the most
energetic and successful of the brothers.  He founded his seat
and handsomely improved the heights, on which Hon. T.S. Adams
now lives, from which there is a pleasant prospect of green,
fertile valleys and forest-clad hill.  The career of Stephen
was prosperous without any adverse break for years, during
which he added a water saw and grist mill and gin to his possessions,
until he planted his numerous and broad and fertile acres of
Pretty Creek bottoms in sugar cane.

He lost his crop in the futile endeavor to express the juice
from his canes with water power, which was totally inadequate.
This costly failure and the loss of his first wife suggested
to the lonely widower of Pretty Creek the need of a partner to
share his sorrows.  Nature abhors a void, and so did Stephen,
the uxorious widower, who, inspired with the resolution to find
a suitable partner to fill the void, spruced  up one fine Sunday
morning in a glossy broad cloth suit, spotless linen, shiny
beaver, tight buckskin gauntlets and patent leather boots, and
rode upon a showy charger, prancing and curvetting, to the fence
around the mansion in which Judge Brame now resides.  Inside the
building were the bright black eyes of the very pretty brunette
Widow Morgan, who sat in widowed meditation, fancy free, biding
her time.  To accompany the bright eyed widow to church was the
objective point of Stephen, and to that same object the widow
cheerfully co-operated.  The acquaintance thus initiated soon
ripened into a rapid exchange of notes, in which the widower's
words, carefully selected from that casket of sighing lovers
"the complete letter-writer," fairly sparkled with the Promethean
fire, to which the widow, with experience of thirty winters and
a former surrender, was coy and very shy, without a 'soupeon' of
gush or any of those traps into which soft and silly maidens
often fall.  As the correspondence developed the furnaces on the
"Heights" became hotter and brighter.  In the course of time,
when the fire grew dim for want of fuel, and when the flashes
from Pretty Creek ceased to illuminate the widow's casket of
epistolary jewels, the thrifty widow unmasked a battery from
behind the columns of Judge Brame's brick house, which struck
terror to the heart of Capt. Adam's uxorious predecessor in
his lofty tower on Pretty Creek.  The artless, coy, bright-
eyed widow filed with the Clerk of the District Court a suit for
breach of promise, and $10,000 damages to salve a broken heart,
and founded her suit on twenty odd carefully folded, labelled
and numbered proposals of marriage.

Imagine Falstaff before Henry the Fifth's Chief Justice, defend-
ing himself from the clamorous asserverations of Dame Quickly,
alleging that the oleagenous old scamp had deceived her into
various and sundry money loans, and broken her susceptible heart
by numberless promises to make her his wedded wife.  Imagine
the placid and rotund Mr. Pickwick defending himself from the
matrimonial aspirations of Mrs. Bardell, and you will have a
"fac-simile" of the fat widower of Pretty Creek before the court
in Clinton, on the trial of the suit styled "The widow Morgan
vs. Stephen Yarborough."  Of all the lawyers, jurors and witnesses
in that celebrated case none that I know of are left to tell the
tale, except the ex-Chief Justice Merrick and this writer.
Recalling the ludicrous incidents of that memorable scene, in
which the two most conspicuous champions of the much damaged
widow were the late Thomas Green Davidson, of Livingston, and the
late Henry Marston, Esq.  The first proclaimed himself to be the
volunteer defender of injured innocence; the latter a knightly old
gentleman from under the shadow of Faneni Hall, who promenaded
the lists, ready to break a lance with whoever presumed to sneer
at the aggravated wrongs of the wounded dove, who was seeking
salve for a broken heart.  As the verable Tom Green Davidson would
extract a letter from the bulky package on which the widow's case
rested, leaning on his crutch, and holding the letter in the other
hand, appealing "Gentlemen of the Jury, I crave your close attention
while I read to you another chapter of "Stephen on Love," a scene
so rich was presented which beggars the numerous presentations of
Falstaff and Pickwick defending themselves from Widows Quickly
and Bardell.  The jury gave Mrs. Morgan $1000 damages, which was
only realized after a hard fight in the Supreme Court, but the
widow died before the decree was rendered and Mr. Marston, her
chivalrous and steadfast friend, administered her estate, which
was kept unsettled by the claim of her volunteer counsel for a
fee of $500, which claim was resisted by the administrator on the
ground that the volunteer had put his hand on his heart and solemnly
avowed before God and the jury he had no pecuniary interest, and
old Tom died a few years afterwards, kicking himself because he had
once in his life forfeited $500 in good money to impalpable gush.

Before closing this sketch I desire to add the water courses that
form the eastern and western boundaries of the Fifth Ward and Pretty
Creek which courses through it diagonally from N.E. to S.W., afford
large bodies of fertile meadow land, that its soil on hill and
valley can be easily and cheaply rejuvenated, and therefore in its
reproductive capacity and splendid pastoral advantages, it is the
equal of the most favored wards.  That its area of cheap, idle,
waste and abandoned lands is large, owing to the scarcity of laborers,
and that in the matter of good society, good churches and good
schools, it possesses inducements which are very attractive to the
roving body of home-seekers, for whom this sketch has been written.
Hoping it will reach them and attract them, I remain, yours, etc.,
H. SKIPWITH

SILLIMAN COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE
FOR YOUNG LADIES
Clinton, Louisiana.
Session 1890-91.
Advantages.
Large Endowment.
Healthful Location.
Moderate Terms.
Free Scholarships.
Easy Accessibility.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES.
Rev. M.B. Shaw, President, Clinton, La.
Hon. D.W. Pipes, Secretary, Clinton, La.
Hon. W.H. Pipes, Treasurer, Clinton, La.
Dr. L.G. Perkins, East Feliciana, La.
Judge J.G. Kilbourne, Clinton, La.
Rev. J.Y. Allison, Baton Rouge, La.
W.R. McKowen, Esq., Jackson, La.

OFFICERS AND TEACHERS.
Session 1890-91.
George J. Ramsey, A.M., President,
Ancient Languages and Modern Science.
Mrs. Go. J. Ramsey, Acting Lady Principal,
Vocal Music and Art.
Rev. F.W. Lewis, A.B. (W.& L. Univ'ty),
Mathmatics, Mental and Moral Science.
Mrs. T.S. Stevens,
History and Composition.
Miss Emma Kilbourne,
English.
.............
Modern Languages.
Mrs. J.A. White,
Primary Department.
Miss O.E. Hardesty,
Instrumental Music.
Dr. James Kilbourne,
Attendant Physician and Lecturer on Physiology and Hygiene.
Miss Jennie Scott,
Stenography and Typewriting.
Mrs. S.P. Saunders,
Matron.

BUILDINGS
These were erected at a cost of $30,000.  They are of brick, large,
well ventilated, and present a very handsome appearance.  The grounds
embrace ten acres, a large part of which is densely covered with
beech and magnolia, and used only for play grounds and rambles.  The
water is from underground cisterns, caught from slate roofs, and
therefore of the purest quality.  The buildings have been, during
the past three years, placed in thorough repair and furnished anew
throughout, and the rooms will always contain every comfort and
convenience.

HEALTH
The town of Clinton, situated in the "hill country" of Louisiana,
is one of the healthiest in the State.  No local cause of disease
exists.  No epidemic has visited the town since 1855.  On the
contrary, the benficial effect of the genial climate and pure
atmosphere upon persons afflicted with pulmonary or marlarial
diseases has been clearly demonstrated by the experience of a
large number of pupils during past years.  In the interior manage-
ment of the school attention to the health of the pupils is made
a matter of the first moment.

Part Twelve

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"EAST FELICIANA, LOUISIANA, PAST AND PRESENT."

SKETCHES OF THE PIONEERS,

By H. Skipwith
1892
Hopkins Printing Office, 20 & 22 Commercial Place,
New Orleans

PIONEERS OF THE SIXTH WARD.

Notwithstanding, Mr. Editor, that this sixth sub-division of
East Feliciana has been sneeringly nick-named "the Dark Corner",
I find on closer scrutiny that is annals are as full of stirring
incidents, its settlement as early, its progress as fast and its
social development as healthy and steady as in any of the other
wards, and a glance at its admirable distribution of forest and
stream, of meadows and valleys and picturesque building sites,
on the crown of its lofty ranges of forest clad hills, will
convince the home seekers that I am sketching one of the choicest
haunts of civilized man; a land conspicuously adapted to the uses
of agricultural and pastoral endeavor.

The bold and turbulent Amite, with its wealth of broad and fertile
bottoms, and its miles of dense primeval forests, is the ward's
eastern border, Sandy Creek, a smaller stream of living waters,
presenting on a smaller scale the same features as are found along
the Amite, is the western boundary of the ward.  The same general
features likewise attach to the courses of its two diagonal feeders,
namely Hunter's Branch, which rises a little north of the centre
and flows south-west into Sandy Creek, and Bluff Creek which also
rises north of the centre and discharges south-east into the Amite
river.  It is almost needless to add that the flocks and herds of
the Sixth Ward never suffer for water, and the meadows bordering
all these streams in large broad bodies of fertile land hold out
a promise of rich remuneration to agricultural and pastoral endeavor.
It goes, too, almost without saying, that the bold headlands hemm-
ing in these streams abound in picturesque sites, calling eloquently
to roaming pilgrims to stop and build and beautify a home.

It has already been asserted in these sketches that there were two
tidal waves, which floated into these wilds; two streams of immigrat-
ing humanity; some by single spies, some by families, and some by
whole neighborhoods.

The first wave was set in motion by the treaty with Spain in 1795,
which defined the 31st parallel of north latitude as the boundary
between Spain's provinces of Florida and the United States, and
also guaranteed to American citizens, for three years, the right
of deposit.  On this first wave came into the Sixth Ward, to battle
with the bears, panthers and wolves for possession and a peaceful
home, John Morgan and Morgan Morgan, who having emigrated from
Virginia to the wilds of Kentucky with their relative Daniel Boone,
soon after the revolutionary war, turned their migratory longing
southward in 1796, and in company with the Vardells and Thackers,
founded their homes in the Sixth in the broad and fertile Amite
valley.  Impelled by the same wave, though not quite so early, but
before the close of the century, came the Chaneys from South
Carolina, the Phelps from Georgia, and John Hobgood from Virginia.
These early comers founded seats along the valleys of Bluff Creek,
except Capt. James Hobgood, whose early life was so eventful and
full of interesting incidents, as to suggest a separate biograph-
ical paragraph.  James Hobgood was a Virginia lad during the
Revolution, with strong longings to go and fight for Washington
and freedom, but being too young was denied enlistment.  After
the war closed, the restless, aspiring lad commenced his migrations
southward, through the Carolinas, stopping in South Carolina long
enough to fascinate a blue-eyed daughter of the Barfields, who
came with him to found a home on the plantation in the Sixth Ward,
now owned and cultivated by Mr. Porter Rowley.  The ancestor of
the Hobgoods was not only one of the earliest comers, but was for
many years the most conspicous figure of the early society of
the Sixth Ward, especially at "House Raisings" and "Log Rollings"
and all other occasions at which physical strength always won the
crown of admiration.  He was a long armed, heavily muscled athlete,
and as a jumper, wrestler and fighter had no equal.  His son, Mr.
W.B. Hobgood, relates with pardonable pride the feats of prowess
of his gigantic ancestor, but he had one weakness, for which Billy,
after the lapse of over half a century, has not been able to fully
forgive him.  When the oats were ready for the harvest the long
armed old giant would shoulder his scythe and buckle on his can-
teen full of whiskey, and his son Billy ws summoned to carry a
fresh pail of water, and when the day's work was done the canteen
was always empty, but Billy had been rigidly confined to the con-
tents of the pail of water, and to this day Billy protests that
he was the victim of a most unfair distribution of the fluids.

Within a year or two of those already mentioned came from Georgia,
the Cobbs, Higginbothams, Carrolls and Blonnts, and the Barfields
from South Carolina, who founded their seats along the Amite river.
While these eastern colonists were developing their scattered
communities, settlements were being made on the western border,
along the valley of Sandy Creek, by the Hatchers, Storys, McMurrays
and Gideon White.

A little later, say about six years, the earliest of that large
column of immigration which was set in motion by Mr. Jefferson's
proclamation of 1803, announcing the purchase of Louisiana, came
B.M.G. Brown, senior, who brought his wife, his little ones, and
his slaves, and his chattels, in 1804, from Darlington District,
South Carolina, to found a new home on the banks of Hunter's
Branch, in the Sixth Ward, near the line of the Baton Rouge road,
where he reared and equipped his four sons, Major Reddin Brown,
B.M.G. Brown, jr., Elly Brown and Eli Brown, for active, useful
and honorable service in the van of civilization, around their
southern homes.

Nearly contemporaneous with the Browns, the society of the ward
was recruited by the Lees, Reddins, Carrolls, and by the mother
of Sothey Hayes, and the late Sheriff Jno. W. Hayes, who came,
a brave widow from South Carolina, to found a new home for her
sons in the wilds of the Sixth Ward.

There were two of the early workers prominent in shaping the
Sixth Ward society, not yet mentioned.  The earlier comer of
the two was Ezra Courtney, who came in 1802, in company with
his young wife from Darlington District, South Carolina, by
flat boat to Cole's Creek and Bayou Pierre to engage in the work
of organizing the scattered, unconnected members of his church.
Feeling his way down South he established headquarters a stone
throw north of the line of demarkation, at the bridge over Beaver
Creek where the Liberty and Jackson road crosses.  While there
he contributed largely in founding and organizing the powerful
Baptist congregation at Ebenezer Church, and there, too, under
shade of a big oak, he established a Gretna Green for the cele-
bration of marriage rites which were forbidden south of the line
to any but Roman Catholic priests.

After the expulsion of the Spainards in 1810, the Rev. Mr. Courtney
founded his home, in 1812, on the southern border of the Sixth
Ward, where he went to work earnestly and effectively to his new
field of effort, as is attested by the rapid growth and consolida-
tion of powerful Baptist communities with houses of worship at
"Hole in the Water," "Bluff Creek" and "Hephzibah," the two first
being in the Sixth, the last in the Eighth Ward.

Notwithstanding Mr. Courtney was so effective in founding the Baptists
in the Southern border, the rival sect of the Methodists still held
the Northern border for the Methodist faith, which had a fiery
and zealous defender in the person of the Rev. Jno. B. Higginbotham.
Whether good old Uncle Johnnie was a regularly ordained Methodist
minister I am not informed, but he was a power after the order of
Wesley's famous itinerants, and his fluent tongue supported by the
Carrolls, Cobbs, John George and John Booker, rallied many recruits
to the Methodist faith, and when Gilead church was rolled on wheels
out of the Eighth Ward into the Sixth, old Uncle Johnny and his
co-religionists slept much more securely behind the new bulwarks
of their faith.

Before closing my narrative of the religious movement in the Sixth
Ward it would be inaccurate not to mention that the religious
bodies in the ward were first assembled under a common standard by
the famous Lorenzo Dow, who, after a year's notice sent in advance
from Alabama, preached on the hill where Captain Lewis McManus now
resides, their first sermon to the assembled hermits of the ad-
jacent canebrakes, after which the famous preacher sought the repose
of a log cabin on a high bluff, on Mill Creek just before it loses
itself in the jungles of the Amite river swamp, the same on which
Mr. Robert Perkins now resides, there to give back to his great
taskmaster the missionary staff he had faithfully borne through
many lands, and ask his final discharge, and there the bones of the
renowned preacher now await the Resurrection.  It is a notable
instance of neglect and ingratitude, that the grave of the greatest
of Wesley's itinerants should be left without even a Head Board.

Recurring to the present home of Mr. Porter Rowley, as a famous
nursery of two leading Sixth Ward families, namely the Hobgoods
and Collins, after the stalwart ancestor of the Hobgoods had moved
his home into the Eighth Ward, just on the margin of the Amite
bottoms, old Captain Jack Collins, whose mother and father emigrated
from Richland District, S.C., with a large number of slaves and
herds, to build a home in these Southern wilds, when the century
and their son John were just two years old, established in the vacated
Hobgood home the ancestral seat of that family. The coming of Captain
Jack Collins into his Sixth Wad home was much delayed by the murder
of his father, who was killed 'en route' by a drunken Creek Indian,
after which his mother fixed her abode in Amite County, Miss., where
she reared and educated her son John, who completed the voyage his
father commenced in 1802 by founding a home and rearing a family
near the Amite river in the Sixth Ward.

A cursory glance at the vast areas of abandoned fields of this ward
would suggest unfavorable conclusions regarding its soil, but there
are plenty of once abandoned fields within its borders which have
been restored by good farming to their original fertility, and plenty
of demonstrations that it pays to rescue the soil from the debilitating
influences of slovenly, ante bellum methods, and there are, moreover,
plenty of advanced Sixth Ward farmers who have grown strong and rich
while feeding high their old abandoned fields.  Of the 25,000 un-
cultivated acres of this ward, which are held at prices varying from
$3.00 to $10.00, every acre can easily be brought back to a pitch
of productiveness which will yield a bale of cotton to the acre.

The dwellers in the ward point gloomily to the latent forces which
want of laborers leaves idle and asleep, and they promise cordial
welcome and all the amenities of generous hospititality to all
agricultural recruits who will help with capital and labor to restore
their waste and bald places.

That the old Sixth Ward is advancing with rapid strides to a better
farming system is evidenced by the existence of a Farmer's Union,
at Gilead, which shapes intelligently and stimulates a new school
of agricultural effort.  With its three Farmers' Unions, its three
churches, its school-houses wherever there are children to be
educated, and claiming the credit of having contributed to the body
politic two good sheriffs and two live representatives, the Sixth
presents a record of progress so creditable as to repel with scorn
the insinuation of being "the dark corner."  On the contrary they
point proudly to their achievements in the march of civilization,
and deny that there is in all the haunts of civilized man, cheaper,
better protected and more productive homes than there are to be
found in the Sixth Ward.

Hoping the recruits so much needed will come ere long, I remain,
yours, etc.,  H. SKIPWITH.

Part Thirteen


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"EAST FELICIANA, LOUISIANA, PAST AND PRESENT."

SKETCHES OF THE PIONEERS,

By H. Skipwith
1892
Hopkins Printing Office, 20 & 22 Commercial Place,
New Orleans

PIONEERS OF THE SEVENTH WARD.

About the time when the Yarboroughs and Phelps and the
other colonists migrated from Elbert County, Georgia, at
the close of the late century, into the Fifth Ward to
make their clearings and found their homes along the
margin of the Comite river and Pretty Creek, another
band of colonists were waking cane brakes and primeaval
forests of the Seventh Ward which borders the Fifth on
the north.  These last had commenced their migration from
South Carolina soon after the treaty of 1795 with Spain,
and meandered through the Yazoo purchase, feeling their
way, via Natchez, Gallatin, Liberty, Cole's Creek or Bayou
Pierre, down south to the line of demarkation.  After Mr.
Jefferson's proclamation of October, 1803, which asserted
a constructive claim to the purchase of Spain's province of
West Florida the policy of encouraging, immigration from
"The States" was revoked by the Spanish government, and the
wilds, south of the line of demarkation, were hermetically
sealed to immigrants of the Anglo-Saxon stripe.  Among the
earliest comers into the Seventh Ward were David Pipes, Sr.,
Ben Graves, Jno. C. and Thos. Flynn, and Thos. East, from
Edgefield District, S.C., who founded his home on the place
familiarly known in after years as the residence of Dr.
Isaac Caulfield, and to this list ought of right to be
added the names of the ancestor of the Harrell family, for
it is a well attested tradition that Hezekiah Harrell was
sent as early as 1802 by his father, fat old Levi Harrell,
of Charleston District, S.C., to explore these southern
wilds for a home large enough for his "old folks," the
little ones, the slaves and the herds.  In discharge of his
mission, Hezekiah, having obtained a liberal Spanish grant,
commenced a "hatchet clearing," in 1802, on the banks of
Pretty Creek, just at the foot of "Mount DeLee."  While
cutting the canes, Hezekiah would prudently at night, retire
up in the forks of the trees, from which secure but uncom-
fortable roost he would calmly observe the gambols, westlings
and fights of bears, panthers and wolves, which was as good as
a play.  His pilgrimage closed by a return to the old folks
at home, and his report was so satisfactory that active
preparations for a general exodus of the Harrells, from
Charleston District, commenced and took up the line of travel
by flat boats down the head waters of the Tennessee river,
braving the hidden rocks, eddies, cataracts and whirlpools
of the Muscle Shoals.  The patriarch of this exodus, Mr.
Levi Harrell, died upon his journey in 1803, and the duty
devolved upon Hezekiah to lead the children, slaves and herds,
via Natchez down to his hatchet clearing at the foot of
"Mount DeLee" on Pretty Creek.

Finding Jno. C. and Thos. Flynn in possession, he passed on
higher up along the margin of Pretty Creek, where he founded
the family home (under the guarantees of the Spanish crown),
thirty acres of which was cultivated this its eighty-sixth
year, by his grandson, Mr. W.C. Kent, who, with two hands and
two plows, made 25 bales of cotton, several hundred barrels of
corn, and several hundred gallons of syrup.

The colonizing of the Seventh Ward, thus far chronicled, was
fostered and encouraged by the policy of Spain, but in 1803
that liberal policy was revoked, and that class of settlers
which came after 1803 below the line of demarkation, came at
their own risk and held their clearings by the strong hand
against the prowling wild beasts and prying Spanish soldiers,
Alguazils and tax gatherers.

Of this latter class of unbidden guests, earliest and most
conspicous was old Major Sam Norwood, who came in 1806 with
his sons, namely: Elias, Noel, John, Ezekial and Abel T. and
his daughter Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. George Keller, his
slaves, his chattels and herds; a big boned, heavy muscled,
true hearted race of men who migrated from Darlington District,
South Carolina, in 1804, by the flat boat route, down the head
waters of the Tennessee, through the perils of the Muscle Shoals
and the Mississippi river, to Natchez, whence they journeyed
by land to the wilds of the Seventh Ward, just below the line
of demarkation, and founded their ancestral seats along the
margin of the Comite river and Richland Creek.  In the same
line of immigration with the Norwoods came out of Darlington
and Union Districts, S.C., the Scotts, Winfers, Robbins,
McKneelys and McCants into the Third Ward, and also old Mr.
Henry Dunn, who founded a home for his children and numerous
slaves in the Seventh Ward, a mile or two east of the Norwoods.
These three families of Harrell, Norwood and Dunn prospered
and multiplied exceedingly, and had large influence in shaping
the civilization of their community through several peaceful
years, which calm was rudely broken by the American revolt in
1810 against the Spanish authority.  After 1806 the tide of
immigration ceased to flow into the Seventh Ward until 1814, in
which eventful year John Rowley, a solitary immigrant from
Beaufort District, S.C., commenced to build a log cabin about
a stone's throw from the present residence of Mr. Frank Wood,
as an humble residence for his wife and twin babies, the door
of which was still unfinished when news came by Gen. Coffee's
couriers "That the British had landed!" and that Gen. Jackson
in New Orleans was badly in need of men, arms and horses.

Hithero my narrative depicts the pioneers developing and
expanding the arts of peaceful civilization, building homes,
clearing, fencing, planting orchards and farms during a period
of peace, the clam influences of which were only disturbed in
1810 by the brief and bloodless revolt which expelled the Spanish
authority.  Now, in 1814, the first call is made upon them to
defend the homes they have built.  Gen. Coffee, whose headquarters
were established at Baton Rouge late in the summer of 1814,
had sent his worn out cavalry horses into the East Feliciana
pastures to rest and recruit.  An order to him from Gen. Jackson,
dated New Orleans, Dec. 17th, summoned him to come with all
the men, horses and arms he could raise, and "not to sleep
until he got there," caused the sending of couriers with the
startling news that "The British had landed, and Gen. Jackson,
in New Orleans, was badly in need of men, arms and horses."
The news thrilled all hearts in the scattered hamlets of East
Feliciana like the sound of the midnight tocsin stirred the
emotional Parisians.  It looked like the land had been sown with
the fabled Dragon's teeth to see an armed and mounted man spring
out of every canebrake.  Gen. Coffee's recruited cavalry horses
were started in a gallop back to Baton Rouge, each with a bold
East Feliciana rider on its back, with his sire's old rifle,
which had sent messages of death to the British on the Revol-
utionary battlefields.  Even the 12 year-old boys caught up the
shaggy, pot-gutted ponies in their canebrake hiding places,
saddled up and spurred on to Baton Rouge.  Old John Rowley nailed
up a blanket as a substitute for the unfinished door of his log
cabin, and committing Esther and the twins to the care of God,
galloped off with his rifle for Baton Rouge.

On the night of December 23rd, when Gen. Coffee sent and answer
to his chief's peremptory order of the 17th from his camp,
fifteen miles above New Orleans, saying: " I am here with fifteen
hundred armed and mounted men," all East Feliciana, from the
boy of twelve to the grey beard of seventy slept under the folds
of brave Coffee's banner that night.  When Coffee on the 27th
and 28th was retiring sullenly, disputing every inch of the way
from the shore of Lake Borgne to the famous field of Chalmette,
the sharp crack of the East Feliciana rifle revived the echoes of
Guilford Court House, Camden, and King's mountain, in the swamps
of Lake Borgne.  It is painful to narrate that, as Coffee retired
before Packenham's veteran leigions, many a saddle was emptied
of its bold East Feliciana rider.  But is is sadder still to record
the manner of the death of Thos. East, who came early into the
Seventh Ward from Edgefield District, S.C., and founded a home
on the place afterwards owned by Dr. Isaac Caulfield.

This Thos. East was the grand father of Dr. A.L. East, of the
Plains, and taking service under Coffee, left his wife and
infant child, in the care of his young cousin, William East,
and fought unscratched through the skirmishes and battles around
New Orleans.  After his discharge, in company with many of his
comrades, he commenced his voyage home on a keel boat, to be
cordelled up to the Bluffs of East Feliciana.  On the voyage he
fell ill with measles, which terminated fatally, just as the boat
tied up at the foot of the Bluffs, afterwards renowned as Port
Hudson, where his remains repose on battle fields where the cracks
of his old Revolutionary rifle was unheard, and where many of his
old comrades in arms encountered death, defeat and starvation.
The son he left in his cradle lived to propagate in many comm-
unities the Baptist faith, on which he was a devoted believer.
His pretty young widow married John L. Delee, of Lincoln County,
North Carolina, who after serving in the Creek, Seminole and
Chalmette campaign came into the Seventh ward with an honorable
discharge and there reared a large family which has been consp-
icious in Seventh ward society.

In further illustration of the ability of our people to defend
their homes, although it is a little outside the scope and
design of my work, I will presume to revert to two episodes
which arroused their fears for the security of the homes they
founded in the primeval forests and cane brakes.  In May, 1846,
news came that the Western frontier of the Republic was invaded
by a Mexican army under Gen. Ampudia and that Gen. Zachary Taylor
had but a handful of troops to encounter him.  A company of 125
East Felicianans under Capt. H.B. Chase and another company of
the same number under Capt. Geo. C. Comstock reported in New
Orleans, many months, in advance of the preparations made by
the Government for arms and transportation.  The 250 men were
one-third of the white adults of the parish and it is no vain
boast to say that the other two-thirds would have offered their
services had not the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca De La
Palma rendered it unnecessary.

Again, in Nov. 1860, Breckinridge beat the Donglas and Bell
and Everet tickets by a large majority but when in less than
two months afterwards the question of secession came squarely
up, it was negatived by a large vote, when, however the convention
of Louisiana adopted an ordinance of secession, and there was
no way out but to fight out, East Feliciana threw three full
companies into the Fourth Regiment; one into the 16th; another
into the 29th and a company into Scott's cavalry; in additon to
which, two bodies of scouts, under Col. Edwin A. Scott and Capt.
John C. McKowen, were kept organized for Home Protection.

>From a military record uniformly honorable and remarkable for
patriotism, I turn to the more peaceful developments of the
Christian religion, which commenced in the Seventh ward soon
after the expulsion of the Spanish authority.  The earliest
religious foundation of the ward was a small Presbyterian House
of Worship, named Friendship Church, situated about a hundred yards
from Mrs. Currie's residence on Pretty Creek.  It had a small
congregation, organized by the Rev. James Smiley and their pastor,
in 1831, was the Rev. John Patterson, a young Scottish Divine.
This congregation was soon absorbed by their co-religionists of
Comite church, which is still the house of worship of a large and
powerful Presbyterian body of which the late David Pipes, Sr., and
William Silliman were honored and revered members.  However pre-
dominant the early Presbyterians may have been, they have since
been confronted by the active and zealous Methodist and Baptist
propagandists, if the younger denominations have not actually
invaded the territories of the older, they have at least held it
in check and barred, in a large measure, its expansion.

The Seventh Ward, though without a foot of ground requiring
artificial drainage, and though it embraces within its bodies
as much good, fertile and fairly productive land as any of the other
wards, has perhaps a larger area of utilized and abandoned places
than any of those I have sketched.  Sterility is not the cause of
its unusually large bodies of waste and idle lands.  Its surface was
in the beginning of its civilization largely divested of its original
forests and cane brakes by numerous slaves brought from South Carolina
by its early and wealthy settlers.  Before these slaves forests
disappeared and fields were brought under cultivation on a large
scale.  When the forests were gone and the fields began to show
bald spots, the tenants of the negro quarters had multiplied under
a kind and paternal treatment at an amazing rate of increase.  Most
of the slave increase was transported, before freedom, to open and
cultivate the alluvial lands west of the Mississippi, where they
have since remained, and the abandoned surfaces of the ward deprived
of their natural labor supply still to a large extent remain un-
cultivated.  The vast surface of abandoned land, say 25,000 acres,
is not worn out but a little tired from the slovenly farming of big
slave plantations.  This land can be bought at an average price of
$5.00 per acre, perhaps less and the second growth of pines, which
clothe all the abandoned acres, will fence them.  When fenced, at
small additonal outlay for fertilizers they can be made to produce
a bale of cotton to the acre.  Indeed it may be truthfully added
that there are small spots, all over the ward, which by its natural
strength will bring a bale to the acre.

Before closing my picture of the Seventh Ward it is but simple
justice to add that, notwithstanding so many appearances of
decay its climate and soil are as good as any; its moral and
social march has been as healthy as any; its lofty ranges of
highlands presents as many temptations to the judicious home
seekers, as can be found elsewhere in East Feliciana.
Yours, etc.,  H. SKIPWITH