Bio: Neal McEacharn; Franklin Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller





**********************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
**********************************************
 





Neal McEacharn is grocer and druggist and planter at Delhi in Richland Parish, is a member of
the parish school board and is a World war veteran with an overseas record.

He is a native of Louisiana, was born on his father's plantation in Ward Five of Franklin
Parish, January 28, 1891, son of Neal and Eliza (Smith) McEacharn, and grandson of B. F.
McEacharn, a Kentuckian who came to Louisiana from Mississippi.

B. F. McEacharn was a Confederate soldier and he was wounded during the siege of Vicksburg.
Neal McEacharn, Sr., is now sixty-eight years of age and his wife fifty-six, and they occupy
the old homestead settled by his father, B. F. McEacharn.  Neal McEacharn, Sr., was educated in
Franklin Parish and Delhi, and for many years has been a very prosperous planter.  He and his
wife are members of time Harmony Baptist Church.  They had a family of five sons and four
daughters.  Three of the sons wore United States uniforms during the World war.  Ernest is
associated with the England State Bank at Little Rock, Arkansas.  Frank, with his brother Neal
in the grocery business at Delhi, was in the quartermaster's corps at Little Rock and at Camp
Beauregard, Louisiana.  The son, Russell, also in the grocery business with his brother, was
with time medical corps and accompanied the first division to France.  The younger son,
Stanley, is still in school.  Neal McEacharn, Jr., was educated in country schools, took
business college courses, and after leaving home at the age of eighteen, worked at Hazelhurst
and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and at Shreveport was an electrical worker.

He was a member of the First Regiment of the Mississippi National Guard and with that
organization was called to duty on the Mexican border in 1916.  He was on the border five
months.  He returned to Jackson, Mississippi, with the rank of Second lieutenant.  At the
beginning of the World war he was transferred to time Thirty-second Division, made up largely
of Wisconsin and Michigan troops.  He had a service record of a number of months overseas in
France and during the great Meuse-Argonne campaign was wounded by machine gun fire on the side
of the face and shoulder.  He was also taken prisoner and was put in a German Prison at
Strassburg in Loraine until the armistice.  Mr. McEacharn had nothing to complain of his
treatment in German prison except lack of good medical attention.  After the armistice he was
with the army of occupation seven months at Coblentz.  While overseas he participated in three
major engagements and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

On returning to the United States, he received his honorable discharge at Camp Shelby,
Mississippi, and soon after his return home engaged in the grocery business at Delhi.  On
January 1, 1925, he became president of the E. W. Thompson Drug Company.  He has been a member
of the Parish School Board since 1924, and has also served on the Parish Democratic Executive
Committee.  He was the first commander of the Clark-Woods Post of the American Legion.

Mr. McEacharn married March 12, 1922, Miss Agnes Hendrick of Ruston, Louisiana, where she
finished her education in the Louisiana Polytechnic Institute.  Her mother, Mrs. Helen
Hendrick, resides at Delhi.  Mr. and Mrs. McEacharn have a son, Neal Doyle.  Mrs. McEacharn is
a member of the Baptist Church.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 235, by Henry E. Chambers.  Published by The American
Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.