History: Grant Parish History Affected U.S., Grant parish Louisiana Source: Alexandria Town Talk, July 15, 1957 Submitted by: Gaytha Thompson 540 May Drive Madison, Tn 37115 LaFamTree@aol.com ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** GRANT PARISH HISTORY AFFECTED U.S. By Loyd Harrison (As told to Richard Briley III) Historical events of Grant parish like southern cooking, have affected the entire United States. While George Washington was ordering his Indian campaigns, Bienville camping at Choctaw Springs was making history in this area with his explorations. After Bienville came two other Frenchmen, Oss and Soss, with a Spanish land grant who settled at Montgomery which then was on a stream called Rigollette du Bon Dieu. The parish gradually came to have a number of "Roe Gullies" named after this stream. By 1800 the two Frenchmen owned a large amount of land in Grant and Winn parishes, but with the Louisiana Purchase in 1804 a tide of English speaking squatters began to establish homes and settlements in the area. JESUITS COME IN The Jesuits came into the area in 1830 and established a school and mission on Carencrow Creek near the Montgomery Landing. This became the Carencrow Mission and Convent and students from many sectors came here to study. The first trading post was established by Nomite Rachal on an Indian graveyard beside the mission, but Nomite and his family were later killed, supposedly by a traveler put off a boat near the settlement, ending the activities of the post. Yellow fever broke out at Grand Ecore in 1850, and the priest and sisters in the Convent died aiding the ill. Instead of sending replacements to run the mission, the convent was closed. Montgomery found its making in 1832 when the waters of Red River broke over at Grande Ecore to Bayou Rigollette du Bon Dieu and cut a new channel to Colfax. A rocky marl floor in the river halted shipping at this point and in dry weather provided a natural bridge for all east and west traffic. Stores sprang up here and the landing became a trading center for Winn, Grant and Bienville parishes. "NO MAN'S LAND" Hostilities between French and Spanish settlers had created a frontier "no man's land" between the holdings of the two nations. In the Grant and Winn area this buffer strip extended westward to Winnfield and on the other side of the river to Robeline sector, and through this no man's land ran the famous Indian trail, the Natchez Trace, literally "Notches Three," which extended from Tennessee and Mississippi into Texas and Old Mexico. During the Civil War, Admiral David Dixon Porter, commanding the Eastport and several other war vessels, sailed up Red River and began to shell the town of Montgomery. As the warheads burst all about, Mrs. Elizabeth Harrison ran out with a cloth and gave the Eastern Star signal of distress. Almost instantly the firing ceased. By this time federal dredges had blown out the rocky floor in the river at Montgomery, and Porter and his flotilla moved on up stream to Grand Ecore. A few days later he returned with his fleet but lost the Eastport below Montgomery. The old hull of the federal ship is still embedded in a sand bar. Colfax gradually grew into a sugar and cotton center with large plantations on every side. In 1868 when Grant became a parish, cut out of Winn and Rapides, it was the northern most sugar producing center in the state. Because its plantations had been worked entirely by slaves, the Reconstruction Days found more Negroes in the settlement than whites, causing the great friction in parish elections. Backed by the rifles and bayonets of union troops, newly freed Negroes and carpetbaggers were oppressing the Southern whites, even to the point of over throwing elections. Radicals, located throughout the state, raised the former slaves to frenzies of hate against their former masters. As a result of this carpetbaggery, the Colfax Riot was to occur, with the killing of about 150 Negroes and clamping further oppression the whites. UNION BACKING The self installed William Pitt Kellogg, union backed governor of Louisiana, apparently fearful of losing his office if the whites were allowed more freedom, is give the blame in the souther viewpoint of the 1873 battle. An unidentified "Republican," in an interview for a New Orleans paper, nine years later disclosed that he had sat in the governor's office when representatives of both parties of a disputed Grant parish election appeared before Kellogg. Speaking to each separately, the governor gave both sides, the white supported party which had won the election, and the Negro and carpetbagger minority party, a set of commissions, instructing them to "resort to violence" if necessary, to hold their offices according to the Republican. The white officials moved into the courthouse but were promptly driven out by a large number of Negroes. The whites then decided to hold a meeting in Colfax to determine action but were prevented by another large band of threatening colored men. Meanwhile, frightened by the actions of the bands of Negroes, white residents of the town fled. The Negro armed bands then broke into the deserted houses looting and committing other acts of violence. Outraged Southerners from other parishes, hearing of the acts of violence, marched to the support of the outnumbered Grant parish white men. The Southerners advanced on the Negroes and outflanking them threw the colored fighters into confusion, after which the Negroes retreated to the Colfax Courthouse. The Negroes had fortified the courthouse well, but a wooden shingled roof was its undoing. The whites set fire tot he roof, and a white flag appeared from a window of the courthouse. A Committee of the whites advanced to make hurried terms of a surrender. Then shots rang out from he courthouse and the members of the committee fell, three of them mortally wounded. The outraged white citizens, seeing their leaders shot down after the white flag was raised, fired upon the colored fighters as they poured out of the rapidly burning courthouse. Others were hunted down individually. The Colfax riot had regrettable effects afterward. Union troops and marshals clamped down on the area and arrested some of the white participants int he fighting. But the men were defended by top members of the New Orleans bar without charge, and little penalty of consequence was laid down for most of the men of the famous riot.