News, Mapping Imprints in Time, LaSalle Parish, La. 

GRASS ROOTS AND COCKLE BURRS- 
By Jack Morgan Willis jbucktwo@hotmail.com

Submitted by: Pat Ezell, PatEzell@worldnet.att.net

From the Jena Times - Olla Tullos Signal, Wed., May 02, 2001 

Thank You to Jack Willis and The Times -Signal for allowing the following to
be added to the Archives. 




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Grass Roots and Cockle Burrs
Mapping Imprints In Time

By 
Jack Morgan Willis

As often stated here, LaSalle Parish is rich in history. When it was just
barely the Catahoula Prairie District, there was a network of paths, trails
and roads that served as a natural East to West migratory route. First for the
abundant wildlife, then the Native Americans and later, last but by no means
least, the Caucasian invasion. 

Just after the turn of the19th century, whether it was speculation on the
pending purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon Bonaparte, or just the desire to
expand their tent pegs, there was a huge population shift from the Eastern
seaboard westward across the Mississippi River. Some came via flat boats from
Kentucky and Tennessee, like the Rhesa Bowie family, which landed in Natchez,
Mississippi about 1802. And some migrants just toughed it out overland. 


About this same time there was a Spanish Governor Don Josef Vidal
headquartered on the West Bank across from Natchez. All migrants had to
receive clearance to proceed westward from his office to proceed to the next
checkpoint, which was Harrisonburg. Then they proceeded to an outpost located
at La Vacca in the Catahoula Prairie District. It was the western most limits
of the Alcade of Harrisonburg, Don Jaun Hebrard' s territory. The outpost was
located at the confluence of the French Forks and Old River waterways, which
formed what was then known as Catahoula River, later Little River. To the
northwest along Old River there was a Bradford ferry located where the western
fork of Brushly Bayou entered the watercourse. After crossing over on the
ferry, it was but a short distance to the location of Three Notches. According
to revered historian Henry Lees, there was an ancient oak tree located at the
intersection of the original bison trail from Harrisonburg to Bayou Des
Rapides (later Alexandria) and the East-West migratory route from Natchez,
Mississippi to Natchitoches, Louisiana. According to traditional accounts, the
tree had three notches emblazoned into the sides of the tree in the four
directions of the compass. This was the first point on the Three Notch trail
from eastern Georgia that this major thoroughfare forked. One of these forks
traveled southwestward along the north shore of Catahoula Lake to Jone's Ferry
and way House located on the West Bank of Little River. The other fork
traversed westward along what is known today as the Blade loop almost due west
to the community of Hemphill.


The Hemphill family had been granted a riquet (Spanish irregular large parcel
of land), but moved on elsewhere without proving up on their land acquisition.
A gentleman by the name of Matthew Stone took over ownership of the riquet,
whether by purchase or appropriation is unknown, and began the selling off
homesteads to incoming settlers for over forty years.


Just across the Hemphill Creek there was a cemetery established on the side of
the trail that eventually led to the thriving community of White Sulphur
Springs, Louisiana. It is known today as the Sandiferd Cemetery. Legible
tombstones reveal the interment of family members from such early families as
the Sandiferds, Fortners, Ezells and Kings. 


The land upon which the cemetery was located had been sold to a timber company
a few years ago. They immediately began harvesting the timber off the land and
their heavy equipment was running indiscriminately over the cemetery site. A
neighbor, Toby Peppers who lived nearby at the time, tried unsuccessfully to
get the timber contractor to stay off the cemetery boundaries. His efforts
were to no avail. Toby purchased part of the cemetery proper in a rescue
maneuver, and was able preserve a small portion of land before he ran out of
funds. The worst scenario was the log skidder tires tearing up the plots
occupied by unmarked sunken graves.


Enter Dr. Tommy Ike Hailey and two of his archaeology students, Scott Faris
and J. T. Stark, from Northwestern State University. Dr. Hailey is Ass't.
Professor of Anthropology at the University, and has received a grant to begin
a project of mapping grave yards in danger of extinction or where their
integrity had been severely compromised. Dr. Hailey and his aides had come
adequately prepared for just such an undertaking. They brought along such
exotic, state-of-the-arts equipment as Ground Penetrating Radar, an Electro-
Magnetic Conductivity Profiler and a Celcium Magnetometer. The devices mainly
measure disturbances in the earth's Electro-magnetic field related to this
project. Their findings in turn,indicate past excavations for burials. After a
base line was established, several grids were established as guidelines for
this meticulous survey. Parallel reading were taken a meter apart for the
length and breadth of each grid.


Before the initial phases of the survey could be undertaken, over an acre of
underbrush had to be hand cleared with machetes and brush hooks. Incessant
attacks by mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers during the two and one-half days of
brush clearing, constantly reminded them that they were in the great outdoors.


Preliminary information furnished by Reverend Larry Chapman from Jena, and
Carl Edwards from Rhinehart indicated an estimate of about ten graves within
the area under fence, and about thirty graves mostly unmarked, outside the
fence parameter. Just outside the fence on the south side of the fenced area
were seven apparent graves side-by-side. Dr. Hailey indicated that two of the
indentions were occupied by the skeletal remains of two of Rev. Martin
Fortner's sons who had died in a Confederates Army staging area in northeast
Louisiana. They had contracted smallpox and the disease had developed into
pneumonia resulting in their untimely deaths. The Reverend Fortner had
journeyed to the Confederate camp, probably at Oak Ridge, La, to recover their
bodies and bring the remains home for burial. 

End results of the survey will be finalized in a matter of days. This type of
archaeological procedures is rapidly bringing this ages-old science out of the
Fred Flintstone era into the "cutting edge age" of technology.


As Dr. Hailey so aptly stated his case, " We know where Archaeology is going,
and we want to take it there!" 
Jack Morgan Willis