Lincoln County Louisiana Archives News.....AN OCTOGENARIAN SEES HS FIRST LOCOMOTIVE. The Old and the New. March 1, 1873 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Lora Peppers loradpeppers@hotmail.com October 30, 2006, 2:00 pm Ouachita Telegraph (Monroe, LA) March 1, 1873 Sixty years have elapsed since Father Abraham Pipes, of Jackson parish [transcriber's note: The area he lived in would soon become part of Lincoln Parish], migrated to the Ouachita Valley. In January, 1812, he, together with Dan'l Colvin and a Mr. Sims, all having families, landed at Monroe. They came by river on a keelboat, no steamboats having ever disturbed the smooth waters of the Ouachita at that day. Monroe was then known as the Post of Ouachita, and could even then boast of three stores, one kept by the father of Gen. Pargoud, another by Lindeman and the third by some one else. Trenton was not throught of until at least twenty-five years afterwards. Our friend Maj. Bry, now something more than a youth, was then two years of age, a baby babbling French. His father, Judge Bry, was hewing out his fortune on his place just below town, and Father Pipes says was so thoroughly democratic as to go barefooted whenever he felt inclined. In that year, (1812,) Louisiana became a State of the Union, Claiborne was elected Governor, war was declared with Great Britain, and the first steamboat, which Father Pipes saw, landed at New Orleans. The round trip to New Orleans and back to Monroe required six weeks. The trade at Monroe consisted in the exchange of coffee, powder, lead, &c., for deer and bear hides, skins of beaver and otter, bear oil, and cotton cloth. The latter article was eagerly bought by the merchants, of the country ladies, at one dollar a yard. Just think of that young misses when you are spending your grandmother's earnings! Father Pipes settled three miles from the site of the present village of Downsville, and has ever since lived within twenty miles of the place he first settled. He enlisted in the war of 1812, and is now drawing his pension regularly, which with his earnings as a book agent gives him a tolerable fair living. He is eighty-four years of age, canvasses on horseback a considerable territory and bids fair to live several years yet. He is a superannuated minister in the Methodist church, but frequently goes into the pulpit and preaches the word of his Lord and Master, never without close attention and certain effects. This pious and venerable pioneer came to Monroe last week on a curious mission. he had seen this country changed from a wilderness to a country of plantations, towns, churches, schoolhouses and highways. He had seen almost two generations grow up and pass away. Many and various and wonderful, indeed, were the changes he had personally seen transpire. The old keel boats had gone, and he had on the fleetest packets sped by the same hills and breaks he had crept by on his keel over fifty years before grateful even that he was moving so rapidly. But there was one vehicle of the many mighty things wrought out by inventive genius Father Pipes had never laid his old eyes on, and he came to Monroe, not being far distant, to see that curiosity before he was called to sleep with his fathers. The object of his search and curiosity was a locomotive and cars. It afforded the writer more real satisfaction than comes very often in the busy hours of bustling life to accompany Father Pipes to the depot and become his cicerone. To describe what are the feelings of a man of years who first stands in view of a locomotive with steam up, itself an object that only itself can describe, is a task not to be attempted. Father Pipes, a man of no mean colloquial powers, stood mute in wonder and admiration of the beautiful mechanism and life-like engine of power before him. "Well! Well!" he ejaculated as he gazed at the engine and long train of cars standing on the track, and then, overpowered with thought, he lapsed into a dead silence. But the vigor of his limbs seemed partly to return, and he stood intently scanning the machinery, almost forgetting he had a cane, until we propsed to see the engine house and shop. Here he obtained a close view of an idle locomotive, and for some minutes stood silently surveying its parts. At last the engineer of the train blew his whistle, and soon the iron horse, wheezing and frying, slowly began to move. The old gentleman regarded this, the climax of the scene, with even greater admiration than he had the motionless train, and as it rolled away down the track, rattling and rumbling, he followed it with his eyes until the end of the rear car and the ascending smoke and steam were all that could be seen. We together turned away, and Father Pipes, mounting his faithful bay pony, rode into town and back to the home of his friend. The writer went to his office wondering what would be the changes of the next sixty years, and what at the end of sixty years there could possibly be that would possess the novelty and interest to a man of eighty-four that the locomotive had for Father Pipes. Additional Comments: Abraham Pipes would die the following July and is buried in the Pipes family cemetery in Lincoln Parish. 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