Whitehall Post Office, Livingston Parish, Louisiana File prepared by D.N. Pardue ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From the book entitled "The Free State - A History and Place-Names Study of Livingston Parish" by the members of the Livingston Parish American Revolution Bicentennial Committee in cooperation with the Livingston Parish Police Jury and the Louisiana American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1976. Reprinted by permission. Dedicated to the memory of Reuben Cooper and Raymond Riggs. WHITEHALL POST OFFICE was established on July 25, 1878 with John A. Porter as the first postmaster. Porter had been the first and only postmaster at Bourgeois Landing in the same area from Sept. 22, 1875 to April 11, 1878. Since the area was without a post office for only three months, this may have been an intentional move by the Post Office Department to shorten the name, but whatever the reason, the origin of the name Whitehall is yet unexplained. One theory is that the name originated as a descriptive adjective. That is, white was describing a building - a white hall. The hall may have been a school house, church hall, Grange hall, Knights of Honor hall, a store or perhaps a dwelling. It is also possible that the name is a comb- ination of two surnames, perhaps of two prominent citizens, although no definite evidence of this has been found. Up to now, the earliest written reference to the name Whitehall is contained in the Livingston Parish Police July Minute Book No. 1. On page 6 a reference is made to a newspaper named the White-Hall Gazette. The date is May 17, 1875. On June 8, 1875, the Poliec Jury passed a motion relating to parish roads in the Whitehall area: ". . .that J.A. Porter, S. LeBourgeois, and A.C. Miller be apponited to lay out said roads as follows: - Commencing at J.A. Porters (White-Hall) running in the present road to Tiger-Bluff and Well's Ferry . . ." The Police Jury also designated voting precincts at their July 5, 1877 meeting, including the Fifth Ward's at the "school house White Hall." The post office at Whitehall continued its operation until April 30, 1954 when it and a number of other small post offices in the parish were closed. ----Clark Forrest, Jr. * * * * *