James Harvey Trousdale, Morehouse Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Mike Miller

Thanks! Mike, for all the hard work and information
you contribute to the Morehouse Parish Archives.


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James Harvey Trousdale has been a resident of the City of
Monroe for more than thirty years, since early boyhood in 
fact, and has been an active factor in many of the movements
and enterprises which have made the city one of the industrial
centers of the South.  His business for the most part has been
in the field of insurance, but of even greater importance has
been the active part he has taken in developing the great
natural gas field adjacent to the city.

Mr. Trousdale is a native of Louisiana, having been born in
Morehouse Parish, February 17, 1866, a son of David Brigham
Trousdale and Martha Elizabeth (Summerlin) Trousdale.  His
father, David B., was a native of Tennessee, who, at the age
of eighteen years, left his native state and, accompanied by
his widowed mother and other members of the family, came to
Louisiana.  The journey, in part, was made on board of a boat
chartered for the trip, ending at Natchez, on the Mississippi
River.  From that point the family came on into Louisiana,
where their new home was established in Union Parish, and
where David B. Trousdale grew to manhood and became one of the
leading citizens, taking active part in the development of the
community, eventually serving as sheriff, of the parish.  It
was also in Union Parish that he met and married Martha
Elizabeth Summerlin, a native of Alabama, who had come with
 her parents to Louisiana.


James Harvey Trousdale was ten years of age when his parents
moved to Monroe.  He completed his education in the public
schools and, while still a young man, engaged in the insurance
work, which line of endeavor was destined to become his life's
profession.  By close application and energy, supplemented by
a natural aptitude for the work, he has built up a large and
profitable business extending over a large territory
surrounding Monroe.


Mr. Trousdale was one of the pioneers in the development of the
great natural gas industry in Northern Louisiana.  He was one
of the local business men who, in 1916, brought in the first
producing gas well in the Monroe field, and from that initial
discovery there has since been developed here the largest
natural gas field in the world.  He has had part in numerous
other completions, and is still active in the business.  He
has ever found the and opportunity to devote to public and
civic movements that measure of aid consistent with good
citizenship.  He has served for a number of years as a member
of the Ouachita Parish School Board, is an active member of
Rotary, being a past president of the Monroe Rotary Club, and
in fraternal circles is a Mason, a Knight of Pythias, and is a
steward in the Methodist Church of Monroe.


Mr. Trousdale married Miss Jennie Belle Weaks, a daughter of
 Capt. James C. Weaks, who was numbered among the
 representative men of Louisiana.  He held the rank of major in
 the Confederate army, and later served as United States
 marshal for the Western District of Louisiana.  Mr. and Mrs.
 Trousdale have three children, George W., Emily W., and J. W.


NOTE:  The sketch is accompanied by a black and white
photograph/drawing of the subject.


A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 319-320, by Henry E.
Chambers.  Published by The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, 1925.