Business of	The Charles Brakenridge Lumber Company, Livingston Parish with connections to Orleans Parish, Louisiana; 
Submitted by 	D.N. Pardue September 1998

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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.

THE CHARLES BRAKENRIDGE LUMBER COMPANY was located three miles south of
the present town of Albany on the Albany-Springfield Road.  The first
historical marker in Livingston Parish was erected on this site to comm-
emorate the arrival of the first Hungarian settlers.

     The Brakenridges had begun cutting into the seemingly endless short
and long leaf pine forests around 1896.  A narrow gauge company
railroad, called the "Dummy Line," carried the lumber to Springfield where
it went by boat to New Orleans and Gulfport for shipment to Europe.

     The mill, the company store, and the few worker's houses became the
tiny settlement of Maxwell, or Arpadhon (home of the Arpads) as it was
known to the Hungarians.

     In 1916, when all the timber had been cut from the Brakenridge
land, the mill closed and the community declined.  Albany grew into the 
main Hungarian center, supported by its surrounding farms and their acres 
of strawberries. (1) --- Louis C. Bartus

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(1) Publication by Southeast Louisiana Agri-dustrial Futurama, 1965, by
Dr. Bertram Groene, Assistant Professor of History, Southeastern La.
University, Hammond, La.