J. B. Carnal , Rapides Parish Louisiana
Submitted by: Suzanne Shoemaker

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Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana
The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago & Nashville,  1890

J. B. CARNAL, 
General Merchant, Lecompte, La.  

Mr. Carnal is an example of the success attending hard work and honest
dealing, and his trade is solidly established and reaches over the surrounding
country.  He carries an excellent and select stock of general goods, and is
pleasant and  agreeable to his patrons as well as to all with whom he comes in
contact.  He is a native of Lecompte, La., his birth occurring in 1857, and
received his education at Pass Christian College, Miss.  After this he went to
Baltimore, Md., and was first engaged in a stationery and then a shirt
house for some time, and then came to Lecompte, where he remained on the
farm with his father.  He first became connected with mercantile pursuits
in his father's plantation store and in the store of Mr. Hardy.  He
continued in this store, getting a share of the profits, and then purchased
a store, which he carried on for five years.  He then moved his stock of
goods to Lecompte.  He started with limited means and has built up his
present business by his own exertions, doing an annual business of $60,000.
 He keeps a bookkeeper, three clerks and a porter besides himself.  He does
a good jobbing trade with the county merchants.  He is a good business
manager and is competent in every way to take charge of the large trade
which he now enjoys.  He is a son of Reuben H. and Louisa (Brunat) Carnal,
the father born in the same house as our subject, and the mother in Baton
Rouge.  Reuben H. Carnal was reared in Rapids Parish, was a large slave
owner before the war and an extensive sugar planter.  He was a heavy loser
during the war, but managed to raise his family in a comfortable manner
after the war.  He was a graduate of the Philadelphia Medical College, and
during the war he served as a physician.  After inheriting his father's
plantation he did not practice his profession again until the time of the
war, and through that period only.  The mother of our subject is living and
resides on the plantation.  Of the nine children born to their union, our
subject is the eldest, and all but one are now alive.   The main store
building in which our subject does business is 65x25 feet, one warehouse of
the same size, and two other warehouses.  He carries a stock of goods
valued at about $15,000.  He is an instance of a truly progressive Southern
gentleman, public spirited, enterprising and has made all he has by his own
individual efforts.  In politics he is Democratic.