E.V. Weems, 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

     E. V. WEEMS, planter, Lecompte, La.  Mr. Weems enjoys the reputation of
being not only a substantial and prosperous sugar planter, but his name
will be remembered in years to come as belonging to a public spirited and
progressive man of this community.  He is a native born resident of this
parish, his birth occurring on May 8, 1847, and was reared to manhood here.
 His educational facilities were more than usually favorable, for after
leaving the common schools he entered the Louisiana State University, a
military school located in Rapides Parish before the war, but destroyed
during that eventful period.  Although but  a boy in years, he served
eighteen months in the Confederate Army, Second Louisiana Regiment, but was
in no active engagements.  Previous to the time he enlisted, however, he
participated in the battle of Mansfield, La.  For a short period after the
war Mr. Weems was on a plantation with his father, but in 1873 he became
engaged in business for himself.  Until 1880 he was engaged part of the
time as a planter on leased land, and the rest of the time as an overseer
and manager of property for others.  While having charge of the Gov. Moore
estate he demonstrated his superior ability as a financier by paying off a
heavy debt that had been standing against the same.  In 1880 he bought a
half interest in the Cocoa Bend Plantation, which he has transformed from
almost a waste to a model plantation, with a fine residence, etc., and
which is a high state of cultivation.  Mr. Weems has been a sugar planter
since 1873, and in sugar, he has made his most money.  Only a few years ago
he was practically penniless, but today he is one of the wealthiest sugar
planters of this part of Louisiana.  He has 250 acres of sugar cane this
year, and also raises some cotton.  He is the owner of 2,800 acres of land
and that portion not susceptible to cultivation is covered with valuable
timber-pine, oak and cypress.  In view of the great resource of timber at
hand, Mr. Weems has become a partner in the Lecompte Lumber and Shingle
Mill, which he and partners intend enlarging into a vast concern in the
near future.  Mr. Weems was married in 1876, to Miss Courtney Wells,
daughter of James Madison Wells, ex-governor of Louisiana.  To this union
have been born five children:  Emily S., Clara Mulliken, Lucile S., Lucile
E. and Courtney Wells.  Mr. Weems is the son of Dr. W. C. and A. (Mulliken)
Weems, the father, an early physician of Rapides Parish, and a graduate in
medicine of Philadelphia.  The father died when seventy-eight years of age,
and the mother died in 1877, when quite aged.  The name Weems, is of Scotch
origin, and was formerly spelled Wemyss.  The Mullikens were of Irish
descent, and they have a large connection round Washington, D. C.
Grandfather Weems was also a physician.  Mr. Weems has $10,000 life
insurance in the Life Mutual of New York, on the life plan, and has $10,000
on the twenty-year plan in the Pennsylvania Mutual.  He is a pleasant,
sociable gentleman, and a man of industry and enterprise.  He has given his
children, of whom he is justly proud, every advantage for pleasure or
profit that money can afford.  He usually spends the hot months of the year
at northern watering places with his family, and when business demands his
attention at home, his family goes anyway.  Mrs. Weems is at present (1890)
spending her summer at Toronto, Canada.  He and family are members of the
Roman Catholic Church, but are liberal in church affairs.