Robert R. Rhymes, Richland Parish, Louisiana Submitter: Frances Ball Turner ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** History of Louisiana by Chambers Vol. II, pg 314 Robert R. Rhymes, president of the Richland Parish School Board, lives in the Sixth Ward of that parish, owning the Rhymes plantation, on which he was born August 27, 1874. He educated himself for the law and practiced for a brief time but his real enthusiasm and his forte of successful accomplishments have been as a practical man of affairs, planter, farmer, stockman, leader in every phase of community development, including good schools and good highways. His father, John Harvey Rhymes, and his mother, Harriet Emily Earle, were both left orphans and were married in Louisiana, J. Harvey Rhymes coming from Mississippi when about fifteen or sixteen years of age. When they married their possessions consisted of a horse, his property, and a feather bed, the contribution of the bride. J. Harvey Rhymes had little formal education, but a sound mind and a rugged honesty and industry enabled him to indefatigibly pursue any plan he undertook. It was said that he never knew when to quit. After his marriage he bought forty acres of land, now a part of the Rhymes plantation, its chief improvement being a log cabin. With that as a nucleus his industry built up a plantation of 1,900 acres. About the only office he ever consented to hold was as member of the local school board. Before he died his land was deeded to his children, and he gave them also all the education they would take. J. Harvey Rhymes passed away in 1921, at the age of seventy-two and his wife in 1923, aged seventy-one. They had a family of nine children: H.F., a planter and member of the parish police jury, who died in 1913; J. Harrison, a planter near Monroe in Ouachita Parish; Robert R.; Dr. W. J., who practiced medicine at St. Martinville, Louisiana, where he died in 1913; Emily, wife of C.C. Lefleur, of Kinder, Louisiana; F. H., in the automobile business at Lafayette, Louisiana; Effie, who married Doctor Thomas and both are now deceased; Katie, who died in childhood; and R.C., a planter, who died in 1920. Robert R. Rhymes grew up on the home plantation and after his first schooling continued his education at Ruston, Louisiana, in McKinney College and in Tulane University Law School at New Orleans, where he took his law degree in 1899. He then formed a partnership for practice with John Mulholland, and they opened an office at Rayville, practicing in all the courts. The profession of law soon proved uncongenial to a man of such active and practical temperament as Mr. Rhymes, and he abandoned it to return to the plantation. In fact, since boyhood he had had a part in the management of the plantation property and was associated with his father until the latter's death and then continued in the same capacity for himself and the other heirs. He has gradually acquired the interests of the other heirs and is proprietor of one of the most fertile and productive farms and plantations in North Louisiana. He is a master of the art of cultivation and of all phases of animal husbandry. Through all the years he has conducted a store and cotton gin on the plantation. Mr. Rhymes has served as president of the parish school board four years, and during this administration the parish school system has gone forward by leaps and bounds, practically all the modern school buildings of the parish having been constructed, including the fine high schools at Rayville and Mangham. Mr. Rhymes is credited with having through his personal influence forced the building of good highways in the parish. He has his father's determination and some of his neighbors say that when they want a thing done they first tell him that the project cannot be carried out. One of the principal highways of the parish is known as the Rhymes Highway, a monument to his constructive leadership in this line. He was one of the organizers of the Monroe Dry Goods Company, a wholesale house. Mr. Rhymes married Miss Nonnie Roark, daughter of Jasper Roark of Marion. She was educated in Ruston and Keatchie Baptist College and is herself a Baptist.