The Ouachita Telegraph 1877 News Articles, Ouachita Parish La Typed Ms. Lora Peppers at the Ouachita Parish Library African American names extracted by S.K. Martin-Quiatte - redstick4@uswest.net ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** *********************** The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, February 9, 1877 Page 3, Column 2 A negro man named Archy Walls was shot and instantly killed by some unknown party, at the residence of Judge W.R. Roberts, near this place, yesterday morning. Walls had been in the employ of Judge Roberts for some time, and the night previous to his death had quarreled with another negro named Martin Fields, who recently came here from Monroe. Fields was heard to make threats against the life of Walls, and soon after day-break yesterday morning Judge Roberts and family were startled by the report of a gun in the yard, and hastening to the scene, found Walls weltering in his blood and life nearly extinct. He was unable to make any statement and there were no witnesses to the deed, but there is not the slightest doubt on the minds of our citizens but that the negro Fields perpetrated the crime. He (Fields) has not been seen in this vicinity since the occurrence. - Union Record. Martin was pretty well known in Monroe, not as a desperate character, but as a big, black, wide-mouthed fellow, with large feet, who did small jobs for Mr. J.G. Sanders at his store. Martin came to Monroe a fugitive from Arkansas, where he was a deputy sheriff under the benign rule of Clayton, in which capacity he was guilty, it was charged, of malfeasance in office, a fact not known here until he reversed his politics - from Radicalism to Democracy. It was then that our sheriff, Hamlet, arrested Martin, and then those big black feet carried him of. He is a tall, gangling, loose-jointed black, with red eyes, wide mouth, laughs all over his face and will laugh at nothing. Look out for him. The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, June 1, 1877 Page 3, Column 3 OLD GILBERT. Old Gilbert, an aged colored man of some local fame, was sitting in his chair Sunday night, in front of his room (next door to this office) chatting and laughing, and, seemingly, in excellent health. His co-renter went off to church, and when he returned at eleven, old Gilbert was dead. His wife from her bed heard the old man breathing hard, went to his relief where he sat, and found him dying. Taken to his bed, he soon died, with "Good-by, Lizzie," (to his wife,) as his last words. Old Gilbert, as we have often had occasion to notice, was not a very common character. He was respectful, obliging, industrious, and had no mean idea of manly dignity. His other claims to our notice consisted in his afflictions, and in the energy and success he exhibited in having surmounted them. In one eye he was blind, and he had but one arm. The loss of an eye gave him, apparently, no trouble; he would march as straight to the front and walk as upright as an Indian, and the blind eye seemed to twinkle and shine in laughter almost as merrily as the good one. His right arm was but a stub, but it as no useless, idle stub. Gilbert was a fiddler, and no very mean one either, as many lads and lassies about Monroe, and older toes, too, might attest who have danced many pleasant hours into the past to the music of old Gilbert's fiddle. Perhaps, some one-armed soldier who, before the war, like Burns's old friend, could make his "elbuck jink and diddle," but has now no supple elbow and no music, save in his head and heart, left, may be curious to know how this old darkey managed to draw his bow with only a stump of an arm, such as this same old Confederate may remember Major General Loring has. The mechanism may, or may not have been Gilbert's invention, but the movement certainly was his. To his short stump of an arm old Gilbert had rigged up a frame-work of small iron rods, so arranged that the fiddle-bow could be secured at the end, the whole being adjusted so as to be put on, or removed at pleasure. With this simple contrivance, the bow could be made to oscillate with all the rapidity necessary in the fastest jig or fiercest puncheon-floor break-down ever fiddler fiddled. Gilbert was also an expert woodchopper, missing his kerf but seldom and cutting a chord of wood for burning in such time as enabled him at least to make a living. But Gilbert tired of land and pole axe, and took to fishing with a trot line in the rive, in which one has need of a skiff and of the knowledge and skill necessary to use it. Swimmer, or not, the old darkey set his lines in water forty feet deep at places and tended them punctually in his skiff, taking off fish and re-baiting his hooks, in spite of wind and weather, and managing his skiff, sitting amidships, with one arm, better than the writer can with two. His adroitness in this business may have passed unobserved, save by a few, but it is, nevertheless, no small achievement for a man with but one arm to accomplish, successfully, that which will puzzle most full-armed oarsmen to do without considerable practice. But Gilbert's fishing venture did not prove lucrative, and, we believe, like many others who have courted and cajoled the fishes and got no bites, he reeled his lines and betook himself to some other calling, exactly what we do not know, except that he devoted his head to the business of carrying clothes for his dusky spouse, a colored woman who takes in washing, and survives to wonder, perhaps, if there was not some way and means by which that large basket of clothes could not have been moved about with calling into requisition the head of her old one-armed devoted husband. Good-by, Gilbert! The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, June 29, 1877 Page 3, Column 1 The Small Pox. Price Bartlett, an old colored man, died of small pox, near the depot, last week. This is the third fatal case of this disease in Monroe since its first appearance in our city several weeks ago, the victims being all colored. No white person has been attacked. Our authorities and citizens should be extremely cautious in preventing the spread of the disease, and the most energetic measures be adopted to root out the loathsome pest. Better a few should suffer inconvenience now and apparent harsh measures be used, than the city should become a pest-house and whole families become sufferers from the indiscretion of a few. There is no immediate danger, it is true, but no one feels entirely safe with such a pestilential disease about him. The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, July 6, 1877 Page 4, Column 2 A colored man by the name of Chas. Jackson, who professed to be a horse doctor, said he could, when an animal had the charbon, tell by tasting the blood. Some day last week a mule had the charborn, he tasted the blood and on the 18th inst., he died at New Texas landing of the diseases. - Point Coupee Pilecan. (sic) The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, September 21, 1877 Page 3, Column 1 Four People Drowned. Friday night last four colored people, living with Mr. Labaum 2 miles below town on the opposite side of the river, came to Monroe to preaching (sic) at the colored Methodist church where there has been a protracted meeting going on for several days. Old man Henry Williams was the head of the party. The remaining three were his wife, Clarissa, Zella Scott and Hannah Brown. Henry Williams, a freedman tells us, was not of very sound mind and not a good post to lean against. The party crossed the river to this side without trouble and paid there devotions to the Lord according to the rites prescribed in their church and, returning home, reached the river about 2 o'clock at night, and the four got into the boat, a small plank skiff. The boat leaked, it seems, and when they had nearly reached the shore on the other side, the women became alarmed, as the boat was nearly full of water. At that point the river is about ten feet deep. One after another of the women jumped out of the skiff, the last one turning it over, and throwing old Henry out. There was a skiff just ahead with a man and two women in it, but before it could land and answer the calls for help made by the drowning people they had all disappeared. Next day, Saturday, two of the bodies were found by dragging, and two days afterward the other two came to the surface of the water and were buried. Coroner Surghnor visited the scene, but declined to hold an inquest, because the manner and cause of the death of the deceased was sufficiently apparent. The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, October 5, 1877 Page 3, Column 2 THE PETULANT PISTOL. Jerry Rogers, a young freedman of copper color who lives on the Copley place, was in town Saturday, one among the host of darkies who came to town that day and almost every Saturday to trade. Jerry started home in the evening full of fun, to evince which he flourished his pistol on the road as he went, discharging it now and then without particular aim, as funny fellows he thought are wont to do. Jerry reached Mrs. Dinkgrave's place, and halted in the lane at Ann Cabeen's cabin to have a chat with some darkies who were about the cabin, among them Ann, her two daughters and her son. Jerry made some inquiries for a freedman named Demoss, talked a while with those around him, finally saying he was going to shoot. Some of those present asked him not to do that, but Jerry was in a funny vein. He must shoot. Ann Cabeen was some 12 feet from Jerry, standing in the lane. Jerry blazed away at the Buckhorn plantation, and Ann Cabeen fell dead, shot through the head. The fun was now all over. Screams and sobs followed, and Jerry it is supposed put up his pistol. Coroner Surghnor held an inquest on the deceased, and on the trial some of the evidence went to show the shooting was intentional, but the preponderating weight seemed to be in favor of accidental shooting, and the verdict was to this effect. Tuesday Jerry was arraigned before Judge Slack for commitment. He was represented by J.H. Dinkgrave, Esq., and the State by Mr. Stubbs, District Attorney pro tem. The trial lasted several hours, the result of which was that the Judge held Jerry in a bond of $300 for "feloniously killing and slaying Ann Cabeen," or in default of giving bond to go to jail to await his trail at the next term of the District Court. The bond was given, the sureties being Martin Rogers, Alex Hester, Wm. Demoss, colored, and J. Baer. Nothing was said about carrying a concealed weapon, from which we infer there was no evidence that the pistol was at any time concealed. Jerry may be a very humorous sort of fellow - in fact, he said to one witness he was going to have some fun; but at least one poor woman was evidence that his comical canters with a loaded pistol amounted to a tragedy. His recklessness was a crime not to be too strongly condemned. The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, October 19, 1877 Page 2, Column 2 Lynching in Catahoula On Monday last three negroes, Geo. Henderson, Dick Holstein and another whose name is not now known to us, were arrested on Sicily Island charged by the constable for the purpose of bringing them down to stand a preliminary trial before the Parish Judge. As the prisoners had to be guarded all night, the constable and posse who had them in charge concluded to bring them to town that night, and thus be relieved of their charge. On the way here, when in the neighborhood of Mr. P.J. Holstein's store, they were surrounded by a body of armed men who demanded their prisoners, and ordered the posse to make tracks, which they did. It seems that here one of the prisoners, who was on foot, escaped, but the remaining two, named above, who were on horseback, were taken out in the woods about thirty or fourty (sic) yards from the road and hung. It was not known what had become of them until their bodies were found dangling from a tree by some persons passing by the next morning. The probability is that the ropes were put around their necks, then tied to the limbs of the trees and their horses driven from under them. - News. The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, November 16, 1877 Page 3, Column 2 Cornelius Scott, a very clever old colored man who has been doing a small business just out of town, on the DeSiard road, died a few days ago. Cornelius was once a patron of the TELEGRAPH, and paid us promptly, one of the few freed men we have trusted who ever has. The Ouachita Telegraph Friday, December 14, 1877 Page 3, Column 1 Jim McClellan, a freedman, is to be hanged to-day in Bastrop for the assassination of Mr. Nick Evans, a worthy and estimable citizen of Morehouse, about a year ago. Jim escaped from the parish, but was arrested in Caldwell, we believe, shortly after, and was carried to Bastrop and put in jail. He had his trial about four weeks ago, was convicted, sentenced to be hanged, and Gov. Nicholls orders his execution to-day. Considering that the doomed man gave the victim of his malice no notice or warning of death whatever, he cannot complain of any haste in his execution.