Willis, Joseph - Bayou Chicot School; St. Landry Par., LA Submitter: Randy Willis Date: July 2001 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** TIPS FOR SEARCHING RECORDS ON THE INTERNET Netscape & Ms Explorer users: If searching for a particular surname, locality or date while going through the records in the archives or anywhere....try these few steps: 1. Go to the top of the report you are searching. 2. Click on EDIT at the top of your screen. 3. Next click on FIND in the edit menu. 4. When the square pops up, enter what you are looking for in the FIND WHAT ___________blank. 5. Click on DIRECTION __DOWN. 6. And last click on FIND NEXT and continue to click on FIND NEXT until you reach the end of the report. This should highlight the item that you indicated in "find what" every place it appears in the report. You must continue to click on FIND NEXT till you reach the end of the report to see all of the locations of the item indicated. From Randy Willis Research files www.randywillis.org Bayou Chicot historian Mabel Thompson's great-grandfather Isaac Griffith states in his handwritten diary "I commenced teaching school in Bayou Chicot on May 16, 1814." Mr. Griffith also kept an attendance record of the children who attended school there with the names of the patrons on the top of each page and an account of payments made for tuition. The diary and attendance records were handed down to Ms. Thompson and she mailed me (in 1981) a copy of the 1814 attendance record which list the patron Joseph Willis. This is the earliest record of a private school in that area. This record has never been published. This is the first of many very rare documents I will be sharing via e-mail and on www.randywillis.org. Ms. Thompson also wrote a history of Bayou Chicot for my book, which will be on the web page and a chapter in the hopefully soon coming book The Apostle to the Opelousas. Notice the $18.00 dollar payment and the term "your sons." The Ephraim Swett [sic] may well be Joseph's fourth wife Elvy Sweat's father.