Wetmore Family, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Sandra McLellan, Feb. 2005
Special thanks to Jim Perrin for donating it to the archives.

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WETMORE FAMILY CAME TO THIS AREA ABOUT 1873

(The following historical sketch of a Ponchatoula family name was submitted by Jim 
Perrin, former school principal and local historian. The subject of this article 
is the Wetmore family.)

BY JIM PERRIN

Nathaniel Downing Wetmore was born Feb. 5, 1838, in Dover, N.H., the son of 
Nathaniel D. Wetmore and Lydia A. H. McIntosh.

He married Margaret Murphy on Sept 29, 1864.  She was born about 1842 in New York.

Sometime after 1850, and probably after the War Between the States, Nathaniel moved 
to the South. In 1870, he and Margaret were living in Plaquemines Parish, and 
Nathaniel was working as a customs officer.  

In May of 1873, Nathaniel, then still a resident of Plaquemines Parish, purchased 
560 acres of land on the east bank of the Ponchatoula River just south of the 
Ponchatoula-Springfield Road.

Some years after he had purchased this property, Nathaniel decided to establish a 
sugar mill on part of the land. The mill, called the Central Sugar Mill Corp., was 
organized in Ponchatoula in the summer of 1878.  The mill's operations were not 
financially successful and Nathaniel was involved in several lawsuits in which 
interested parties sought to recover some of their investments.

Nathaniel died in February, 1881.

Margaret Murphy Wetmore continued to live in Ponchatoula after Nathaniel's death. 
She died sometime after the 1900 census was conducted and was buried in Wetmore 
Cemetery west of Ponchatoula on the land she owned and which carries her name 
today. 

Oldham Bryson Wetmore was born on March 12, 1844, in Ohio and was the son of Moses 
W. Wetmore and Jane Oldham.

Oldham B Wetmore was a first cousin of Nathaniel D. Wetmore.  He married Elizabeth 
"Lizzie" M. (?) (ca. 1852 in Tennessee).  Oldham and Lizzie were farming in 
Arkansas County, Ark, in 1889.

Sometime afterwards, Oldham and Lizzie moved to Ponchatoula and purchased 37 acres 
of land on the Ponchatoula River next to his cousin, Nathaniel D. Wetmore.  Oldham 
died on Feb. 4, 1896, and was buried in the Ponchatoula area, probably in the 
Wetmore Cemetery near his home.

He and Lizzie had a child, Lula Wetmore, who married a Mr. Black and lived in Hope, 
Ark.