Kentwood, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Sandra McLellan, Aug., 2000

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From Tangipahoa Centenial Book, 1869-1969: 
Donated to the archives by the Tangipahoa Parish Tourist Commission

Kentwood

Kentwood, the northernmost town in Tangipahoa Parish, is near the
Louisiana-Mississippi state line, several miles north of the village 
of Tangipahoa on U.S. Highway 51.

The name of the town does not stem from the earliest settlers who came 
there in the first decade of the nineteenth century, among them the
Amackers and the Tates.  Kentwood honors, instead, Amos Kent (1811-
1906), who came to the area about fifty years later.  Kent, originally
of Chester, New Hampshire, sailed to New Orleans, walked to Baton
Rouge, moved to Greensburg, and eventually settled in the vicinity
of Kentwood.  At this time the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern
Railroad was being constructed through the region, and Kent established
a lumber mill and a brick plant on the railroad just south of where the 
town was to develop.  On Line Creek Road northwest of his mills, Kent
built his home, Oak Hill. Here he lived happily with his wife, the 
former Susan Fluker, and twelve children.

In 1887, William Gramps Hall of New York came to the locality.  He and 
his brother-in-law, Fred Woolver, as promoters for the Immigration 
Department of the Illinois Central Railroad, began to develop the
cutover land north of the "Kent's Mills" into a town.  On February
29, 1888, a post office was established wiwth Hall as its first
postmaster.  He is the man who selected the name of Kentwood for
the town.

On March 18, 1893, Kentwood received its charter.  Originally a 
sawmill town, it is now a center of Louisiana's dairy industry.
The population of the town in 1960 was 2,607.