Stanley Hall, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Robert Vernon, Nov., 2000

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>From "Individual Studies of Place Names in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, James Valsin 
Coumes, Tangipahoa Parish Resource Unit, Tangipahoa Parish School Board, 1972."

STANLEY HALL

On the west side of U. S. Highway 51 across from the feed mill at Arcola and on the knoll now 
housing the residence of Cleo Moore once stood a stately home known as Stanley Hall.

Built in 1858, the residence received its name from its owner, Captain Henry Morton Stanley, 
a wealthy merchant of New Orleans. The memory of this place is important to Tangipahoans in 
that Stanley's adopted son became the celebrated explorer who found Dr. David Livingstone in 
Africa.

Born John Rowlands (1840) of Denbigh in Wales, this adopted son had been put in a poor house 
at St. Asaph.  After running away from here, he sailed from England to New Orleans, where he 
was employed on the waterfront by H. M. Stanley.  The latter adopted the orphan, and the boy's 
name was suitably changed to H. M. Stanley, which name he retained for the rest of his life.

After the merchant died, young Stanley engaged in newspaper work and later fought in the 
Civil War for the South, his adopted country.  As a correspondent for the New York Herald, he 
accompanied the British army to Abyssinia in 1868.  Shortly thereafter, James Gordon 
Bennett, the editor of the Herald, requested that he search for Dr. Livingstone.

Historically thrilling is the fact that this young man unquestionably spent some of his youth 
at Stanley Hall, unaware that someday he would become Sir Henry Morton Stanley.

The imposing two-storied, gabled roofed Stanley Hall is described in the New Orleans States 
of December 28, 1924, by W. S. Bender, the realtor through whom the house passed to Ernest 
Roger Jr., of Thibodaux, the latter an occupant who tried to rescue it from ruin.  It was 
destroyed by fire on November 1, 1929.