Abstracts of 1839 - 1846 Police Jury Minutes of Union Parish Louisiana Submitted for the Union Parish Louisiana USGenWeb Archives by Dr. Max H. Williams, 3/13/2004 . ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Introduction to the UNION PARISH LOUISIANA POLICE JURY MINUTES Books 1 & 2 (1839 - 1846) Abstracted and Edited by Max Harrison Williams DEDICATION Publications concerning the Police Jury Minutes are dedicated to the memory of my late paternal grandparents, John Washington Williams, Jr. and Susan Rebecca Tucker, and late maternal grandparents, Emmett Everett Harrison, Sr. and Mae Holloway. The Williamses were from Zion Hill Community and the Harrisons from Cherry Ridge (Laran) in Union Parish, Louisiana. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am grateful to Clerk of Court Joe Brantley, Deputy Clerk of Court Sue Buckley, and the rest of the staff of the Union Parish Clerk of Court's Office for their cooperation in the abstracting of Union Parish Historical Documents. I am also appreciative of the assistance of Arelia Breed, a local genealogist, in helping to identify given names and surnames and Wayne Barrett, Principal of the Junction City Elementary School, for assisting in the preparation of the index of the Police Jury Minutes. EDITOR'S NOTE The preparation of Union Parish Historical Documents was a special labor of love for several reasons: (1) First of all, I wanted to preserve the memory of historical events, places, and people in Union Parish. I am a native of Union Parish, and many of my forebears helped make the history of that political unit. (2) In addition, and perhaps more importantly, as an historian, I wanted to preserve the contents of the parish archives. Documents are subject to courthouse fires, natural deterioration caused by time, theft, and mutilation, intentional or not. Over the years, at least two of the oldest books have disappeared, and the ink in other books has in places become almost too faint to read. Abstracting the contents of the archives is a way of preserving those records. (3) Finally, I wanted to make the records more accessible to history and genealogy researchers. Many people who have interest in the documents cannot visit the courthouse. Moreover, although some of the records have been microfilmed, most people do not have ready access to microfilm readers. Abstracts of documents allow people to perform research without having to go to the courthouse and without using microfilm. The Police Jury Minutes are valuable not only as a record of the parish's historical development but also as a supplement for the Federal censuses for Union Parish. Some heads of families were not included in the Censuses of 1840 and 1850 in particular. In addition, numerous settlers migrated to and departed from Union Parish between censuses. The Minutes identify many of those individuals. Although I have been very careful in abstracting the material, there will undoubtedly be errors in the results due to the 1) old style handwriting, 2) poor penmanship, and 3) faulty and sub-standard spelling. Parish scribes in the period before the advent of the typewriter were not always chosen for their ability to write legibly and spell correctly. By the 1840's, a writing norm had developed that offered model characters (letters) of the alphabet; nevertheless, the first several clerks emulated those characters very clumsily. At least two of the clerks made their upper case I's and J's exactly alike. Likewise, often the capital B and R were so similar as to be almost identical. M's were difficult to distinguish from W's in many cases. As if the chirography did not present enough difficulty, spelling suffered a still greater assault by the clerks. Notwithstanding the standardization of English spelling by the time Union Parish was formed, the first scribes committed first degree murder on English orthography, often spelling in their own version of phonetics. Though most of the regular words in doubt can be determined through analysis and reason, proper names and surnames, especially those no longer in usage in this area, cannot always be determined accurately. Unlike regular words, surnames could not be placed into context. Where there was doubt concerning proper names, I sought the opinions of other local genealogists. Mrs. Arelia Breed was particularly helpful in determining given names and surnames. A knowledge of the people living in the parish at a given time is helpful in determining surnames; yet, even that knowledge is not always adequate in deciphering names whose spelling was massacred by the clerks. By checking questionable names with those of previous and subsequent records the correct names often-times could be identified. However, at times names were so badly mangled that even that method was not successful. In the case of given names and surnames, unless they were too badly spelled for the reader to recognize them, I left the names spelled as the clerks spelled them. When I did change them, I put the correct names in parentheses after the misspelled ones. Sometimes I had to place a question mark after doubtful names. Normally, names were spelled in a variety of ways, even in the same sentence and on the same page. All editorial comments are in brackets. In general, I made no attempt to interpret the Police Jury proceedings but allowed the records to speak for themselves. Unfortunately, the records usually tell us only the results of the police jury deliberations. They do not tell us of the hot debates, the name-calling, and the chicanery, that led to decisions on the part of police jurors. Occasionally, I could not resist the temptation to give the background of those decisions, based on my knowledge of parish history. Those explanations are also given within brackets. Punctuation in direct quotes was sometimes added in brackets for clarity and to make the quotes convey the intention of the proceedings. The Police Jury Minutes is the first of several publications. Others planned for the future are the successions (known as wills, probates, and administrations in other states), conveyances (deeds), civil suits, and miscellaneous records. I would be very grateful to readers for advising me of any errors that they find in the publications, whether the errors be programmatic, grammatical, or factual. I am also preparing a comprehensive history of Union Parish, for which I have been gathering data for many years. In that endeavor, I would appreciate receiving copies of old letters, Bible records, personal reminiscences, pictures of historical events, places, and people, and any other family or historical material. Contributors will be credited for any material used, unless they request anonymity. Material may be sent to the address given on the title page, or I will gladly visit contributors to make copies. The preparation and the publication of the abstracts of the parish archives have been for me a great personal satisfaction. I hope that the results will be a source of equal pleasure for the reader. Max Harrison Williams March 1, 1993 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HISTORICAL EXPLANATION The Police Jury Louisiana's French origin has made this state different from the remainder of the states in several ways: its place names and customs often reflect the French and Spanish colonial past; it has a very large Roman Catholic minority; and its laws are a curious combination of English common law and the Napoleonic Code, which influences its local governments. The only state in the union that uses parishes as the local political unit, Louisiana is divided into sixty-four parishes. Those in turn are sub-divided into wards, and sometimes wards are further broken into precincts. The number of wards a parish has is determined by the parish's geographical area, its historical development, and its population. Wards are adjusted in number and size as population increases, decreases, or shifts from one area to another. Parish governments are known as police juries, which are composed of an elected representative from each ward. Members of the police jury, or the police jurors, elect a president from among the jurors, who presides over the group. Clerks and other administrative personnel are hired by the police jury. The purpose of the police jury is to make laws that govern the parish and enforce those laws. The proceedings of the police jury are recorded in large books, and the books are kept in the Clerk of Court's Office of the parish courthouse. This publication is an abstract of records found in those books. This is the oldest of many books in the Clerk of Court's Office that record the proceedings of the Union Parish Police Jury. It has no letter or number to distinguish it from the other books, and it is simply called the first book. Approximately eight inches in width and fourteen inches in length, it has a thick, beige-colored, cloth cover with dark brown leather corners on the right hand side. Originally, its pages were ruled with vertical ledger-type lines; however, those lines have faded so much that now they can scarcely be seen. Today the heavy parchment pages are very fragile. The first several pages are so brittle, in fact, that their edges have broken off, losing some of the text. Attempts over the years to repair pages with cellophane tape and laminate, especially the first few pages, also have made some parts difficult, if not impossible, to read. Other pages have come loose from the binding. Despite the bad spelling and poor penmanship, most of the text is generally very readable. Because of the first book's historical value and its poor condition, it is now kept in the office vault. ####################################################################################