Bio: Edward C. Bright, Webster Par., Louisiana
Source:  Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana
The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago & Nashville, 1890
Submitted by: Gwen Moran-Hernandez
Date: April 2000



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===Edward C. Bright, surveyor and civil engineer, Minden, La.  Mr. Bright 
is a native of Tennessee, his birth occurring at Brownsville, on 
February 10, 1840, and his father an eminent divine, the Rev. J. E. 
Bright, was a native of Virginia.  He was a man of superior natural 
endowments, of classical education, and was a graduate of Ann Arbor, 
Mich.  He was a minister in the Presbyterian Church, and also a 
prominent educator.  He ministered to the spiritual wants of his 
fellow-men until his death in 1878.  His wife died the same year.  
He was married in Tennessee, to Miss Sarah Bell Slack, a native of 
New Jersey, where she was reared and educated, and the daughter of 
Rev. Elijah Slack who was a noted chemist and mathematician.  Edward 
C. Bright passed his boyhood and youth in Tennessee, secured a good 
education at La Grange College, where he had advanced to the junior 
year, when the breaking out of the war put an end to his studies.  He 
was one of the first to enlist in the Confederate Army, joining the 
same on April 17, 1861, at Jackson, Tenn., in the Fourth Tennessee 
Infantry, Company F, and soon after was promoted to orderly sergeant, 
which position he held while in active service.  He was in the battle 
of Shiloh, where he received a gunshot wound to his arm and was 
disabled.  He soon after returned to Tennessee, and thence, in the 
winter of 1863, to Louisiana.  In 1864 he again entered the service as 
assistant engineer under Col. Douglas, and served in that capacity 
until cessation of hostilities.  After the war, or in 1865, Mr. Bright 
came to Webster Par., Louisianalocated in Minden, and was there engaged in 
surveying and farming for one or two years.  He was appointed surveyor 
of Claiborne Parish, and on the organization of Webster Parish in 1871,
 he was appointed surveyor of this parish, serving in that capacity 
nineteen years.  He has also worked at civil engineering on the 
construction of some of the railroads of Northern Louisiana.  He has 
also served in a number of offices of trust and honor in Minden.  Mr. 
Bright was married in Monroe, on September 10, 1867, to Miss Texanna 
Phillips, a native of Alabama, but who was reared and educated at Baton 
Rouge, La., at Mrs. Reed's College.  She is the daughter of Dr. Phillips.  
Mr. and Mrs. Bright have two children: Mary E. and Johnston E., Jr.  
One daughter, Aurelia, died at the age of nine years.  Mrs. Bright and 
daughter are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  Mr. Bright is 
a prominent business man and makes a specialty of preparing abstracts 
to title to any land or any farms in Webster Parish.