Historic Places: History of Lane's Ferry
Submitter: Friends of Genealogy Feb 2001
           Beth Mathews, Pauline Mobley,Josie Brumley
           Myrtle Phillips, Carolyn Avery, Evelyn Ross
Source: West Carroll Gazette 12 May 1955





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NOTE: The marker at Lane's Ferry reads:
        Near this point in 1700
        Jean Baptiste le Moyne de
        Bienville, colonizer and
        first governor of Louisiana
        crossed Bayou Macon en
        route to the trading post
        on the Ouachita.


HISTORY OF LANE'S FERRY TOLD BY D.A.R. MEMBER
By Mrs. Thelma D. Pulley

Tuesday we paid tribute to the outrageous French explorer, Bien-
ville, by placing a marker at Lanes's Ferry.

General William Carroll chapter, D.A.R. has dedicated the marker
placed at Lane's Ferry because it was the place that Bienville
crossed Bayou Macon.

The explorer and his party made a crude raft to cross the bayou,
so states Bienville in his diary.

Bienville lamented the fact that he was shorter than his compan-
ions and that wading through the swamp for him was rather perilous.

The crossing received the name of Lane's Ferry more than a century
ago for John Lane, who operated a ferry across Bayou Macon. Lane's
wife was Nancy P. Mayfield, who had inherieted the land in that
section from part of her father's estate. John A. Lane bought 
another part of the William S. Mayfield estate. These lands lay
in sections 28, 34, and 33, the latter being where Lane's Ferry was
operated.Check the old map and you will find that this land was
owned by John H. Martin at the time the early map was surveyed.
The John A. Lane family home was known as "Reclusia".

John A. Lane and Nancy P. Mayfield had of record the following 
children: Alexander G. Lane, Jane Ann Lane and Emma Vick Lane. 
Court records reveal these children were in New Orleans when
they disposed of their inherited property in Carroll Parish about
the time of the Civil War.

The Lane family came from Warren County, Miss. to Carroll Parish.
John A. Lane was the son and grandson of Methodist ministers. To
me this is symbolic, for today, as one looks across Bayou Macon to 
the south there stands, overlooking the stream, Lane's Ferry 
Baptist church.

Godly people and their influence are still dominant in and near 
this place as they were over one hundred years age.

Who was John A. Lane? He was the son of the Rev. John Lane, born
in Fairfax county, Virginia, April 8, 1789, one of the most noted
ministers in the Methodist conferance, according to the Rev. John
G. Jones, in his book "Methodism in Mississippi".

His mother was Sally C. Vick, the daughter of another celebrated 
Methodist minister of the Mississippi conference, the Rev. Newitt
Vick. Vicksburg was named for Rev. Mr. Vick, who owned the land
on which the city was laid out.

John A. Lane was also the grandson of a Revolutionary soldier of 
Fairfax county, Virginia, William Lane.

NOTE: See Biography of John Allen Lane