Historic Places: Civil War Map of Winn, Winn Parish, LA Submitted by Peggy Chandler Beaubouef, 2656 Hwy 1232, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** SOURCE: March 9, 1983 Winn Parish Enterprise CIVIL WAR MAP OF WINN FILED AT NSU by Marshall J. Hough "The Winn Parish section of the Minden-Alexandria road is in good order. There is a good site at Beech Springs where 5,000 troops and their horses can be watered and bivouacked. Beech Springs is shown on your road map two miles south of the crossing of this road with the Natchitoches-Monroe Stage road." This message does not make sense today but could well have been issued to a Confederate officer moving troops from Tioga to Minden in 1864. This interesting fact is born out by the study of a Civil War road map now on file with a number of other Civil War maps in the Louisiana Room at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches. This map showing much of the western part of Winn parish was confiscated by the Union forces after the Civil War along with many other war maps of Louisiana and other southern states. The original maps are stored in the Department of Archives in Washington, D.C. The old Minden-Alexandria road, as shown on the map, branched off the old Winnfield-Alexandria highway near the present day crossing of the Packton- Atlanta road and the old Winnfield-Alexandria road. The old Alexandria- Winnfield road is still being used as a parish road in Winn parish and is located generally three to four miles west of the present day Hwy. 167 South. The Minden-Alexandria road then heads in a northwesterly direction to Sardis, then to a point one mile west of Gum Springs, thence to Sanders Chapel, Pine Ridge and on into Bienville parish. By choosing this route instead of a more direct route between Minden and Alexandria many major stream crossings in the Red River delta portion of Grant and Natchitoches parishes were avoided. Most of the old road above Gum Springs has been incorporated into various present day parish and state roads. Southeast of Gum Springs the old road has been largely abandoned. The Monroe-Natchitoches highway crossed into Winn parish at the north end of the old Drake's Salt Works near Goldonna, then proceeds northeast to a crossing of the old Minden-Alexandria road, thence to a ford on Dugdemona bayou upstream from the old and abandoned iron bridge. Yankee Spring is on this road, as is the old Dayton Sullivan log home. The late Dayton Sullivan, in an interview with a reporter of the Calvin High School "Sassafrass" staff, stated that the log house once served as one of five relay stations on the Natchitoches-Monroe stage road and was owned by an Anderson Walker [Daniel Anderson Walker, g.g.g. grandfather of submitter] in Civil War times. The recently found map backs up Mr. Sullivan's statement by showing the place as being owned by a D.A. Walker at the time the road map was made. An interesting feature of the map is that about 50 farms are located and the owners identified. This will be a boom to genealogists interested in searching for their ancestors living in Winn parish during the Civil War. Court house records for this period in Winn parish were destroyed by fire. This is by no means all the farms that existed in that part of Winn parish at that time, but probably only those that were located adjacent to the roads. Will Lucky, who first homesteaded 40 acres of the farm then owned by Anderson Walker and who also sold Walker another 120 acres that he received for services in the Florida War, is shown living at that time on a farmstead one and one-half miles south of Mr. Walker. Will's place is shown on a parish road that generally parallels the west side of Dugdemona from Winnfield to Brewton Mill (known as "mill" then). Several other familiar Winn parish names of families found along this road from Lucky's farm south are: Rudd, Bolton, Mr. Griffin Dickerson (or Dickenson), Cockeram. No given names or initials are given for this group of names. Two miles up the road from the D.A. Walker farm, and situated just east of the Price Salt Works, (incorrectly located on the map), is the Martin farmstead. This is the James T. Martin homestead. James married Will Lucky's daughter, Emily, in Alabama, moved to Texas and then moved to this farm in 1861 to be near Emily's family. He died that same year and is buried nearby in the old Martin-Lucky cemetery. The George W. Lucky farmstead is shown on a small road two miles east of the James Martin place. George was Will Lucky's second son and is the great grandfather of the author. One mile southwest of George Lucky's farm is the farm of John W. Elkins, his wife, Nancy, and five Brewton children (1860 census date). Joseph Brewton, the second son of this group will enter the Confederate service by joining the 28th La. Infantry in March of 1864 at age seventeen and just in time to fight in the battle of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in April of that same year. He married Will Lucky's youngest daughter, Pensy, upon returning from the war and settled near Brewton Mill. Living north of Elkin at this time on the Alexandria-Minden road, as shown on the map, are families with the family name of Clifton, Rogers, Walker, Barton, and Ross. Living south of elkins on a parish road going to Goldonna are families named Lowe, Bates, Lacey, Weeks and another Walker family. Farmsteads near Sanders' Chapel are shown with families named Saunders, Green and Duplissis. Calvin does not seem to be in existence at the time this map was published. A road runs from Sanders' Chapel, passes about a mile south of the present day village of Calvin and then heads east-southeast to Winnfield. The eastern one- half of this road is still used as is the lower road from Calvin to Winnfield. The western portion was abandoned. The map has homesteads shown on this road by the name of Callum, Shoulders, Bolton and Holly. The old Alexandria highway that branches left from highway La. 34 near the fairground is shown as being in "good condition" with a "bad bottom" and "no bridge" at Cedar Creek below Winnfield. The farmsteads shown on the map on this section of road are Tegel, Briley, Willana Durham and G. Gray. The present Winnfield-Atlanta highway (La. 34) follows very closely the old road shown on the map. Names of homesteaders found along this road are Herring, Spikes, Drewett, Dr. Carey, Dr. Colliers, Ferguson, Colliers (or Collins) and Sayndle(?). Farmsteads found on other roads west of Winnfield are: Matthews, Tedley, Rowe and Parry. Names of homesteaders found along and near the St. Maurice-Monroe road are Thompson, Turner, and Fredricks. This road is classified "not in good order, sandy soil". Just three miles below Winnfield on the Atlanta road a small mark indicating a building is made and the word "school" is inked in on the map. There must have been a number of one room schoolhouses in the western portion of Winn parish at this time but this is the only one shown. The building is indicated as being on the south side of the road at the intersection of a minor road that terminates three miles north of this intersection at "Jerusalem". Jerusalem church and cemetery is indicated on the map with the symbols of a cross and seems to have been a well established church at this time. The southern end of the road is on the old Alexandria highway. No farms are shown on the map near the schoolhouse, and since you cannot run a school without pupils, this indicated just how few farms then found in the parish are shown. Just north of the present Hwy. 84 bridge crossing on Saline bayou a ford is indicated for crossing the bayou. The information given is "good ford at low water". The road then going north from Winnfield, followed the same route as U.S. 167 now uses, out to where Winnfield High School is now located, then bore left and entered Dugdemona bottom one and one-half miles west of the present bridge crossing. A person named Walker was shown as living on the south side of Dugdemona at this time. The one-half mile wide bottom had the notation "bad bottom" written across it, then the statement, "Luke's Bridge, 200 ft., Indifferent". The "Luke" was Luke Radescich, an early Winn parish settler and the owner of a large farm on the north side of Dugdemona at this point. A road is shown branching off of the Winn-Monroe road out near the present airport and headed north to a crossing of Dugdemona where the present bridge is located. The one-half mile wide "bad bottom" shown, then the notation "Womack's Bridge, 200 ft., Very Bad". It seems that Winn parish had two private bridge owners competing for business on Dugdemona at that time. A general notation across the western hills area of Winn parish states in bold print, "Open Poor Pine Hill Country-Sandy". Not mentioned were those red clay hills that occasionally had to be crossed in bad weather with mud that tugged at the boots of marching men and often mired their wagons and horses. A glance at the map will show that Winnfield is definitely the parish hub at this time from which parish roads radiate out to other points in the parish. The cartographers making the map used as a base map the then recently made land surveys of the Winn parish area. The surveys show section, township and range, lakes, rivers and smaller stream courses. To this base map were added the roads, farmsteads and other features. The road systems shown in general follow the high ground, the dividing ridges, and avoided low, swampy land and stream crossings as much as possible. This represented good engineering practices, and as a result, many of the old roads have been incorporated into the road systems in the parish and are still being used. A good example is the old Winnfield-Atlanta road that covered the ten mile distance between the two towns without a single bridge or culvert being needed. The majority of the farms shown on the map were in the forty to fifty acre range and the land was shown as consisting almost exclusively of cropland. This use was indicated by the symbol L., a symbol still used by agricultural map makers. The symbol A was also used on the D.A. Walker farm. This probably denotes land used for animals, or pasture land. Eight of the farms have cropland acres of from ninety to three hundred acres. The small forty to fifty acre farmers were not good candidates for having been slave owners. On the eight larger farms slaves could very well have supplied the labor needs. The Confederate soldiers serving the Confederacy from the small farms shown on this Civil War map could not have been motivated by a desire to fight and die to defend the institution of slavery. They fought and died to save their homeland from invasion and for states rights.