Another Puzzler - Updated

I finally got a chance to work with those images of the Minden Democrat from September 11, 1868. I learned that I was not yet completely senile; the images could not have been in possession of Hill Library when I last visited in early July 2008, or at the least could not have been available to researchers. The date of creation on the TIFF files was June 26, 2008. So the images are relatively new to the LSU Libraries collections.

I had hoped that there would be some news of great significance in the newspaper, but from what I can tell it seems to be just "run of the mill" news. There were some interesting tidbits that actually will help in other projects. A front-page editorial about the looming threat of integrated schools in light of the new Louisiana Constitution of 1868 -- ironically I taught about that this morning in Louisiana government and will be coming to that point within a couple of weeks in Louisiana History.

There were also at least three or four notices of business closing or changing hands. One of those was the store of Nicholas J. Floyd, who will be mentioned in my program on Confederate Minden for the Dorcheat Museum in April. Floyd was leaving Louisiana to return to Virginia. He turned his business over to his father-in-law, J. W. Morrow.

But perhaps the most interesting tidbit to me was a brief mention of the death of a child, and a public mention of tragedy I had observed years ago. Along the eastern edge of the old Minden Cemetery, there is the Loye family plot. The Loyes, along with the Chaffes and Goodwills, were among the British émigré community in antebellum Minden. The families had intermarried and were prominent in local affairs. Long ago I looked at that plot and was stunned by the presence of so many graves of children from the family -- none of which survived beyond childhood.  Just "guesstimating" from the spacing of the children, I wondered if any of the Loye offspring lived to be adults, as they were so closely spaced in birth I could not see how any other children could have reached maturity and I also knew that the Loye name disappeared from local records.

The September 11, 1868, Minden Democrat discussed the tragedy of the death of little Johnnie Loye and confirmed what I has suspected. Sadly this family lost seven children to death. A truly tragic situation indeed; but unfortunately, not unprecedented in those “frontier” days of primitive medicine. I know Schelley is probably reading this and I guess now that I know, I'd better start getting a Ghost Walk script ready . . . . LOL!!! What follows is the Democrat's account of Johnnie Loye's passing:

"It is seldom that the death of a little child saddens a whole community. When we think of the many trials and troubles through which we have to pass the verdict is universal that the little one is better off, but little Johnnie was the last child out of seven interesting children. We had helped to bury them one by one, and it was in this way that we all felt a special interest in this dear little boy who was the idol of his parents and around whom all their earthly hopes seem to cluster."