E pluribus unum – out of many, one – for many years was considered our national motto and for most people is the basis of how we view our society. In addition, Turner’s Frontier Thesis, the idea that the merging of people from disparate backgrounds led to the emergence of a distinctly American culture, is a major tenet of American Historiography. However, as a child growing up in Minden during the 1960s, those concepts seemed foreign to the place I lived. Although we were clearly divided along racial lines into two separate communities due to the American apartheid of segregation, it seemed each of those two communities were largely homogenous in their makeup. We seemed to be a very insular and perhaps even xenophobic place, not open or understanding to outsiders and their ideas. The odd thing is that little more than a century before we in Minden were on the frontier and more than perhaps any other community in North Louisiana were the “poster child” for the American “melting pot.”
I began thinking about this because of a suggestion from Thad Andress for a project for the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum (if you look back on this blog you’ll see that Thad often nudges me toward ideas.) On a visit to Nova Scotia, Thad had seen a map showing the eventual “landing spot” of those Acadians dispersed from Canada by the British after 1755. Of course we know that many of them ended up in South Louisiana where they became the Cajuns, but most followed a winding path before reaching that destination. Since the goal of the British in creating a diaspora of Acadian culture was to prevent them coalescing once again, the settlers were scattered across North America. That so many did eventually land in Louisiana was a tribute to the determination of the Acadians.
Thad’s idea was that we needed to create such a map for Minden, showing the points of origin and the path taken by the early settlers of our community. This is a project in its infancy, as he only mentioned this to me last week, but today I pulled out an old newspaper column to get me started on research. I wrote this column for the Press-Herald in 2003 and based it on information in the 1850 Census of Minden. The data reveals that Minden was truly a cosmopolitan settlement in 1850 (I’m not sure many have ever seen those two words – Minden and cosmopolitan – used in such close proximity before.)
I’m still working with the data but some of the facts are pretty surprising. In 1850, Minden was home to natives of 25 of the then 30 states of the United States, plus one resident born in the District of Columbia. Foreign-born citizens listed birthplaces in the following locales: Austria, Bavaria, England, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Prussia, Russia, Scotland and Sweden. As I mentioned in my post about the Ghost Walk, it was likely one could hear three or four languages spoken on one trip down Main Street in those days. Missing from this data is the place of origin of the African-Americans in Minden. We were home to only one free person of color in 1850, but local slaves came from many different places. It seems possible, since it was only 42 years since the end of legal slave importation to the United States, we might have had some slaves who had been born in Africa. But clearly a sizable portion of the local populace had African heritage.
The really fascinating part of such a map will be the path taken to come to Minden. We know of the traditional routes up the Red River and Bayou Dorcheat, across the “Redneck Trail” after the Indian Removal Act and down the Mississippi and across Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. However, there seem to be many other interesting and varied paths to Minden. I’m looking forward to learning more about how out little town became the home of our first residents as this project moves forward.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Ghost Walk 2011
Next Saturday, November 12, 2011, will be our annual Ghost Walk to benefit the Minden Cemetery Association. Several years ago Schelley Brown Francis borrowed this idea from the American Cemetery in Natchitoches and it has become a very popular event in Minden. (I really need to attend the Natchitoches version one day, my great-grandmother is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the cemetery, a victim of the 1918-19 flu epidemic. Her entire family was ill with the flu and local officials buried the body and the family was never able to find out precisely where she was interred.) We normally schedule it on the weekend closest to Veterans Day and use the final resting place of our forefathers and mothers to help tell a little of the story of Minden.
In recent years we have usually had a theme and this year is no exception. In recognition of our newly established Fasching celebration -- which kicks off at 11:11 a.m. on 11/11/2011 -- we are highlighting Minden's German roots in several of our characters. So often we focus solely on Germantown when discussing the Teutonic influence on local history, but despite the significance of Germantown, Minden has strong ties to Germany beyond the Colony. Our founder, Charles Hanse Veeder, was of German descent and evidently named our community after his family's ancestral home in Minden, Germany. In the 1960s, Minden Mayor Tom Colten established a relationship with our sister city, Minden, Germany, it is my hope that in the near future we may reopen that relationship to expand our new focus on our German ties. In the early years of our town, there were many German settlers who were attracted to our town because of the presence of Germantown, but others simply because of the uniquely cosmopolitan nature of our community as it sat on the western frontier of the United States near the Republic of Texas. For many years I have been intrigued by the "accents" of our past. I tell my American History students that it is difficult for me to imagine that our Founding Fathers all spoke with what today we would consider a "British" accent, just doesn't seem right to think of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams speaking that way, but it was reality. I've particularly thought it would be fascinating to be transported back in time to Minden Main Street, 1850. While strolling past the businesses it was likely you would hear native speakers in the following languages: English (with British, Irish and Scottish accents), German, Polish, Russian, French and Choctaw. It was the very presence of those German speakers that brought several residents to our town as they knew someone would understand them. (Well, to some degree -- it is true that the Germantown Colony was more commonly called Dutchtown in both Minden and Homer, as demonsrated by the Dutchtown Road that runs from Homer to the area of the Colony, based on the same mishearing of the word Deustch that led to the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch in American History.)
In the upcoming Ghost Walk among the characters will be a German immigrant stationed in Minden by the Confederate Army who married a local woman and became a vital contributor to our community and transplant to Minden who brought her German immigrant mother to live with her locally and found the presence of a German community a pleasant surprise. Other characters while not directly tied to Germany will highlight the role that the German connection has played in our town. Working with the Secretary of State's museum system and their control of the Germantown Colony it has been repeatedly pointed out to us that our unique German heritage is something we need to embrace and promote. I'm so happy to see Patti Odom and her office have pushed forward with our Karneval to contrast with the French Carnival and am glad that this year the Cemetery Association is joining in to help on that effort.
I hope each of you will make an effort to attend this year. Here are the details of the event.
The 8th Annual 2011 Minden Cemetery Ghost Walk
Saturday November 12th, 2011
The Minden Cemetery Ghost Walk “Living History Lesson”
Website: www.mindencemetery.blogspo
Price: $10 adults / $4 children under 12 (tickets at gate only)
Location: Old Minden Cemetery off Pine St. on Bayou Avenue in Minden, La.
Contact #: Schelley Brown Francis (318) 423-0192 Cell
Time: Noon – last tour starts at 3 p.m.
Email: iluvoldcars@yahoo.com
In recent years we have usually had a theme and this year is no exception. In recognition of our newly established Fasching celebration -- which kicks off at 11:11 a.m. on 11/11/2011 -- we are highlighting Minden's German roots in several of our characters. So often we focus solely on Germantown when discussing the Teutonic influence on local history, but despite the significance of Germantown, Minden has strong ties to Germany beyond the Colony. Our founder, Charles Hanse Veeder, was of German descent and evidently named our community after his family's ancestral home in Minden, Germany. In the 1960s, Minden Mayor Tom Colten established a relationship with our sister city, Minden, Germany, it is my hope that in the near future we may reopen that relationship to expand our new focus on our German ties. In the early years of our town, there were many German settlers who were attracted to our town because of the presence of Germantown, but others simply because of the uniquely cosmopolitan nature of our community as it sat on the western frontier of the United States near the Republic of Texas. For many years I have been intrigued by the "accents" of our past. I tell my American History students that it is difficult for me to imagine that our Founding Fathers all spoke with what today we would consider a "British" accent, just doesn't seem right to think of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams speaking that way, but it was reality. I've particularly thought it would be fascinating to be transported back in time to Minden Main Street, 1850. While strolling past the businesses it was likely you would hear native speakers in the following languages: English (with British, Irish and Scottish accents), German, Polish, Russian, French and Choctaw. It was the very presence of those German speakers that brought several residents to our town as they knew someone would understand them. (Well, to some degree -- it is true that the Germantown Colony was more commonly called Dutchtown in both Minden and Homer, as demonsrated by the Dutchtown Road that runs from Homer to the area of the Colony, based on the same mishearing of the word Deustch that led to the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch in American History.)
In the upcoming Ghost Walk among the characters will be a German immigrant stationed in Minden by the Confederate Army who married a local woman and became a vital contributor to our community and transplant to Minden who brought her German immigrant mother to live with her locally and found the presence of a German community a pleasant surprise. Other characters while not directly tied to Germany will highlight the role that the German connection has played in our town. Working with the Secretary of State's museum system and their control of the Germantown Colony it has been repeatedly pointed out to us that our unique German heritage is something we need to embrace and promote. I'm so happy to see Patti Odom and her office have pushed forward with our Karneval to contrast with the French Carnival and am glad that this year the Cemetery Association is joining in to help on that effort.
I hope each of you will make an effort to attend this year. Here are the details of the event.
The 8th Annual 2011 Minden Cemetery Ghost Walk
Saturday November 12th, 2011
The Minden Cemetery Ghost Walk “Living History Lesson”
Website: www.mindencemetery.blogspo
Price: $10 adults / $4 children under 12 (tickets at gate only)
Location: Old Minden Cemetery off Pine St. on Bayou Avenue in Minden, La.
Contact #: Schelley Brown Francis (318) 423-0192 Cell
Time: Noon – last tour starts at 3 p.m.
Email: iluvoldcars@yahoo.com
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Skeletons In and Out of the Closet - Follow-up
The two researchers who were here flew back to Boston last night and I wanted to add a bit of information about their work and why they were here.
Professor Margaret Burnham and law student Brett Watson came here as part of the work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northeastern University School of Law. You can read about that program at this link: Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project
The goal of the project is to resolve lingering issues from the Civil Rights era and to preserve and memorialize the victims of Civil Rights abuse. The reason for coming here are several in nature. The Jones case was one of a rash of killings of returned African-American war veterans in the Summer of 1946 and gained great attention in the national press, including a discussion in Time magazine that outraged local residents with its description of Minden. More importantly no one was ever convicted of any crime in this matter. The suspects were never indicted on state charges of murder and the Federal trial for violation of Civil Rights ended with acquittals. So, techincally this is an open case.
Some may be alarmed if you go to that link and see that Professor Burnham has an amazing track record of success in her legal career and has actually obtained convictions in some long-lingering Civil Rights cases. However, our case is somewhat different because of the age of the case. The victim was killed, his only child died in 1978, his widow died at Meadowview in 2006. The victim who escaped the mob left Louisiana and is apparently dead. All of the men tried for the crime have died -- the first a victim of murder himself less than two years after the Jones murder. So there is no one left to try. In addition, Professor Burnham was very willing to not press the issue with the families of some of those involved in the case who are still living. Her major goal was to flesh out the record and fill in the blanks. I have not yet received their summary of what they learned, but yesterday we were able to confirm the burial site of John C. Jones, which had been somewhat of a question for years. They have indicated to me that they did learn much and recieved leads to more information. So, it was a useful trip.
Professor Margaret Burnham and law student Brett Watson came here as part of the work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northeastern University School of Law. You can read about that program at this link: Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project
The goal of the project is to resolve lingering issues from the Civil Rights era and to preserve and memorialize the victims of Civil Rights abuse. The reason for coming here are several in nature. The Jones case was one of a rash of killings of returned African-American war veterans in the Summer of 1946 and gained great attention in the national press, including a discussion in Time magazine that outraged local residents with its description of Minden. More importantly no one was ever convicted of any crime in this matter. The suspects were never indicted on state charges of murder and the Federal trial for violation of Civil Rights ended with acquittals. So, techincally this is an open case.
Some may be alarmed if you go to that link and see that Professor Burnham has an amazing track record of success in her legal career and has actually obtained convictions in some long-lingering Civil Rights cases. However, our case is somewhat different because of the age of the case. The victim was killed, his only child died in 1978, his widow died at Meadowview in 2006. The victim who escaped the mob left Louisiana and is apparently dead. All of the men tried for the crime have died -- the first a victim of murder himself less than two years after the Jones murder. So there is no one left to try. In addition, Professor Burnham was very willing to not press the issue with the families of some of those involved in the case who are still living. Her major goal was to flesh out the record and fill in the blanks. I have not yet received their summary of what they learned, but yesterday we were able to confirm the burial site of John C. Jones, which had been somewhat of a question for years. They have indicated to me that they did learn much and recieved leads to more information. So, it was a useful trip.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Skeletons In and Out of the Closet
In the past I have indirectly discussed and/or referred to the 1946 lynching of John C. Jones here in Minden. About five or six years ago, Professor Chris Waldrep came to Minden to research the killing. Today, there are two more researchers in the community working on this case. I learned from them that Professor Waldrep has posted all the material he obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the National Archives to the website for one of his courses. I had been to the National Archives and seen that file before, but never the DOJ and FBI info, so I've been digging up local bones and opening local closets in that material this morning. I wanted to share the link with any local people who might be interested. I can tell you that there are thousands of pages, much of it boring, but the files do provide a fascinating tale of racism, self-preservation and gratefully some heroic behavior by local people of both races 65 years ago in our town.
Jones Lynching Files
Jones Lynching Files
Friday, October 14, 2011
If you tear it down, they won't come
Got another reminder today of that nasty habit Minden had of tearing historic structures down. I know that's always a controversial topic and at least one person who likes to pull my chain will probably post a sarcastic comment because in one recent high profile situation I was in favor of something being torn down. But as I said, I'll just need to learn to let folks comment and not try to engage when there's no point in replying.
Monday night at the Night for the Museum program about the Campbell family, Thad Andress asked me if I had ever been to Washington, Arkansas. Thad had visited recently and thought I needed to visit and also had a question relating to Minden history that learning about Washington had created in his mind. Now normally when Thad recommends a place to visit he has just returned from Greece, South America, Alaska or perhaps Jupiter -- places my pocket book will never allow me to visit. So, when he recommended a place I could afford to visit, I decided the trip has added to my itinerary. Plus, I was a little ashamed, particularly after I realized how close it was to home, that I hadn't visited.
So when I got out of classes today I set out for Old Washington. If possible I prefer to stay off the Interstate so you can see (stealing a line from Sarah Palin) the "real America." I did that today driving up La. 3 on to Arkansas 29 through my grandparents old stomping grounds of Lafayette County. Arriving in Washington I checked out some of the buildings and also purchased a book that answered the question Thad had posed. For many years I have explored all the historic figures that came close by Minden traveling on Military Road #11, cut through the North Louisiana wilderness in 1827 - 1828 between Fort Jesup and Fort Towson in what later became the Indian Territory. Without a specific citation to prove the point, I am certain that future Presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant traveled the road during their times at Jesup. I can verify that Col. George Armstrong Custer passed by when he was reassigned from occupation duty in Alexandria to fight the Indians on the Great Plains. (I'm not certain, but I don't think that turned out so well.) However, I had never considered the question that Thad raised. At Washington he had learned of a road connecting Fort Jesup to Washington and also found that Washington served as a main dispersion point for that tragic episode known as the Trail of Tears. I was so excited by the possibility that Thad had uncovered a place of Webster Parish in a significant era of American history when he asked, "did the Trail of Tears include the Military Road near Minden."
Today I discovered that it was "close but no cigar." The Trail of Tears, at least part of it, did come through Louisiana, in fact through Monroe. However, it turned north at Monroe and intersected "our" Military Road at Camden, Arkansas, so those Indians making the sad journey did reach Washington by the road that came by Minden, but did not traverse today's Webster Parish on the journey.
Now, in the words of Ron White, "I told you that story to tell you this one", which will explain my title. Today I visited the Hempstead County Courthouse built in 1836, it also served as the seat of government for Confederate Arkansas. Then I went to the Visitor's Center at Old Washington State Park, which is the Hempstead Country Courthouse that was used from 1874 - 1939. I was in such a rush to find the answer to Thad's question that my "light bulb moment" didn't hit me until after I had found my answer and was exploring the old courthouse. Something about that date, 1874, stuck in my mind. Then, as I was looking at the upstairs courtroom, it hit me. The first Webster Parish Courthouse that stood roughly on the site of today's Capitol One Bank downtown, was also completed and put into use in 1874. That meant that while Hempstead County still had both its 1836 and 1874 courthouses, Minden was in a completely different situation. The courthouse we built in 1874, the same year as the "new" Washington courthouse, was torn down in 1905. The building that replaced it, was torn down in 1970. So while that 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse stood "witness" Webster Parish built and destroyed two courthouses. As I stepped outside I suddenly realized something else, the 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse (pictured below) while not identical, resembles the 1874 Webster Parish Courthouse enough to be a "cousin." Hindsight is 20-20 and I don't think folks in Minden had evil motives, but it's a shame so much of our history died with the wrecking ball.
Monday night at the Night for the Museum program about the Campbell family, Thad Andress asked me if I had ever been to Washington, Arkansas. Thad had visited recently and thought I needed to visit and also had a question relating to Minden history that learning about Washington had created in his mind. Now normally when Thad recommends a place to visit he has just returned from Greece, South America, Alaska or perhaps Jupiter -- places my pocket book will never allow me to visit. So, when he recommended a place I could afford to visit, I decided the trip has added to my itinerary. Plus, I was a little ashamed, particularly after I realized how close it was to home, that I hadn't visited.
So when I got out of classes today I set out for Old Washington. If possible I prefer to stay off the Interstate so you can see (stealing a line from Sarah Palin) the "real America." I did that today driving up La. 3 on to Arkansas 29 through my grandparents old stomping grounds of Lafayette County. Arriving in Washington I checked out some of the buildings and also purchased a book that answered the question Thad had posed. For many years I have explored all the historic figures that came close by Minden traveling on Military Road #11, cut through the North Louisiana wilderness in 1827 - 1828 between Fort Jesup and Fort Towson in what later became the Indian Territory. Without a specific citation to prove the point, I am certain that future Presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant traveled the road during their times at Jesup. I can verify that Col. George Armstrong Custer passed by when he was reassigned from occupation duty in Alexandria to fight the Indians on the Great Plains. (I'm not certain, but I don't think that turned out so well.) However, I had never considered the question that Thad raised. At Washington he had learned of a road connecting Fort Jesup to Washington and also found that Washington served as a main dispersion point for that tragic episode known as the Trail of Tears. I was so excited by the possibility that Thad had uncovered a place of Webster Parish in a significant era of American history when he asked, "did the Trail of Tears include the Military Road near Minden."
Today I discovered that it was "close but no cigar." The Trail of Tears, at least part of it, did come through Louisiana, in fact through Monroe. However, it turned north at Monroe and intersected "our" Military Road at Camden, Arkansas, so those Indians making the sad journey did reach Washington by the road that came by Minden, but did not traverse today's Webster Parish on the journey.
Now, in the words of Ron White, "I told you that story to tell you this one", which will explain my title. Today I visited the Hempstead County Courthouse built in 1836, it also served as the seat of government for Confederate Arkansas. Then I went to the Visitor's Center at Old Washington State Park, which is the Hempstead Country Courthouse that was used from 1874 - 1939. I was in such a rush to find the answer to Thad's question that my "light bulb moment" didn't hit me until after I had found my answer and was exploring the old courthouse. Something about that date, 1874, stuck in my mind. Then, as I was looking at the upstairs courtroom, it hit me. The first Webster Parish Courthouse that stood roughly on the site of today's Capitol One Bank downtown, was also completed and put into use in 1874. That meant that while Hempstead County still had both its 1836 and 1874 courthouses, Minden was in a completely different situation. The courthouse we built in 1874, the same year as the "new" Washington courthouse, was torn down in 1905. The building that replaced it, was torn down in 1970. So while that 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse stood "witness" Webster Parish built and destroyed two courthouses. As I stepped outside I suddenly realized something else, the 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse (pictured below) while not identical, resembles the 1874 Webster Parish Courthouse enough to be a "cousin." Hindsight is 20-20 and I don't think folks in Minden had evil motives, but it's a shame so much of our history died with the wrecking ball.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Starting Up Again
Well, since my column with the Press-Herald has ended, I know that there are going to be times when I want to share something interesting about local history that takes up more space than allowed on a Facebook status update. So, after more than a year I'm going to start using this blog again. My friend Chris Broussard started a great blog and it pushed me toward using the great tool of the Internet to share local history.
As I stated when I started -- and then proceeded to ignore -- I will try to stay as "apolitical" as possible. To my "friends" who I had nasty exchanges with in the comments section, you are certainly justified in pointing out what you see wrong with my views, when I insist on stating them. Arguing them is also fine, but I failed to keep myself in check and as a result perverted my intent in starting this blog. I don't apologize for my beliefs, but if I want to focus on them, I'll just start a political blog. On occasion, there will be a bleed over, it can't be prevented, but I will try to act as a moderater and not a "combatant" when that happens.
So, if anyone out there was still checking this, there will be posts again. If you're a Facebook friend, I'll be posting on Facebook when they are made.
As I stated when I started -- and then proceeded to ignore -- I will try to stay as "apolitical" as possible. To my "friends" who I had nasty exchanges with in the comments section, you are certainly justified in pointing out what you see wrong with my views, when I insist on stating them. Arguing them is also fine, but I failed to keep myself in check and as a result perverted my intent in starting this blog. I don't apologize for my beliefs, but if I want to focus on them, I'll just start a political blog. On occasion, there will be a bleed over, it can't be prevented, but I will try to act as a moderater and not a "combatant" when that happens.
So, if anyone out there was still checking this, there will be posts again. If you're a Facebook friend, I'll be posting on Facebook when they are made.
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