"East Feliciana, Past and Present", Parts 1-5,  East Feliciana, La.
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"EAST FELICIANA, LOUISIANA, PAST AND PRESENT."

SKETCHES OF THE PIONEERS,

By H. Skipwith
1892
Hopkins Printing Office, 20 & 22 Commercial Place,
New Orleans

PREFACE
East Feliciana
Rise And Progress of A Colony Of the Carolinas.

Clinton, La., October 5, 1889.

Mr. Kilbourne,
MY DEAR SIR - I contemplate a work germain to the title
"role" in the performance of which I shall need the "Patriot-
Democrat" as my coadjutor.

Inasmuch as the census of 1890 will, as is customary, compile
and publish all needed statistical information relating to our
material progress, the occasion appears to favor a systematic,
well-considered endeavor on our part to attract the gaze of the
home-seekers to our large area of waste and uncultivated fields,
which are laying idle for want of laborers, and which are dirt
cheap and are easily renovated.

A pamphlet containing a synopsis of the census statistics for
East Feliciana would be brimful of valuable and reliable
infomation; but would the average home-seeker read it unless
it is accompanied by some pleasant pictures of the social life to
which he is invited?

Those pictures, it is my design to draw in connection with a map
of our parish by wards, giving to the history and genealogy, the
social characteristics and progress of each geographical division,
a separate sketch.  As the sketches are drawn I venture to hope that
the "Patriot-Democrat" and the other parish newspapers will aid in
submitting them for inspection, amendment and revision, to the people
of the ward sketched.  If the papers will help me to that extent
before the close of 1890, I expect to have compiled all the historical
and genealogical material for a more than usual interesting immigration
pamphlet.

It is universally conceded that we are badly in want of agricultural
recruits, and it is almost as generally desired, while we will cordially
welcome capital and labor from any quarter of the compass, that our
agricultural recruits should be drawn from the ancient seats of the race
which planted this colony early in this century.

In tracing back to the fountain head, it is as well to have it
understood, that we make no pretension to a genealogical shield
emblazoned with heraldic legends in panels of gules, argent or azure,
resting not upon the fanciful creations of bards and historians -
owning nothing to fabricated genealogies - nothing to the miraculous
apparitions which usually usher in the birth of states.

Nevertheless we, have a line of ancestry for which we entertain
affectionate reverence and cordial admiration, a line of ancestry,
which unlike the shoddy and codfish aristocrats, we are anxious to
trace out to its remotest antiquity.

Vast schemes of colonization were generated in the older settlements
when Mr. Jefferson made proclamation in October, 1803, that a
boundless fertile unpopulated empire had been transferred the previous
April by France to the United States.  That famous state paper found
eager readers among our immediate ancestors.  A population clinging to
the sides of the mountain ranges of the Carolinas and Southwestern
Virginia, cultivating the narrow valleys of the Clinch and Holston,
rugged as the crags; impetuous as the torrents of their native
mountains, still full of the military spirit inspired by the camp
fires and on the battlefields of the Revolutionary war - still
burning with patriotic fires which lighted Sumpter, Pickens, Laurens
and all the heroic chiefs of cavalier and Huguenot strain the path
to glory, and many a tory minion of King George the way to dusky death.

On such a population, restless and ill at ease, environed by the dull
monotonies of peace paying unwilling homage to the authority of the
law - relying more on their own valor and trusty rifles for that
protection rarely extended by the laws in those early days to segregated
and remote communities.  On such a population the stirring announcement
that a boundless and fertile empire, larger than the original thirteen
states, for which they had risked their lives and freely shed their
blood, lay to the south of them waiting to be peopled; - And the
promise of homes in the genial south - land dazzled their imaginations,
as did the spoils of England, the restless imaginations of the bold
Feudal Chieftains who rallied to the standard of William Duke of
Normandy.

Still hunting our genealogical source which is common to the population
of each of the eight wards without groping in the dark, we can inquire
a step farther back for the origin of the sturdy mountaineers, who
colonized East Feliciana.  We can go back to a settlement on the
shores of Albemarle sound by the Cavaliers, fleeing from the cruelties
and oppresssions of Cromwell, - back to the settlement along the South
Carolina sea coast by the persecuted Huguenots who after the seige
of Rochelle, sought an asylum in the new world for the freedom of
consience denied them by Cardinal Richelieu and the Pope of Rome.

When the sea coast hives the Cavaliers in North Carolina and the
Hugenots in South Carolina became overpopulated, they spread out in
search of homes, the two lines of home seekers crossed and commingled
among the mountain ranges of the Carolinas.  From the commingling of
these two lines sprang Marion, Sumpter, Laurens and Pickens, and many
of the great southern chiefs of the Revolutionary war; and from the
commingling of these two historical lines, we claim lineal descent.

If here amid the cain-brakes and vine clad forests of these southern
wilds, we have constructed a civilization characterised by all the
virtues of both lines of our haughty aristocratic forefathers, we
arrogate to ourselves with pardonable pride some little credit.

If under the enervating influence of southern heats, our progress
and development has been slow, when contraste with the more populous,
faster moving northern societies still we claim to be the better,
happier, purer civilization, because we have maintained uncontaminated
and undefiled the moral and social characteristics of our patriotic
high strung ancestors and because no new fangled "ism" foreign
or native has ever taken root in our societies which we have always
jealousy guarded against the poisonous preachings of visionary
enthusiasts who come from abroad to teach them to be freer who know
and feel that they are already as free as they ought to be - as free
as they want to be.

By these cautionary acts of vigilance we have maintained our civilization,
socially and politically free from the turbulent teaching of Irish
saloonists and free from the socialistic heresies of the beerguzzling
Germans.  Happy would it be for our country if the older and more
trumpeted colonies of Jamestown, Plymouth Rock and Manhattan Island
had preserved the civilization entrusted to them by their ancestors as
jealousy as we have guarded ours.

I send the "Patriot Democrat" this preparatory chapter of the more
extended work I have in contemplation, hoping it will not prove too
long for your space.

Yours truly,
H. Skipwith.

Part Two

Clinton, La., October 16, 1889.

I am enabled, Mr. Editor, to send you this week, a few authentic
incidents relating to the earliest movement of population in Ward
No. One, first in antiquity, first in fertility, first in pop-
ulation, and therefore entitled to be first of my series of Ward
Sketches.  Tradition, corroborated by vestiges of a decayed Fort,
Mission House, Cemetery and Store House, tell of a small centre of
population settled between Murdock's Ford on Thompson's Creek, and
from the great river and along the public thoroughfare leading
from Baton Rouge, the metropolis of the political and ecclesiastical
Power of Spain, in West Florida to St. Francisville, and the Church
of St. Francis.  An old blotter or day book, of Cochran & Rhea, an
adventurous firm doing business n September, 1802, in the old store
house now decayed, informs us from day to day until the close of
1803 who were the clients of that earliest commercial venture within
the borders of our parish, and likewise discloses the names of many
of the old pioneers who first awakened the primeval forests of East
Feliciana with the echoing thuds of the woodman's axe.

Inasmuch as the junior partner of the old store on Thompson's Creek,
by his marriage with one of old Dr. Raoul's (a French "Emigre")
lovely daughters, founded a family which has played a prominent part
in the material and social development of Ward One, and has moreover
fastened his name and deeds conspicuously on the pages of history, I
will devote a short paragraph, to keep green the memory of old Judge
John Rhea, who in 1802 was merchant, planter and alcalde for Feliciana
(an officer about the equivalent of parish judge in our system).  The
King of Spain's jurisdiction, as it was administered by his mild and
benevolent old Anglo-Saxon alcalde, was doubtless equitable and paternal,
and the people of that day lived contentedly under it.  When, however,
a few years later, the country began to fill up with the fiery Huguenot
and cavalier immigrants from the Carolinas, and loud protests against
monarchial government, began to stir the hearts of the Anglo-American
communities, I am afraid the King of Spain's old Anglo-Saxon alcalde,
blinded by the hot love of liberty characteristic of his race, forgot
his royal master at Madrid, and in 1810 the alcalde figures prominently
as member and president of the convention which founded and governed
the free and sovereign State of West Florida.

>From the old blotter of Cochran & Rhea's Thompson Creek store, I select
the names which I conjecture became permanent factors in the advancing
civilization of East Feliciana, many of them founding families which
became identified with the development of the wards.  While the old
blotter rescues from oblivion the ancestors of many of the powerful
and honored families of our parish, I notice, nevertheless, some
notable omissions of pioneer names of Ward No. One who contributed
largely and faithfully to the social elevation and agricultural
development of that modern garden of Eden.  Those notable omissions
I shall endeavor to supply after preparing an alphabetical catalogue
of the names of the clients of Cochran & Rhea, selected from the
blotter of 1802 and 1803, to wit:

Adville Aitkens, Giles Andrews, A. Brozina, James Brannon, Thomas
Brannon, Asa Brashiers, Zadock Brashiers, Samuel Brashiers, Philip
Brashiers, Henry Bradford, Sr., Henry Bradford, Jr., Nathan Bradford,
John Buck, Peter Busky, Baily Chaney, James J. Chaney, James Clarke,
James Cooper, Madam Como, Thomas Carney, Sr., Thomas Carney, Jr.,
Daniel Carney, Guy Carney, John Carney, Sr., John Carney, Jr., Thomas
Carpenter, John Dortch, Doctor Flowers, John Gale, Llewellyn Colville
Griffith, Baltor Hanmer, Battle Hanmer, Thomas Irwin, James Jackson,
Watkins James, Michael Jones, Thomas Jones, John Keats, Peter Keller,Sr.,
Peter Keller, Jr., Nathan Kemper, Ira C. Kneeland, James Loudon, David
Miller, William Miller, John McDonald, Manuel Montegudo, William
Marbury, John Murdock, John McArthur, George Neville, Sybil Nash,
John Nolan, Phoebe Owens, James Owens, Robert Owens, John Patterson,
Vincente Pintado, Policarpio Rogillio, Amos Richardson, Zachariah
Richardson, Henry Richardson, Theophilus Richardson, William James
Richardson, William Reames, William Stewart, John Stewart, David B.
Stewart, Abraham Speers, John Simms, Hugh Smith, Laban Smith, Jeremiah
Smith, Abraham Smith, William Taylor, Mary Taylor, Thomas Vaughan,
Robert Vaughan, Thomas Williams, David White, Elizabeth Waltman, David
Waltman, William Walker, Thomas Young.

Parsons Carter, whose name is not in the blotter, a scion of the
Carters of Shirley Hall in old Virginia, migrated from Natchez,
certainly before the country passed from under the Spanish jurisdiction,
and founded a home on the Baton Rouge and St. Francisville road, just
where it emerges from Buhler's Plains.  And nearly at the same time,
Benjamin Kendrick, the maternal ancestor of the Flukers, began a
clearing at Asphodel, the present ancestral seat of the Flukers.
William D. Carter and Gen. Albert G. Carter lived near the oldest
family seat, useful, public spirited citizens, warmly honored and
loved by their neighbors.  Many of the descendants of Gen. A.G. Carter
still uphold the social prestige of the family, in close vicinity
to their ancestral seat.  The same honorable characteristics have
developed in the line of old Mr. Ben Kendrick's descendants.  At a
later day, there came into the ward Gen. Felix Huston, of Texas
"Crab Orchard" fame, and his next neighbor, Capt. James N. Chambers,
an "eleve" of West Point, who having married a daughter of the rich
and powerful Relfs, of New Orleans, opened a large plantation along
the banks of Thompson's Creek over the site of the old Fort, Mission
House and store.  These two comparatively new comers became able
and zealous coadjutors of the Carters and Flukers and the pioneers
who figured on the old blotter of 1802.

It is a merited tribute to the wonderful fertility and durability
of the fine old ward, to emphasize the statement that notwithstand-
ing its cultivation commenced with the present century there is
scarcely an acre of land under fence that is not producing, in
this year of grace, 1889, its bale of cotton.

I found in the old blotter of Cochran & Rhea the following entry:
"To Robert Owens, $1.00 for taking care of goods at the landing,"
and I am admonished by it that Ward No. One has a history which
has a commercial side as well as a social and agricultural side,
and its commercial development will form the staple of the sketch
which I intend to send you next week.


Part Three

Clinton, La., October 9th, 1889.

Very suggestive is the following entry from Cochran & Rhea's
blotter of 1802, to wit;
"To Robert Owens, $1.00 for taking care of goods at landing."

Inasmuch as East Feliciana had before 1832 scarcely enough
front on the Mississippi river to afford a wharf for an
ordinary sized flat boat, and that small river front was her
only port for imports and exports in the days of flat boats
and keel boats, as carriers for the produce, transported by
ponies, along bridle paths through the cane thickets, and raised
by primitive "scooter" plow with wooden shovel boards and hoes,
both of which were cherised because they had been "compagnons
de voyage" all the way from the Carolinas and as further more
the cotton production was limited to the consumption required
by hand looms and spinning wheels, it stands to reason that the
increase of the tides of commerce which flowed in and out of our
only gate, signified when the area of production was increasing;
that the laborers in the Eastern Wards had gathered into the
harvest field in larger numbers, that the bridle paths had been
widened, and that therefore the demand for flat and keel boats
had increased.

Tradition has kept us of the present generation well posted
regarding the primitve methods of agriculture and commerce
which supplied the simple wants of our ancestors.  There is not
a doubt that the store of Cochran and Rhea on Thompsons Creek
did receive its stock of western produce from descending flat
boats at the "Landing" at the foot of the Bluffs, on the top
of which at a late date was built the "Town of Port Jackson,"
and it is equally apparent that the Thompsons creek store
received its supplies of family groceries and general merchandise
by ascending keel boats loaded by the New Orleans house of
Cochran & Rhea and cordelled up stream.

As the area of production was enlarged in the Eastern portion of
the parish, there arose in the interior two formidable commercial
rivals of the Thompsons creek store, Mr. William Silliman, the
founder of the renowed seat of education, "The Female Colegiate
Institute" of Clinton, and Mr. David Pipes, who migrated at an
early date from Natchez.  Both established a store in the North-
eastern portion of the parish.  Mr. David Pipes was the father of
the present State Treasurer and of one of our members of the
general assembly.

The cheap and primitive methods of those old merchants, in conduct-
ing the agricultural and commercial affairs of the parish are worthy
of a detailed description.  Either Mr. Silliman or Mr. Pipes would
buy a flat boat and cargo moored at Port Jackson, flying at her
peak the Wabash coat of arms an emblem which needed neither Hoosier
nor Garter King at arms to interpret.  Its realistic legend was
symbolized by a flag staff with a mammoth Irish potato, a big ear
of corn, a golden hued apple and a side of bacon pendant, and at the
topmost peak, a bottle of whiskey, rampant.  This purchase was notified
to all their clients through all the Eastern wilds, and a day appointed
to send in the years catalogue for Western produce, and for the
delivery of a corresponding amount of cotton at the "Landing."  As
the long train of wagons dumped their cotton bales, the drivers were
called into the flat boat, and the articles designated on the owner's
list were loaded on his empty wagon; as the cotton passed down the
Western produce passed up, and when the ark of the Wabash was discharged
of its original cargo it was reloaded with cotton bales.  The whole
transaction would be completed in a few hours, and, then with Captain
Silliman or Captain Pipes at her helm and with three or four stalwart
Africans at the oars, the clumsy old Wabash "Broad Horn" would leave
behind her the Bluffs of Port Jackson and soon be wafted out of sight
by the ceaseless currents of the great river on their way to the Sea.
Ordinarily the voyage was uneventful, but on one occasion, Captain
Pipes tied his rich load of fleecy staple to the New Orleans shore,
too late at night to make a sale of it, which added another night to
the risk of his voyage.  "That was the longest night and the most un-
pleasant I ever lived through" as the old gentleman used to tell.  "I
was awakened during the night by the whistling of the tempest, the
deafening roar of the wild waters and the violent bumping of the boat
against the bank.  I jumped out of my berth, grabbed a lighted pine
torch, and forgetting my pants, in the hurry and excitement, rushed
ashore yelling like a wild Indian to wake up the sleepy headed negroes.
I danced almost a hornpipe up and down, brandishing the flambeau and
yelling to wake up the sleeping Africans.  At last one wave bigger
than its fellows, lifted the old flat boat on the levee, and there
she lay next morning, like her ante type on mount Ararat.  "After
the storm abated and the waters became calm" continued the narative
of Capt. Pipes, " I became conscious that I was wet as a drownded
rat by the sprays from the surging waves, and moreover that I was
"sans culotte's for the first time."

Pursant to custom a sale of the flat boat and cargo was made to
those merchant princes, Nathaniel and James Dick, the largest and
almost the only cotton buyers in New Orleans, and a flat boat and
cargo in those days passed to them without any labored figuring for
freight, insurance, drayage, tare, sampling, scalage, storage or
stealage.  Under the influence of such cheap, honest and equitable
methods, the country prospered, and as wealth poured in, production
increased with magical celerity.


Part Four

COMMERCIAL PROGRESS OF WARD NO. ONE

About 1832 the exports and imports through Port Jackson, had
become too large for the carrying capacity of the slow going
flats and keels; the old wagon roads between the Amite River
and the "Landing" were growing into desuetude, too slow for
the fast ideas developed by an era of great prosperity.  A
railroad from Clinton to the river was projected; Port Jackson
had too small a port and was too closely identified with the
slow methods of the olden times.  An Act of the Legislature of
1832 wiped out famous old Port Jackson and a landing more comm-
odious, with a larger front was captured by Statue from East
Baton Rouge in anticipation of the vast streams of commerce
which were to flow from the construction of the railroad from
Clinton.  In 1834 three regular steam packets were plying in
the Port Hudson trade.  With the development of the new river
port, came a new set of merchants under whose adventurous and
enterprising spirit arose, parallel to the river, a densly
crowded row of handsome and costly warehouses, stores, saloons
and hotels, between which and the steamboats a long line of
loaded country wagons plied almost incessantly.

As memory calls up for review the familiar features and forms
of the thrifty, bustling, scheming guild of old Port Hudson
merchants who were shaping, with so much sagacity, the comm-
ercial rise of their young town by the side of the great river;
and who were like skilfull alchemists converting the streams
of commerce which touched their wharves into golden bars; it
would be singular if the burly figure of Robert W. Troth were
to be omitted from the line under review.  He was the most
intricate and involved character study, I ever met, and he was
endowed with more conflicting qualities - more irreconcilable
characteristics - more warring forces than ever human tenement
was equipped with.  Nevetheless with many weak and inconsistent
sides, Mr. Troth had no mean side.  He was a liberal giver and
ever had an open hand and heart for melting charity.  He
carried within his big burly frame two distinct indivdualities.
Indisputably he was a dashing and bold devotee of the fascinating
game of Draw Poker, a game then much in vogue at Port Hudson, and
he was moreover, when breathing the pure and clean atmosphere
of the church, a sober, devout and reverent christian, earnestly
sincere, I always thought.

And besides these commendable traits, Brother Troth had ingrat-
iated himself with the congregation as a fervid, eloquent,
persuasive leader in prayer, who could lift his hearer in
imagination from above the petty schemes of this transitory
sphere.  But as soon as the fervor of his fiery exhortations
cooled down - as soon as our impulsive brother could escape the
espionage of the "rigid righteous" - as soon as he had left
behind him the salutary influence of the church our brother,
Alas ! would make and unconditional surrender to the Demon of
Draw Poker !

Often have I watched Brother Bob impatiently pacing up and down
the guards of our Sunday packets, with troubled frowning brow,
revolving perhaps the knotty question, "How to break down the
inconvenient barrier between Piety and Sunday Draw Poker!" at
last the troubled, thoughtful brow would become smooth, and Bro.
Troth, with a bland smile, and the ingenuity of a skilled casuist,
would announce as a maxim, incontrovertible, "There must be
somewhere a limit to the jurisdiction of the church.  I fix it
at three fathoms depth, just as Vattel fixes three miles from the
shore as the limit of the jurisdiction of nations."  Henceforth
a small game of "Draw" up in the Texas would receive from Brother
Troth unreserved acquiesence and approval and lively participation.

Nothwithstanding Brother Bob's manifold treasons to the church,
perpetrated under the cloak of his ingenious "three fathoms"
theory, his usefulness as a class leader continued unimpaired
until one memorable night, when his avenging Nemesis overtook
and assaulted him in the very sanctuary while clinging devotedly
to the horns of the altar.  And thus it happened: In the calm
and peaceful twilight of a Sabbath evening, Bro. Troth, in the
midst of one of his most fiery and stirring invocations, paused
to pump a fresh supply of air into his exhausted lungs preparatory
to a higher flight.  During the ill-fated pause there came from
one of the open windows a voice, in basso profundo inquiring:
"Who won that Big Pot at two o'clock this morning?" and from an
opposite window there came in shrill, clear tones the incriminating
answer, "Bob Troth! Bob Troth!"  Amid such embarrassing aspects, the
orator lost the thread of his eloquent and fiery discourse; the sobs
and tears of the excited congregation gave way to smothered sniggers
and indignant groans, and a star fell that night from out of the
galaxy of exhorters, "like Lucifer never to rise again."

Having, in the preceding sketches of the First Ward of East Feliciana,
shown how old Port Hudson rose rapidly in commercial importance as
the shipping point for the products of a big, fertile back country,
and as the distributing point for the western produce floated down
on the broad horns out of the Wabash and Ohio valleys, and having
shown how by the formation of a batture in front, its harbor has
filled up, its wharves have disappeared under the deposits of the
Mississippi's slime, how its warehouses are rotting down, given
over to the bats, snakes, and frogs, and how, alas! its commercial
glory has faded, and its bustling merchants have become dust. It
is a pleasure to turn to the rise of a compensating social and
commercial centre, to supply the missing influences which old Port
Hudson used to excercise on the growth of the First Ward.  These
compensating influences are developing rapidly in

THE TOWN OF SLAUGHTER,

a thriving, fast growing, incorporated town of two hundred houses,
situated on both sides of the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas
Railway, just on the dividing line between the First and Second
Wards, 300 yards north of the line which divides East Feliciana
from East Baton Rouge, 108 miles north of New Orleans, nineteen
miles north of the capital of Louisiana, thirteen miles southwest
of the seat of justice of East Feliciana, the point of junction
of the Woodville and Bayou Sara R.R. with the main trunk of the
L.N.O. and T.R.R.  Besides its railways centreing on it, SLAUGHTER'S
geographical position is so favorable as to promise rapid future
growth and a large aggregation of commercial capital and population.
It holds under natural tribute without a competitor, all the
country west of it, between it and the Mississippi, and by the
same natural ties, all the country east of it, between it and the
Amite river, and bids fair with such advantages to become a for-
midable rival to its older commercial competitors, viz: Clinton,
Bayou Sara, Port Hickey and Woodville.

SLAUGHTER is situated on a well-chosen rolling site, with great
natural advantages redounding precepitibly to the health and
longevity of its bustling throng of energetic citizens; its
natural drainage is so perfect that the heaviest downpours of
rain, pass out of sight as if by magic, leaving its streets and
sidewalks clean and dry in a very few minutes.  Its architecture,
which bears the stamp of the useful and solid, consists of a
number of large and commodious warehouses, storehouses, the
railroad depot, and Mr. Oscar Howell's renowned Windsor Hotel,
a Methodist and a Baptist church, Kernan Institiute and two or
three preparatory schools, some public and some private.  And
its suburbs are adorned by many handsome, pleasant private
residences and cottages.

When its tributary country, east and west, becomes fully devel-
oped by the inflow of immigrants and capital, its present
productive capacity will soon increase ten-fold, and in that
event it is not unreasonable to predict that Slaughter will
grow into a populous and prosperous centre of commerce and
population.


Part Five

Clinton, La., November 23, 1889.

SKETCH OF THE SECOND WARD.

If a landscape painter, with pallette, brush and canvass, and
an artist's eye for the beautiful in Nature, would take his
stand on the highest hill of the dividing ridge between
Comite river and Redwood creek, and half way between Pine Grove
Church on the North, and Olive Branch Church and campground, on
the South, his admiring gaze would be attracted on his right
hand by a scope of country 17,500 acres in area, its surface
marked by curvatures and undulations, as gentle as the waves
of old Ocean, at peace in a calm; and in the trough of each
of these graceful undulations he would decern the tops of the
tall, waving ever green canes which fringe the margins of the
dry bayous, marking their course towards the eastern or west-
ern stream of living water, indicating to a practiced eye, deep
pockets which serve as cisterns, beneath the umbrageous canes,
which carry a water supply failing only in periods of prolonged
drouth.  These same green curtains often conceal from view a
rippling, gurgling dancing stream of living waters, fed by
perpetual springs gushing out of the dividing range of hills.
At the same glance he would behold a surface nearly equally
divided into forests, pastures and cultivated fields.  In this
"coup d'oeil" he would find spread on his canvass one half of
Ward Number Two.

To make a more faithful and complete picture he would paint on
the ward's eastern boundary a small river, meandering through
dense screens of canes and forest trees on its ceaseless course
towards the sea - receiving invigorating contributions from
Widow's creek, Knighton's Branch and Olive Branch - watering
and fertilizing along its wide margin of fertile valley, many
generous acres, each, with its native, unaided forces capable
of producing 500 lbs. of lint cotton, or 50 bbls. of corn, or
40 bushels of rice, or two hogsheads of sugar.  Far away to the
South, he would paint a long line of slow-moving, cotton laden
wagons toiling westward from Olive Branch Church and Camp Ground
to the thriving little railroad town of Slaughter.  On the Ward's
extreme Northern line he would bound the landscape with a long
train of railroad cars, heavily laden with cotton bales piled as
high as safe carrying would allow, flitting speedly from east to
west, from beautiful Clinton to busy, growing Ethel.  On its
extreme western boundary he would spread upon his canvass heavy
screens and curtains of canes and forest trees, denoting the
rapid, winding movement of a large stream he would paint the
bustle and stir of a great railroad, which has carried to market
in one day Twelve Thousand Bales of Cotton.

And then continuing his line of vision by the aid of a powerful
telescope he might take into his landscape the twelve miles of
snow white fields of Ward No. One lying between the railroad
and the Father of waters - the ever moving interminable lines
of steam boats and barges, bearing to the sea the products of
the Pennsylvania and West Virginia mines, the harvests of eight-
een powerful, prosperous and happy commonwealths; and carrying
on its ascending lines back to St. Paul and Bismark the fruits
of the Northern and Eastern looms; the silks, hats, gloves, laces
and gewgaws of the old worlds metropolis of taste and fashion
and huge hogsheads and barrels of sugar and molasses of Louisiana.
With such a 'tout ensemble' he would have a picture lovelier and
grander than the scenery that greeted the admiring gaze of the
inspired Hebrew Prophet and Law Giver, when he ascended from the
plains of Moab to the top of mount Pisgah, to see the beautiful
land that was promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and die.

This was the scene, with the railroads and steamboats left out,
whose genial climate, generous soil and lovely features, attracted
with its miraculous beauty, the roving Carolina home seekers of
1804-'5-'6, appealing to them with restless eloquence to abandon
their restless, roaming methods of life and settle down to per-
manent home building, this was the lovely land in which those
bold adventurers from the Carolinas; the Kirklands, Westons,
Hauseys, Brashiers, Chapmans, Hays, Knightons, Ingrahams, Griffiths,
Crofts, Gayles, Edwards, Overtons, Packers, Whites, Clarks,
Burnetts, Bradfords and Rheams founded their seats and raised
their home altars and settled down to permanent home building.

I know there are doubting Thomases, who will question the fidelity
of such a lovely panorama in the heart of a "decaying community"
like East Feliciana has been erroneously styled.  But they can
see for themselves all the materials for just such a picture in
traversing andy fair day the 'thirty-five thousand' acres of the
second ward, of which "tis true, 'tis pity 'tis true" there are
'twenty-seven thousand' acres, of forest and field, lying, today,
waste, idle and unproductive.  Because when the war of the sections
closed, the bones of the former propietors and their sons lay
bleaching on the battle fields, and the emancipated race, left
to shift for themselves, without the fostering care of "old Massa"
and his gallant sons, migrated to the sugar fields.

In candor and in simple justice I will add to correct the impression
which is made by the fact of such an immense body of uncultivated
land that there is some chronic incurable cause for it, that the
decay and desolation which seems to hover like a black pall over
so many seats of former wealth and prosperity is more 'apparent'
than 'real', which is clearly demonstrated by the achievements of
a few German farmers, who, a few years ago, bought, at a very low
figure, some of the abandoned lands, and have already restored them
to their pristine vigor and fertility and have harvested from
the present years crop a little more than 500 lbs. of lint cotton,
and over 50 barrels of corn to the acre.  In further demonstration
it may be added that these German farmers have paid with the
generous products of the renovated soil, the purchase price of their
possessions, they have protected their holdings with good strong
fences, under which they have constructed comfortable dwellings,
barns, stables and out-houses, gardens and orchards, and are surr-
ounded by fat horses and mules, and fat cattle and hogs.  And
while doing all this they have erected a commodious German Methodist
Church, which likewise serves as a school house, for the flaxen
haired, blue eyed little Teutons.

Will the toiling, overburdened, ill requitted tillers of the worn
out fields of the Carolinas still turn a deaf ear to the urgent
appeals of the children of their children, to come and help restore
the homes which their children founded in 1804-'5-'6?  Will the heavily
handicapped and mortaged farmers of the West still hestitate to
abandon the inclement climate which shortens life and impairs all
its brief pleasures, to bring his money and labor to a climate in
which the Orange tree was once an indigenous growth, and ripened its
fruit in the open air just as any other orchard tree - to a climate
and soil, where there is fertile land for a multitiude of workers at
prices ranging from $ 1.50 to $ 10 per acre?  Before closing this long
sketch of one eighth of East Feliciana, I desire to say a few words
descriptive of the movements and methods of the early pioneers.

GENERAL REMARKS

The pioneer days of the second ward - the days of hand looms, spinning
wheels and scooter plows with wooden shovel boards, developed some
rare and estimable characters.  Among the first to come and the last
to leave was old "Uncle Daniel Cleveland," a lineal descendant of
Oliver Cromwell, the Great Protector.  He laid down a constable's staff
in South Carolina to found a new home to which he brought all his
household effects, farming and implements and kitchen utensils, stored
carefully in a tobacco hogshead.  In his new home he lived and raised
a numerous and powerful family which mulitplied and prospered exceed-
ingly, and in which, after seventy years of useful, virtuous and
happy life, he died.  Old Uncle Daniel was moreover a model Democrat
of the "Old Hickory" type, who never kicked nor scratched a ticket
and in his later days, had a word of forgiveness for all his enemies-
except "the silk stockinged, ruffle-shirted whigs," of which this
writer was one.

The religious movement developed early.  The first house of worship
was built in the centre of the neighborhood in which the Bradfords,
Rheams, Clarkes and Tubbervilles settled.  It was built of logs near
Redwood creek and was probably served by those two admirable types
of Wesley's itinerants, Rev. David Pipes, of the 5th Ward of East
Feliciana, and Rev. Barnabas Pipkin, of St. Helena.

Later, after Olive Branch Meeting House and Camp Grounds were founded,
the Rev. Isaac Wall, another earnest and marked type of Wesley's
itinerants, came to garner in the harvest fields.

When civilization came into the primitive forests and cane brakes,
with luxury in its train, the early pioneers built them saw mills
along the Comite and Redwood and registered an edict of banish-
ment against the old log house, with its rough puncheon floor.  The
first progressive step towards the luxury of civilized architecture
in the ward was taken by Mr. Joseph Kirkland, who had come into the
wilderness as early as 1802, commissioned, perhaps, like the two
spies of Joshua, " to view the land of Canaan," and who having reported
back to the South Carolina Procarators that it was a good land for
them to come to and bring their wives, their little ones and their
cattle, to build a home and divide an inheritance; remained and
commenced the work of development, a year or two in advance of the
arrival of the main column of immigrants.  Mr. Kirkland having access
to no better lumber supply, commenced at a very early day with
cross cut saw and whip saw to manufacture the material for the first
frame building ever erected in ward number two.  That venerable
pile of hand manufactured lumber has a history coeval with the
progress of civilization in the ward.  It is not only the most durable,
best constructed, but the cheapest pile of lumber ever modeled.
Tradition laughingly describes the closing scenes in the construction
of this renowned old edifice.  Mr. Joe Kirkland, a gentleman of lavish
and hospitable tastes, sent couriers into all the neighborhood as his
splendid mansion approached completion to invite the neighbors to
a house-warming frolic on a stated day.

When the guests, attired in all the primitive finery of the cane
brakes, ascended to the second story, with the fiddles and filled
the spacious corridors and rooms with mirth, music and dancing, the
architects, painters, plasterers and glaziers, all creditors of the
hospitable giver of the feast, stood around dressed in their homely
every day working garb, quite unconsidered and neglected by the
fine birds up-stairs.  In this unpleasant predicament the thrifty
ancestor of the Kirklands spied his hungry creditors and commiser-
ating the undeserved neglect which had left them out of the pro-
gramme of amusements, considerately invited them into a small room
in the basement and proposed as a pastime a game of "Old Sledge"
or "Draw."  The same gossiping tradition goes on to say that Mr.
Kirkland devoted all that night, in the little basement room, to
hospitably administering to the amusement of his little band of
mechanic friends, and that the next morning their liens had been
miraculously extinguished by amicable process known to the law as
"confusion" and very early next morning the late lien creditors
were out canvassing the parting guests for a new job.

The liens being thus extinguished, the title to the house passed,
soon afterwards, clear of incumbrance, to Gen. E.W. Ripley, the
renowned hero of Bridgewater battle and the first commander of this
military department after Chalmette.  At the death of Gen. Ripley,
the fine proplerty of which I have been writing, which stands in
perfect repair to-day two hundred yards north of the line of rail-
road from Clinton to Ethel, became the property by purchase of the
late B.M.G. Brown, a native of Darlington District, South Carolina,
for many years the honored and trusted sheriff of East Feliciana.
At Mr. Brown's death Mr. C.C. Brown and his co-heirs became the
owners.

In conclusion let me emphasize the fact that Nature has so equitably
distributed her choice of gifts as to endow nearly every quarter
section of these abandoned lands with winter pasturage and shelter
of evergreen canes, shading a sufficient water supply for cattle.
And futhermore there is scarcely a quarter section that has not its
valley affording a few acres of land capable of producing a bale
of cotton to the acre without fertilizers.  Hoping my picture will
attract capital and labor from harsher climes and less productive
soil, I am, yours truly,
H. SKIPWITH.

Note.-- Since the above sketch was closed, ready to hand to the
publisher, Mr. A.J. Hawsey, grandson of the hardy old pioneer,
Zadock Hawsey, informs me that he fenced in last winter a piece of
abandoned land in his vicinity and has this year, with one hand
working thirty acres on shares, harvested 200 barrels of corn and
twenty-three bales of cotton !  These figures incontestibly demon-
strate that farming on the abandoned lands of Ward No. 2 Does Pay.
H. SKIPWITH.