Doughty, Richard

1815 - 1905
Submitted by: Joe Doughty, Great, Great, Grandson of Richard Doughty

Richard Doughty, the second child of Reuben Doughty and Mary Reed (and the grandson of Levi
Doughty), was born August 8, 1815, in East Feliciana Parish, near Felixville, Louisiana. In the early 1830's Richard and his brother Benajah moved to Catahoula Parish with several other families from East Feliciana Parish.

According to family tradition, in 1838, Richard led a mule on which his bride, Charlotte West, rode holding their first child as he moved to an area now located inside the cutoff of Black River Lake,
now called Paraham's Bend. The only possessions they carried with them were a grubbing hoe, a rifle, and the clothes on their backs. The migration may also have been influenced by the fact that a sister of Richard's wife had married an Alexander and the Alexander's had moved to the area of what is now LaSalle Parish.

Richard and his first wife Charlotte, reportedly had 13 children, but not all of them are known--for some unexplained reason, Richard's family did not show up in the critical 1850 Census of Concordia Parish, although they are listed in the Concordia census of 1840, and in the 1860 Census Richard is also on the list of Whig voter in the Presidential Election of 1840 in Catahoula Parish.

Several of Richard and Charlotte's children died as infants or at a young age. They were buried near the Black River and later floods washed the graves into the river and they are lost forever. Richard and Charlotte's children included W. T., Mary Ann, Martha, Reuben, James, Archibald, Jason, Doctor, Samuel, and Major. Three other children died at birth.

The father of the West girls, "Grampa" West lived with Richard and Charlotte during the Civil War. Jason, son of Richard and Charlotte, told his daughter that he remembered riding horseback behind Grandpa West as a young boy living on Black River. Grandpa West carried the biggest knife young Jason had ever seen.

Three of the older sons of Richard and Charlotte are reported to have died of pneumonia while serving in the Civil War. The first wife, Charlotte died not long after the birth of their last child, Major, on the 19th of October, 1861. Her body was brought out of the Black River area by boat and she was buried in Glen Hill Cemetery, up on the hill behind Oak Grove Baptist Church, in Rinehart, Louisiana. I have found her grave there, and all that was left was a sandstone rock tombstone with writings chiseled in the stone. The writings were not readable but we took a piece of white paper and covered the front of the stone. We then rubbed over the paper with a large black wax color crayon. Everything was colored black except the indentions where the writings were. I could make out the words Charlotte West and the date 1861. Other descendants of Richard are buried there but all of the graves are now unmarked. There are several sunken in places and when you stand in the middle around the graves you think back to what it was like in the 1860's.

Richard married his 2nd wife, Miriam Wilbanks on May 4, 1865. He had met Miriam on one of the many moves by residents living on the banks of the Black River escaping the annual floods. Richard had come out to the foothills of what is now Manifest- Rinehart area. About 1866, when Jason was 14, Richard moved the family off Black River permanently, to the Manifest area. Richard and Miriam had nine children and their first child, Charley, was born on July 8, 1866. Other children born to Richard and Miriam included Edward, Abigail, Dolly, Tullie, Ella, Della, Ada, and Baby Doughty, who died at birth.

Miriam died in 1890, and was buried at the homestead at Little Creek, in LaSalle Parish. Her grave is now unmarked and cannot be located. Richard had two wives and twenty-two children. His descendants cover the parishes of Catahoula and LaSalle by virtue of many of them producing many children and by the good fortune of long-life. Richard "broke up housekeeping" when Miriam died. Of the minor children when she died, Tullie married to Ike Valentine, raised her younger sister, Della. Ada moved in with Edward when Edward and his wife, Rebecca Jones, moved into Richard's old homeplace. Richard lived mostly with his son, Jason. He rode regularly on horseback to visit his children in the area. In the Spring in which he died at age 90, he had ridden from the Manifest area to Tullos to visit his son Major.

Richard is buried at Chalk Hills Cemetery in the Little Creek Community in LaSalle Parish. Richard owned a good bit of land around Rinehart near the Billy Hawkins place. Each of the older children received 40 acres in the settlement of the estate, and when you have as many children as Richard, that is a lot of land!