Morehouse Parish
The Parish of Morehouse was created in 1844 by
legislative act from parts of Ouachita and Carroll Parishes. The parish
seat was selected as a road intersection. These roads are today called
Washington and Madison. They are two of the four roads that surround the
courthouse in Bastrop. The city of Bastrop was established in 1852.
Morehouse Parish was originally part of Ouachita country
which was roughly defined by the area between the Red and Mississippi rivers
north to the Missouri River. The name Ouachita, pronounced „Wash-i-taw, is
derived from a tribe of Native Americans which inhabited that area when it was
first explored by the French. European settlement of the area began about the
same time as the founding of New Orleans, but the massacre of settlers at
Natchez in 1729 induced the Ouachita settlers to move closer to the protection
of more established communities down river.
In 1785 Don Juan Filhoil, a Frenchman in the Spanish
military, was given command of the Ouachita and told to establish settlements in
the area, which had become Spanish territory in 1769. He reported that no sign
of the previous settlements existed.
About 1795, a letter from governor Carondelet to Filhiol
mentions a possible contractor. He is a Dutch man Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron
de Bastrop. Like the Marquis de Maison Rouge, his French properties had been
confiscated in the revolution and they had been banished from France. If he
would help populate the area he would be given a grant of over a million square
acres of land. The Baron hired a man from Kentucky named Abraham Morehouse to
encourage immigration to the Ouachita country. Settlers were promised title to
400 acres of land if they remained for three years.
About 1799, The Baron de Bastrop sells the "grant" to Col.
Abraham Morehouse before Gabriel J. Johnson a Kentucky Justice of the Peace.
Morehouse was originally from Montgomery County New York, claimed to be a
Colonel in the New York Militia, and had abandoned a wife and two young sons
there before he began speculation on land in Kentucky, Virginia and Louisiana.
In 1805, when the Territory of Orleans is divided into
counties the present-day Morehouse Parish is part of Ouachita County. In
1844, due to the population increase, Morehouse Parish is created from the
parent parish of Ouachita by an act of the Louisiana Legislature in 1844 and at
the time included within its boundary part of what is now Richland Parish.
In 1850, Settlement mostly occurred on small prairies near
navigable streams. The prairies allowed the pioneers to plant crops without
clearing the land of trees. Small communities appeared near present day Bastrop
and at Prairie Mer Rouge and Prairie Jefferson (Oak Ridge), but settlement of
the area was slow until 1850 because the validity of the BaronËs grant was
disputed by the government of the United States. Once the question of land
ownership was settled by Congress and the courts, the parish of Morehouse began
to grow more rapidly, new towns were established and businesses flourished.
Another boost in immigration to the area came with the
steamboat era. In the 1850s the first packet boats began to arrive, carrying
produce and cotton to New Orleans and delivering supplies to the new
settlements. The communities near the points of river trade grew until the Civil
War.
River traffic had a significant influence on the area's
development during these formative years. However, as railroad tracks were
constructed through the parish after 1890, the settlement patterns and growth of
the villages changed. Towns which were not on the railway were deserted while
those along the right-of-way prospered. By 1850, only two areas of the parish,
Bonne Idee and Gum Ridge, remained unpopulated. Collinston, in the area of Gum
Ridge, became a population center with the construction of the Houston, Central
Arkansas and Northern Railroad (later called the Iron Mountain Railroad) and the
New Orleans, Natchez, and Fort Scott Railroad which intersected at that site.
Bastrop which lagged behind in population grew rapidly after the construction of
a railroad nearby in 1892. In 1868, Richland Parish is organized in 1868
taking with it part of Morehouse Parish.
By 1900, Bastrop had a population of roughly eight hundred
people, followed by Mer Rouge with about five hundred. Collinston, Oak Ridge and
Bonita had approximately three hundred people each. Agricultural dependency
continued to dictate settlement of Morehouse Parish in the first half of the
twentieth century.
Morehouse Parish Neighbors
North: Ashley County, ARNortheast: Chicot County, AR
East: West Carroll Parish
South: Richland Parish
Southwest: Ouachita Parish
West: Union Parish
Northwest: Union County, AR
