East Feliciana Parish
LAGenWeb
Notwithstanding, Mr. Editor, that this sixth sub-division of East
Feliciana has been sneeringly nick-named "the Dark Corner," I find on closer
scrutiny that its annals are as full of stirring incidents, its settlement as
early, its progress as fast and its social development as healthy and steady as
in any of the other wards, and a glance at its admirable distribution of forest
and stream, of meadows and valleys and picturesque building sites, on the crown
of its lofty ranges of forest clad hills, will convince the home seekers that I
am sketching one of the choicest haunts of civilized man; a land conspicuously
adapted to the uses of agricultural and pastoral endeavor.
The bold and
turbulent Amite, with its wealth of broad and fertile bottoms, and its miles of
dense primeval forests, is the ward's eastern border, Sandy Creek, a smaller
stream of living waters, presenting on a smaller scale the same features as are
found along the Amite, is the western boundary of the ward. The same general
features likewise attach to the courses of its two diagonal feeders, namely
Hunter's Branch, which rises a little north of the centre and flows south-west
into Sandy Creek, and Bluff Creek which also rises north of the centre and
discharges south-east in the Amite river. It is almost needless to add that the
flocks and herds of the Sixth Ward never suffer for water, and the meadows
bordering all these streams in large broad bodies of fertile land hold out a
promise of rich remuneration to agricultural and pastoral endeavor. It goes,
too, almost without saying, that the bold headlands hemming in these streams
abound in picturesque sites, calling eloquently to roaming pilgrims to stop and
build and beautify a home.
It has already been asserted in these
sketches that there were two tidal waves, which floated into these wilds; two
streams of immigrating humanity; some by single spies, some by families, and
some by whole neighborhoods.
The first wave was set in motion by the
treaty with Spain in 1795, which defined the 31st parallel of north latitude as
the boundary between Spain's provinces of Florida and the United States, and
also guaranteed to American citizens, for three years, the right of deposit. On
this first wave came into the Sixth Ward, to battle with the bears, panthers and
wolves for possession and a peaceful home, John Morgan and Morgan Morgan, who
having emigrated from Virginia to the wilds of Kentucky with their relative
Daniel Boone, soon after the revolutionary war, turned their migratory longing
southward in 1796, and in company with the Vardells and Thackers, founded their
homes in the Sixth in the broad and fertile Amite valley. Impelled by the same
wave, though not quite so early, but before the close of the century, came the
Chaneys from South Carolina, the Phelps from Georgia, and John Hobgood from
Virginia. These early comers founded seats along the valleys of Bluff Creek,
except Capt. James Hobgood, whose early life was so eventful and full of
interesting incidents, as to suggest a separate biographical paragraph. James
Hobgood was a Virginia lad during the Revolution, with strong longings to go and
fight for Washington and freedom, but being too young was denied enlistment.
After the war closed, the restless, aspiring lad commenced his migrations
southward, through the Carolinas, stopping in South Carolina long enough to
fascinate a blue-eyed daughter of the Barfields, who came with him to found a
home on the plantation in the Sixth Ward, now owned and cultivated by Mr. Porter
Rowley. The ancestor of the Hobgoods was not only one of the earliest comers,
but was for many years the most conspicuous figure of the early society of the
Sixth Ward, especially at "House Raisings" and "Log Rollings" and all other
occasions at which physical strength always won the crown of admiration. He was
a long armed, heavily muscled athlete, and as a jumper, wrestler and fighter had
no equal. His son, Mr. W. B. Hobgood, relates with pardonable pride the feats of
prowess of his gigantic ancestor, but he had one weakness, for which Billy,
after the lapse of over half a century, has not been able fully to forgive him.
When the oats were ready for the harvest the long armed old giant would shoulder
his scythe and buckle on his canteen full of whiskey, and his son Billy was
summoned to carry a fresh pail of water, and when the day's work was done the
canteen was always empty, but Billy had been rigidly confined to the contents of
the pail of water, and to this day Billy protests that he was the victim of a
most unfair distribution of the fluids.
Within a year or two of those
already mentioned came from Georgia, the Cobbs, Higginbothams, Carrolls and
Blounts, and the Barfields from South Carolina, who founded their seats along
the Amite river. While these eastern colonists were developing their scattered
communities, settlements were being made on the western border, along the valley
of Sandy Creek, by the Hatchers, Storys, McMurrays and Gideon White.
A
little later, say about six years, the earliest of that large column of
immigration which was set in motion by Mr. Jefferson's proclamation of 1803,
announcing the purchase of Louisiana, came B. M. G. Brown, senior, who brought
his wife, his little ones, and his slaves, and his chattels, in 1804, from
Darlington District, South Carolina, to found a new home on the banks of
Hunter's Branch, in the Sixth Ward, near the line of the Baton Rouge road, where
he reared and equipped his four sons, Major Reddin Brown, B. M. G. Brown, jr.,
Elly Brown and Eli Brown, for active, useful and honorable service in the van of
civilization, around their southern homes.
Nearly contemporaneons with
the Browns, the society of the ward was recruited by the Lees, Reddins,
Carrolls, and by the mother of Sothey Hayes, and the late Sheriff Jno. W. Hayes,
who came, a brave widow from South Carolina, to found a new home for her sons in
the wilds of the Sixth Ward.
There were two of the early workers
prominent in shaping the Sixth Ward society, not yet mentioned. The earlier
comer of the two was Ezra Courtney, who came in 1802, in company with his young
wife from Darlington District, South Carolina, by flat boat to Cole's Creek and
Bayou Pierre to engage in the work of organizing the scattered, unconnected
members of his church. Feeling his way down South he established headquarters a
stone throw north of the line of demarkation, at the bridge over Beaver Creek
where the Liberty and Jackson road crosses. While there he contributed largely
in founding and organizing the powerful Baptist congregation at Ebenezer Church,
and there, too, under shade of a big oak, he established a Gretna Green for the
celebration of marriage rites which were forbidden south of the line to any but
Roman Catholic priests.
After the expulsion of the Spaniards in 1810,
the Rev. Mr. Courtney founded his home, in 1812, on the southern border of the
Sixth Ward, where he went to work earnestly and effectively to his new field of
effort, as is attested by the rapid growth and consolidation of powerful Baptist
communities with houses of worship at "Hole in the Water," "Bluff Creek" and
"Hephzibah," the two first being in the Sixth, the last in the Eighth Ward.
Notwithstanding Mr. Courtney was so effective in founding the Baptists in
the Southern border, the rival sect of the Methodists still held the Northern
border for the Methodist faith, which had a fiery and zealous defender in the
person of the Rev. Jno. B. Higginbotham. Whether good old Uncle Johnnie was a
regularly ordained Methodist minister I am not informed, but he was a power
after the order of Wesley's famous itinerants, and his fluent tongue supported
by the Carrolls, Cobbs, John George and Jones Booker, rallied many recruits to
the Methodist faith, and when Gilead church was rolled on wheels out of the
Eighth Ward into the Sixth, old Uncle Johnny and his co-religionists slept much
more securely behind the new bulwarks of their faith.
Before closing my
narrative of the religious movement in the Sixth Ward it would be inaccurate not
to mention that the religious bodies in the ward were first assembled under a
common standard by the famous Lorenzo Dow, who, after a year's notice sent in
advance from Alabama, preached on the hill where Captain Lewis McManus now
resides, their first sermon to the assembled hermits of the adjacent canebrakes,
after which the famous preacher sought the repose of a log cabin on a high
bluff, on Mill Creek just before it loses itself in the jungles of the Amite
river swamp, the same on which Mr. Robert Perkins now resides, there to give
back to his great taskmaster the missionary staff he had faithfully borne
through many lands, and ask his final discharge, and there the bones of the
renowned preacher now await the Resurrection. It is a notable instance of
neglect and ingratitude, that the grave of the greatest of Wesley's itinerants
should be left without even a Head Board.
Recurring to the present home
of Mr. Porter Rowley, as a famous nursery of two leading Sixth Ward families,
namely the Hobgoods and Collins, after the stalwart ancestor of the Hobgoods had
moved his home into the Eighth Ward, just on the margin of the Amite bottoms,
old Captain Jack Collins, whose mother and father emigrated from Richland
District, S. C., with a large number of slaves and herds, to build a home in
these Southern wilds, when the century and their son John were just two years
old, established in the vacated Hobgood home the ancestral seat of that family.
The coming of Captain Jack Collins into his Sixth Ward home was much delayed by
the murder of his father, who was killed en route by a drunken Creek Indian,
after which his mother fixed her abode in Amite County, Miss., where she reared
and educated her son John, who completed the voyage his father commenced in 1802
by founding a home and rearing a family near the Amite river in the Sixth Ward.
A cursory glance at the vast areas of abandoned fields of this ward
would suggest unfavorable conclusions regarding its soil, but there are plenty
of once abandoned fields within its borders which have been restored by good
farming to their original fertility, and plenty of demonstrations that it pays
to rescue the soil from the debilitating influences of slovenly, ante bellum
methods, and there are, moreover, plenty of advanced Sixth Ward farmers who have
grown strong and rich while feeding high their old abandoned fields. Of the
25,000 uncultivated acres of this ward, which are held at prices varying from
$3.00 to $10.00, every acre can easily be brought back to a pitch of
productiveness which will yield a bale of cotton to the acre.
The
dwellers in the ward point gloomily to the latent forces which want of laborers
leaves idle and asleep, and they promise cordial welcome and all the amenities
of generous hospitality to all agricultural recruits who will help with capital
and labor to restore their waste and bald places.
That the old Sixth
Ward is advancing with rapid strides to a better farming system is evidenced by
the existence of a Farmers' Union, at Gilead, which shapes intelligently and
stimulates a new school of agricultural effort. With its three Farmers' Unions,
its three churches, its school-houses wherever there are children to be
educated, and claiming the credit of having contributed to the body politic two
good sheriffs and two live representatives, the Sixth presents a record of
progress so creditable as to repel with scorn the insinuation of being "the dark
corner." On the contrary they point proudly to their achievements in the march
of civilization, and deny that there is in all the haunts of civilized man,
cheaper, better protected and more productive homes than there are to be found
in the Sixth Ward.
Hoping the recruits so much needed will come ere
long.
I remain, yours, etc.,
H. SKIPWITH.
Extracted 09 Aug 2019 by Norma Hass from East Feliciana, Louisiana by Henry Skipwith, published in 1892.
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