East Feliciana Parish
LAGenWeb
In my sketch of the pioneers of the Fifth Ward
of East Feliciana, which, with a similar sketch of the other seven wards of the
parish is now in the hand of the publishers nearly ready for publication in book
form, but a short incidental glance of the town of Canton was given. This
notable omission has elicited some sharp, unfavorable, and I believe merited
criticism.
In atonement for an omission which assumes the complexion of
intentional neglect and injustice to a widely known and renowned seat of
educational, social and religious development, my only apology is that Clinton
is the creation of circumstances in A. D. 1824; whereas, the pioneers who made
the first clearings within the border lines which now mark the boundaries of the
Fifth Ward, came into the ward in 1795, 1803-4-5 and 6.
As a full
compensation for my omission I offer to His Honor, the Mayor, and town council
of Clinton, the followingreliable history of the origin and progress of their
town, which is also intended as a supplement to the sketch of "The Pioneers of
the Fifth Ward."
The oldest seat of population, commerce and education
in East Feliciana is undoubtedly the town of Jackson, which in its palmiest of
metropolitan days was the seat of justice of a County bounded on the east by the
Perdido river, forty miles east of Mobile Bay; on the north by the line of
demarkation established during General Washington's administration by American
and Spanish commissioners; on the south by the sea coast, and on the west by the
Mississippi river. The biggest county ever laid out since the days of the
original thirteen states, and its magnitude existed at a day before steamboats,
railroads, telegraphs and telephones. But, alas ! as not many years after the
creation of the big "County of Feliciana," with Jackson as its metropolis,
Alabama budded from a territorial hoyden into a full grown State and wanted an
outlet to the sea, that part of the big county which included Mobile city and
bay was added to the dowry of the new comer into the family of states; and so,
likewise, when the Territory of Mississippi applied for admission as a State,
and all the old county of Feliciana which lay eastward of the Pearl river
between Mobile and Pascagoula, Biloxi, Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis were all
wrested out of the county of Feliciana to give our neighbors access to the sea
when she was admitted into statehood; and thus crumbled away the vast territory
under the county jurisdiction of which our ancient and venerable neighbor,
Jackson, was the metropolis.
Between 1813 and 1824 the big county was
further dismembered by the creation of the parishes of St. Tammany, Washington,
St. Helena and Livingston, thus reducing the county to the small territory on
which the parishes of East and West Feliciana are now seated, and in 1824 the
state government, impelled by complaints that the floods and quick sands of
Thompsons creek established a barrier to the speedy and cheap course of justice;
created the Parishes of East and West Feliciana, with instructions to the Police
Jury of the Eastern Parish to establish its seat of justice in the centre of the
parish. The commissioners ascertained by actual survey the centre, in the middle
of an old worn out field about two and a half miles west of Clinton, the old
field being entirely destitute of forest or fountain. The commissioners selected
the site for the parish seat on which Clinton now stands, because it was well
watered by perennial springs and by Pretty creek, and wooded by dense forests of
pine and hard woods all around it.
Two western mechanics and
speculators, John Bostwick and George Sebor, were the actual, not mythical
founders of Clinton after it was selected as the seat of justice for the parish.
They bought most of the land now within the corporate limits — they built a
small temporary courthouse, jail, and hotel, and laid out the streets and
squares of a large city in the prospective.
The writer came into Clinton
in 1825 from where Wilson now stands by narrow bridle paths, all through dense
cane thickets, extending after fording Pretty creek to the top of the hill on
which the livery stable now stands. Around the courthouse square there were two
frame houses used as country stores and saloons, and between Carow's corner and
Mr. Henry Hartner's dwelling, there stood in 1825, the dwelling of the original
proprietor (Louis Yarborough) and his family. The fertile and extensive back
country east of Clinton soon attracted mercantile enterprise and merchants
reaped golden harvests; the disputes between landed proprietors, questions of
boundary and the right of way, and the more vigorous collection of debts soon
brought into the Forensic arena just opened a large body of intellectual
recruits from the law schools all over the Union; and old Tully Robinson (the
father of the East Feliciana bar), who had been sent out early in the century by
President Jefferson as U. S. District Attorney for the Territory of Orleans, and
who, after the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana, clung to the
county of Feliciana, as the last appanage of his official realm and made his
home at the new seat of justice, found himself bearded by a guild of lawyers his
equals in all the wire drawn arts of professional skill, though the old Settler
still held all his rivals at bay in the brilliant science of rhetorical display.
Among the aspiring spirits who first flocked to Clinton in search of
professional laurels where Lafayette Saunders, who held the parish judgeship and
state senatorship, and would have been, had he lived until March 4th, 1849, a
member of General Taylor's first cabinet; — Thomas L. Andrews, — John R.
Bullard, James H. Muse, — Edwin T. Merrick (afterwards Chief Justice of
Louisiana) —Thornton Lawson (afterwards District Judge) and R. W. Short, the two
last having engaged in a personal controversy which was ended in a duel at
Kellertown in which Short met his death at the first fire. Take these all in all
the first generation of the East Feliciana bar stood unrivalled in Louisiana, as
able, adroit and eloquent advocates, and the second generation of lawyers held
up bravely the brilliant record of the first. Among the leading spirits of the
second generation were such masters of the art of rhetorical fire works as the
late Colonel Preston Pond, the late Judge John McVea and the late Judge Charles
McVea, Judge J. G. Kilbourne and Judge W. F. Kernan, all graduates of the old
college of Louisiana at Jackson, or of old "Centenary."
With such a
brilliant Society of Intellectual Athletes it is no wonder that churches and
schools were the first wants of a community fast growing in refinement and
numbers. And with the co-operation of Clinton's old time merchants Clinton grew
and prospered amazingly. The religious societies, spying a new, populous and
unredeemed field of effort, soon added their mite to the moral leverage which
was leavening the precincts of the new court house; churches went up on every
spare lot, and "old Grocery Row," a second edition of "Natchez Under The Hill,"
went down. And now, Clinton of to day has a Bar, though not so numerous, is
probably as gifted as its brilliant ante types of the first and second
generations, and to-day the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians
and Roman Catholics (I name them in the order of their coming) have each a
handsome, roomy and commodious house of worship. And in proof that educational
development is keeping even step with religious development, there are in
Clinton to-day a prosperous and growing boys' school in which youths are
thoroughly grounded in all the walks of knowledge leading to a complete
collegiate course of study, — and an institute for girls, with more than a
hundred pupils, who are being as thoroughly educated in all the ornamental and
useful branches of knowledge, as they could be in better endowed, and more
pretentious seats of education.
In a closing paragraph I desire to
submit a few additional remarks essential to round off a faithful Sketch of the
Town of Clinton.
East and south of Clinton, there are at least 100,000
acres of cleared fields and forests now idle, waste and unproductive for want of
a sufficient labor supply. All this area forms a back country naturally
tributary to Clinton commerce, in which Clinton has no competitors; when all
these broad and fertile acres are stimulated to their highest productive
capacity by intelligent farming and abundant labor and capital, Clinton will
become the "entrepot" for a fifty thousand bale crop, which will surely attract
mercantile and manufacturing capital and enterprise. The distribution of the
contents of the Western granaries and smoke houses to a laboring population
sufficient to make fifteen thousand bales, will add enormously to our commercial
ventures.
A centre for the distribution of such large quantities of raw
material will, as surely as the Pole attracts the needle, attract capital to
start a cotton seed oil mill, a compress, and a first-class cotton factory, for
Clinton will then furnish water fuel and raw material to run machinery cheap and
keep machinery well fed all the year round.
When commerce swells, when
agriculture multiplies, when the town is alive with steam whistles and the
ceaseless run of busy lucrative machinery, with a railroad equal to all its
needs, the dream of its founders and the hopes of this writer will have been
fulfilled.
H. SKIPWITH.
Since the foregoing appeared in "The Southern Watchman"' of
December 19th, 1890, an old neighbor and friend who is like myself on the shady
side of seventy, has pointed out a number of notable omissions.
First.
In my sketch of the educational advantages of Clinton it was an important, and
unpardonable omission not to mention the Finishing school for young ladies' of
that renowned and beloved educator Mrs. Sallie Munday, which was founded as an
Academy many years ago by the mother of Admiral Gherarde, and which under Mrs.
Munday's able superintendency has grown in popularity and usefulness, until, its
capacity is heavily taxed to give proper attention to the large number of
boarders and day scholars applying for admission.
Second. The names of
many of the lawyers who graced the early Clinton bar, and who have since made
famous names and National reputations were omitted in my incomplete and hasty
enumeration of the leading spirits of the early Clinton bar.
Among those
omitted were General E. W. Ripley, who after having perfected the system of
defences for the Louisiana coasts, retired from the army, with a bullet through
his neck received at the famous and bloody battle of Bridgewater; and resumed
the practice of his profession (the law), and in partnership with Charles M.
Conrad afterwards Senator and Cabinet Minister, made Clinton his field of
professional effort. There too, old James Turner, renowned for his adroit
methods of saving criminals from deserved punishment, and A. D. M. Haralson, the
States brilliant prosecuting officer, used to come out to Clinton to shiver
lances with such expert fencers as U. S. Senator Solomon W. Downes, Joseph E.
Johnson and Isaac Johnson, afterwards Governor and District Judge. In the midst
of this throng of bright, aspiring intellects, might be seen the burly towering
form of James M. Bradford, who started the first newspaper West of the
Alleghanys at the "Falls of the Ohio," the voice of Mr. Bradford, when pleading
a case was as loud as the voice of Mahomet's, uncle in the midst of the battles
around Mecca; from this distinguishing characteristic he obtained the nickname
of "Bull Bradford."
Third. Reuben Washington Short, adopted son of Lund
Washington, was not killed at Kellertown, as was stated in the original sketch;
he only lost the plated ruffles on his shirt bosom instead of his life.
Fourth. James Holmes; who married a daughter of the grand old Pioneer Baptist
Missionary, Ezra Courtney; was part owner with Bostwick of the site of Clinton,
and George Sebor was their architect and constructor.
Fifth. Thomas W.
Scott, a farmer, was appointed by Governor Thomas Boiling Robertson, the first
Parish Judge, instead of Sheriff as he petitioned to be, always upright, modest
and conscientous, he had written, and mailed a letter of declination, to the
governor, but his friends overruled him and influenced him to accept an office,
which was never more satisfactory filled, than it was by the honest unpretending
farmer.
Sixth. I omitted to include in my museum of "antiques" the small
brick building in the Court house square, which is now the office of the Mayor
of Clinton, but which, until the new Court house was finished in 1838, served as
the office of the Parish Judge and Clerk.
H. SKIPWITH.
Extracted 09 Aug 2019 by Norma Hass from East Feliciana, Louisiana by Henry Skipwith, published in 1892.
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