Supple, Joseph

Submitted by Mike Miller

Joseph Supple one of the prominent men, of affairs in the Bayou Goula district of Iberville Parish, where he is president of two important and representative corporations, the J. Supple's Sons Planting Company and the J. Supple's Sons Mercantile Company.

Joseph Supple was born at Donaldsonville, Ascension Parish, Louisiana, December 3, 1861, and is a son of Jeremiah and Catherine (Gillick) Supple, both natives of the fair old Emerald Isle, where the former was born at Kinsale, in picturesque County Kilarney, in the year 1826, and where the former was born, in the same county, in 1830, both having passed the closing years of their lives on their fine homestead plantation at Bayou Goula, Louisiana, where the father died September 18, 1883, and the widowed mother in the year 1897.

Jeremiah Supple was a boy at the time of his parents' immigration from Ireland to Toronto, Canada, where he was reared to adult age, his youthful education having been advanced by his attending the Jesuit College in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. He became skilled as a mechanic, and in 1853 he came to Louisiana and established his residence at Donaldsonville, where he engaged in business as a contractor and builder. About two years later he removed to the city of New Orleans, where he continued in the same line of enterprise until the inception of the Civil war. He forthwith manifested his loyalty to the cause of the Confederacy by enlisting, early in 1861, for service in a Louisiana volunteer regiment of infantry, in which he gained the rank of captain, his service having continued until the close of the war. Within a short time after thus terminating his military career, Mr. Supple removed with his family to Iberville Parish and engaged in the general merchandise business at Bayou Goula, this business, founded in 1865, having been continued under the family name during the long intervening years. In 1872 Mr. Supple became actively identified also with the sugar planting industry in this parish. He purchased the Theresa Plantation and immediately changed its title to the Kinsale Plantation, in honor of his native place in Ireland. The tract which he thus obtained comprised 500 acres, and in 1879 Mr. Supple added 300 acres to his holdings, which still later were further augmented by an additional tract of 200 acres. His characteristic energy, excellent judgment and progressive policies combined to make his plantation enterprise one of broad scope and importance, and he gained precedence as one o the most successful planters and merchants of Iberville Parish, the while his sterling traits of character made him the recipient of unqualified popular confidence and respect. Mr. Supple was a staunch democrat, gave many years of service as a member of the parish school board, and held for eight years a membership on the police jury of the parish. he having been its president during four years of the period. He was affiliated with the United Confederate Veterans, and he and his wife were devoted communicants of the Catholic Church, he having served as a member of the executive committee of the Catholic Parish at Bayou Goula. Of the children the eldest is Catherine, who is the widow of Rudolph G. Comeaux, and who resides at Homer, Claiborne Parish, in which vicinity her husband had been a successful sugar planter; Richard, who died at the age of sixty-one years, was at the time a member of the firm of J. Supple, as it was then known, and was active in the directing of the large enterprise founded by his honored father, as was also his new younger brother, Thomas, deceased; Mary became the wife of John Henry Bruns, president of the Builders' Hardware Company of New Orleans, and both died in that city, she having passed away at the age of sixty-six years; Valentine died in boyhood; Joseph, immediate subject of this review, was the next in order of birth; Julia, who now resides in the City of Paris, France, is the widow of the late Thomas E. Grace, who was a leading lawyer at Plaquemine, Iberville Parish, at the time of his death; John died in infancy; a daughter, A. G., who resides in the City of New Orleans; and John William is one of the principals in the J. Supple's Sons Planting Company and the J. Supple's Sons Mercantile Company, at Bayou Goula.

After completing his studies in the public schools at Bayou Goula, Joseph Supple attended Jefferson College, in St. James Parish, and in 1882 he completed a course in the Soulé Business College in the City of New Orleans. Since that time he has continuously and actively been associated with the splendid industrial enterprise and mercantile business founded by his father, and he is president of both corporations, as previously noted in this context. The J. Supple's Sons Planting Company now owns and operates sugar plantations with an area of 4,500 acres, as well as the large and modern Catherine Sugar Refinery. As a matter of expediency in the directing of the two corporations were organized in 1897, and with an aggregate capital stock of $140,000 for the plantation company and $30,000 for the mercantile company. Joseph Supple is the executive head of each of these important and well ordered corporations, R. H. Chadwick is the vice president, and John W. Supple is secretary and treasurer. Under the existing laws of Louisiana theses companies figured as the third to be incorporated in the state.

To the original Kinsale Plantation the J. Supple's Sons Planting Company has added the Richland Plantation, of 1,200 acres, the Catherine Plantation of 500 acres, and the Ridgelands Plantation, which brings the total acreage of the company's holdings up to 4,500.

Joseph Supple, like his able and honored father, has stood exemplar of loyal and progressive citizenship, and has given unqualified allegiance to the democratic party. He was for ten years a member of the school board of Iberville Parish, and continues to take deep interest in the educational affairs of the parish. At Plaquemine he is a substantial stockholder and a director in the Iberville Bank and Trust Company, and he and his family are communicants of St. Paul's Catholic Church at Bayou Goula.

June 19, 1888, recorded the marriage of Mr. Supple to Miss Eloise Hanlon, daughter of the late Maurice and Danotilde (Boudreaux) Hanlon, of Iberville Parish, where Mr. Hanlon was a successful sugar planter. Mrs. Hanlon was graduated in the Sacred Heart College at Donaldsonville, was a woman of most gracious personality, and her death, on January 3, 1918, was deeply deplored in the community which she had graced by her gentle and kindly presence. Of the children the elder was Joseph Maurice, who was thirty-one years of age at the time of his death, November 19, 1922, he having been at the time the vice president of the two Supple corporations. He was graduated in Spring Hill College, near Mobile, Alabama, and was in the nation's military service in the World war period. He was stationed for a time at Camp Martin, New Orleans, and thence was sent to the officers' training camp at Atlanta, Georgia, where he won his commission as second lieutenant. He was preparing to take an assignment as a training officer in California at the time when the armistice brought the war to a close. Mary Eloise, the one surviving child, remains with her father and is the popular chatelaine of the attractive family home, she being a graduate of the Visitation Convent at Mobile, Alabama.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 254-255, by Henry E. Chambers. Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.