1925 Biography - James H. Trousdale

James Harvey Trousdale has been a resident of the City of Monroe for more than thirty years, since early boyhood in fact, and has been an active factor in many of the movements and enterprises which have made the city one of the industrial centers of the South. His business for the most part has been in the field of insurance, but of even greater importance has been the active part he has taken in developing the great natural gas field adjacent to the city.

Mr. Trousdale is a native of Louisiana, having been born in Morehouse Parish, February 17, 1866, a son of David Brigham Trousdale and Martha Elizabeth (Summerlin) Trousdale. His father, David B., was a native of Tennessee, who, at the age of eighteen years, left his native state and, accompanied by his widowed mother and other members of the family, came to Louisiana. The journey, in part, was made on board of a boat chartered for the trip, ending at Natchez, on the Mississippi River. From that point the family came on into Louisiana, where their new home was established in Union Parish, and where David B. Trousdale grew to manhood and became one of the leading citizens, taking active part in the development of the community, eventually serving as sheriff, of the parish. It was also in Union Parish that he met and married Martha Elizabeth Summerlin, a native of Alabama, who had come with her parents to Louisiana.

James Harvey Trousdale was ten years of age when his parents moved to Monroe. He completed his education in the public schools and, while still a young man, engaged in the insurance work, which line of endeavor was destined to become his life's profession. By close application and energy, supplemented by a natural aptitude for the work, he has built up a large and profitable business extending over a large territory surrounding Monroe.

Mr. Trousdale was one of the pioneers in the development of the great natural gas industry in Northern Louisiana. He was one of the local business men who, in 1916, brought in the first producing gas well in the Monroe field, and from that initial discovery there has since been developed here the largest natural gas field in the world. He has had part in numerous other completions, and is still active in the business. He has ever found the and opportunity to devote to public and civic movements that measure of aid consistent with good citizenship. He has served for a number of years as a member of the Ouachita Parish School Board, is an active member of Rotary, being a past president of the Monroe Rotary Club, and in fraternal circles is a Mason, a Knight of Pythias, and is a steward in the Methodist Church of Monroe.

Mr. Trousdale married Miss Jennie Belle Weaks, a daughter of Capt. James C. Weaks, who was numbered among the representative men of Louisiana. He held the rank of major in the Confederate army, and later served as United States marshal for the Western District of Louisiana. Mr. and Mrs. Trousdale have three children, George W., Emily W., and J. W.

Note: The sketch is accompanied by a portrait of the subject.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, pages 319-320.