1925 Biography - Joseph A. Provost

Hon. Joseph A. Provost. The high regard paid to Joseph A. Provost of Jeanerette, has been due to a life of unusual achievement in material affairs, and a record most honorable in his public relations, he was one of the youngest soldiers of the Confederacy from Louisiana, and right after the close of the war he started life with absolutely nothing, though a member of one of the oldest families in the southern part of the state. Through his labor and good management, he has acquired extensive interests as a sugar planter and lumber manufacturer, and for many years has operated a modern sugar refinery on his Plantation. This plantation, known as the Right Way Plantation, comprises the estate formerly owned by Mr. Provost's great-grandfather, and grandfather. The land has been continuously in the possession of the family for one and a quarter centuries, the deed having been patented about the time Louisiana was transferred from France to the United States Government.

Joseph A. Provost was born in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, June 6, 1847. The Provosts were Massachusetts Colonial settlers. The grandfather of Joseph A. Provost, Ursin Provost, who was born in St. Mary Parish in 1790, and for many years was a plantation superintendent there, finally moving to the home of his grandson at Jeanerette, where he died in 1874. His wife was Julia (Prevost) Etie, who died near Jeanerette in 1856. Ursin Provost, Jr., who was born in Louisiana in 1818, was reared in St. Mary Parish, was well educated, and for a number of years was employed as a bookkeeper by Martial Sorrell, a prominent and wealthy citizen. Later he engaged in fanning at Jeanerette, where he died in 1850, when only thirty-three years of age. He was a democrat. His first wife was Celestine Penn, daughter of Henry Penn and a descendant of the William Penn family. The three children born to that marriage are all deceased. Ursin Provost, Jr., then married Josephine Baudin, a family name subsequently spelled Bodin. She was born in St. Mary Parish in 1822 and died at Jeanerette in 1867 of yellow fever. Joseph A. Provost is the oldest of her children. The second son, Ursin A., Jr., died of yellow fever in the same year as his mother at the age of eighteen. Mary Provost died at Jeanerette, wife of Emile Druilhet, a retired planter living near Jeanerette.

Joseph A. Provost as a boy attended private and public schools, and in 1864, when seventeen years of age, joined Company I of the Third Louisiana Cavalry, being on duty with that command in the closing months of the great war. The war over, he returned to Jeanerette, worked on his father's plantation, and by private study and reading acquired the equivalent of a good education. Inheriting part of his father's plantation, he has greatly added to his inheritance, and now owns 1,1150 acres, improved with a very fine residence, this land adjoining Jeanerette on the east, four acres of the plantation being within the limits of Jeanerette. His plantation is on the east side of Bayou Teche. He also has another plantation of 694 acres a mile north of Jeanerette.

For twenty-eight years, Mr. Provost has been president of the Planters Lumber Company, manufacturers and dealers in lumber, one of the leading concerns in this section of the state. For twenty years he was vice president of the Bank of Jeanerette, and was a director in the First National Bank of that city.

In politics he has maintained an independent attitude. Mr. Provost was one of the strong and resourceful and generally popular men in his parish in reconstruction times. For two years he was justice of the peace, being the only white man to hold a political office in the parish at that the. For fourteen years he was a parish commissioner, being president of the board seven years at that the. He was the second mayor of Jeanerette, and once he filled two terms of four years. The city was incorporated in 1878. From 1884 to 1892 Mr. Provost represented Iberia Parish in the Louisiana House of Representatives, being the first democrat chosen by the parish after the war. Under appointment from Governor Nichols he served as levee commissioner of the Mississippi River sixteen years. From 1904 to 1912 he was again a member of the Legislature, this the in the State Senate, representing the Thirteenth District, comprising the parishes of Lafayette, St. Martin, and Iberia. He refused the nomination for another term.

Mr. Provost is a member of the Catholic Church, is a fourth degree Knight of Columbus, with membership in Council No. 1425, and belongs to Iberia Lodge No. 554, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. In 1900 he and his wife made an extended tour abroad, visiting France, England, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany.

Mr. Provost married November 26, 1868, when he was twenty-one years of age, Miss Emily Druilhet. She was born in St. James Parish in 1847 and died July 26, 1869, within a year after her marriage. On February 29, 1872, at Jeanerette Mr. Provost married Miss Eleanor Lyon. She was born in Iberia Parish, and is also deceased. She was the mother of seven children: Emily, who died at the age of two years; Hortense L., wife of Fernand P. Gonsoulin, an employe of the Planters Lumber Company, with home at Jeanerette; Antoinette Julia, wife of Frederick J. Druilhet, present mayor of Jeanerette; Rita Mary, wife of Roland H. Menville, who for twenty years has been with the Planters Lumber Company and is manager of its saw mills; Joseph A. Jr., who died at the age of eight years; Albert Sidney, of Jeanerette, and Horatio, who died when eight months old. Mr. Provost on May 30, i900, married Miss Juliet Rebecca Hill, a native of Marion County, Kentucky.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, pages 324-325.