A Brief History of the European Settlement of
        Union Parish Louisiana
            1540 – 1850


       Researched & Written 
          by
           T. D. Hudson
=====================================


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French & Spanish Control of Louisiana (1540 – 1803)
===================================================
After Hernando De Soto's exploration of the Mississippi Valley during the 1540s, we 
have little evidence of any European activity in the Ouachita River valley until the 
latter 1600s. European interest in the region then came in three distinct waves. The 
French hunters, trappers, and traders appeared first and operated along the Ouachita 
River valley until the Natchez Indian massacre of 1729, which frightened away any 
developers for a while. Next, in the 1740s and 1750s, French settlers meandered north 
from the Pointe Coupee Post in south Louisiana and named many of north Louisiana's 
bayous and prairies. These settlers returned south to Pointe Coupee before the 
Spaniards took possession of Louisiana in the late 1760s. The third wave of European 
settlers were actually descendents of the second wave, mostly true Louisiana Creoles 
born near the Point Coupee and Opelousas Posts. Additionally, a few Canadians came 
down the river from the Arkansas Post, and a few native French traders also operated 
along the river in the 1770s. Although plenty of evidence exists to indicate significant 
Indian activity and settlement in Union Parish, these apparently pre-dated the French 
explorations of the mid-1700s. Certainly by the 1780s, the region served merely as 
hunting grounds for Indian and French trappers.

Prior to 1782, with the exception of occasional failed colonization schemes, the 
Europeans ignored the vast Ouachita Valley, which extended from the area around Hot 
Springs Arkansas southward towards the Mississippi River in Louisiana. This changed 
with the 1779–1782 war between England and Spain. After their defeat at the Battle of 
Baton Rouge in 1779, the English yielded control of Natchez to the Spaniards, and this 
led to several years of fighting as the English settlers resisted Spanish rule over 
them. After the ultimate English defeat, many settlers fled to the Ouachita Valley 
region, creating the threat of English/American rebel activity in the Ouachita Valley 
region. This prompted the Spanish governor, Don Bernardo, the Comte de Galvez, to 
establish a strong buffer zone between the independent American states and the Spanish 
province of Louisiana. In 1781 Galvez created the “Poste d'Ouachita” and named 
Jean-Baptist Filhiol (also known as Don Juan Filhiol) as the commandant. Filhiol 
served in this capacity between 1782 and 1804, and through his service helped to keep 
a firm Spanish grip on activities in the region.

Filhiol, his new wife, and a few others arrived in the Ouachita country in April 1782. 
He traveled up the river, past present-day Union Parish, to the old trading post called 
“Ecore a Fabri” (now Camden, Arkansas). For various reasons, after a few years Filhiol 
decided not to build his headquarters there and took his group back down river to the 
“Prairie des Canots”. With the help of a few early settlers, Filhiol built Fort Miro 
in 1790–1791, named after the Spanish governor Esteban Miro. The Americans took over 
control of the region in 1804 and later changed the name of the settlement that grew 
up around the fort from “Fort Miro” to “Monroe”, after President James Monroe.

From Filhiol's reports to the Spanish governor, we learn that his corporal Augustine 
Roy had a claim to land surrounding Noyer's Bluff, near the mouth of Bayou d’Loutre 
in present-day Union Parish by the early 1790s. No clear record exists to indicate how 
long (if at all) Roy resided near Noyer's Bluff, and this is perhaps the earliest 
documented reference to land in present-day Union Parish. Filhiol also reported that 
several men settled in the region north of Fort Miro along Bayou d’Arbonne between 1790 
and 1800, including Baltazard Foguel, Andre and Simon LeBoeuf, and the American John 
Price. It is unclear precisely where they settled, although presumably in present-day 
northern Ouachita Parish, closer to the mouth of the d’Arbonne on the Ouachita River.

The earliest known permanent European settler of what is now Union Parish, John 
Honeycutt, Sr., arrived in the Ouachita Valley region with his family between 1790 
and 1795. He obtained the first known Spanish land grant for property that later fell 
into Union Parish. Honeycutt's land lay along Bayou D'Arbonne, and on 14 October 1797
he sold his 

      "...habitation with ten arpents frontage by the usual forty arpents depth with its 
       stock of hogs with his mark..." 

to Zadoc Harman, a man of African descent who had formerly lived in North Carolina (Ouachita
Parish Louisiana Conveyance Book Z, folio 46, Deed 68). Although we do not know the 
specific location of the land that Spain granted to Honeycutt, it was probably near 
the property that his son John Honeycutt, Jr. purchased from the United States 
government in 1826, when it finally opened the first land office in Monroe. John 
Honeycutt, Jr. was among the very first purchasers to appear at the Ouachita Land 
Office in Monroe that year; he bought eighty acres near Bayou D'Arbonne in 
present-day Union Parish, located just a mile below the present-day Lake D'Arbonne dam. 

Commandant Filhiol's reports written in the 1780s and 1790s to the Spanish governor
gave little information on the origins of the place names already well established in 
the Ouachita Valley. He referred to Bayous d’Loutre and d’Arbonne by 1784. The Loutre
was named for the French – Canadian word for otter or otter skin, but the d’Arbonne 
was named for Jean Baptiste Darban or d’Arbonne, the son of Jean-Baptiste d'Arbonne 
of Natchitoches. They were descendents of Gaspard Derbanne, a Canadian hunter who 
accompanied Louis Jucherneau St. Denis to the Red River in 1714. 


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The Early American Period (1804 – 1838)
========================================
As mentioned above, the earliest recorded permanent white settlers of the modern 
Union Parish region were John Honeycutt, Sr. and his family, who arrived in the 
Ouachita Valley between 1790 and 1795 and obtained a Spanish grant for land 
along Bayou D'Arbonne. He sold his Spanish land in 1797, but remained in the region 
with his family. Between the early 1790s and about 1810, the Honeycutts were the 
only known permanent white residents of what is now Union Parish. By 1814, 
Honeycutt's John Honeycutt, Jr. owned a plantation of 625 acres on Bayou D'Arbonne. 
The Honeycutts lived in what soon became known as the "Upper Pine Hills" 
or the "Piney Hills", the region surrounding Bayou D'Arbonne in what is 
now southern Union Parish. John Honeycutt, Jr. was born about 1774 in Tennessee; 
when George Feazel moved into the Honeycutt's neighborhood in early 1814, John Jr. 
almost immediately married his daughter, Mary Feazel. It appears that John 
Honeycutt, Sr. died shortly after 1820, but John Jr. and his wife Mary remained 
in southern Union Parish until the mid-1850s.

The next earliest Union Parish settlers were John Stow, who arrived in the Ouachita 
Valley prior to 1810, and Mills Farmer, who arrived by 1812. Both born in 1780 in S
outh Carolina, Stow and his wife Dorcas settled on land now in Lincoln Parish near 
the modern Union/Lincoln Parish line. Farmer apparently settled a few miles east of 
what later became the Village of Downsville in extreme southern Union Parish. Farmer 
married Susannah Wood McGowan on 13 February 1812 in Ouachita Parish. In 1814, he 
joined aunit of soldiers raised by William Wood (his father- or brother-in-law) to 
help defend south Louisiana from invasion by the British. Farmer served as the unit's 
sergeant, and they marched south to help fight the British during the War of 1812. He 
saw service around Baton Rouge and New Orleans and afterwards returned to north 
Louisiana. Although he practically lived isolated in a wilderness with only a handful 
of nearby neighbors, Farmer ensured his children received a sound education. His son 
William Wood Farmer (27 Apr 1813 – 29 Oct 1854) is the earliest recorded justice of 
the peace for what is now Union Parish. The younger Farmer was a lawyer and surveyor, 
often performing surveying work for the government. After serving two terms in the 
Louisiana Legislature, William W. Farmer was elected as the lieutenant governor on 
the Democratic ticket with Governor Paul Octave Hebert. While on a trip to New Orleans 
in 1854 to collect surveying debts for the state from the federal government, Farmer 
contracted yellow fever and died. He was first interred in the Protestant Girod Street 
Cemetery in New Orleans, but a joint committee appointed 15 January 1855 by the 
legislature authorized the removal of his remains to the Farmerville City Cemetery.

William Lyles arrived in the region at the same time as Mills Farmer and settled near 
him in what is now southern Union Parish. John "Liles", probably William's brother or 
son, served in the Louisiana militia in 1814 with Farmer. 

Another early Union Parish settler was Johannes Gorge (George) Feazel, who arrived in 
Ouachita Parish in early 1814 and settled near the Honeycutts. Feazel's daughter Mary 
married John Honeycutt, Jr. on 31 March 1814. In 1822, George Feazel traveled from north 
Louisiana to Texas, where he had a meeting with Stephen F. Austin. However, Feazel 
decided to not settle in Texas and soon returned to north Louisiana. In 1824, 
Feazel's son John married Christina Ferguson, the daughter of Revolutionary War soldier 
John Ferguson, who arrived in what is now southern Union Parish in the early 1820s from 
Mississippi. 

Prior to 1826, the only documented landowners in what is now Union Parish are John 
Honeycutt, Sr., who obtained a grant from the Spanish government in about 1795, his 
son John Honeycutt, Jr., who in 1814 owned 625 acres of land on Bayou D'Arbonne granted 
(presumably) by Spain, and Mills Farmer, who owned 20 acres in 1814.Others who cleared 
fields and built cabins were technically squatters on government land, and this situation 
provided little incentive to draw settlers to north Louisiana.

The United States finally completed the task of surveying and platting the land 
surrounding Monroe in about 1825, thus opening the door for the government to finally 
begin selling some of these lands to farmers. The Ouachita Land Office opened 
for the first time in mid-1826, offering land at $1.25 per acre. Only around forty or 
fifty men purchased land in the entire northeastern Louisiana region that year, including 
five who bought eighty-acre tracts of land located in what would soon become Union Parish. 
The first purchase was on 19 August 1826, when John Stowe and Gideon P. Benton traveled 
to Monroe and bought land located a few miles east of the present-day Town of 
Downsville in southern Union Parish. Benton went to the land office strictly as the 
representative of William Lyles, and the government issued a land patent to Lyles a few 
months later. However, shortly after he paid for his land, Stowe must have sold it to 
John Honeycutt, for the government issued the patent to Honeycutt, not Stowe. 

One month later, on 18 September 1826, John Honeycutt, Mills Farmer, and Farmer's 
brother-in-law Shepherd Wood appeared at the Ouachita Land Office and purchased their 
own eighty-acre tracts of southern Union Parish land. Farmer bought land two miles due 
east of what later became Downsville, whereas Wood chose property one mile south of 
Farmer's, on the modern Union/Ouachita Parish line. Honeycutt, however, purchased 
property located just below the modern dam on Lake d’Arbonne, apparently land that 
adjoined his existing plantation. At this same time, several other men purchased land 
that would lie in Union Parish between 1839 and 1845: Daniel and Jeptha Colvin, as well 
as Ferdinand Stow, bought government property near Vienna; the Louisiana Legislature 
put this region into Jackson Parish in 1845, and then into Lincoln Parish in 1873.

The Ouachita Land Office did very little business 1827 (only eleven transactions for 
the entire northeastern portion of the state), with no land in present-day Union Parish 
sold. In fact, the only other pre-1836 sales of what later became Union Parish property 
were Mills Farmer's 5 July 1828 purchase of an 80-acre tract that adjoined his existing 
farm, as well as the 5 October 1832 purchase by John Huey of 40 acres on the 
Union/Ouachita Parish line, south of Farmer's farm. The Hueys had settled not too far 
south of Mills Farmer prior to 1814, and although fairly close neighbors of Farmer’s, 
they primarily resided in the region that is now northwestern Ouachita Parish. 

The vast majority of land sold at the Ouachita Land Office between 1826 and 1833 lay 
in the region surrounding Monroe - including present-day Ouachita Parish 
and the southernmost portions of Union, Lincoln, and Morehouse Parishes. Very little 
of Claiborne and nothing in Union Parish north of modern Lake D'Arbonne was yet 
offered for sale. Undoubtedly a few settlers made their homes in that region in the 
1820s, but the only one of record is Lawrence Scarborough. He settled on Bayou 
Cornie in the 1820s and made improvements to a total of 200 acres located about 
four miles due south of Spearsville. Lawrence was a Baptist minister born in 1767 
in Edgecombe County North Carolina; his father Major James Scarborough was a hero 
of the Revolutionary War Battle of Kings Mountain. Lawrence had settled in Burke 
County Georgia in the 1790s, moved to Mississippi Territory by about 1810, and traveled 
throughout southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana before settling on Bayou Cornie. 
He was a Baptist minister and preached at various churches in Claiborne Parish. 

Other early settlers of northwestern Union Parish include Powhatan Boatright, who settled 
in what is now the Zion Hill Community, about four miles south of Scarborough's farm, 
in about 1835. Also in the 1830s, Francis W. Turpin settled in what is now Spearsville.

Apparently prompted by some unknown sequence of events (perhaps the resolution of some 
bureaucratic red tape that prevented the government from offering certain tracts for 
sale earlier), the floodgates opened in 1836 with thousands of land purchases at the 
Ouachita Land Office. Thirty-six settlers purchased land in the Union Parish region 
that year, primarily in the southern half of the parish near Bayous d'Arbonne and 
d'Loutre. Immigration increased dramatically in 1837 with the arrival of the first 
large wave of Alabama settlers led by Colonel Matthew Wood, and continued unabated 
until the opening of the War Between the States in 1861. 


===================================================
Creation of Union Parish & Farmerville
===================================================

The Louisiana Legislature created Union Parish on 13 March 1839 from Ouachita Parish. 
At that time it bordered Union County Arkansas on the north, the Ouachita River on the 
east, Claiborne Parish on the west, and Ouachita Parish to the south. Union Parish 
reportedly took its name from a statement made by Daniel Webster: “liberty and union, 
now and forever, one and inseparable”. These influential local citizens petitioned 
the legislature for the creation of Union Parish: Wiley Underwood, Peter J. Harvey, 
John Taylor, Colonel Matthew Wood, Stephen Colvin, Philip Feazle, Daniel Payne, and 
William Wood Farmer. The legislature appointed John Taylor as the first parish judge, 
and he held this position for twenty years. Elections for the Union Parish Police Jury 
(the governing body of each Louisiana parish was called the “police jury”) were held 
in March and April 1839.

Upon the order of Judge John Taylor, the first meeting of the Union Parish Police Jury 
was held at the home of William Wilkerson near the mouth of Bayou Corney on 15 May 1839. 
Police Jury members elected included: John N. Farmer (Ward 1), Jeptha Colvin (Ward 2), 
Phillip Feazel (Ward 3), Matthew Wood (Ward 4), Needham M. Bryan (Ward 5), Bridges 
Howard (Ward 6), and D. P. A. Cook (Ward 7). As its first item of business, the Police 
Jury elected Colonel Matthew Wood as their first president. The second item of 
business was to elect Thomas Van Hook as the clerk of the police jury.

The Union Parish Police Jury deliberated all day on 17 May 1839 concerning the location 
of the parish seat. Still meeting at the house of William Wilkerson on May 18th, they 
agreed that the “seat of justice” should be located near the confluence of Bayous 
d’Arbonne and Corney. They also selected the name of 'Farmerville' for the parish 
seat, undoubtedly in honor of early settler and War of 1812 veteran Mills Farmer, who 
had died a few years earlier on 21 October 1834.

Union Parish Police Jury President Colonel Matthew Wood went to the government land 
office in Monroe on 28 May 1839 (almost certainly traveling down Bayou d’Arbonne) 
and purchased 160 acres of government land for $1.25 per acre for the purpose of 
establishing the parish seat of Farmerville. They selected and marked out a “public 
square” and the adjacent town lots. The police jury began selling the lots in July 
1839, but did not authorize the construction of town streets until the next year. 
Farmerville grew slowly, not receiving her town charter from the state until 1842.

James Hayden Seale (1814 – 1865/1870) had arrived in north Louisiana with Colonel 
Matthew Wood’s group in February 1837, along with his brother-in-law David Ward. A 
veteran of the 1836 Creek War in Alabama, Seale was also a lawyer. He became quite 
active in the construction of Farmerville and in Union Parish politics for the next 
few years. By July 1839, Seale had removed many stumps from the town square, and he 
and Wood dug the first well there. When the United States Postal Service officially 
opened the Farmerville post office on 2 May 1840, they appointed Seale as the first 
postmaster; he served in this capacity until 6 July 1842. On 1 June 1840, the police 
jury put Seale in charge of the construction of Farmerville's first streets, ordering 
them to be fifty feet wide. The following year, Seale continued to work on clearing 
the courthouse square, for on 8 June 1841 the police jury paid him $100 for 

     "...digging up 84 stumps, rolling, piling, and burning logs, and filling up a 
      large hole on the public square...”

Seale served as the tax assessor for 1841 and 1842, and beginning in 1842, he served 
one term as Union Parish sheriff. He left Union Parish for New Orleans in 1846, and 
later moved to Jackson Parish, where he served as the clerk of court in 1850.

The early meetings of the police jury frequently became chaotic, and on 12 July 1841, 
the police jury required Sheriff William C. Carr to attend the meetings regularly, 
as they were “…frequently Disturbed by officious and disinterested persons…” whose 
conduct was not “…in accordance with the laws and general Customs of our State…” 
The police jury allowed Carr $2 a day for preventing

      "...any person or persons intruding upon this body by Loud words or medling 
       [sic] with business in which they are not Directly concerned..."

In September 1841, the police jury passed a procedural motion stating that its members:

      "...shall have the priviledge [sic] to speak without interruption from other 
       members untill [sic] he may git [sic] through his Subject provided it does 
       not exceed 20 minutes and that no abusive Language Shall be used by one member 
       toward another member & that each member Rise on his feet When he speaks on any 
       subject....Violators subject to a $5 fine..."

The first serious recorded controversy in Union Parish occurred around the 1840 
Presidential election. Although most of the story comes from local tradition rather 
than recorded facts, documented evidence exists of a serious disturbance between 
Matthew Wood and Peter Harvey that resulted in Wood's migration to Texas. The story 
according to Dr. Max H. Williams: 

      "Wood and Harvey had differing opinions about parish business which may have 
      originally put them at odds with each other. To make matters worse, Wood was 
      a staunch Whig, where as Harvey was a fervent Democrat. Following President 
      William Henry Harrison's premature death shortly after taking office on 4 
      April 1841, Wood and Harvey casually met on the street in Farmerville. Wood, 
      wearing a black armband around his coat sleeve as a sign of mourning for 
      Harrison, greeting Harvey. However, Harvey refused the salutation, remarking 
      that he would not speak to anyone who mourned such a scoundrel as Harrison. 
      In anger, Wood drew his pistol and shot Harvey at close range. A button on 
      Harvey's coat is said to have caused the bullet to deflect, leaving him with 
      only a minor flesh wound. Harvey reportedly then wrested the pistol from Wood 
      and beat him with it until bystanders intervened. At that moment, Wood's son 
      Willis Wood arrived and put his father on a horse and took him home. Shortly 
      thereafter, Wood left Louisiana for Texas, likely persuaded by his sons-in-law 
      John Taylor and William C. Carr, the parish judge and sheriff. We have no 
      record that Wood ever stood trial for his assault upon Harvey." 

After spending a few years in Texas, Wood returned to north Louisiana and lived near 
his son in what was then southwestern Union (now Lincoln) Parish, where he died in 1855.

Union Parish experienced incredible growth during the twenty-four year period 1837–1861, 
with settlers arriving in droves from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. 
Prior to 1860, no east/west rail line existed across north Louisiana, and so water 
remained the primary mode of transportation. To reach the available farmland of 
northwestern Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas, settlers from the Gulf coast states 
most often crossed the Mississippi River at Natchez, then came up the Ouachita River 
past Monroe to either Bayou d’Arbonne or further north at Alabama Landing. Although 
some made Union Parish their permanent home, many remained only long enough to grow a 
crop or two before migrating further westward.

To handle this influx of immigrants, during the 1840s the Union Parish police jury 
authorized the construction of a courthouse and grogshop (tavern) in Farmerville, and 
numerous ferries, bridges, and roads all over the parish. By 1850, communities had 
formed throughout the parish, with new post offices at Ouachita City (on the Ouachita 
River), Marion, Cherry Ridge, Spearsville, Shiloh, Downsville, d’Arbonne, and Spring 
Hill. Naturally, Farmerville experienced the most significant growth, acquiring the 
services of at least one newspaper, numerous physicians, lawyers, and merchants, as 
well as cabinet makers, wagon makers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, brick masons, 
and millers.


=======
Sources
=======
Numerous published works document the general historical background of the earliest 
European exploration of the southeastern United States and early history of Louisiana, 
1540–1700. In addition, I have gleaned many facts concerning events in early Union 
Parish history from the conveyance, probate, and lawsuit records on file in the Union 
Parish courthouse, as well as records of the United States Land Offices available in 
the National Archives. 

1) Williams, E. Russ, Jr., Spanish Poste d’Ouachita: The Ouachita Valley in Colonial 
   Louisiana 1783 – 1804, and Early American Statehood, 1804 – 1820, Williams Genealogical 
   Publications, Monroe, LA, 1995.

2) Williams, E. Russ, Jr., Encyclopedia of Individuals and Founding Families of the 
   Ouachita Valley of Louisiana From 1785 to 1850: Organized into Family Groups with 
   Miscellaneous Materials on Historical Events, Places, and Other Important Topics, 
   Part One A – K, Williams Genealogical and Historical Publications, Monroe, LA, 1996.

3) Williams, E. Russ, Jr., Encyclopedia of Individuals and Founding Families of the 
   Ouachita Valley of Louisiana From 1785 to 1850: Organized into Family Groups with 
   Miscellaneous Materials on Historical Events, Places, and Other Important Topics, 
   Part Two L – O, Williams Genealogical and Historical Publications, Monroe, LA, 1997.

4) Williams, Max Harrison, Union Parish (Louisiana) Historical Records: Police Jury 
   Minutes, 1839 – 1846, D’Arbonne Research and Publishing Co., Farmerville, LA, 1993.

5) Union Parish Civil Suit #124D, Lawrence Scarborough to Sarah Scarborough his wife,
   15 Oct 1829. Lawrence gives to his wife his legal right of "pre-emption" to land 
   on Bayou d'Loutre. Specifically, Lawrence gave to his wife

   "...anticipated by law an improvment on public land situated on the loutre..."

   This proves that Scarborough had settled and made improvements on a tract of land 
   in Union Parish by 1829. However, the records of the United States Land Office 
   indicate that the land and improvements given to Sarah Scarborough were actually 
   on Bayou Corney, not Bayou d'Loutre. The Loutre was some eight miles northeast 
   of the 200 acres of land Sarah Scarborough purchased at the Ouachita Land Office 
   in Monroe between 1840 and 1843. 

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