Grant Parish

(This Catharine Cole column appeared in the New Orleans Picayune October 16, 1892.)

 Early one morning last week I stood rather forlornly in the dust before the door of the hotel at Alexandria packing up my buggy for a trip of unknown length across an unknown country of Louisiana. Not only was I storing away belongings with a keen regard for space, but I was, to use a plebeian and expressive phrase, "sizing up" my driver and getting acquainted with the wiry little ponies that were, if nothing happened, to carry me over at least a round dozen of those magnificent parishes that make up most of the wealth of central north Louisiana.

Often when in Ireland or England I have longed to join one of those delightful caravans that go creakingly from village to village: a gay, yellow-painted, cluttered-up home on wheels for a cheersome lot of playerfolk, or a thriftier sort of Romany Ryes. A two-horse buggy, with a colored lad for a driver, stocked for three weeks of delicious, spread-eagle independence, is the best, however, I can manage in a free, democratic country, where the most of us are only free to do what our neighbors and polite society sanctions.

But somehow, as we were almost to move off, I surveyed our belongings and our appearance with mingled sentiments of pride and misgivings. I even fancied we should cut quite a figure driving from village to village and town to town, and I was shocked to find how little ashamed I was of that figure. It will take more chilling blasts than have yet scorched my sensibilities—that is, if chilling blasts can scorch—to destroy the ancestral gypsy blood that I am certain fountains in my veins.

I fancy we have a dim resemblance to Mrs. Jarley’s wax works en route, or the Crummles family "on the road."

"I hope we we’ve not forgotten anything, Philip," said I. But it was a superfluous remark. In the very nature of all we had remembered it seemed impossible that there was anything left to be forgotten.

For the edification of any other romantic lovers of Louisiana, who may be fired by these strange adventures of an American buggy, whose outing was not molded after Mr. William Black’s "Phaeton," I will say that a correct, Quaker-like gray drummer’s box held my clothes, that a large, motherly basket held various tins of potted meats and extravagances in the way of olives and biscuits and pate de foie gras. There was also a fat parcel of good things contributed by my genial hostess, Mrs. Yarborough, of the Arlington; a bag of fruit, Philip’s unique and experienced carpet-bag, without which I find it impossible to go anywhere, and a ridiculous box of books.

Whenever I plan a trip, I make preliminary, a parcel of things to eat and things to read. On a buggy trip is hardly the place to do much reading, but it sounded cozy and felt cheerful to have books along. They were trivial volumes, however; their titles would scarcely reflect credit, and as "books that have helped" me on my way, they are not worth twenty cents a volume. The gentle reader can see, however, that we could not have forgotten anything—at least, not much.

I spread out on my knee a section of my state map and proceeded to show Philip where we were going. As I named town after town, parish after parish, doing our little sums in arithmetic addition in the matter of miles between stops, Philip looked at me suspiciously.

"I don’t believe we ever will get back," he declared, and I am of the opinion, starting off in that lonely, unspeeded way that we did, that he half determined that I was a sort of lady horse thief, until we reached Colfax, where a royal reception by a prominent and reputable citizen re-established his faith in my sincerity and respectability.

It did look like a glorious trip we had before us! Through rich alluvial lands of corn, cane and cotton; across the superb primeval pine forests where scarce the ring of an ax has sounded civilization’s note of warning; across the farmer’s uplands as fertile, rich and prosperous as any in the worked, and I told myself that it would not be my fault if the readers of the Picayune did not learn the one golden, paramount truth: that Louisiana is a fine cotton state, the only sugar state, and has more inexhaustible riches of timber than any other state in the union.

 It was a crisp, golden October morning, that had no limit in its breadth of a languorous South. The dust, however, was fathoms deep and one moved along like a new, chosen people traveling in a pillar of it that at least had the virtue of rendering our luggage invisible.

Across the railroad track we soon turned away from the famous "Horseshoe Curve" about Bayou Rapides that the people of Alexandria rightly believe to be one of the most enchanting drives in the state, and were trotting over the turf between the rich cotton fields that apparently are crowding out the cane in Rapides. Rapides, by the way, is that happy parish where cane and cotton grow equally well. The establishment of neighboring central refineries, the Alladin’s lamp of the small farmer, and the greater profits of sugar culture will doubtless turn many cotton fields into cane fields.

By main road and lane we came to the edge of a dismal swamp, a dank, jungley little stand of tropic vines, cypress trees, snakes, and Spanish moss, inserted in the heart of the farming country that lies between Boyce and Alexandria. The swamp was dry and the ground cracked and curled up in huge leathery flakes. The vines hung in natural trellises, looping the trees into one long arcade, beaded with the scarlet seeds of honeysuckle and the musky berries of death weed.

We could only travel at a snail’s pace. Once, a big rattlesnake, already sluggish in the cold, lifted his dull, dirty body out of the horse’s path. I am grown forest-wise and I watched ahead for that first break in the sky—a broad sheet of blue in the distance that should show we were coming to a clearing. In a few minutes we had crossed the pleasant pastures of a thrifty farm and were trotting along the river road under the shade of huge pecan trees and rapidly approaching the plucky little town of Boyce, that has more than recovered itself since a heavy fire four years ago swept off nearly all of its business houses.

The Red River is down to its lowest dregs, and when we drove to the bank and I looked down the yellow Alp by which we were to reach the flatboat ferry, I decidedly balked. The red pony, whose nervous temperament it had not taken me ten minutes to divine and sympathize with, balked also. He put his pretty nose in the air and snorted with a sound not unlike those old rattles that country bellmen used to carry in the moss-grown ages of long ago, when some of us were little girls and some of us were little boys.

He had to go in the flatboat, however, but a polite and handsome gentleman who came up, or rather down the Alp at the moment, helped me into a skiff and together we crossed to the other side. It was a polite old ferryman that came to me for the fee. He seemed aggrieved at my groundless, or perhaps it would be more correct to say waterless, fears.

I apologized.

"You is very excusable, Miss," said he. "I recognize that you is one of the weaker vessels, and I was glad to see you come over in cooperation with Dr. Brian of Boyce."

 It takes a stately old darky of the ante-bellum sort to do the polite. The introduction to Dr. Brian, a popular physician of the Red River country, was a subtle appreciation of the proprieties, and I at once felt properly chaperoned and vouched for.

The river road drive from Boyce up to Colfax, the parish seat of Grant Parish, is simply one of the most charming in the world. On the left, in and out, around and over, in circle and loop and double loop, all red silver and Etruscan gold of hue—as if making frantic efforts at inventing a new riparian alphabet—the Red River clasps and unclasps the tawny shores that are now steeply high above its brim. Oaks and pecan trees, the latter tremendously laden, and enough to stock all the dinner tables in Christendom, grow in groves or single file, while plantation field after field unfurls its white scroll of cotton.

And now by this time as that peaceful, country-like cool of the evening comes on we are away up in Grant Parish and nearing the town of Colfax.

If you, my patient reader, know as much about Grant Parish as I do you can skip my inevitable statistics. If not, they are really the backbone of what I am scribbling off so easily seated here—you need not know where—but in a quaint old log-cabin country hotel before a big pine log fire, the flame and delicious incense of which are going up the chimney, while the golden, lovely sunshine is coming down, determined to get into the room somehow!

Here, right plain in the middle of the state, bordered beautifully by the Red River, and crossed by the Houston Central Railroad on its eastern side, is the pine hill parish of Grant. It includes 642 square miles, or 416,880 acres. Of this, 462 miles are "long leaf" pine hills—the most valuable sort of pine timber, by the way; 110 square miles are prairie region, and fifty square miles are Red River bottom or alluvial lands. More than three-fourths of the alluvial lands are above overflow. At least, the high water of 1892 failed to reach them and it is safe to say no high water ever was so high as that of ’92, or will be again. The town of Colfax has never been submerged.

The parish produces about 8,000 bales of cotton. Its population is 8,000, and while its shipping facilities are not so complete as those of other parishes, yet it is probably the largest lumber market and has more mills, and ships more lumber than any other parish of its size in the state. For these facts I am indebted to one of the cleverest newspaper editors in the state and one of the most popular, Mr. H. G. Goodwyn, editor and owner of the Colfax Chronicle.

Both sugar cane and rice grow well in this parish, and thousands of bushels of pecans could be gathered. Apples, peaches, pears, plums, figs, and particularly grapes, grow abundantly. Peach and pear trees four years old were this year laden with delicious fruit. The fields yield a bale of cotton and forty bushels of corn to the acre without fertilizing, or, with fertilizing, eighty bushels are often grown and one and a half bale picked.

With its 8,000 people, it is of value to all immigrants to know that less than one-twentieth of the land is under cultivation, and it is still more valuable to know that the way of the immigrant and squatter is made easy by the fact that there are in Grant Parish thousands of acres of good land subject to homestead entry. A vast amount of state land is wild, idle and subject to entry as homesteads. Jay Gould and other railroad men own about 160,000 acres, much of it for sale at about $12.00 an acre. Otherwise open or cultivated lands are quoted and for sale at from $5 to $20, timber lands about $1.96 an acre.

These instructive figures and the foregoing facts were furnished me jointly by Mr. Goodwyn, of the Chronicle, Mr. C. E. Kemp, Sheriff; Mr. H. C. Rogers, Deputy, and Mr. W. Y. Shackleford, the handsome young Parish Clerk, whom I believe to be the youngest as well as one of the most popular officials in the state, being only twenty-two years old.

I cannot refrain from pointing a moral through these three conscientious young men. Sheriff Kemp is in the office every morning at six, as are the others, and when District Judge Wear holds court it is opened promptly at eight o’clock, and so well does he manage that when the term is ended he will have disposed of every case.

Colfax is a small, pretty, trim village of about 250 inhabitants. It is on the bank of the Red River on a noble bit of plateau land, high, picturesquely wooded and with a lake full of fish and several bayous near. There are twelve large business establishments, and about 4,000 bales of cotton are shipped.

There are several law offices, two churches, with a new Catholic Church just building, and a number of handsome residences, notably the homes of Messrs. McNeely, McKnight, and Teal. The late Mrs. Judge Shackleford had at her charming home one of the finest and largest collections of flowers in the South, including over 500 varieties of cactus, roses and lilies. As an amateur florist, she was known in this country and Europe. Since her death, her flowers are cared for by her daughter.

Colfax has an excellent public school, with a five-month session, and a high school, open ten months of the year, of which Prof. Samuel Miles is principal.

One of the prettiest and most stylish Methodist churches outside of New Orleans is at Colfax. It is a gothic building, internally richly finished in native pines, that have happily been oiled, instead of painted. There is a good organ, artistic stained glass windows, and not a penny of debt. It is under the care of Rev. Mr. Hocutt, of Boyce, and like the parish officials, is a shining example for other parish seats to follow.

The Colfax Chronicle, a newsy, reliable paper, is as neat and clean as a weekly newspaper can be. Its matter, which is never dull, is mainly set up by two of this editor’s wholesome and bright-faced children. Surely, ours is not a lazy state when a bright little girl of eleven years, and a jolly lad of ten fill the composing sticks and help get out every week’s tip-top country paper! A point not to be overlooked is the fact that Colfax has had only two deaths in two years, and those were persons far advanced in years.

Eighteen miles away, still further up on the Red River, is the old mother town of the parish, Montgomery, that has been for years the home of cultured and hospitable people, mostly emigrated from Alabama and Georgia. Here the long red, sunny hills stretch sleepily to pine-covered billows towards the river the across these hills the town’s houses amble in a neighborly way. Each sweet, gray, or white home is set behind its own tall hedges of cape jasmine, and each yard takes up enough room to accommodate quite a town.

These steep, red bluffs overlook the river at almost the intersection of three parishes—Grant, Winn, and Natchitoches. Across the water it is Natchitoches, The local name for the clustered fertile farms lying between the Cane and Red Rivers is "Isle Buvelle." This strip of land of peculiar fertility is about forty miles long and eight or ten wide. Here, cotton grows a bale and a half to two bales to the acre, the pastures are knee deep in Bermuda grasses and clover, and the sleek cattle attest that it is a natural stock and grazing country, and here the Negroes who farm small holdings on the tenant or share system are prosperous and comfortable.

Just here about, on the Grant Parish side of the river, with Montgomery for a shipping point, is an excellent and curiously varied country. Its resources appeal to the farmer, the speculator, the machinist and the manufacturer. To the northwest of the town are hills of iron ore, with pure streams of water tumbling in graceful falls over the rusty rocks. To the south are good open cotton lands, and to the east are sandy hills bordering forests of oak, ash, beech, pine and magnolia.

Between these hills where creeks run are little fertile holdings of land, producing good crops of cotton, corn, and sweet potatoes. One farmer told me he had 200 bushels of sweet potatoes to sell at 25 cents a bushel. Only exorbitant freight rates keep him from sending the lot to New Orleans, where they are now quoted at $1.75 a bushel.

As our ponies scuffled rather weariedly around the blooming corners leading by a pleasant road into Montgomery town, even Philip, who is remarkably saturnine, a peculiar trait of country-bred Colored lads who have been living in a city, took heart and sat up. Well he might. Before us sprawled this little gray village, like an antique volume margined with gold. Only, the volume was men’s lives and the gold was golden-rod. All about in the fence corners and fairly disputing our right of way, were feathery clusters of this "iron weed," so that the autumn was as purple as a young widow in the second and mitigated stage of her grief. The bell tower at the Baptist church shone like a white obelisk through a mesh of trees, and red chimneys splashed the hills with color.

I am bound to say that a little good, honest whitewash, a few neatly laid footpath planks would be vastly becoming to Montgomery’s style of beauty, but when I had explored the little town, learned that it is the shipping point for 5,000 bales of cotton, that its trade amounts to $150,000 a year, and that its citizens maintain one of the best high schools in north-central Louisiana, that hospitality flowers on each hearth, I would have forgiven much worse than a lack of whitewash.

The Montgomery High School has sixty pupils. It is located in a handsome, large building at the edge of town and has had many good gifts from New Orleans merchants and commercial men, including a Knabe piano from Louis Grunewald, stoves from Mr. Albert Baldwin, and $250 from Mr. J. A. Morris. All this was to help Montgomery start her big school. The trustees still owe $300 and the school needs library books, a few physiological charts, and mathematical and chemical apparatus. Also a good clock.

It is to be hoped that this will find for it a fairy godmother, or at least a good genie. Prof. C. C. Harris, his wife, and Miss McCain, comprise the faculty. Prof. Harris is an experienced educator, and more, a thoroughly refined and intellectual gentleman. His methods are the best and most approved, and while Montgomery school is under his training and influence, the parents of Grant Parish have no need to send their children away from home to be educated.

Montgomery’s business is in the hands of six merchants—B. A. Fortson, of the Farmers’ Alliance Store; H. V. McCann, J. H. Williams, W. D. Harrison, McCann & Dyson, and A. C. Teddlie. There are two physicians, Dr. W. D. Harrison, and Dr. W. A. Dunn. It is Dr. Dunn who is the parish antiquarian and enthusiast. His house, on a hill at the beginning of the town, is full of rare books and archaeological treasures that would form a bright page in the history of the state. Among his relics are many of the war, and also the huge jawbone of a mammoth, teeth intact, which he picked up on the river sands below the town.

Th original settlers of the town were Spanish, one Leon Orties and family. The oldest house standing was put on its hill sixty years ago by a Frenchman named Cann. It is an adobe building. The graces and social influences of the first settlers, allied to the thrift and generosity of the town’s American inhabitants, still dominate business and social life.

The town was bought and laid out into town lots in 1857 by General Thomas S. Woodward, a half-Cherokee Indian, a dashing soldier and a distinguished man. He called the place Creola, after an Indian girl, whose love was the romance and tragedy of his life. In later years, when the name was changed it almost broke his heart. He died soon after, willing his heart to his physician, who kept it for a long time, and desiring that his body should be cremated.

Among the prominent families of the older Montgomery were many whose names still survive, such as the Wilders, Bernsteins, Harrisons, Browns, Williams, Watsons, Dunns and McCains. Many of these families live at Montgomery, keeping alight the sacred fires of hospitality, and unstained the record of bravery and integrity.

During the war this town sent to the Gray Army the Winn Rifles, Third Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, Captain D. Pierson; Beauregard Invinciples, Twelfth Louisiana Infantry, Captain Van McCain; and Captain Cooper’s company, Louisiana Regiment. Today, peacefuller organizations are Masonic and Pythian lodges.

To this skeleton of its history that I have crudely articulated I am vastly indebted to copious notes given me by Prof. Harris.

It was at Montgomery I met my first woman engineer—a bright-faced, rosy-cheeked lassie, Miss Lulu Ettridge, who is the regular engineer of a large cotton gin—ginning each year between 800 and 1,000 bales. Miss Ettridge is a first-class machinist—good enough to go to the World’s Fair---and while at work running her engine she puts in all her spare moments crocheting.

During my visit I spent two days across the Red River at the home farm of a well-known planter-merchant, Mr. R. B. Williams. It was an ideal farm—and as fair a sample of prosperous life in Louisiana as one could desire.

Nothing could be better in its way than the quaint, rambling farmhouse, with big fires crackling in the wide hearths. About were young orchards, long log arbors just rifled of their grapes, piles of pumpkins sunning on the sheds, huge cemented cisterns like sunken jars at each corner of the house, and nearby big gardens, a paddock where brood mares gamboled with their colts, a chicken run where there were a thousand domestic fowls, and off in the distance long barns bulging with hay and clover, corn and oats, and all about the frothing seas of cotton, with a fifty-acre pasture lot where the horses fed.

It will be a long day before I forget that Sunday dinner—the fried chicken done in cream, the buttermilk biscuits, the yellow yams and salads, the home-made pickles and jams and jellies, the custard, better than Delmonico, and the hearty welcome that went with it all.

CATHARINE COLE