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Discover the rich heritage and history of Union Parish, Louisiana as preserved by local author W. Gene Barron. In the late 1830s, prominent local settlers Peter J. Harvey, John Taylor, Col. Matthew Wood, Philip Feazle, Daniel Payne, Stephen Colvin, and Mills Farmer of upper Ouachita Parish Wiley Underwood petitioned the Louisiana Legislature for the creation of a new parish. Created by the legislature on May 13, 1839, it was given the name Union, supposedly because Daniel Webster stated, Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable. By the 1850s, settlers streamed into the parish from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Most came by steamboat, landing at a point on the Ouachita River, which became known as the Alabama Landing since many Alabamians arrived there. Agriculture always dominated the Union Parish economy, evolving from cotton and corn in the 1840s to the 1950s to cattle, timber, and poultry today
" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.
There's More Leaves on the Tree is about the author's 14 year journey in search of his great grandfather's Frank Bilberry's white father and African American mother. The book starts out with a visit to his grandfather's Ladell Bilberry old home site. The visit reveal that the old home site was now overtaken by the forest where it can barely be found any longer. The home he knew as a child has now fallen down with a few remnants left from the past. It was a place where his ancestral family and extended families once bought land raised and sold crops to make the best living they could. He reminiscences about how his mother and father once lived in this area. His mother really didn't like living on a farm and designed a way to convince her husband to move closer to the town of Marion, Louisiana. The author writes a chapter about "The End of Jim Crow Education" in Union Parish, Louisiana. He recalls how the Plessey vs Ferguson doctrine of 1896 and the Brown vs Education doctrine of 1954 co-existed at the same time. One law allowed African Americans to have separate but equal facilities as Whites but in 1954 the Brown vs Board of Education stated it was acceptable to go to the same schools. The book delineates the struggle his high school, the community and the Union Parish School Board had in trying to reconcile this dilemma when it was time for the senior class to graduate in 1970. The Bilberry surname originated from White immigrants from Alabama who made their way to the rich fertile land of Union Parish, Louisiana. Most of them bought land, raised and sold crops to make their living. Many owned slaves. Slaves were valuable property to the slave owners. Many mulatto children were fathered by slave owners with the slave female. It was not uncommon for this to continue after the emancipation of the slaves. The latter is the case with Frank Bilberry. He was born circa 1878 to a former slave holder that lived near his mother's family. His white father sired several other sister and brothers other slave and former wome. Like many other slaves of South several slaves used the surname Bilberry after their master's name after being emancipated. The book is filled with pictures that follows along with the story of the book. It has an extensive appendix at the end of the book that includes death certificates, marriage licenses, land patents, obituaries and photographs of both white and black Bilberry's and their extended families (Honeycutts, Horn, Nelson, Bridges, Feazel, Wilhite, Warren, Burch, Ellis, Archie, Armstrong, Roberts, Robinson, Montgomery and more) of Union Parish, Louisiana. Every Family has a family story to tell but someone must be willing to tell it.
Louisiana has sixty-four parishes, and many of them are as individual and different as the state itself is different from others in the Union. St. James Parish, a small parish of 249 square miles, is not only one of the oldest settlements in the state, but it is different in its population make-up and is important historically. Cabanocey . . . is a splendid history of the Parish of St. James. . . . Lillian C. Bourgeois captured the spirit that animates the population, which is descended from French, Spanish, Acadian, German, and Creole peoples. Bourgeois writes of the population's customs, beliefs, language differences, and folklore. Cabanocey is not a collection of dry facts and dates; rather, it vividly describes how, more than one hundred years ago, the people of St. James Parish lived, who they were, and what they contributed to their parish and their state. Before the Civil War, St. James Parish was the educational center of Louisiana, and Jefferson College was the first important college in the state. Founded in 1830, it had fine buildings, a well-equipped laboratory, and an impressive library. The Convent of the Sacred Heart (1835) for girls was well-known by prominent families in Louisiana, Mexico, and Central America, who sent their daughters there. Cabanocey contains St. James genealogies and thousands of names of early settlers, including the soldiers, taxpayers, officials, prominent families, and the first settlers and their children. From the early censuses and church and court records, descent is traced for many names. The censuses of 1766, 1769, and 1777 are complete and were obtained from the archives in Seville, Spain.
Days before the tumultuous presidential election of 1868, St. Bernard Parish descended into chaos. As African American men gained the right to vote, white Democrats of the parish feared losing their majority. Armed groups mobilized to suppress these recently emancipated voters in the hopes of regaining a way of life turned upside down by the Civil War and Reconstruction. Freedpeople were dragged from their homes and murdered in cold blood. Many fled to the cane fields to hide from their attackers. The reported number of those killed varies from 35 to 135. The tragedy was hidden, but implications reverberated throughout the South and lingered for generations. Author and historian Chris Dier reveals the horrifying true story behind the St. Bernard Parish Massacre.