Eric J. Brock - Shreveport Chronicles: Profiles From Louisianas Port City

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2009 by Eric J. Brock

All rights reserved

First published 2009

e-book edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN 978.1.62584.304.3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brock, Eric J.

Shreveport chronicles : profiles from Louisianas port city / Eric J. Brock.

p. cm.

print edition ISBN 978-1-59629-761-6

1. Shreveport (La.)--History. 2. Shreveport (La.)--Biography. I. Title.

F379.S4B755 2009

976.399--dc22

2009029924

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For Shannon Glasheen,

My Colleague, Dearest Friend and Wife

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For their kind assistance in making possible the original columns on which this book is based, I wish to acknowledge the staff of the Louisiana State University in Shreveport Noel Memorial Library Department of Archives and Special Collections, the staff of the Shreve Memorial Library Special Collections and Genealogy Departments and the original publishers of my columns, the Shreveport Journal and the Forum News Weekly, each of which gave me the opportunity to publish within its pages while retaining copyright and ownership of my writings. I also wish to thank those descendants of several of the personalities featured in this book who shared information with me regarding their ancestors. Lastly, but far from least, I wish to thank my wife, Shannon Glasheen, formerly a curator with the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, whose assistance in doing research, proofreading and editing has proved invaluable many times.

The Jacobs family of Shreveport, circa 1890. Edward and Palestine Jacobs (center row, third and fourth from left) with their children, childrens spouses and grandchildren in front of their Travis Street mansion. Authors collection.

INTRODUCTION

The biography of a city is really the collective biography of that citys people. In the pages that follow, an attempt is made to tell the story of Shreveports historical pageant through the lives of a cross section of that pageants cast of characters. Obviously, there is not space enough for such an undertaking to be comprehensive. Far, far more personalities associated with the citys history are left off these pages than are included in them. However, the selections given attempt to represent an accurate portrait of the men and women from many diverse walks of life and many diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds who have contributed to the citys development and, indeed, have created the citys very character.

Not everyone whose biography is treated in this book was necessarily a citizen of Shreveport, though most were. Some came here from elsewhere or sojourned here during a period of their life and the citys life. All had a lasting impact on Shreveport, however.

Here are heroes and scoundrels, businessmen and religious leaders, artists and soldiers, pioneers and planters, physicians and lawyers and, well, just a number of stories that are ironic, bizarre or simply curious.

No comprehensive list of notable Shreveporters exists, but there are many. The city has produced more notable figures in music, sports, politics, theatre, the visual arts, business and other endeavors than many a city twice its size. The biographies in this book are not necessarily those of its greats, the many notables who have so frequently been discussed in print that they are familiar to all. Rather, this book seeks to tell the story of the city through people both ordinary and extraordinary who contributed to Shreveports growth and developmentor in some cases merely to its legends and lorethrough their unique and often accidental roles in the unfolding historical pageant that began in 1836 and continues even yet. The biographical vignettes included herein were originally written as articles for the authors popular historical columns The Presence of the Past, which ran on the Journalpage editorial page of the Shreveport Times newspaper between 1992 and 2000, and its successor, A Look Back, which ran in the Forum News Magazine from 2000 through 2008. The Journalpage was the last vestige of the old Shreveport Journal, Shreveports long-lived evening newspaper that closed in 1991 but, through a joint operating agreement with the Times, remained in publication as a daily editorial page within the surviving paper. When the joint operating agreement ran out on the first day of January 2000, the author carried his column to the Forum. All told, the column ran weekly for sixteen years and gained a wide following during that time.

The selection of articles that forms the basis for this book draws from those written for both publications, though these have been substantially edited and revised to reflect data discovered after the original publication of the articles and to generally bring them up to date.

FOUNDERS AND PIONEERS

J.B. PICKETT, CO-FOUNDER OF SHREVEPORT

One of the most influential figures in the early development of Shreveport and the Shreveport area was a man named James Belton Pickett, who, along with Captain Henry Miller Shreve and six others, established the Shreve Town Company, the corporate entity that founded Shreveport in 1836. Today he is memorialized only by a small and neglected street in the Crosstown-Bluegoose area southwest of downtown, but his influence, and that of his heirs, played a significant role in the early growth of Shreveport and Caddo and Bossier Parishes.

James Belton Pickett was born in Chester County, South Carolina, in October 1803. His family were planters and he, too, made planting his career. In 1833, at the age of thirty, he married the fifteen-year-old daughter of another wealthy Chester County planter family, Paulina de Graffenried. The couple had three children: John, born in 1834; Sarah (known as Sallie), born in 1837; and James Jr., born in 1840.

In 1835, Picketts friend, another South Carolinian named Thomas Taylor Williamson, urged Pickett to invest in a land speculation venture in Louisiana. A new town was being laid out on the newly navigable Red River and Williamson, a partner in the company establishing the settlement, convinced Pickett that the investment would change his life; it did just that.

While the Shreve Town Company was being formed, the Pickett family remained in South Carolina. Meanwhile, Pickett himself was acquiring vast holdings of land throughout the newly opened northwest Louisiana region, including a 640-acre tract in what is now Sabine Parish, a large amount of property in southern Arkansas and considerable holdings along Red River in what was then part of Claiborne Parish but now is Bossier Parish.