Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, October 28, 1997

Early Jeff Davis sold as 'land of sunshine and flowers'

by Jim Bradshaw

The name Calcasieu reportedly is derived from the name Katkosh Yok (Crying Eagle, an Attakapas Indian chief). There is also a questionable story about mapmakers arguing over the name. Finally, a Frenchman, tired of talking about it, suggested, "Oh, name it quelque chose, ("anything, something"). According to the tale, an orthographically challenged Irishman at the meeting wrote that down as Caleasieu (sic), which later became Calcasieu.

By Act of the Louisiana Legislature in 1912, "Imperial Calcasieu" was divided into the parishes of Allen, Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and Calcasieu, with the actual separation taking place on Jan. 1, 1913. (Cameron Parish, south of today's Calcasieu Parish, had been formed in 1870.)

The 1912 division of Imperial Calcasieu came after a 16-year fight. Beginning in 1896, bills providing for the division had been presented no less than eight times. There was a bitter fight each time the bill was introduced.

Jennings and DeRidder (now the parish seat of Beauregard Parish) had been the leading fighters for the division, but the people of the Lake Charles area wanted to keep all the government business there. Back then, it was a day's journey from Jennings to Lake Charles. This was a sore point with the people of Jennings.

Development of the Jefferson Davis area began after the completion of the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad from New Orleans to Texas. The prairies were all but vacant, and railroads began to actively recruit homesteaders to fill them (and provide railroad business).

Sylvester Luther Cary, a native of Howard County, Iowa, who was known locally as "Father Cary," was agent for the railroad and colonization agent for the area. He used excursions and advertisements to attract Iowans and other Midwestern settlers to the "land of Sunshine and Flowers."

Cary had originally gone to Texas with a group that settled near San Marcos, but he decided not to stay there. On his way home, he passed through Louisiana and came across a book published by William H. Harris, then state commissioner of agriculture and immigration.

The book impressed Cary with Louisiana's possibilities, so he got off the train at Jennings to have a look around. He found that the prairies reminded him of Iowa--except for the fact that cattle were grazing on winter grass here, while it was 24 below zero in Iowa.

There was much government land available, so Cary rushed to New Orleans to apply for a homestead. He wrote later that he was "breathless" with excitement when he got to the land office, where the official told him, "You need not hurry, my good man. Nobody wants that land but you."

Cary returned to Jennings, found the position of Southern Pacific station agent vacant, and got the job. In his spare time, he wrote letters to his friends back in Iowa, telling them of his wonderful find, and begging them to come to Jennings. As his friends responded, the immigration work grew and the railroad sent him to Iowa to promote Louisiana. He would travel north for each of the next 14 summers, and each time return with a trainload of farmers from Iowa and Illinois.

Before this, the open prairies had been left "to the cattle and the newcomer," in the words of M. B. Hillyard of the New Orleans TimesDemocrat. He traveled across the prairies in 1886.

"The railroad is the townbuilder," he said. "The 'Cajiens' (sic) love the streams, and a man might have ridden along the railroad a little while ago and thought there were no people in the country (except where the road skirts a stream, and thus reveals their home, when in truth, the woods are full of people. And there is a large population in the prairies of Louisiana, which no inexperienced traveler suspects, but is generally unseen."

The prairies that welcomed the growing population were part of an old delta of the Mississippi River, formed thousands of years ago during Pleistocene times. The old river flowed across this region when the land was lower and sea level higher than they are today. As the river meandered across the region, it built natural levees. The remains of these levees, a few feet higher than the prairie around them, attracted the early settlers.  The soil was deeper and coarser on these old levees, and they drained better--an important consideration in a place that gets as much rainfall as south Louisiana.

Even the early Native Americans preferred to live somewhere besides the prairies, according to Fred B. Kniffen's study of the historic Indian tribes of Louisiana.

"A most distinctive region is the prairie country of southwestern Louisiana," Kniffen reports. "The land is comparatively dry and very flat, the grassy surface broken only by islands of trees, woods lining the bayous, and coulees that cut across it. The prairie is extensive, covering all or portions of eleven parishes and having a total area about twice that of Delaware. Much of it is underlain by a clay hardpan which contributes to the current agricultural value of the region but may have thwarted development of the soil in aboriginal times.

"The grasslands have been of little importance as producers of wild game," Kniffen goes on. "The bison that the Attakapas Indians hunted there seasonally for the most part disappeared early. Europeans later found a few deer and buffalo on the prairie, and other game was limited to waterfowl in ponds and streams.

"The aborigines, viewing other parts of Louisiana more favorably, were never drawn to the grasslands in significant numbers," Kniffen says. "The Chitimacha and Opelousa (sic) had occupied portions of it but preferred lands along the natural levees of Bayou Lafourche, and the former eventually moved into the vast depths of the Atchafalaya swamp. The Opelousa, not well known, apparently shifted about on the Prairie Terrace west of what is today Lafayette. Of the lesser prairies in Louisiana, some were occupied at least for a time. One such region was the Avoyelles Prairie, home of the Indian people of a similar name."

It would be left to Cary and his fellow Midwesterners to open the prairies. Cary published a series of pamphlets lauding the virtues and opportunities of cheap land, free from ice and snow, in the virgin regions of Louisiana.

One of them said: "The stereotyped advice to young men to 'Go West' has been changed and now is 'Go South.' The South is now building up, increasing in wealth and population, as no other portion of the United States is doing today.

The young man just starting out in life should have the most favorable opportunities and advantages that he can secure, for these are half the battle of success. The Southern states afford these advantages and opportunities."

Another article said: "There are many reasons that can be given why a farmer should locate in Southwest Louisiana. In the first place, a complete crop failure is almost unknown, since a drought, the greatest of all the disasters to the Western farmer, practically never occurs. There are no long winters here during which the farmer has to sit with folded hands and kill time till spring rolls around again, but on the other hand, the climate is so mild that he can work outdoors almost constantly. And not the least of the reasons is the greater opportunity for profitable investments. All of those advantages combine to make Southwest Louisiana the most desirable home for the man looking for a new location."

The propaganda apparently worked.

On Oct. 25,1890, The Opelousas Courier, under the heading "Coming by the Hundreds," ran this report from Jennings:

"In response to the Macedonian cry sent to their friends by the members of the Iowa colony: 'Come and help us to develop the immense deposits of wealth that had lain hidden in the soil of these beautiful prairies for centuries,' thirty-four boxcars containing the household and agricultural appliances, and two passenger cars that contained the brawn, muscles and beauty of a large contingent of the former citizens of Southwestern Kansas promptly responded to the call and arrived here Sunday. Last night a grand reception was extended to them, and speeches of welcome were made by S. L. Cary, the Moses of the colony, Dr. E. M. Burke, Dr. Remage, Editor Cary and others. Another contingent from Nebraska is due here in a few days."

Early comers to the section of Calcasieu that is now Jefferson Davis included names like Cary, Daughenbaugh, McFarlain, White, Mahaffey, .lasinksy, Roever, Moore, and Kokanour.

According to a 1947 study by the Jefferson Davis Parish Planning Board, "The scattered homes (of the 1890s) were usually near or in the edge of timber where wood was easily available." The report continued. "The houses were almost uniform in design, being substantially constructed, each having a spacious front porch, which at a distance appeared to be the front of the house proper, as it was covered by the same roof. Some houses were erected without the use of nails, wooden pegs being substituted."

Travel, even after the coming of the railroad, was principally on horseback or in buggies. Oxen hitched to high-wheeled carts were used by the men for hauling hides, logs, lumber, and rice to market. There were no roads in much of the parish until relatively modern times, and few bridges spanned the waterways.

Historian William Henry Perrin quotes a speech given by Judge G. A. Fournet on Oct. 28, 1890, at the laying of the cornerstone of the new courthouse in Lake Charles. In it, he remarks about the opening of the Imperial Calcasieu prairies and the grand strides the area had made:

"There can be no fitter occasion than the present to recall the changes that have brought about the necessity of electing the new courthouse, the corner stone of which is now being laid," said the judge. "Without having recourse to statistics, I will simply state that within the life and recollection of the youngest among you, the population of the parish of Calcasieu was the smallest in the State of Louisiana. Although the largest in territory, it was the last opened to settlement. Its immense prairies, traveled by no roadway, save here and there the tracks of the huntsman or the stock-gatherer, had not yet been startled by the shriek of the locomotive or the roar of the railroad train. The tasseled corn, the rippling wave of the sugar cane and the loaded crests of the mellow rice field were unknown from the Mermentau to the Sabine swamp. Our wealth and timber, the finest and best in the world; pine unequaled in usefulness and cypress unrivaled in durability, inviting the wants of mankind and courting the industry of man, covered our virgin forests with giants of their kind, from the 30th parallel to the limits of Rapides and Vernon. Age, winds and storms alone tumbled their giant frames, while the steel destined to fell them laid as yet entombed in the bowels of the earth, undiscovered and unforged.

"We had then neither cities nor incorporated towns," Judge Fournet continued. "This very city, of which you are all so proud, I am sure, which now rests so gracefully basking in the glory of our own Southern sun, like a thing of 'beauty and life,' on the edge of this, the loveliest and most picturesque lake that ever greeted the eye of man, was nothing but a mere hamlet.

"Jennings, Esterly, Welsh, Iowa City, Westlake, twin sister of Lake Charles, Sulphur City, Edgerly, Vinton, Jacksonville, Crown Point, and Lakeside, all growing and promising towns, were not even on the maps and had not yet drawn the breath of activity and life. In a few short years the magic hand of progress has accomplished the wonderful transfiguration in the aspects of nature and works of industry and art we contemplate today. We now have before us and around us a bustling and prosperous young city, teeming with a busy population of over four thousand inhabitants of all classes and trades and professions. Thriving towns, with the bright and comfortable residences and business houses, fill places where only two or three years since there was nothing but the wilderness of uncurbed nature, unbroken and untrained to meet the wants and bend itself to the commands of civilized society.

"Numberless farms now dot the landscape where there was no object within the scope of vision in the measureless waste, except the flowing immensity of the prairie meeting with the boundless azure of the sky in the distant horizon," said the judge. "Hither have come ... the farmers from the Northwest, driven from their inhospitable plains by the scorching drought of summer and the snow-mantled blizzard of winter, to seek refuge in the solitude of our prairies; and they have made our empty places smile with pleasant homes and pregnant fields."

Indeed, population on the southwestern prairies doubled between 1880 and 1890, from approximately 126,000 to 240,000.

With the creation of Jefferson Davis Parish, the next item of business was selection of the parish seat, and there would be war waged for it.

Jennings was the most populous town, but Welsh was more centrally located. Lake Arthur had seniority on both of them. Elton was a growing town in the north. Gov. L. E. Hall named Lake Arthur the temporary parish seat until a permanent one could be decided.

After a first vote of the people, Lake Arthur and Elton were eliminated as permanent sites. A second vote was set for Oct. 22, 1912, to make the final choice between Jennings and Welsh. Partisans of each of the towns fanned out across the parish promoting their causes and berating their opponents.

Welsh was so confident that a courthouse site was cleared, on the square where the municipal complex sits today. But the final vote went to Jennings, by only a 79-vote majority, and it became the courthouse town.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).