L&A Railroad Establishes Princeton

Mrs. Perry at the Central Point South Princeton train sign in Princeton, La, 1996.
Kenneth R. Perry collection: 1998.048.003.

In the early history of Bossier Parish, the steamboats and later the railroads influenced the movement of the populace. Communities like Fillmore and Bellevue suffered because they were not selected as depots when the railroads came in 1884 (VS&P) and 1888 (Cotton Belt), respectively. Likewise, Haughton, Benton, and Plain Dealing grew because they did become depots during that time. In 1909 the L&A Railroad was built establishing Princeton as a depot. The first train passed through on November 2, 1909.

We can’t be confident as to how Princeton got its name because there are at least two different accounts. Both accounts agree that the community was named for early settler Joseph Wilson Prince, Sr. It has been written that Princeton was named when it was established as a train depot. One account is that Joseph’s wife Dollie McDade Prince was given the honor of naming the community for the sake of the train depot. Her first choice was Princeville. Since this name was already in use at another train depot, she decided on Princeton and was quoted as saying, “Princeton is a pretty name.” However, Joseph Wilson Prince, Sr.’s great-granddaughter, Dorothy Watson Glover, believes that Ella Cooper Watson named the community after her beloved deceased stepfather, Joseph Wilson Prince, Sr. (1833-1902).

The railroad caused the little community of Princeton to change from being just a quiet farming community to a bustling railroad depot community. On March 24, 1910, it was announced in The Bossier Banner that Mr. Burge of Minden was erecting a store.

In an article found in The Bossier Banner on August 11, 1910, the writer describes Princeton as having “a store, a freight room, and several residences,” but not a post office. The writer notes, “things bear the appearances of being exceptionally busy during weekdays for a little flag station.” He also writes that Mr. F. E. Burrage served as the ticket and freight agent for the L&A while running his store and raising chickens. Bellevue sawmill was one of Burrage’s freight customers shipping thousands of feet of lumber, such as pine cross ties and piles. “A number of the piles, sixty feet in length and skinned from end to end ... were consigned to the creosoting plant in Bossier City and will later be shipped to West Texas, where they will be used in the construction of a new railroad.” The writer finishes by opining that, “Princeton is admirably located to become a trading and shipping point of local importance and no doubt it will develop into such within the next year or so.”

By September of that same year, the first Post Office was opened at Princeton with Allie J. Burrage as postmaster. On January 31, 1919, the post office was discontinued in Princeton with all mail being sent to Haughton, but it was re-established on October 30, 1922, with Clara M. Crawford as acting postmaster.

Over the next few years, Princeton continued to grow. By 1914 it had a sawmill that was producing about “20,000 feet of lumber daily.” Their railroad depot went from being a “little shack” to “a large and commodious depot.” An express office was planned along with the promise of telegraph and telephone facilities. A new school building was constructed and filled with new desks and equipment. “Land in and around Princeton was beginning to be hard to find.” And apparently so were wives according to an article by an unknown writer in The Bossier Banner on March 5, 1914, “Princeton can boast of a high, salubrious, free-from-malaria atmosphere, of an intelligent, broad-minded and progressive community, and six or seven of the handsomest, most industrious and good all-around young bachelors that can be found anywhere. If you girl readers doubt this last statement come and see for yourselves.”

By the beginning of 1915, the cross arms and insulators arrived for the telephone lines which were run by Cumberland Telephone Company in April. Finally, the telephone box was installed in May, making it possible for the Princeton community to communicate with the outside world via telephone.

To learn more about Princeton or Bossier Parish history, visit the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center at 2206 Beckett Street in Bossier City.

Note: The History Center's collection database could use more historical photographs etc. of Princeton, La. If you have any you would like to donate; please contact the History Center today (318.746.7717). If you do not wish to part with your photographs, but would like to share them, we are happy to scan them to add to our collection.

By: Amy Robertson

Upcoming Genealogy 101 Program

Are you interested in genealogy, but don't know where to begin? This program is designed to get you started in the right direction. You will learn where to search for information, how and why to cite your sources, proper formatting, and what sources you have free access to with your Bossier Parish Library card.

Upcoming Program with Guest Speaker

Upcoming Bossier History Program

The Early History of Fillmore

Dove A. Horton, Sr. with his family in front of their Fillmore home, formerly Connell's Inn, C. 1903.
Thelma Horton Porter Collection: 2003.011.008e

Around 1835 settlers came to the beautiful hill lands of what is now known as Fillmore. Fillmore is believed, by many North Louisiana historians, to be the oldest European settlement in Bossier Parish. “At one time, Fillmore was the most important town in Bossier Parish.”   

Fillmore was originally called Connell’s Crossroads named after its founder Thomas Dixon Connell. “Crossroads mercantile establishments in the 1800s were the centers for information, the post office and the source of innumerable personal, household and farm items.” “Fillmore probably exemplified the idea of “Bossier’s Crossroads” more than any other local community.”  

In May of 1852, Connell’s Crossroads was renamed Fillmore after the 13th President of the United States, Millard Fillmore. Fillmore is located eight miles south of Bellevue on the “Old Wire Road.” The “Old Wire Road” was the first road across north Louisiana wilderness. It began as a Native American trail. As settlers moved in, it became a stagecoach road making the passage from Monroe to Shreveport a bit easier. It also served as a Pioneer route to Texas. After 1847 it became known as the Wire Road because of the parallel telegraph lines that ran along with it. A commercial stagecoach operated along this road with stagecoach changes made at the Connell Inn, which was built around 1848. For $12, a person could ride the stagecoach 120 miles from Monroe to Fillmore.  

Before the Civil War, Fillmore enjoyed great prosperity with the community being distinguished for its wealth and cultural background. Surnames of early settlers include the McDades, Connells, Platts, Forts, Hickmans, Hillmans, Murffs, Sandidges, Reeds, Beauchamps, McClanahans, Hamiltons, and many others. Many of these early settlers are buried in the Fillmore Cemetery, which sits on land that was donated by Thomas Dixon Connell. Thomas Dixon Connell and William Purvis Haughton were the first two people to be buried there.  

In 1847, one of the first Methodist churches in Bossier Parish was built in Fillmore on land sold from Thomas Dixon Connell for $1. In the fall of 1871 when Marion Britt relocated his family to Fillmore, he recorded the village as having “three churches (Methodist, Baptist, and Christian), a Masonic Lodge, Griswold’s Academy, several large mercantile establishments, a large horse barn (that also housed the stagecoach), and considerable population.”  

On June 20, 1850, Connell’s Crossing received its first post office with Thomas A. Snider as Postmaster. The post office was discontinued on June 26, 1867, but it was re-established December 12, 1870. Then, on January 10, 1881, the post office was discontinued again, and to this day, there is still no post office in Fillmore.  

One of the oldest schools in North Louisiana was the Bossier Academy at Fillmore. The earliest evidence of this school can be seen in an advertisement looking for a qualified teacher for Bossier Academy in Fillmore that ran in the South-Western on July 25, 1855. After the Civil War, Lyman Griswold came to teach at Fillmore Academy and Normal School. He not only provided a sound education for the children, but he was also credited with turning out qualified teachers.  

When the Civil War broke out between the north and the south, the abled body men of Fillmore enlisted in Louisiana’s 19th Infantry Regiment, the Robins Greys. Captain Loudon Butler was commanding officer of the Robins Greys and he led them away from their Fillmore homes to Camp Moore on Monday, September 23, 1861. They “went away to fight for a cause they believed to be right. They marched gaily away to the strains of martial music, some never again to see the red hills of their ancestral homes.”  

In 1884 the VS&P Railroad came to Bossier Parish passing through Haughton. In 1885 Fillmore residents began to leave their homes for Haughton. Dr. Luther Longino wrote, “The glamour of moving trains and a railroad center, coupled with bad roads between these two points, forced upon the denizens of Fillmore the inevitable result: the village’s decline and fall. The crash was made complete, when at a later date the L&A Railroad (April 2, 1909) pushed through to Shreveport on the north of Fillmore, Establishing Princeton, and still farther, dividing what business Haughton did not take. Fillmore read these inexorable laws of business, and in a frantic effort to hold the community together went into the dairying business, which was carried on for several years...”  

To learn more about Fillmore or any of Bossier Parish’s communities, visit the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City. 

By: Amy Robertson

Pre-register for R & R with History: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. More than twenty years later, her children found out. Their lives would never be the same."

Dr. Rose Harris

A four-week reading and discussion series facilitated by Dr. Rose Harris, Ralph Bunche endowed Professor of Political Science at Grambling State University. The series will center on the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks  by Rebecca Skloot.

FREE 

Please call or come by to pre-register; space and books are limited.

When:  Monday evenings

              Sept. 9 - Sept. 30

              6:00 - 7:30 p.m.

Red River Baptist Church: 170-Years of History

Red River Baptist Church's new sanctuary (left), old shale block building built 1947 (center), parsonage (right). Bossier Parish Library Collection: 2010.024.017

One hundred and seventy years ago on the “Saturday before the 4th Lord’s day in August 1849...” (August 25, 1849), Red River Baptist Church was organized at the request of thirteen men and women. The charter members were James Engram, J. G. & Caroline Curry, Dudley & Matilda Curry, Peter & Jane Curry, Adline Pouncy, William & Nancy Perrit, Selenor Romby, and Thomas & Louisa Hamilton.

They were led in the organization of the church by Reverend M. S. McDonal and Reverend Allen Winham from the outgrowth of the mission work of Caney Creek Baptist Church. Rev. Winham served as the pastor for the first fifteen and a half years (longest-serving pastor in the history of this church), except for a few months in which Rev. McDonal served as pastor.

During the nineteenth century, the church met only once a month, and on their next meeting, the newly formed church happily welcomed seven new members, including two slaves. In fact, the church minutes reveal that a large portion of the church’s membership was composed of slaves, who later formed a separate church.

It was recorded in the church minutes on the fifth Sunday in June of 1862 that the church met at Gold Point on the plantation of Wm. Pickett. On that day, the largest number of baptisms to occur in one day, in the history of the Red River Baptist Church, took place. According to the church minutes, Rev. Winham gave a sermon and afterward “a door was opened and invitation was given for the reception of members, when 48 presented themselves for baptism who being examined were received and baptized the same evening.” The names of all those baptized were recorded in the minutes as well.

All we know about the original meeting place is what’s described in the minutes of the organization of the church as “the meeting House in the neighborhood of ‘Willow Chute.’” Sometime around 1859 or 1860 the church moved to Wallace Springs or “Old Red River Cemetery,” located on the road to the Linton community. And, in the 1880s, services were held at the Pine Grove Schoolhouse.

It was November of 1901 when a majority vote was given to be built a permanent church house near Linton. A one-room frame building was erected in 1902 at the church’s current location and served as the church house until 1947 when the groundbreaking was announced for the construction of a new shale block building. The shale block building was a one-room structure that featured electric lights, ceiling fans, and butane gas heat.

Groundbreaking for new shale block church house, Linton Rd. 1947
Carol Young Collection: 1998.081.053

The 1950s was a time of rapid expansion for the church starting in 1951 when three Sunday school rooms were added onto the shale block building. Then, in 1952, a committee met to discuss building more Sunday School rooms, which resulted in a new building, that later became the parsonage. In 1955, the building committee agreed to finance the construction of a four-room Sunday School building. Finally, in 1957, the church approved the parsonage to be enlarged.

Ten years later, in the spring of 1967, a committee was formed to investigate the possibility of building a new Church building. But two years went by before plans were approved for a new sanctuary. On September 12, 1971, a dedication service was held for the new sanctuary, which was constructed with brick veneer, all-electric central air and heat, and was fully carpeted. Perhaps more importantly than the dedication service, the Red River Baptist Church celebrated their 122nd anniversary on August 29, 1971, in the new sanctuary.

In the fall of 1970, advertisements were placed in the newspaper for the shale block building to
be sold to someone willing to move the building. For some reason, the building was not sold, and
church records reveal that it was converted into classrooms and an assembly hall. On July 6,
1977, groundbreaking took place on a new educational wing built behind the sanctuary, which
was later added onto in the spring of 2000. On August 1978, the old shale block building was
torn down. A three-hundred seat sanctuary was added on around 2001 or 2002.

There have been two cemeteries established by the Red River Baptist Church, one at the
“Wallace Spring” location and one at Linton. The first cemetery at the “Wallace Spring” location
west of Cypress bayou on the Linton-Vanceville Road has been there for well over a century.
The second cemetery is located adjacent to the current church location and has been in use since
about 1904 and was expanded in 1958 or 1959.

During the last 170 years, Red River Baptist Church has “regularly sent messengers to various
districts states and-southwide [sic] Southern Baptist gatherings, and supported associational
missions, state missions, home missions, foreign missions, orphanages, Christian education and
benevolences of many kinds.”

All are welcome to join the 170th homecoming celebration on August 25, 2019, at 10:45 a.m.
with a fellowship meal afterward. It is located at 3301 E. Linton Road, Benton, La.

To learn more about the history of churches in Bossier Parish, visit the Bossier Parish Libraries
History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City.

By: Amy Robertson

Upcoming Genealogy Program

September Book Club

Pages Past:

An American History
Book Club

At the Bossier Parish LibrariesHistory Center

2206 Beckett Street

Bossier City, LA
318.746.7717

6:00 - 7:30 pm

September 5, 2019

Stop by the History Center today to sign-up and to borrow a copy of the book chosen for September's discussion. 

This Month In Bossier Parish History

August: through the years

Aug. 3, 1922: Dr. A.M. Eichelberger opened the first automobile showroom in Bossier City.
*please, enjoy the variety of automobile photo from the early 1900's

Bossier Banner

Richard Bradford, Sallie Tidwell Bradford
Mary A. and Mary L. Bradford. Unknown location
2002.035.215B McKim Collection

1900's: Johnny A. Stroud on his front lawn
off HWY 157, Plain Dealing, La
1997.062.158 Turnley Collection

1910-1920's: J.P. Keeth Store corner of Lynch
and Palmetto Ave. from left to right:
Ben Keeth, J.P. Keeth, Johnnie Nuckolls
T. Benton Bilxer   1997.062.102 Turnley Collection

1914: Tom Adger and Clyde Herndon wedding at
Plain Dealing Baptist Church
1997.062.156 Turnley Collection

                                           

Aug 7: It's back to school in Bossier Parish! Students, parents, and school faculty are gearing up for another exciting school year. Please, be mindful of all the buses that are loading and unloading the most precious cargo from our parish.

1940's: Mildred Purcell's 3rd grade class at
Bossier Elementary School
2001.052.096 Saucier Collection

1940's: Elm Grove School
George T. Robinson Jr: third row, third from the left
with blond hair. Margaret Pilkinton: seated far right with
glasses. Lola P. Armistead: seated in the middle with
ribbon in hair. Phipps Collection

                                   
               

               

           

1936-1937 Bossier High School Faculty
2001.052.097 Saucier Collection

C. 1920's: Early Bossier school buses marked   
Haughton High School
1997.003.003

                                                       







Aug. 11, 1926: In memory of Lt. Eugene H. Barksdale (1896-1926)

Lt. Barksdale was born in Goshen Springs, Mississippi. He attended classes at Mississippi State College for three years. At the start of World War I, he entered the officers’ training camp at Fort Logan H. Roots in Little Rock, Arkansas. He also volunteered for the aviation section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a Private First Class. After completing aviation ground school in Texas, Barksdale boarded to England in 1917. From there, he received his flight training with the Royal Flying Corps and was assigned to the 41st Squadron in 1918. The next year he became a founding member of the U.S. Army’s 25th Aero Squadron.
While Barksdale was assigned to Mitchell Field in New York, he met and married Ms. Lura Lee Dunn in 1921. In 1924, Barksdale had his first accomplishment while at McCook Field; he had a record of flying from Dayton, Ohio to New York in just under 4 hours (3 hours and 53 minutes). This was the first successful test flight using only instruments, he was later congratulated by his commanding officer Maj. W.N. Hensley. Over the next couple of years, Barksdale embarked on several flights and survived many aircraft accidents.
August 11, 1926, Lt. Eugene Barksdale flew his last flight. While testing a Douglas O-2 airplane over McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio, he could not recover from a flat spin. His parachute was caught in the wing's brace wires, causing him to fall to his death.
In the late 1920’s, a new military flying field was needed. After narrowing the location to a select few areas, the cotton fields in Bossier City, LA met all the requirements. In keeping with the war Department’s policy for naming the base in honor of Army Air Corps veterans that died in the line of duty, it was decided to name the field after First Lt. Eugene H. Barksdale. In a letter sent from the Assistant Secretary of War, Davison writes that Barksdale was, “an officer with an outstanding record who met his death in the line of duty while conducting experiments to determine the cause of the spinning characteristics of the O-2 airplane. As he was a native of Mississippi, he was in reality a neighbor of yours.” Barksdale Field was officially dedicated on Feb 2, 1933, and at that time this base was considered “the finest in U.S. history”.
*biography sources and pictures are courtesy of: Eight Air Force Museum/Barksdale Air Force Base, Book: Barksdale: The Man, The Base, Wikipedia, and www.findagrave.com

Aug. 27, 1954: Bossier City Lions Club host the first annual High School Jamboree, held at the Bossier Memorial Stadium.

Aug. 27, 1954: The Times


1954: Bossier High School Football team
1954 Bossier High School Yearbook