Haughton's Early Days

The Village of Haughton
This unique picture of Haughton, Louisiana, was taken in 1910, from atop the church bell tower. A wagon loaded with a bale of cotton proceeds to the railroad depot. the three-story building in the center is the Crume Hotel. At the far left is the store of T.H. Lawrence, which was the last surviving building, until 1997, when it was dismantled. the white house on the right would burn in the 1950s. Behind it is the Edwards' home, which would burn in the 1990s. Fire has been a strong enemy of Bossier Parish's early homes and towns. Emma Patillo Collection: 0000.003.033-2

When William Purvis Haughton moved his family to Bossier Parish, he had no idea that the land he pioneered along with the Lawrence family would one day be named after him and would continue to grow as it has. Haughton's beginning goes back roughly forty years before it was officially designated as such on Sept. 1, 1884, when the VS&P railroad changed the community known as Lawrenceville to Haughton.

The name change was because when the railroad came through Lawrenceville, the train station was named Lawrence Station, but there was already a Lawrence Station in Mississippi. Dr. Paul Andrew Lawrence, the son of pioneer David Lawrence and son-in-law of William Haughton, chose to change Lawrence Station of Lawrenceville to Haughton Station. And the community from that point forward has been known as Haughton.

Being chosen as a location for a railroad station set into motion a significant growth spurt for Haughton. During the summer of 1884, the railroad was built through the community. The Bossier Banner reported on July 10, 1884, "Lawrenceville, situated ten miles south of Bellevue, on the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad, is having quite a boom in business and improvements. There is life and bustle everywhere, and our new railroad town evidently has a bright future before it, in which well directed industry and liberal investments will surely be well rewarded. Success to the new town and its progressive citizens."

A few days later, the first U.S. Post Office opened with Luther E. McDade as postmaster. Of course, the post office name changed from Lawrenceville to Haughton a little over a month after the community's name was changed. The second postmaster was Milus W. Haughton, son of William.

The community continued to grow, and when talks of moving the Parish seat from Bellevue started, the citizens of Haughton wrote a letter to the editor of the Bossier Banner with their bid to be chosen for the new location. The letter was dated May 7, 1885, and was published a week later. It reads as follows:

"As there is a great deal of talk about the Parish site removal, and some little bidding for the Court House, the citizens of Haughton and vicinity desire to be heard. We will give ($3,000) three thousand dollars and one lot of ground for the parish site. Our land ranges in value from $125 to $1000 per lot; and we will give a suitable lot worth at least $500. If parties do not believe that we are in earnest, let us be awarded the parish site and the cash will be forthcoming. In the early days of Rome the crown was put up to the highest bidder, and the money this derived was given to the people. — In this, we propose to assist the people of Bossier in building a new Court House and jail. If any other community offers this amount we may raise our bid, but think that those who get the advantage of the parish site, should pay for that advantage. We are willing to do so."

The letter continues with boastings of the fruitfulness of the land, its commercial advantages, and schools. The amount of cotton they shipped out in 1884 was 3,000 bales, and the fact that they paid more for cotton than any other place. Pointing out that "everything argues in favor of Haughton. We have six business houses, boarding houses, livery stables, saw mills, and everything that constitutes a first-class village, with the ambition of a town — Within the present year Dr. Lawrence, Messrs. McClanahan, Davis, Grounds, Bullock and Odom, have built residences, and Messrs. Bryan, Radcliff, Bodenheimer, McKinney and J.F. Edwards are constructing residences. If any town, or neighborhood in the parish can beat this showing of a town less than a year old, we would like to hear from them, especially if they will offer more for the Court House."

That same year a Baptist church house and Methodist church house were erected. P.B. Holt became the editor and proprietor of the first newspaper, the “Haughton Democrat.” The village held its first election that fall, where the people elected Henry Bodenheimer as their first Mayor and for Trustees, Dr. Paul Lawrence, J.F. Edwards, J.W. Elston, D.H. Cale, D.E. Griffin, and J.G. Grounds. Come Christmas time; the people put up a community Christmas tree in the schoolhouse where they gathered on Christmas Eve. The first telephone was installed in June of 1889.

The village of Haughton continued to grow. With a population of over 1,000 inhabitants, Governor Edwin Edwards, through proclamation, reclassified the Village of Haughton to the Town of Haughton in Sept. 1975. Currently the largest town in Bossier Parish, and once it reaches a population of 5,000, it will be eligible for reclassification as a city.

To learn more about Haughton, visit the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City. Be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on Tiktok, and check out our blog, http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

By: Amy Robertson

History in the Name: Bossier Parish Cities and Towns

The Parish of Bossier is a medley of communities that includes two cities, three towns, two census-designated places, as well as several unincorporated communities. Names for these communities were inspired by the area’s physical features, given in memory of an early settler, or after an individual that made significant contributions to the development of that area.

Bossier City is the highest populated municipality in the parish, and like many other communities, it has had more than one name. The first European settlers of the Bossier City area were James and Mary Cane, who had a plantation called Elysian Grove, which was about 600 acres in size. The plantation’s port or ferry landing was known as Canes Landing, and sometime after the Cane’s opened a store near the landing, the area became known as Cane City.

Near the end of the nineteenth century, a small village was laid out by Mary Cane’s granddaughter and her husband, changing the name to Bossier City. Bossier was later incorporated as a village in 1907 by Gov. Blanchard. Bossier City was named in memory of Pierre Evariste John Baptiste Bossier, the same U.S. Congressman that Bossier Parish was named after. In 1843, he was elected to represent Louisiana’s 4th District in the Twenty-Eighth Congress, the same year that Bossier Parish was created.

General Pierre Evariste Jean Baptiste Bossier C. 1820-30.
Clifton Cardin collection:1997.065.001

Shreveport is the second city that resides in Bossier Parish, but only small portions of it. It is easy to assume that the Red River perfectly divides Caddo and Bossier Parishes, and at one time, this was true. However, over time through natural and artificial causes, the course of the river has changed. The boundaries of the two parishes were designated based on how the “Old River” ran; however, the river has moved east over the years. Making it so that areas of Shreveport seem to be in Bossier and areas of Bossier seem to be in Shreveport.

The Shreveport downtown airport, Wright Island, Shreveport Aquarium, El Dorado Casino, and the Charles and Marie Hamel Memorial Park are all in Shreveport, Bossier Parish, Louisiana. Boomtown Casino is in Bossier City, Caddo Parish, as well as most of Cane’s Landing, and a portion of the eastern bank of the river south of Jimmie Davis Bridge. Therefore, parts of Shreveport are in Bossier Parish, making Shreveport the other city within the parish.

Shreveport was named in honor of Captain Henry Miller Shreve, who not only made the Red River navigable in 1838, but he also made contributions to the settlement of the region. Shreveport was first called Shreve Town after the real estate brokerage firm, Shreve Town Company, in which Captain Shreve was an owner.

Captain Henry Miller Shreve by artist George
D'Almaine Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org

There are two accounts of how the town of Benton received its name. In one account, it is said that it was initially called Ben’s Town after a merchant by the name of Benjamin Looney, who was reported as being the first merchant in the area. The other account is that the town of Benton was named in honor of Thomas Hart Benton, a United States Senator from Missouri. He played a critical role in developing the west by building roads west of the Mississippi, including the road from Arkansas into Shreveport, which passed through Lewisville, Plain Dealing, and Benton operating as a stagecoach line for many years.

Daguerreotype of United States Senator Thomas Hart Benton, C. 1850.
Image courtesy of the Harvard University Library.
Source: Harvard University Library, Weissman Preservation Center
found on  https://commons.wikimedia.org

The town of Haughton, which is expected to qualify to become a city after the 2020 U.S.
Census, started as Lawrenceville. When the VS&P railroad came through in 1884, the name was changed to Haughton on Sept. 1 of that year—named after one of the original settlers, William Haughton. The Lawrence’s and Haughton’s once owned all of the lands that make up Haughton today.

William Purvis Haughton
Source: http://bebossier.com/2018/03/history-of-haughton/

Before the Civil War, there was the Plain Dealing Plantation that was operated by George Gilmer. When the Shreveport and Arkansas Railroad, commonly known as the Cotton Belt Railroad, was announced to be coming through the area in 1888, S.J. Zeigler a businessman and the husband of a Gilmer descendant that owned the Plain Dealing property, selected the property to establish a village. It was briefly known as Guernshein after a prominent railroad company stockholder, but it was soon renamed to Plain Dealing after the plantation. It was chartered in 1890 and became incorporated as a town in 1928.

George Oglethorpe Gilmer owner
of Plain Dealing Plantation
Source: ancestry.com

To learn more about these and other communities in Bossier Parish, visit the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City.

By: Amy Robertson