First People of the Red River

 Looking straight at me and my coworker Sarah-Elizabeth Gundlach, Ms. LaRue Parker, the tribal chair of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, asked us how we would feel if someone dug up our grandmother’s grave, taking the bones and the jewelry and all that was buried with her. “Violated,” answered Sarah-Elizabeth. “Outraged,” I said. “Yes,” Ms. Parker said, with the tribal council members seated around her nodding in agreement, “That’s how we feel when it happens to us.”

National Native American Heritage Month is commemorated each year in November to celebrate the traditions, languages, contributions and stories of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and affiliated Island communities to ensure those vital histories and contributions continue to thrive and be known through coming generations. 2024’s theme is Weaving together our past, present and future. It is an opportune time to recall that meeting on April 20, 2006, and other lessons learned from the Bossier Parish Library History Center’s First People of the Red River exhibit and symposium, which opened in October of that year.

The First People of the Red River exhibit was a display of Caddo Indian artifacts from the “Mounds Plantation” site of Caddo Parish, the largest Caddo ceremonial site in Northwest Louisiana, as well as the “Haley” site in southwest Arkansas. The one-of-a-kind collection had never before been seen by the public and included finely engraved pottery and a range of beautifully-worked stone tools. To plan the exhibit, History Center staff worked closely with members of the Tribal Council of the Caddo Nation and its Cultural Preservation Department, which are located in Binger, Oklahoma. It was the topic at-hand in our meeting with Chair Parker and her historic all-women tribal council that cool spring day in 2006.

Ms. Parker opened the meeting with her hopes for the exhibit: She wanted visitors to the History Center to know why the objects were in the mounds, who made them, how the present-day Caddo Indians feel about the artifacts, and especially, how they feel about looting.

The council stressed that we show that the artifacts are sacred to a living people who still practice the ways that the artifacts represent. They wanted visitors to take away the message that the Caddo people’s ancestors, and the artifacts, were buried with great ceremony and love to help them in their journey to their next life – sometimes with water jugs, food, or even their horse. The council chair and members hoped that the exhibit, by putting human faces and beliefs to the artifacts, will cause people to think twice before taking artifacts and disturbing Caddo burials.

The Council chair and members emphasized that through the exhibit we aim to teach as many people in Shreveport-Bossier as possible that the Caddo are “still around’ and to build bridges between cultures. They hoped to break down barriers as people learned about the Caddo tribal members of the present-day.

The main message of the exhibit became that Mounds Plantation in Northwest Louisiana is an important, sacred place to an ancient and living people, the Caddo Indians. A number of tribal members living in the modern world still honor and practice the ancient traditions that the Mounds Plantation artifacts represent, such as community dances and feasts, speaking the Caddo language to reinforce Caddo identity, and continuing Caddo spiritual practices. For the exhibit’s opening symposium on October 7, 2006, after being welcomed by Mayor Lo Walker, Caddo elders were able to make those points directly to the public here in Bossier City.

The History Center acknowledges that the tribal council made a significant commitment in participating in the exhibit process when displaying these sacred items was not their customary inclination. They did so with the hope for more recognition of who they are as tribal members from cultural institutions such as the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center and by the public in northwest Louisiana.

The best to way to learn more about the Caddo people is to go to the source. The Caddo Nation has a Heritage Museum in Binger, OK (west of Oklahoma City), though it is currently closed for renovations. Closer to Bossier, for a daytrip, you can visit the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in Alto, TX, and step inside a Caddo grass house built under the direction of Caddo elder Phil Cross and walk among prehistoric Caddoan mounds. If you can’t visit in person, you can view an excellent video on the house and its construction called, “Koo-Hoot Kiwat: The Caddo Grass House.” (Search for it on YouTube.)

Closer still, the Caddo artifacts mentioned in this article are now on display with the McKinney collection at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport’s Native American Gallery. Or, History Center staff can visit with your group or school with our replica Caddo Indian tools and hunting weapons for the “Caddo Indians: Early Inventors” program. And come to the History Center to peruse or request our many books and other resources on the Caddo, such as a “Time Travel Kit” of books, educational activities and primary source materials. We are located at 724 Hutchison Drive (formerly called 850 City Hall Drive, just across Beckett Street from the old library and History Center), Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Images: 

• Bossier City Mayor Lo Walker presents Keys to the City to LaRue Parker, Chair of the Caddo Nation, at the First People of the Red River.  Exhibit and Symposium Celebrating Caddo Culture on October 7, 2006 at the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center. History Center photo by Sarah Elizabeth Gundlach
• Women from the Caddo Nation not only loaned the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center their traditional clothing and accessories for the First People of the Red River Exhibit, but helped set up and arrange them properly. October, 2006. History Center photo by Sarah Elizabeth Gundlach.
• Visitors to the First People of the Red River: Exhibit and Symposium Celebrating Caddo Culture on October 7, 2006 at the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center. History Center photo by Sarah Elizabeth Gundlach.

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Football Team Finds Victory in Crash Landing at Barksdale

Sixty-one years ago, a football team and three coaches from a small Texas school made an unscheduled stop at Barksdale Air Force Base, providing them a victory greater than any experienced on the field.    

McMurry College in Abilene, Texas had one win and one loss early in the 1963 football season, and next on its schedule was Northeast Louisiana State College, now University of Louisiana Monroe. The game would be played in Monroe, so McMurry flew-in for the matchup on Saturday, September 28. 

Defense from both teams dominated play that evening until McMurry scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter to take a 7 – 0 lead. And it seemed that lead would secure the win, until it didn’t. Monroe’s Morning World newspaper of September 29 described the action: “Northeast scored a touchdown with 25 seconds left to play, then went for a two-point conversion and made it.” The final was 8 -7 in favor of Northeast. Dejected, McMurry’s team members had no idea that this stinging defeat would soon pale in comparison to the danger off-the-field that awaited them. 

Later that night, these 28 team members and their three coaches boarded a chartered Douglas DC-3 for the return flight to Abilene. After everyone had settled in their seats, the pilot increased power and the plane swiftly moved along the Monroe airport runway, then lifted off. But something was wrong. The plane had trouble gaining altitude. According to an article in The Shreveport Journal from September 30, 1963, the aircraft “barely cleared trees at the end of the runway.” The pilot attempted to get the plane back on the ground quickly. After two unsuccessful tries, the second of which damaged the landing gear and blew out a tire, a decision was made to try and reach the longer runway at Barksdale Air Force Base. It was during that approximately 30-minute journey that McMurry head coach Grant Teaff was called upon to provide something not usually associated with coaching. He was asked to provide comfort.  

On his podcast, Beyond the Game, Teaff spoke about the harrowing experience aboard the flight. “My assistant coaches and I had moved to the tail of the airplane and were seated on the floor at the recommendation of the captain to try to give some stability to the tail-end when we were to crash,” he said. “Thoughts were racing through my mind because in about 30 minutes, there was the opportunity for death.” Sitting in the dark due to the cabin lights having shorted out, Teaff heard from one of his players. “There was a voice from the darkness that said, ‘Coach, we’re scared. Will you lead us in prayer.’”  And this he did. Assistant coach Hershel Kimbrell was quoted in a September 30, 1963 article in The Shreveport Times as saying, “He (Teaff) was trying to calm everybody down.” 

Just after 1 a.m., with Barksdale’s firefighting crews standing by, the plane crash-landed at the air base, skidding along the runway, producing a shower of sparks and losing a propeller. The Shreveport Times article states that one of the engines caught fire, but was quickly extinguished by firefighters. Apparently, the prayer offered by Coach Teaff had indeed provided comfort. According to The Shreveport Times article, Barksdale Fire Chief Paul Blackburn said of the players, “That football team acted like old pros in coming out of the plane. They came out calmly and quickly.” He added, “They were certainly fortunate. Most planes land like that catch on fire all over.” 

Teaff said that after giving a prayer of thanks for their safe arrival, the players and coaches stayed at a motel and boarded another flight home Sunday morning. “Those players looked that plane over, I’ll guarantee you,” he said on his podcast.  

Back in Abilene that Sunday evening, Teaff was still dealing with the experience, and according to his podcast, he gave thanks again to God for the safe return home and recommitted himself to prioritizing faith in his life. “God has honored that … in many ways,” he said on his podcast.  

Teaff's coaching career took him to several different schools, including Baylor University where he served as head coach from 1972 until his retirement in 1992. During that time, Baylor won the Southwest Conference championship twice, and Teaff was named National Coach of the Year. In 2001, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and in 2022, McMurry dedicated a statue of him in his honor. According to an article in the Abilene Reporter News that was written at the time of the dedication, a plaque next to the statue describes that 1963 crash landing at Barksdale and highlights its importance in Teaff’s life. He calmed fears in a moment of uncertainty and received for himself and his players, as stated in the Reporter News article, “a different kind of victory.” 

If you have any information or items relating to the history of Bossier Parish, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org.  We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Images: 

Plane that crash-landed at Barksdale with McMurry football team aboard/courtesy J. Frank McAneny, The Shreveport Journal

Head coach Grant Teaff after a Baylor victory/courtesy Abilene Reporter News, 1980

Article by: Kevin Flowers

Daisy “Dell” Sutherlin Jones: Delta Wings and Haughton Roots

November is Aviation History Month, and here in the History Center, we’re always looking for stories from World War II. But if “aviation history” and World War II invokes images of fighter planes, bombers and their pilots, here is another image to add: Domestic planes being used in the war effort, with women as part of their crews.

In 1943, Daisy Dell Sutherlin (later Jones), a young woman from Haughton, became an early “stewardess,” now known as flight attendant, for the North Louisiana-grown Delta Airlines. It was a brand-new career opening up for women in an industry just on the cusp of major growth. And for Daisy Dell, it was a starting point for big-city life and careers.

Delta, as Huff Daland Dusters, began in 1925 as a crop-dusting service, first in Macon, Georgia, then Monroe, Louisiana. It was bought by C.E. Woolman, who changed its name in 1928 to Delta Air Service for the Mississippi River Delta region it served. In 1929, Delta operated its first passenger flight from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson, Mississippi, with stops in Shreveport and Monroe. By 1940, it added Douglas DC-2 and DC-3 propellor planes that could hold 14 and 21 passengers respectively, and added Delta’s first flight attendants, then known as stewardesses. In 1941, the HQ moved from Monroe to Atlanta.

Delta’s addition of stewardesses to its flight crews came 10 years after the Boeing Air Transport company pioneered this position in 1930. A nurse from Iowa, Ellen Church, wanted to become an airline pilot but realized that wasn’t a career path open for a woman. So, she approached Boeing with the idea of placing nurses aboard airliners. She convinced the powers that be that the presence of women nurses would help relieve the traveling public’s fear of this new way to travel, flying.

Thus, women nurses as stewardesses replaced non-medical male stewards, and at Delta in 1940, flight attendants were required to be single women (never married) between 21 and 26 years old who were registered nurses. They also had to pass particular height, weight and appearance standards, and for over another decade, they had to be white. In 1952, Ruth Carol Taylor was the first African-American flight attendant in the United States, with Mohawk Airlines.

Fortunately for Dell Sutherlin Jones, who after her Haughton High School graduation, attended the two-year business secretary course at Louisiana Polytechnic Institute (Now Louisiana Tech), the registered nurse requirement was dropped during World War II due to the military’s demand for nurses. She left her job as a bookkeeper in Shreveport to head to Georgia to become a stewardess, and was on the job and in the air by January 1944, when the airline was still flying for the Air Transport Command, carrying materials and personnel for military purposes across domestic routes. The Air Transport Command, which was formed in June 1942, controlled most of the airliners (commercial passenger and cargo planes) that were drafted for the war effort, like Delta’s DC-3’s.

By the middle of 1944, the ASC was able to return planes to the airline that had been used for training. A July 7, 1944, article in the Shreveport Times, when Delta airlines came to Shreveport to recruit young women to be stewardesses, said, “The recent return to Delta by the government of three DC-3 planes has made possible the openings and M.E. Beard, local traffic manager for the line, said he was anxious that Shreveport be represented among the stewardess(es) who serve the line.” Miss Daisy Mae Sutherlin was named as the area’s current representative.

A jumbo-sized postcard featuring a Delta DC-3 in flight that Daisy Dell sent from Atlanta to her little sister Elyane in Haughton in November 1944, chastised “Layne” in fun about why she hasn’t written , since by then she’d have started elementary school, and she must be able to write a little. Daisy Dell inquired, “do you make any A’s?” She signed the letter, “Dell,” though local papers continued to call her the name she was known for from childhood, Daisy Mae.

      

Elayne, in an interview with her and her childhood friend, Dell Steadman, remembered they were practically giddy over Dell and her glamourous career, an image promoted by the airline and their fashionable summer and winter wool suits and matching jaunty hats. It was a special event when Dell’s flight stopped in Shreveport, where it was reported in the Bossier Banner-Progress on June 8, 1944, how Elayne and her mother and aunt drove to Shreveport to spend a few hours with “Miss Daisy Sutherlin, who is an airplane hostess on the Delta Line.”

Daisy was even featured in a magazine, pictured in her crisp uniform smiling between two pilots with the DC-3 towering behind them. Though the magazine was “Outdoors Georgia,” and the article promoted an appreciation of Georgia’s landscape and natural resources from the air, the writer emphasized the absolute comforts of air travel and stewardess Daisy Dell Sutherlin of Shreveport’s role in that. Though Daisy Dell had admitted to the article’s writer that she could count her trips thus far on one hand and had only recently completed her training, “she went about her business like a veteran. She tilted the easy chairs for passengers, answered a million questions, and served orange juice, delicious coffee and sweet buns in a tray. Just like breakfast in bed,” and enthused that when Daisy puts a pillow beneath your head, “you're at peace in a troubled world.”

When Dell left stewardess life, she studied at Johns Hopkins, and enjoyed big city life, working in Chicago and in 1951, New York City. The Planters Press Bossier City newspaper reported on Sept 11, 1952, that Dell, who by then worked for the pharmaceutical company Squibb in New York, “is flying here by plane on the 19th to visit with her family.” This visit was perhaps explained when news of her marriage license, filed along with Wesley J. A. Jones of Gary, Indiana, appeared in the Shreveport Journal on September 24th. Wesley Jones had been an aerial instructor in the Navy Air Corps. After their wedding later that month in Haughton, the couple first moved to Stamford, CT and continued to travel widely.

If you have World War II homefront family photos or stories to share (we will scan and return originals if that is your preference), please visit or contact us at the History Center. Also, don’t forget about our World War II’s Day coffee and discussion group on the second Tuesday of each month from 10:30 – noon. The next meeting is on November 12, with Rev. Sig Kunz speaking on his childhood experiences during World War II in Eastern Europe. The History Center (and World War Tuesday) is now located in the new Central Library building at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA, across Beckett Street from the original History Center and the “old” Central Library. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Photo of Dell Sutherlin, Delta flight attendant, between two pilots, with a Delta Douglas DC-3 plane behind them. From “Outdoors Georgia,” January, 1944.
• Front of a Delta Airlines DC-3 jumbo postcard C. 1940. Courtesy of the Delta Flight Museum. Gift of Cara Finger in honor of Dell Jones and Elayne Cornett.
• Back of postcard of Delta Airlines DC-3 jumbo postcard, from Dell Sutherlin to Elayne Sutherlin, November, 1944. Courtesy of the Delta Flight Museum. Gift of Cara Finger in honor of Dell Jones and Elayne Cornett.
• Elayne Sutherlin (Cornett) and her mother, Lucille McAnn Sutherlin C.1950. History Center photo courtesy of Elayne Cornett.

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Here is  another story of our parish’s namesake, General Pierre Evariste Jean Baptiste Bossier.  Our last jaunt into the past with General Bossier (8/28/2024), the story ended with his fabled death in 1844. With the Day of the Dead just around the corner, this story takes up from there. 

In 1842, General Pierre Evariste Bossier, a Jacksonian Democrat of Natchitoches, became the first legislator elected to represent Louisiana’s brand-new Fourth Congressional District. He began his term in March 4, 1843 and barely more than a year later he died in-office of an unspecified illness on April 24, 1844. Stories later circulated that Bossier’s death was a suicide, prompted by the angst perpetuated by a deadly duel with his political opponent (yet childhood friend) Gen. François Gaiennie. Political acrimony was truly at an all-time high,  but pre-modern medicine, in actual swampland, Bossier was the tenth member of the 28th US Congress to die just four months into the session. Tuberculosis is just one example of a common, yet potentially deadly,  illness that could have sounded Bossier’s death knell. 

Reports by legislative correspondents for newspapers around the country of the elaborate funeral service for General Bossier make it plain that Congress was practiced in holding grand state funerals. Also notable in these reports is that the congressional witnesses were not practiced in observing Catholic rites, and their commentary runs the gamut from curiosity to awe to xenophobic disgust.  

These reports began with the information that on April 25, 1844, Bossier’s fellow representative from Louisiana, Mr. Slidell, rose and announced the death of his colleague, Pierre Bossier, who died at his Washington “lodging” early that morning. Mr. Bossier had been confined to his room during the greater part of the session, and that he departed “peacefully,” according to the Hartford (CT) Courant. The Charleston (SC) Mercury reported that “Madame Bossier,” Bossier’s wife Mathilda Blair Bossier, was with him and “consoled him in his long affliction.” The Courant continued about General Bossier, “He was identified with the French population of the State of Louisiana where he was born [on March 22, 1797] and was of a type of people wholly devoted to our free institutions.” This paper also pointed out that Mr. Slidell referenced the brutal political division of the day by “express[ing] the hope that the occurrence serves to soften the asperities of debate and to put an end to all recrimination among members hereafter.”

The funeral was held the following day at noon. Members of the House of Representatives took their places and opened their session. At a quarter past 12’o’clock, the President of the Senate entered the Hall of the House, now Statuary Hall, in the US Capitol followed by the Senators in a body. The President of the Senate took a seat on the rostrum beside the Speaker of the House of the Representatives. Both wore white sashes, as did the officers of the House and members of the committee for the arrangements seated below them. Next came several Catholic priests in their bright vestments followed by the bier supporting the body of General Bossier, which was placed in front of the Speaker’s seat. The scent of incense filled the air. Also present were the President of the United States, John Tyler, and members of the Cabinet. 

Rev. Dr. James Ryder, Jesuit priest and president of the Georgetown College (now University) ascended the rostrum, and delivered his sermon without notes. Enthused a correspondent of the Journal of Commerce, “His [Rev. Ryder’s] exordium (beginning words) was beautiful, and as he went on to speak of the uncertainty of life and the fleeting nature of all worldly honors and advantages, every one within his hearing, felt the ground slipping from under him.” 

A reporter for the National Anit-Slavery Standard of New York stated similarly, in the May 9,1844, issue, that they found Fr. Ryder’s sermon impressive, though within a coarser context, the strident political discourse of the day. (The dramatic presidential nominating conventions held in the days and weeks following General Bossier’s 1844 death culminated in the closest presidential election in US history). The Standard said Rev. Ryder’s sermon “was an eloquent performance, but too much in the spirit of propaganda for such as occasion. One thing I was glad to hear, and that was a faithful rebuke for the House for the scandalous disorders and outrages committed so frequently on its floor.“ 

The Standard’s editorial comments also betrayed their anti-Catholic prejudices: “I was disgusted, as I have often been before by the mummeries of the Catholic rites, but I must do homage to the superior moral grandeur of this intrepid and truthful testimony.”  Regrettably, this prejudice was not limited to the page. As Fr. Ryder left the ceremonies, he was pelted with stones by anti-Catholic protestors, called the “Know-Nothings.”   

Following the service, a procession from both Houses and others conveyed the coffin to the Congressional burying ground (the Congressional Cemetery). There Pierre Evariste Bossier was interred but only temporarily, until reburial was possible in the Catholic Cemetery in Natchitoches. A cenotaph, a marker for a normally empty gravesite, memorializes him in the Congressional Cemetery as the Anglicized “Peter Bossier.” 

To learn more about the beginnings of Bossier Parish, come visit us in the History Center, which is now within the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fast facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Pierre Bossier. Digital copy in History Center collection. Original in private collection in Baton Rouge. NOTE: Portrait used previously for Pierre Bossier, by John James Audubon, on further research appears to be of Pierre’s cousin, Jean-Baptiste Bossier.
• The House of Representatives by Samuel F.B. Morse, C.1820s. In the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Painting depicts the “Old House Chamber,” which was used by the House of Representatives for their assemblies until 1857. It now houses the Hall of Statues in the U.S. Capitol.
• Father James A. Ryder, S. J. From the Georgetown University Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Text of Cenotaph for Representative Pierre Evariste Jean-Baptiste Bossier in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.. His name has been Anglicized to Peter E. Bossier.

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Family History Month: “Generation to Generation”

In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations….So begins one of my favorite poems, “Generation to Generation” by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (best known for “the Little Prince”). I’m sharing it here because October is Family History Month.

Family History Month is celebrated and promoted to ensure that family stories are remembered for decades (and centuries) to come through research and education. It was not a coincidence that the Senate resolution to declare this commemorative month passed unanimously in 2001 just two and half weeks after the tragic and terrifying events of 9/11. The hope behind the act was that learning family history could work to unite communities, as well as provide context for and examples of, and resilience despite suffering and struggles. The U.S. Senate declared, “…Whereas as individuals learn about their ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much, their commitment to honor their ancestors’ memory by doing good is increased; Whereas interest in our personal family history transcends all cultural and religious affiliations... Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate designates the month of October 2001, as Family History Month…”

My grandparents Lillian and Algot Ekstrom of Worcester Massachusetts lovingly did not neglect to hand down their heritage, and my grandmother, especially, told stories that were remembered across generations – stories of childhood pranks on her beloved sisters or playmates, stories of fellow residents in her Massachusetts neighborhood’s trademark triplex (known as “triple decker”) houses, and of a beloved grammar school principal who took the students on nature walks, instilling in the lifelong city girl a lifelong love of nature and a famous green thumb.

Saint-Exupéry’s poem continues, Let us build memories in our children, lest they drag out joyless lives, lest they allow treasures to be lost because they have not been given the keys. We live, not by things, but by the meanings of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.

I was incredibly fortunate my grandparents passed down those “passwords” and that I got to spend so much time in their home that was filled with meaningful things –stashed in an attic desk were love letters my grandmother wrote while she was in nursing school to her future husband of 69 years, my grandfather, designer dresses, hats and shoes of the 1920s, that passed down from the wealthy industrialist yet progressive family that employed my great grandmother, a young widow from Sweden who was raising 4 daughters, my mother’s and uncle’s prized story books, dolls and trucks, a gallery of my grandfather’s paintings (like many Swedes in his city, he worked in the steel and wire industry, but self-taught, he prolifically painted nature and wildlife) and the brightly-painted wooden horses (Dala horses) passed down through the family or bought as souvenirs from their trip of a lifetime to Sweden with their church.

History Center staff are eager help you research and record your family’s history, and we carefully preserve and make accessible the history of many Bossier Parish families. We also can share the inspiration and research skills we’ve gained from our own and our patrons’ family history searches, whether local or not. Our online resources span the globe. We are in the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Images: 

• Lillian Carlson nursing school portrait 1930s
• Astrid, Ruth and Lillian Carlson, Bancroft Tower, Worcester, MA, 1922
• Dala horses. Image by Gustav.jg - Own work, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
• History Center research area in the new Bossier Parish Central Complex Library

Article by: Pam Carlisle