CHAPTER
II
THE courthouse square in Franklinton is
like many courthouse squares. It has a monument. This is rather pretentious,
with a plaque which is an eternal reminder of a once-rampant violence in the parish
and a tribute to those who abhorred its lawlessness. The inscription on the
plaque reads:
TO COMMEMORATE THE CONSERVATIVE AND
PATRIOTIC SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE OF
FAITH IN GOD, RESPECT FOR CONSTITUTED
AUTHORITY AND ALLEGIANCE TO OUR GOVERNMENT HAS EVER BEEN, IS NOW, AND WILL EVER
BE THE VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR PEACE, HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY.
OUR CITIZENSHIP IS DEDICATED ANEW TO THE
ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAW OF THE LAND. THE SACRIFICE OF OUR BROTHERS WHOSE LIVES
WERE GIVEN FOR THE WELFARE OF OUR COUNTRY SHALL NOT BE IN VAIN.
There
were times when it must have seemed that those who lived outside the law
outnumbered the good parish citizens who "upheld the supremacy and majesty
of the law." It seemed so when the Goodyear brothers first knew Washington
Parish. It was so long before they were there.
Once
a witness under suspicion as an accomplice in a felony shot to death Joe Reid,
the prosecuting attorney, as he descended the outside stairs from the
second-floor courtroom where the defendant had been sentenced for stealing
cattle. Such breaches of the law were not uncommon
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7
in the parish. A man indicted for a
misdemeanor burned the courthouse to the ground in 1897 so that any evidence
against him would be destroyed. At that time all written court proceedings
dating back to 1826 were destroyed, so that today it is only commonly accepted
hearsay that no white man in Washington Parish ever was convicted of the murder
of a Negro until the twentieth century.
The
monument in the
At
the trial, the jury had been out only a few minutes when the foreman pronounced
to the court the verdict of guilty. Thereupon the judge condemned the prisoners
to "hang by the neck until they shall be dead." There was a muffled
sound in the courtroom and among the hundreds who stood outside. But there was
none of the chilling doubt that often accompanies man's deliberate killing in
the name of justice.
The
defendants, who clandestinely had the sympathy of the lawless element of the
parish, appealed the case to the State supreme court on the grounds that the
confessions were illegally obtained and should not have been admitted in
evidence. The employment of a capable criminal lawyer in their behalf indicated
that funds were being supplied by some unknown source.
The
supreme court affirmed the verdicts of the lower court. But only one of the
defendants was sentenced to hang. The other was committed to the State
penitentiary for life, but he was stabbed through the heart by another convict
and died after he had served only five years.
Many
of the natives who were taking the law into their own hands were of obscure
origin. Intermarriage among some of them had produced degeneracy. Clayeaters in
certain sections were not uncommon. The ravages of the hookworm were
widespread. Little value was placed on human life, except one's own. Shooting
seldom was in the open but rather from am-
page 8
Natives
of
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bush. Shotguns and knives were the most
frequently used weapons. Fist fights were rare.
A
fratricide in a lawless clan was typical of the violent deaths that often
stemmed from family quarrels. Two brothers who had been avoiding each other for
some time met by chance at a political gathering. One of the brothers suggested
that they be friends. Thereupon they stepped behind the meeting house to settle
their differences amicably and drink in celebration of their reconciliation.
As
the elder of the two tossed back his head to drink from a jug of "white
lightnin'," the other drew his knife and slashed his brother's throat from
ear to ear. The jurors who heard the case unanimously found the brother not
guilty on the grounds of self-defense. Obviously every juror had decided that
his own life would be safer with an acquittal than a conviction.
The
judge himself appeared relieved at the verdict, but he made sure that his
six-shooter was concealed under his coat for a quick draw as he left the
courthouse.
There
were mass family feuds. As a rule these grew out of sharp controversies over
cattle branding, rivalry over political control, and petty squabbles. One of
the most notorious of these quarrels was between two factions of a large family
which today exerts considerable influence in the parish. The feud and its
"killin's" reached such intensity that several members of the clan
out of sheer fear moved elsewhere to seek peace and security.
So
sensational was one of these violent family quarrels that it came to the
attention of a
News was received by the Bulletin
of a premeditated murder which had just occurred in Washington Parish. A man
named Hiram Adams resided in the Parish some thirty miles from
He in turn would sue the parties and thus
a state of mutual annoyance and
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Fielding
and Nick: some of the
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irritation
was kept up. On the previous Wednesday, Hiram was in the immediate neighborhood
of his own house; he saw a band of fifteen persons approach him armed with
double-barreled shotguns and rifles. He was sitting on the fence when they came
up and his younger brother stood near him. A man named Jess Craff, who seemed
to act as leader of the gang, asked Hiram if he knew what they came for. He
replied that he did not unless it was to murder him. Craff said they came for
that very purpose. Joe, the younger brother, denounced the gang as a band of
midnight murderers, when the mob instantly leveled their weapons on the two
brothers and fired, both being killed instantly. A woman who kept house for the
two brothers, with her son, a boy of fifteen years, who were in the house and
witnessed the killing, ran for their lives. They were fired at but escaped.
Among the attacking party were three nephews of the murdered men. The murderers
then withdrew to a place of rendezvous, where they organized for systematic
defiance of the constituted authorities. The remains of the murdered men were
interred by the two brothers who had taken no part in the broils which Hiram
and the elder brother participated in. It was stated that the surviving
brothers had applied to judge Richardson for a warrant of apprehension but he
refused to grant it, giving his reason fear of the murderers.
Had
the editor of the Bulletin ventured into that section of the parish, remote
from New Orleans, he undoubtedly would have been taking his life into his own
hands.
There
was violence of still another sort in Washington Parish. Many of the former
slaves, taking advantage of their new freedom after the Civil War, banded
together in small settlements in the South. One of these was a scant two-hour
ride by horseback north from Bogue Lusa Creek. As late as 1903, it was a scene
of a mass killing, stemming from the alleged attempt by a "bad
nigger" named Lott to murder a white woman.
Lott
was tied to a tree and burned. Not yet satisfied, the infuriated whites waited
until there was a gathering of Negroes in Live Oak Church. A gun shot began a
massacre in a racial conflict still known as the Ball Town Riot. When the smoke
cleared, fifteen Negroes lay dead.
Washington
Parish even had its own Jesse James. His name was Eugene Bunch. He was a
schoolteacher whose avocation was train-robbing. Those who knew Bunch remember
him as a soft-spoken man with a large black mustache, blue eyes, and the
manners of an educated gentleman. Except for the two months when he taught
children who came from far and wide on foot or horseback, he followed
sporadically the more lucrative
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Professor
Young and his pupils in front of Lee's Creek schoolhouse.
Professor
Young (in doorway) followed Eugene Bunch as schoolteacher
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profession of holding up trains. His
double life was a secret well kept, and he was the terror of crews and
passengers on trains between the deep South and the North.
Ostensibly for
the purpose of living near the school at Lee's Creek, the quiet-mannered
schoolteacher stayed much of the time at the home of one Leon Pounds at Walnut
Bluff on the Pearl River. Actually, the Pounds' home was one of his more
convenient hideouts. He could slip across Pearl River on the ferry at Poole's
Bluff, or in his own dugout, and be back before daylight after gathering his
loot.
During the
winter of 1892, the stage was set for one of Bunch's big hauls. A southbound
train on the New Orleans Northeastern Railroad with several passengers and a
shipment of currency bound for New Orleans was scheduled to stop near McNeil,
Mississippi, at a certain hour. When it did, Bunch was there, alone, to climb
aboard. The armed mail and express agents were relieved of their pistols and as
many sacks of money as Bunch could conveniently carry away. The crew and
passengers were then lined up outside for the holdup. As this fabulous
schoolteacher-train robber went through their pockets, he unwittingly dropped a
scrap of paper which a passenger hastily pressed into the mud with his heel. Bunch
slipped away into the darkness toward the Pearl River swamplands, but his
identity at last had been revealed. On the paper he had dropped was written the
time of arrival of the train at McNeil and the names of Bunch and Leon Pounds.
As he took inventory of the loot in his hideout, Bunch became aware of the
missing slip of paper. Taking no chances, he fled to a more remote hideout.
In a few days,
notices offering a $3,000 reward for Bunch, dead or alive, were posted in the
towns of northern Louisiana and Mississippi. The $3000 was too tempting an
offer for one of Bunch's accomplices, Colonel Hapgood, who shot the
schoolteaching bandit in the back as he slept on a bed of pine needles in
Muster Ground Swamp. Thus ended Bunch's spectacular career, in the damp
darkness of a December night in 1892.
His confederates
now began to talk freely, something they had not dared to do while he was
alive. Bunch, they said, had come from Texas. He had decided on a train-robbing
career after what he considered an injustice done by the railroad. It had
compensated him inadequately, so he thought, for his cattle which had been
killed by trains. Furthermore, the
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railroad had condemned land through his Texas
ranch for a right of way which it obtained for a small settlement and on which
oil was later discovered.
To
him any railroad was his debtor, and he dedicated his life to obtaining payment
in full.
To
his associates, and to parish natives who knew him less intimately, Bunch was a
fearless, unerring marksman who shunned taking advantage of his marksmanship
except in self-defense.
"Once
I seen him pull his .45 quicker than a mule can let out with his hind legs, and
shoot two birds through the head at the same time," an old native recalls.
"High in the tree they was, too."
One
of his own confederates revealed how Bunch and his gang obtained information on
railroad shipments of currency. Bunch had learned telegraphy. By keeping slyly
alert at railroad stations, he heard the telegraphic messages on valuable
consignments being sent through by mail and express. Occasionally, though, he
held up trains which carried only routine mail and express, not only to keep
his own hand well practiced, but to put the railroad officials off guard. The
passengers, he could be certain, carried enough money and jewelry on their
persons to make any holdup worth the effort.
Progress in
enforcing law and order in Washington Parish was painfully slow, but there were
those who devoted their lives to it. One who exercised considerable influence
in ultimately shaping a law-abiding parish was Delos R. Johnson, a native son
born on a headright twelve miles south of Franklinton. Johnson became a State
senator, and was urged to run, for the United States Senate and for the
Governorship of Louisiana. He declined, preferring to practice his profession
as a crusading lawyer in his own native parish.
Another healthy
influence in the parish was Judge Joe Ard, whom the law-abiding natives, bucking
considerable opposition, succeeded in having appointed justice of the peace in
the 1890's. Judge Ard seldom resorted to the strong arm of the law, and few
cases went to final judgement (sic) in his court. When a suit was filed, it was
the judge's habit to ride horseback to the defendant's home, arrange for a
meeting with the plaintiff, and then tell both parties to settle their
differences. Usually they did. Most of the duties of Judge Ard's office were
performed under the spreading branches
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Judge
Joe Ard’s home
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of an oak tree or on the porch of his
home. This also was the setting for the marriages of many country folks living
in the vicinity of Bogue Lusa Creek.
The roll of
honor of others who loyally served the land of their birth, or where they
settled as pioneers, is too long to record in these pages.
The Parish of
Washington was the cradle of Protestant religion in Louisiana. It was in the
Half Moon Bluff Baptist Church, built of logs on Bogue Chitto River in 1812 ,
that "the first message of salvation through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ, was brought to the souls in the darkness of Washington Parish."
From the beginning, the church had a struggle for its very existence. One of
its earliest parsons, the Reverend B. E. Chaney, was arrested and confined in a
prison cell until he promised to cease preaching the Gospel.
At a
crescent-shaped bend of Bogue Chitto River there is today a stone marker on the
site of the Half Moon Bluff Baptist Church, long since destroyed by the ravages
of time and neglect. Country folks from far and wide listened to the address of
the Reverend Doctor John Henry Smith as he officiated at the ceremony when this
simple memorial was dedicated. When Doctor Smith said during his talk, "So
this afternoon we want to look back to the days of our Baptist fathers to see
from whence and how far we have come," the brethren from the settlement
along the eastern waters of Bogue Lusa Creek realized that the spirituality
which their community church at Lee's Creek had slowly spread among their homes
was born many decades ago in the Half Moon Bluff Baptist Church.
The congregation of the church at Lee's Creek was composed of footwashing Baptists until the end of the nineteenth century when the Reverend W. F. McGehee was called to the pulpit to spread the Gospel. Parson McGehee was a missionary Baptist. His daughter, Mrs. Y. R. Nichols, recalls riding to church in a buggy with her father to protect him as they drove through the woods. The natives who did not take kindly to religion were less inclined to shoot at the preacher when there was a child by his side. Father and daughter often returned home from church with a shoat or two in the buggy and a stubborn heifer lagging behind, tied to the rear axle. Gifts of this kind were frequently received by the minister from parishioners who had little to offer when the collection plates were passed.
