Minden Perserverance and Pride

By John A. Agan

The beautiful historic town of Minden is tucked up in the pine-filled hills of northern Louisiana. Established by Charles Hanse Veeder in 1835, a third-generation German-American originally from upstate New York, Minden rapidly earned a reputation as a town of unique character, aided by the Minden Academy and the early introduction of the Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian religions. After Veeder left the town, the hearty settlers remained to foster Minden's growth and development. Although the seat of Webster Parish today, Minden has faced expansion fluctuations, caused by natural disaster and economic hardship, but followed by ambitious industrial endeavors and renewed hope.

Minden thrived commercially, with economic gain centralized in Bayou Dorcheat, which was composed of separate landings acting as shipping points for goods coming from much of northern Louisiana. Industries like cotton farming and the Minden Lumber Mill, formed in 1901 as one of the largest mills in the United States at the time, caused the town's population to nearly double in just ten years. Under the leadership of great men like E.S. Richardson, Minden also became a model for other towns of similar size in the field of education. At the same time, disastrous fires, a catastrophic tornado, and the devastation of the steamboat trade on Bayou Dorcheat by the coming of the railroad challenged the community in the ever-changing twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 25, 2002
• ISBN: 9781439630532

John A. Agan

In Minden: Perseverance and Pride, author John A. Agan has crafted the first ever text history of Minden, Louisiana. A history instructor and genealogy and reference librarian, as well as an established writer, Agan has conducted many historic presentations, published articles in the Minden Press-Herald, and compiled two pictorial histories of the county in the popular Images of America series. With over 100 photographs and illustrations, this compelling new volume depicts the city's willingness to overcome adversity and flourish. Minden personifies an unending ability to excel and thrive, while still maintaining its small-town charm and reputation as a good place to live.

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INTRODUCTION

To many Americans, the name Louisiana conjures up images of New Orleans, beautiful Catholic churches, the sounds of a French patois being spoken by the residents, Spanish moss hanging from the trees, voodoo, Cajuns, and bayous and swamps full of alligators. However, Louisiana is a state with a tremendous cleavage, both geographical and cultural. It seems that most of the United States is unaware of the northern portion of Louisiana, largely dominated by red clay and piney hills (although we do have our bayous and even alligators). The community that is portrayed in this book is the quintessential north Louisiana town. While settlement in the southern half of the state began in the early 1700s, north Louisiana was sparsely settled at the time of Louisiana’s statehood in 1812.

In fact, the heart of north Louisiana, in the area between the Red and Ouachita Rivers, was largely unsettled until the 1830s. Minden is located in this section of north Louisiana. It is strongly Protestant and dominated by Anglo-Saxon settlers with a strong mixture of German and Scotch-Irish heritage. These first residents were simple people who believed strongly in the work ethic. The wave of settlers that came in the 1830s and 1840s across the newly opened Native American territories in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi populated the community in its formative years. When examining the family history of the oldest families, one finds that most of them were originally residents of South Carolina or Georgia who set out to find new homes on the frontier. In most cases, they were of modest means and came to the newly opening lands to seek their fortune.

The land in northwest Louisiana was not suited to large-scale plantation agriculture. A few large cotton plantations did emerge along the bayous, yet the typical farmer in the Minden area owned fewer than a half-dozen slaves. The absence of a dominant agricultural presence allowed Minden to become a commercial city from its earliest years, first drawing its trade from nearby Bayou Dorcheat and later from the railroads that were finally completed in the area during the late 1800s. Many of the first families became wealthy through commercial interests and are still residents of the Minden area today. Interestingly, the few families who made the bulk of their income from plantation agriculture have nearly all vanished from the Minden scene.

In later years, timber, railroad, and munitions would all become the industrial leaders in the Minden area. It was this diverse economic base that helped Minden to overcome a unique number of tragedies, including fires, storms, and simple changes in the economy, and always bounce back, often stronger than before. In the single traumatic year of 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Minden saw nearly one-third of its downtown area destroyed by fire, the largest of the two commercial banks in the town fail, a killer tornado claim 28 lives and destroy nearly one-third of the dwellings in the town, a devastating 17-inch rainfall in one day that destroyed the cotton crop, and the political assassination of a local official. Yet, within a decade, Minden was thriving as she never had before. That resilience is the reason for the title of this volume—Minden: Perseverance and Pride. Enjoy this story of a small community that used hard work and civic pride to overcome its setbacks and become a wonderful place to live and rear a family, a town that is moving forward while still maintaining the history and traditions that made it succeed. Minden, Louisiana, a town that I am proud to call home.

These old businesses were destroyed to build the Civic Center. In addition to the significance they held for the African-American community, these stores were also home to businesses owned by several families that immigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century.

1. BEGINNINGS

On April 30, 1812, Louisiana was admitted to the Union as the 18th state. At that time, the state had a population of about 80,000 free settlers. The overwhelming majority of those citizens lived in south Louisiana. In fact, by 1830 when the population of the state had risen to more than 215,000, only 17,000 (about 8 percent) of the people lived north of Alexandria in the center of the state. The settlement of north Louisiana began to grow in the years after statehood and increased rapidly after the Indian Removal Acts of the 1830s. Our story will be set in this region that was largely a wilderness at the time of statehood. All of northwest Louisiana was then part of Natchitoches Parish, including the area where the town of Minden would eventually be established. Settlement around Minden did not begin in any numbers until about 1818, when several families from Tennessee, most notably the Murrell family, settled about 12 miles north of the current site of Minden. John Murrell established his home, which would eventually become the seat of government and religious activities for Claiborne Parish when it was established in 1828. John Murrell’s son Isaac was born in 1819 and became the first child of European heritage to be born in north Louisiana, north of Campti and between the Red and Ouachita Rivers. As an adult, Isaac would become a prominent Minden businessman.

The first settler to reside in the more immediate vicinity of Minden was Newitt Drew, who came to what would become the village of Overton in 1822. There, he built a sawmill and a gristmill at the confluence of Cooley Creek and Bayou Dorcheat. Drew’s business thrived and, eventually, the little town of Overton grew up around his enterprises. Overton, located about 3 miles south of Minden, became the seat of Claiborne Parish until the unhealthy climate and accompanying frequent outbreaks of yellow fever caused the town to be abandoned by 1850. By that time, Drew had moved on to Arkansas where one of his sons, Richard, would become governor of the state. His legacy has been felt in Minden through his descendants that remained in the Minden area. Since 1850, there has been a member of the Drew family serving on the benches of various local and state courts in Minden and they are the first family of law in Minden.

Most of these early settlers arrived in Minden from either the north or the south. In these years, much of the territory in Mississippi and Alabama were still occupied by Native Americans. Crossing this territory was considered an extreme risk. The Murrell family came down the Mississippi River, then took the Arkansas River into what is today the central portion of that state, and completed the journey to Minden by land. Other settlers came to Minden by water from the south. The usual path was to travel up the Mississippi River and then into the Red River. The journey would then follow the Red to its intersection with Loggy Bayou, go through Loggy Bayou into Lake Bistineau, and leave the lake via Bayou Dorcheat, which would then take travelers to one of the three landings that would eventually be created near Minden. In the early years, the only landing point was at Overton, later called Minden Lower Landing.

Isaac Murrell was the son of pioneer settler John Murrell and the first European child born in North Louisiana. He later became a prominent Minden businessman.

The Murrell settlement and Overton were already in place when, in early 1835, a new group of settlers came into the area. These unique settlers probably had more to do with the creation of the town of Minden than any other group. The Germantown colonists, as we know them today, were a group of Harmonists who set up a religious utopian community about 8 miles north of today’s town of Minden. They came to the United States under the leadership of the self-proclaimed Count Leon, who proclaimed he had been ordered by God to create a true church in anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The group emigrated from Germany and first settled with the followers of George Rapp in Western Pennsylvania. They only stayed with Rapp for a brief time, as Leon had already caused a schism among the Rappites through his charismatic teachings. Leon and his followers left, taking with them many former members of Rapp’s congregation. They established the town of Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania near the Rapp settlement of Economy, Pennsylvania. After a few years at Phillipsburg, the group moved further south. Leon’s account was that he had been ordered by God to establish a settlement in the United States on the latitude of Jerusalem. More worldly accounts portray the trip south as an attempt to avoid enforcement of a judgment Rapp had obtained against Leon as the result of a lawsuit.

Whatever the impetus, Leon and his band moved south in late 1834. They traveled down the Ohio River, stopping in Louisville, Kentucky, among other points, and eventually reached the Mississippi River. The band continued down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Red River, and sailed up the Red until they reached the approximate latitude of Jerusalem at a swampy site on the Red River called Grand Ecore. This settlement was located just north of Natchitoches, which had been founded in 1714 and was the oldest town in the Louisiana Purchase. The Grand Ecore site proved unhealthy and many colonists died there, including Leon. The remnant of the group moved north along Military Road #11 and eventually came to their new home in the healthy hill country north of Minden. Here, in the spring of 1835, they established their utopian experiment called Germantown, which would endure until 1871.

J.W. Berry witnessed the birth of Minden as a young man, and later was a civic and political leader of the community for more than 50 years.

Shortly after the Germantown colonists arrived, another stranger came into the area. This man brought with him a large supply of goods and other materials necessary to establish a trading post. He was Charles Hans Veeder, a native of Schenectady, New York, who had been operating several business enterprises in southern Indiana and the area of Kentucky around Louisville. While no written record exists to confirm the story, it seems clear that Veeder had encountered the Germantown settlers at Louisville and followed them to their new home, which would explain why he would bring enough goods to stock a large store to an area with few settlers; he obviously planned to become the source of supplies for the Germantown colonists. Veeder purchased a large parcel of land from a man named Adam Stewart and established his store and inn, which he called the Rock Inn, on a hilltop located about 3 miles away from Bayou Dorcheat, between the Germantown colonists and the Bayou, which would have been their source of any imported goods. The site of Veeder’s inn was reputed to be one of the best sites for deer hunting in the entire area, as it was located over a salt dome and the salt licks that came through the ground attracted abundant wildlife. Today, it is the center of downtown Minden. After constructing the inn by January 1836, Veeder divided the rest of his property, which formed a parallelogram, into lots and proclaimed the new village he had created Minden. It is not known whether he named the community after Minden, Germany, since his parents came from Germany, or if he named his town after Minden, New York, near his home of Schenectady. Since the New York town was named after Minden, Germany, it can be stated that the ultimate source of the name Minden was the German city. Thus, Minden can date its birth to 1836 and claim as its founder Charles Hans Veeder, attorney, veteran of the War of 1812, and most of all a true entrepreneur.

New settlers soon came to Veeder’s town; among the first was a young man named J.W. Berry. Berry had been traveling south to Texas, along with his father, Judge Berry of Indiana, when his father was taken ill and died near Minden. The young man came to the new town and was present when the lots were surveyed to create the town. He would remain in the community until his death in the 1890s and see both the town and himself become prosperous. Veeder’s goal was to see Minden become the parish seat of Claiborne Parish and thus gain all the visitors and business that accompanied courthouse towns. However, obstacles soon began to emerge between the founder and this goal.

The first problem came when some new settlers arrived in Minden from the nearby community of Mount Lebanon. Mount Lebanon had been established by a large group of settlers from the Edgefield District of South Carolina. Among the group were several members of the Drake family. By 1837, W.A. Drake and Hervey Drake had come to Minden holding title to some of Veeder’s land. It seems that Stewart had sold the same tracts of land to at least two different people, Charles Veeder and Reuben Drake. The two younger Drakes presented their claim to the property and a potentially devastating fight over ownership seemed near. Fortunately, both Reuben Drake and Veeder were reasonable men who were skilled in the art of the deal. Veeder proposed a compromise accepted by Drake that each would retain title to alternate lots along the parallelogram, with Veeder being given first choice of the lots. The disputed lands outside the parallelogram were divided between the two men under similar terms. This parallelogram became downtown Minden and was still referred to in city ordinances as late as 1926.

The Germantown Cemetery is the final resting place of some of the original members of the colony and the descendants of those pioneer settlers.

Soon after this settlement, Minden began to move forward and rapidly became the largest community in Claiborne Parish. By 1837, Minden had a post office and more than seven mercantile firms in the community. In 1838, Veeder petitioned the Louisiana legislature and obtained an appropriation of $1,500 to establish the Minden Academy. While the school was by nature private, the state appropriation required that part of the original $1,500 be used to create a fund to pay for the education of indigent students. The coeducational Minden Academy operated for about 12 years until 1850. In that year, political considerations made changes in the structure of the school necessary. The Louisiana Constitution of 1845 had barred the use of any public funds by any private institution of learning, so the Minden Academy was forced to remove the indigent students and become strictly a private school.

The Minden Academy continued to operate for about five years without state funds until it was reorganized in 1850. At that time, local civic leaders led by W. Abner Drake decided to split the institution into two separate schools, one for males and another for females. The Minden Male Academy was built with funds given by Drake on a plot of land he donated for the school. Later, in July 1852, Drake, Drury Murrell, J. Gibbs, and T. Gibbs donated an additional 80⅔ acres to the Male Academy to complete the campus. Today, the campus of that school is Academy Park. The Male Academy would continue to operate on this site until the 1890s. Many of the most outstanding civic leaders of Minden received their primary education at this institution, including John T. Watkins and John N. Sandlin, both of whom would eventually serve eight terms in the United States Congress. The academy only closed when the first official Minden public school opened in 1898.

An even more distinguished heritage was created by the school for girls, which eventually became known as the Minden Female College. That school was located on the original grounds of the Minden Academy, which is today the site of Minden High School. An educational facility has been located on that site since 1838. Girls of all ages, from kindergarten up, attended classes here during most of the school’s existence and finishing the program was tantamount to graduation from college, although by present standards of education, it might have been nearer to high school graduation. Along with the three R’s, there were courses in chemistry, Latin, astronomy, higher mathematics, history, art, drama, and music.