Grass Roots and Cockle Burrs

An aerial view of Georgetown, Louisiana

Greetings

A series of e-mails arrived yesterday from newspaper columnist Jack Willis of Jena, La., a “big city” (pop. 3000) about 15-20 miles east of Georgetown, La. (pop. 300). I’m encouraging Jack to take the plunge and start a blog of his own. Until then, I’m more than happy to accept his offer to showcase some of his articles.

Today I’m posting the first message he sent me and an article he did about Georgetown. Assuming Jack doesn’t change his mind, the ones on the Maxwell brothers will follow. Feel free to leave comments or questions here or email Jack at jbucktwo(at)hotmail.com (I’ve substituted (at) for @ to frustrate spammers.)

Enjoy

Bayou Bill

--

Hello, Bill...

The name is Jack M. Willis...I'm a native of Jena...Lived there over 60 years...I worked for the La. Dept. of Hwys. for over 20 years along with Earl Killingsworth and my very best friend Johnny Clark Maxwell, Jr.. I'm well acquainted with several of the residents of the "Windy City" as Earl calls it. Attached, please find a couple of features I did about Johnny and his younger brother Terry for The Piney Woods Journal out of Dodson, LA...I also write a weekly feature for The Jena Times called Grass Roots and Cockleburs ...been at now for about 11 years...It's 40's and 50's history, Civil War and about anything I want to write about...

--

Grass Roots and Cockle Burrs
by Jack Willis
first appeared in, The Jean Times
Feb. 8, 2001


Georgetown

Georgetown, Louisiana is a small hamlet in Grant Parish, situated on U.S. 165, south of where Rochelle used to be and north of where Selma used to be. Its speed limit is somewhere between slow and under 40.

There’s not much to see in Georgetown today. It’s been relegated to a wisp of a cobweb on the roadmap of time on what’s referred to as “old”165. It was replaced with a new ribbon of pavement in 1958. The “new road by-passed Rochelle and Selma and deftly sidestepped to the western city limits of what used to be downtown Georgetown. Located today on the “new” thorough fare is a thriving grocery store, a CB/Computer Shop and a convenience store in a perpetual state of “under new management”.

Someone raised the question of where the town got it’s name, and that was an excuse to research its origins. Come to find out, the town owes it’s naming to one Daniel Nicholson White.

The name White is often mentioned in perusing various histories of Jena, Louisiana, but it was never mentioned that the name might also be relevant to that Grant Parish community also.

In one alpha to omega account unearthed, it recanted Dan White’s origins. He was born in Copiah County, Mississippi in 1853,and departed this life in Jena, Louisiana in 1908. It went on, to paraphrase Longfellow; ”he left his footprints in the red clay of time”. He left Mississippi after gaining some saw milling experience and worked for some time in Arkansas. He then migrated to Grant Parish (then still a part of Rapides) in 1873. In 1875 he married Mathilda Brian, daughter of Reverend B. F. Brian, pioneer Baptist preacher, blacksmith, Confederate veteran, and for eight years a Louisiana State Senator.

Dan White operated “jerkwater” sawmills at several locales in Grant Parish. One was at White Spur, about two miles south of Pollack; others were at Iatt Lake, Georgetown and several other unnamed sites. Mr. and Mrs. White reared eight children and one, Bennie, the last born, died in infancy.

Somewhere around 1900 Dan White was operating a sawmill in the town which would eventually become the Village of Georgetown. Some of the local gentry and the founding fathers had called a town meeting of sorts. Their task was to choose an official post office name for the little hamlet. Dan White was probably the leading employer and possibly the top citizen in the community and he was therein person. There was some lengthy discussion but no conclusion was reached by the townspeople. There was an employee at the meeting by the name of George (whether it was his given or surname is not known) who was employed at White’s mill. White obviously liked him because he suddenly turned to George and said, “George, I’ll give you a new John B. Stetson hat if you’ll let us name this place for you.” George said, “Gimme the hat!”

Daniel Nicholson White was undoubtedly a man of vision. In 1904, he sold his holdings in the Georgetown area and relocated to Jena in what was then Catahoula Parish. He arrived in Jena about the same time as William Buchanan’s beloved Louisiana & Arkansas Railroad interests was building depots at Trout, Good Pine and Jena, and the Trout Creek Lumber Company mill was cutting their first logs.

Realizing the incalculable value of the telephone as a communications resource, White formed a partnership with a W.M. Coleman and started the first phone company in the area. Also about a block from the Jena Depot, White built an ice plant and next to it a bottling works, which bottled soft drinks with the name of the Jena plant inscribed on the base of the bottles. Recently an undetermined number of these old bottles were unearthed on the old site while excavating for a new business.

As stated before Dan White passed away in 1908 and is interred in the Belah Cemetery near Jena. But he passed the pioneering spirit onto his son William Walter White and his son-in-law Robert Wesley Wagner. Wagner had a general store in Verda in Grant Parish and started the first phone company in that area. Robert Wesley Wagner had a son Robert Walter, who in 1944 would assume ownership of “The Jena Times.” Walter White founded a newspaper in Jena in 1904 called “The Tribune”, which only lasted for a year or two. It was probably was not affiliated with “The Jena Times” which was founded in 1905.

One could safely say later generation of Whites and Wagners also “left footprints in the red clay of now Grant and LaSalle Parishes.”