Samuel Settles on the Natchitoches Parish Land He Bought from John Sibley

Accompanying Samuel to Natchitoches Parish and living with him on the land Samuel bought from Sibley at the site of the old Spanish fort and presidio at Los Adaes was his young son Ezekiel Samuel Green, who was born in 1824 or 1825, according to his statements in the complaint he filed to set his March 1856 Pointe Coupee Parish lawsuit against his father into motion.[3] As previously noted, Ezekiel also states in his complaint that his father Samuel K. Green and mother Eliza Jane Smith (she is named elsewhere in the case documents) separated when he was five or six years old, and his father then “took possession” of him and raised him, recognizing him as a son and giving him the surname Green.

As the posting I have just linked and another posting indicate, it seems evident to me that Samuel and Eliza Jane had separated by 10 May 1829 when she bought a family of enslaved persons in New Orleans, using her maiden surname for this purchase.[4] As we’ve seen previously, in the Green vs. Green case, both Dr. Augustus H. Mears and Peter Millette (also called Pierre Millet), who were half-brothers, testified that by 1830, Eliza Jane Green was boarding at the house of their mother at Plaquemine in Iberville Parish, and they first met her at that time.[5]

Dr. Mears also testified that around 1832, when Eliza Jane Green was boarding with his mother at Plaquemine in Iberville Parish, she asked him to accompany her to Plaquemines Parish to get her son Ezekiel, then eight or nine years old. She brought Ezekiel to Plaquemine to the house of Mears’ mother, where Ezekiel stayed with her several months. Mears also testified that Eliza Jane told him Ezekiel was her legitimate son, that she had been married to Samuel K. Green, and that she left Samuel because he treated her badly.

Also testifying in the Green vs. Green case that Eliza Jane Green brought her son Ezekiel to Iberville Parish to stay with her in the early 1830s were Mary Ann Texada, Captain Francis Duplessis, and William B. Savary.[6] Duplessis indicated that Eliza Jane was living in Iberville Parish by 1829 or 1830 when he first met her. Savary stated that Eliza Jane told him she had sent Ezekiel away to school. Ezekiel’s March 1856 complaint states that some years after his parents separated, “his said mother with the said Green sent your petitioner to school in the city of St. Louis at their joint cost and expense.” I suspect that this schooling took place after Samuel K. Green moved to Natchitochoes parish at some point before October 1835. None of the case documents provide a date for when Ezekiel was sent off to school.

The fact that Eliza Jane went to Plaquemines Parish in or around 1832 to bring her son Ezekiel to stay with her in Iberville Parish confirms, I think, that Ezekiel was being raised by his father, who may have maintained a pied-à-terre south of New Orleans while he worked for Hopkins in New Orleans. Then, as I stated at the outset of this posting, when Samuel moved to Natchitoches Parish by October 1835 and settled on the land he bought from John Sibley, Ezekiel accompanied him there and lived with him, growing up in Natchitoches Parish. 

Samuel Has a House Built on His Land

Not long after he bought his 640 acres from John Sibley on 1 October 1835, Samuel K. Green contracted with a local carpenter, John Hartman, to build him a house on his land. We know this from a lawsuit Hartman’s widow Mary Hartman filed in Natchitoches Parish on 15 August 1838, claiming that Samuel had not paid her deceased husband for his work on this house.[7] Mary Hartman’s complaint states that Samuel K. Green contracted with John Hartman on 11 October 1835 to build a two-story house for him.

Samuel countered Mary Hartman’s complaint on 17 August 1838, stating that John Hartman’s workmanship was so poor he had not paid Hartman in full and indicating that he had had to hire another carpenter to take down much of Hartman’s work and do it anew. The court found in favor of Mary Hartman, it seems, and on 12 March 1839, Samuel filed an appeal of the judgment with J.A. Ragan as his attorney — and I do not have information about the outcome of that appeal.

The case file for this lawsuit has a transcription of the agreement Hartman and Green signed, with a detailed description of the house that Samuel K. Green commissioned Hartman to build: it was to be a two-story house with two rooms eighteen-feet square on each floor, and a central hall fourteen-feet wide. The house was also to have a gallery running across its front on both stories and chimneys at either end of the house. Samuel was to pay Hartman $50 in hand when the project began, $150 when the house was covered (i.e., roofed), and a final $200 when the house was fully built. The house was to be completed by November 1836.

The description of the house Samuel K. Green commissioned John Hartman to build for him indicates that it was in the style called “plantation plain,” and was a smaller replica of a house his father John Green had built from 1830-4 in Bibb County, Alabama.[8] This house is still standing and occupied; a picture of it I took in 2006 is at the posting I’ve just linked.

Samuel K. Green’s house in Natchitoches Parish has long since been gone, but as several newspaper notices I’ll share below from the years in which he lived in Natchitoches Parish make clear, he lived in this house on his 640 acres as he farmed a cleared portion of the land up to the time he left Natchitoches Parish for Pointe Coupee Parish, and it’s at this house that Eliza Jane Smith died in March 1843, having rejoined Samuel and Ezekiel there in the final part of her life.

Samuel Travels to New Orleans, Acquires Texas Land, Then Visits His Brother Ezekiel at Smithland, Kentucky

As previous postings have noted (see here, here, and here) on 10 January 1837 in New Orleans, Samuel K. Green purchased 640 acres of land in Llano County, Texas, from Hansford Cophendolpher. The postings I’ve just linked discuss in some detail this part of Samuel’s story, with digital images of documents pertaining to it, and with notes about his son Ezekiel’s sale of the Llano County land on 16 February 1891 when Ezekiel was living in St. Landry Parish.[9]

This January 1837 land purchase tells us that Samuel had for some reason traveled back to New Orleans from Natchitoches Parish at this time. He would surely have had ties there, both business and personal ones, from his years living in New Orleans and just below it. His decision to buy a tract of undeveloped land — the acreage was the same as his acreage in Natchitoches Parish — on the Edwards Plateau in central Texas in 1837 also presents us with some mysteries. Since, as we’ll see in a moment, Samuel lost his Natchitoches Parish land in February 1846, evidently for failure or inability to make mortgage payments on it, why was he buying yet another piece of land out in Texas and where were his resources coming from? Unless he won this land in a gambling game….

If he deliberately bought it, did he think he and Ezekiel might leave Louisiana and move out to Texas, where his brother Benjamin would settle between 1840 and 1850 and where his sister Jane Caroline and husband Thomas Keesee would move in 1864? Land on the Edwards Plateau is not ideal farming land, but supports ranching. Perhaps Samuel had dreams of launching a new phase of his life as a rancher in Texas? Whatever his motivation in acquiring this land, neither he nor Ezekiel ever lived on it, though Samuel held onto it throughout his life and Ezekiel did the same for most of his life, after he inherited it.

By 19 March 1837, Samuel K. Green was in Smithland, Kentucky, visiting his brother Ezekiel Calhoun Green. We know this from a Pointe Coupee Parish district court case file, which shows that on 7 July 1851, Ezekiel’s estate administrator James K. Huey filed suit against Samuel K. Green to recover a debt Samuel owed to the estate of his brother Ezekiel.[10] The case file has Samuel’s original promissory note to Ezekiel, written by him and signed Sam^l K. Green, 19 March 1837, and stating that it was signed at Smithland, Kentucky. Samuel had borrowed $150 from his brother Ezekiel and he had not repaid the debt by the time Ezekiel died at Smithland on 6 April 1851.[11]

While Samuel was visiting his brother Ezekiel in Smithland, their father John Green died in Bibb County, Alabama. John Green’s tombstone at Tannehill Historical State Park in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, to which his and other family graves have been moved from a family cemetery on his homeplace in Bibb County, states that he died 18 March 1837.[12] Both the petition of John’s son John Ewing Green to divide his father’s real estate in February 1838 and the final settlement of the estate filed by John E. Green in May 1839 list Samuel K. Green as a child of John Green, and indicate that Samuel was the first-born child of John Green and Jane Kerr.[13]

The record of the sale of John Green’s personal estate in Bibb County on 13 November 1837 shows that Samuel was in Alabama for the sale of his father’s property Bibb County, Alabama, Administrators Records Bk. E, pp. 1-3; and Probate Minutes Bk. A, pp. 195-7). At the estate sale, Samuel purchased an enslaved woman named Letitia. When Samuel’s brother John Ewing Green presented his final account of his father’s estate settlement to Bibb County court on 7 May 1839, the account shows that each of John Green’s children, Samuel included, received $793.46 as an inheritance (Bibb County, Alabama, Probate Minutes Bk. A, pp. 286-9; and Administrators Records Bk. E, pp. 87-90).

Samuel’s Ex-Wife Eliza Jane Smith Joins Him and Ezekiel in Natchitoches Parish and Dies There in March 1843

A number of affidavits in the Pointe Coupee Parish Green vs. Green case contain information about the years Samuel K. Green spent living in Natchitoches Parish. As a previous posting has noted, on 5 March 1857 testimony of Julia Ann Walsh or Welch (both spellings appear in the case file) of Natchitoches Parish stated that she had met Eliza Jane Smith — she had reverted to her maiden surname at this point in her life — at the house of Samuel K. Green in Natchitoches Parish about 1838. She also indicated that Eliza Jane told her Ezekiel was not her son.[14]

As also previously noted (the link is in the preceding paragraph), Daniel B. Smethers of Natchitoches Parish testified on 27 November 1857 that Eliza Jane Smith moved to Natchitoches Parish and rejoined Samuel K. Green in 1839 or 1840. James H. Gallion, also of Natchitoches Parish, gave similar testimony on 21 November 1857. The 1850 federal census shows Daniel B. Smethers living in Natchitoches Parish next door to Sara Birdwell, a sister-in-law of James Birdwell, whose daughter Elvira Samuel K. Green married on 13 June 1844, and whose daughters Camilla and Hannah Samuel’s son Ezekiel married. James Birdwell’s half-brother Jeremiah T. Birdwell married Sarah Ann Harper on 19 November 1844 in Marshall County, Alabama, and she’s the Sara Birdwell living next to Daniel B. Smethers in Natchitoches Parish in 1850 with sons Harvey and John.[15]

The three deponents stating that Eliza Jane had rejoined Samuel K. Green prior to 1840 were incorrect, however. Eliza Jane appears on the 1840 federal census as W^d  S Ives — that is the Widow S. Ives.[16] Eliza Jane had married a second husband, Captain Samuel Ives, about 1832 or 1833 and had separated from him by February 1837, or possibly by June 1835. Samuel Ives was still living in 1840; he was murdered in Iberville Parish by his business partner Alden Piper on 2 June 1850. But Eliza Jane was listed as a widow in the conventional way that many divorced or separated women were on federal censuses in the 19^th century. The 1840 census listing shows the Widow S. Ives on the same census page as Francis Duplessis, mentioned above. Listed in Eliza Jane’s household in Iberville Parish in 1840 are a number of other people whom I cannot place. I wonder if she was operating a boarding house following her separation from Samuel Ives.

Eliza Jane did not leave Iberville Parish and rejoin Samuel K. Green in Natchitoches Parish until after 23 November 1841, when Iberville Parish conveyance records show her on that date selling her property in that parish, which included 154 acres, with a house and farm buildings, farm implements, livestock, and other farm paraphernalia.[17] The record of the property sale notes that Eliza Jane insisted on keeping a large armoire, her riding horse, a bedstead and bedding, a large copper kettle, and her table silver spoons. She evidently brought these along with her when she went to Natchitoches Parish and resumed living with Samuel K. Green — as well as, of course, the eight or nine enslaved persons that were the subject of the contention between Samuel and his son Ezekiel when Ezekiel filed suit against his father in 1856. The coordinates of Eliza Jane’s land in the conveyance record — it was lot 14 in township 10, range 11 east, section 34 — are the coordinates of the community of Bayou Sorel twelve miles southwest of Plaquemine, the parish seat. The 1840 census listing for the Widow S. Ives had shown her with seven enslaved persons.

The March 1856 complaint of her son Ezekiel in Pointe Coupee Parish setting in motion his lawsuit against his father states that Eliza Jane came to live with Samuel K. Green in Natchitoches Parish in 1842, “being in bad and feeble health,” and died within months after her arrival at Samuel’s residence. Ezekiel would have been living with his father in Natchitoches Parish at this time, unless this is the period in which he was studying in St. Louis. In the Green vs. Green trial, James H. Gallion, mentioned above, and Joseph Clark both testified that Eliza Jane died at Samuel’s house on or about 13 March 1843, and both deponents also said that Samuel then took possession of her enslaved people and of her bay horse and buggy, with Gallion stating that Samuel commissioned him to sell the horse and buggy at auction.

On 21 November 1837, Samuel K. Green filed suit in Natchitoches Parish against Elijah Clark.[18] The complaint Samuel filed says that the 640 acres that he had bought from John Sibley in township 8 north, range 9 west, and sections 3, 4, and 10 were also claimed by Clark, who had refused to relinquish his claim and had been cutting timber on the land. Samuel sued for damages in the sum of $5,000, with J.A. Ragan as his attorney. The case file has a receipt from Samuel dated 21 March 1840 for a confirmation of his plat to the land. I find no judgment recorded in the case file. As the preceding posting notes, on a visit I made in December 2000 to the Los Adaes historic site, its curator told me that Elijah Clark lived just to the east of the tract at Los Adaes that Samuel had acquired from John Sibley. Since most of that land was forested when Samuel bought it and Elijah Clark was cutting timber on it, I wonder if Samuel bought the land with an eye to combining sale of timber with farming.

John A. Ragan, who acted as Samuel K. Green’s attorney in Samuel’s 1837 case against Elijah Clark and in the case Mary Hartman filed against him in 1838, was a Georgia-born lawyer who appears living and practicing law in Natchitoches on the 1850 federal census, aged 40. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana speaks of him as a representative, so he may have held public office on behalf of the parish.[19] This source states that he donated his payments for mileage during his stint as a representative in 1850 to the parish to be used as a fund to purchase books and papers for orphaned scholars.

As has been previously noted, Samuel K. Green is enumerated on the 1840 in Natchitoches Parish with a household in which only two males were living, one aged 40-50 and one aged 15-20.[20] It’s clear to me that these are Samuel and his son Ezekiel. Note that there are no enslaved members in the household: I find no evidence that Samuel owned enslaved people until he took possession of Eliza Jane Smith’s enslaved persons following her death in 1843. His battle to keep those enslaved persons when his son Ezekiel married and claimed them as his inheritance from Eliza Jane was perhaps all the more fierce because he had no enslaved people of his own and wanted Eliza Jane’s enslaved persons to farm his land in Natchitoches and Pointe Coupee Parishes.

In the Green vs. Green case, Eliza A. Dockery of Caddo Parish testified on 23 April 1857 that she became acquainted with Samuel K. Green and Eliza Jane Smith in Natchitoches Parish in 1842, where they lived three miles from her and she visited them often. Eliza Dockery stated,

She [i.e., Eliza Jane] told me that S.K. Green was a distant relation of her mother, that Green had taken care of her when she was young, and that she felt under obligation to keep house for him, and take care of him, as she had property, and he was poor.

Whether there was a kinship connection between Samuel K. Green and Eliza Jane Smith, I have not been able to verify, since I have been unable to discover anything about her ancestry. It’s true, of course, that Eliza Jane held valuable property at the time of her death — enslaved persons — and Samuel did not have property to equal hers.

Elizabeth Ann Dockery was a daughter of the Julia Ann Welch who also testified in the Green vs. Green case. Julia Ann Yocum Welch (1808-1867) was the Kentucky-born wife of Henry Paulin Welch (the name is also found as Welsh), and is buried in Rutherford cemetery at Oak Grove in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.[21] Julia Ann’s daughter Elizabeth Ann Welch (1825-1887) married Samuel Hull Dockery and is buried in Eppes cemetery at Shreveport, Caddo Parish, Louisiana.[22] As her mother also testified, Eliza A. Dockery testified in Green vs. Green that Eliza Jane Smith told her that Ezekiel S. Green was not her son. As I’ll discuss in my next posting, after Samuel and his wife Elvira Birdwell Green moved from Natchitoches to Pointe Coupee Parish in 1848, Samuel filed suit in Natchitoches Parish in 1850 to recover a promissory note he held against Henry F. Duke. The note had been made by Duke to Samuel’s father-in-law James Birdwell, and had been co-signed by Julia Ann Welch’s husband Henry Paulin Welch.[23] James Birdwell had died in December 1849 in DeSoto Parish.

Note that the absence of any female members of Samuel K. Green’s household on the 1840 federal census is further proof that Eliza Jane had not yet moved from Iberville to Natchitoches Parish by 1840. Also living in Natchitoches Parish in 1840 and enumerated several pages after Samuel K. Green was the family of James Birdwell, whose daughter Elvira would marry in 1840.[24] James Birdwell’s household in 1840 had two females aged 15-19, in addition to his wife Aletha and their other children, and it seems clear to me that one of the females in the 15-19 age range was James and Aletha’s daughter Elvira, who was born in 1822, per the 1850 federal census. Elvira married James Madison Grammer, son of John Grammer and Elizabeth Abernathy, in Marshall County, Alabama, on 17 January 1838, and I can find no trace of James following the marriage. I think that Elvira was a young widow living with her parents in Natchitoches Parish at the time that Samuel met and married her.  

Samuel Marries Elvira Birdwell Grammer, and Financial Problems Result in the Loss of His Land

Samuel and Elvira married on 13 June 1844 in Natchitoches Parish.[25] The marriage record gives Samuel’s full name, Samuel Kerr Green, and gives Elvira’s name as “Mrs. Elvira Burdwell, widow of the late James M. Grammer.” Judge Charles E. Greneaux solemnized the marriage, with both Samuel and Elvira signing the marriage certificate, with witnesses Pierre (?) Derbonne, James McCreight, and John J. Cobb.

Note that Samuel had not married again while Eliza Jane was still living, and chose to marry a year and a few months following her death in 1843. Note, too, that he was some 32 years older than his bride.

Natchitoches Parish records indicate that in the year he married Elvira Birdwell Grammer, things began to go awry for Samuel. On 3 January 1844, he mortgaged his land to St. Francis church in Natchitoches for $1,500.[26] My reading of this document is that Samuel’s 1 October 1835 note to Dr. John Sibley for his 640 acres had fallen into the hands of St. Francis church which, as the last posting shows, already held a mortgage against John Sibley and his son Samuel in October 1823.

Samuel evidently did not let his financial struggles dampen his zest for living the good life, however, since a report in the Southern Reformer of Jackson, Mississippi, on 2 November 1844 states that Maj. Samuel K. Green, “an old veteran,” had given a ball in Natchitoches Parish for the benefit of the Democratic Party on 8 October 1844.[27] Preceding the ball was a mass meeting of local Democrats at the house of William Smith on the Sabine Road, which would no doubt have been in the section of Natchitoches Parish in which Samuel lived. I think that the Sabine Road was what is today Louisiana highway 6, which runs west from Natchitoches to the site of the Los Adaes fort and mission, where it then connects to what was formerly the Camino Real de los Tejas, passing from there through Robeline just to the south and then going to the Sabine River. If I’m correct in thinking that highway 6 follows the path of the old Sabine Road from Natchitoches, then the Sabine Road would have passed right by Samuel’s residence at the site of what was formerly Los Adaes. If Samuel K. Green did military service at any point, by the way, I have not found a record of it.

Prior to the ball Samuel hosted in October, the Southern Reformer reported on 27 April 1844 that a meeting of the Democratic Party had been held at Natchitoches on the 1^st inst. with S.K. Green chairing it.[28]  At this meeting, Samuel was appointed to the local Democratic Party’s correspondence committee.  

In addition to giving a ball at his house and involving himself in local political affairs, Samuel appears to have continued farming his land, since a 27 March 1845 report entitled “Large Turnip” in the Opelousas Patriot, which had picked the report up from the Natchitoches Chronicle, announces that though Kentucky had her “giants” and Ohio boasted of her “fat girls,” Natchitoches might glory in raising turnips.[29] The preceding week, Major S.K. Green had brought to the Chronicle office an English turnip weighing 10 pounds.

On 13 October 1845, St. Francis church filed suit against Samuel for $500 due on his mortgage.[30] On 20 November 1845, the district court handed down a judgment decreeing that Samuel’s land was to be seized and sold to satisfy his debt to St. Francis church. On 7 February 1846, the land was sold to St. Francis church for $1,334.[31]  On 7 January 1848, Samuel ratified the sale of his 640-acre plantation to Ambrose Lecompte, warden of St. Francis Parish.[32] This record uses the term “plantation” to refer to Samuel’s property.

It was, it seems, the loss of his land in Natchitoches Parish that precipitated Samuel’s move with wife Elvira and their two small children Albert B. and Cornelia Jane to Pointe Coupee Parish in 1848 — and, as I’ve noted previously, I think also Samuel’s son Ezekiel who would marry Elvira’s sister Camilla in Pointe Coupee Parish on 2 January 1853. In his affidavit in the Green vs. Green case cited above, James H. Gallion placed the move of Samuel’s family from Natchitoches to Pointe Coupee Parish about 1846-7, but the testimony of Julia Ann Welch, also cited above, and of her daughter Elizabeth Ann Dockery both indicates that the move took place in or after 1848.[33]

In Pointe Coupee Parish, Samuel and Elvira acquired a 650-acre plantation on the Atchafalaya River that seems to me to have been bought with money Elvira held, though where she would have obtained the funds to buy this land is not clear to me. I am assuming Elvira bought the land because it was sold at her succession sale when she died in or by December 1855. I’ll pick up the Pointe Coupee story, much of which I’ve already told in previous postings, in my next posting.

---

[1] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Mortgage Record Bk. 22, p. 110, #578.

[2] Ezekiel S. Green vs. Samuel K. Green, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 9th District Court, file #1525.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, Notarial Bk. 4, #714, p. 276 (Register 17, #4, p. 714).

[5] See supra, n. 2. Mears testified twice, on 10 September 1856 and 5 December 1857. As has previously been noted, Peter Millette and Augustus H. Mears were sons of Augustine Françoise Verret, who married 1) Pierre Alexandre Maximilian Millet, and 2) Walter H. Mears.

[6] See supra, n. 2.

[7] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, District Court file #1986, Parish Court file #283.

[8] On the Green house, see Rhoda Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama, The First Hundred Years 1818-1918 (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1984), pp. 48-9; James L. Green, “The Greens of Bibb County, Alabama” (unpublished manuscript, Columbia, South Carolina, 1992); and John Morgan Green, “A History of the House” (unpublished manuscript, n.d.). According to John Linley, Frederick Doveton Nichols coined the term “plantation plain” and it was then adapted to refer to “the typical two-story, one-room-deep, plain plantation house, with a one-story porch and a shed roof across the front”: see The Georgia Catalog, Historic American Buildings Survey: A Guide to the Architecture of the State (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1982), p. 22. Notice that the house of Elisha Winn at Lawrenceville, Georgia — Elisha was a brother of my ancestor Abner Winn — which is in the plantation-plain style has porches on both upper and lower stories of the house, as Samuel K. Green’s house did, with the porches running the length of the house in the case of his house: see “Elisha Winn House” at Wikipedia.

[9] Llano County, Texas, Deed Bk. T, pp. 53-4.

[10] James K. Huey vs. Samuel K. Green, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 9^th District Court case #932.

[11] James K. Huey was appointed administrator of Ezekiel C. Green’s estate in Livingston County, Kentucky, on 7 July 1851: see Livingston County, Kentucky, Court Order Bk. L, p. 28. Ezekiel Calhoun Green is buried in Smithland cemetery with a tombstone stating his dates of birth and death and that he was born in Pendleton District, South Carolina: see Find a Grave memorial page of Ezekiel Calhoun Green, Smithland cemetery, Smithland, Livingston County, Kentucky, created by Charles Lay, maintained by wdlindsy, with a tombstone photo by wanda.

[12] See Find a Grave memorial page of John Green, Tannehill Historical State Park, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, created by Kathy, with a tombstone photo by wdlindsy.

[13] See Bibb County, Alabama, Orphans Court Minutes, February 1838, pp. 190-1; and Bibb County, Alabama, Probate Minute Bk. A, pp. 286-9. A notice of the sale of John Green’s real estate appeared in the Democratic Gazette and Flag of the Union, both Tuscaloosa papers, on 4 April 1838; and see also Pauline Jones Gandrud, Marriage, Death, and Legal Notices from Early Alabama Newspapers 1819-1893 (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1981), p. 160; and Gandrud, Alabama Records, vol. 5 (Shreveport: J. & W. Enterprises, 199-), p. 58.  The newspaper notice also lists John Green’s heirs.

[14] See supra, n. 2.

[15] 1850 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, p. 31A (dwelling/family 506, 13 November). D.B. Smethers was a constable, aged 41, born in Pennsylvania.

[16] 1840 federal census, Iberville Parish, Louisiana, p. 55.

[17] Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Conveyance Bk. U, #332.

[18] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, District Court file #1635; and District Court Bk. C, pp. 428-9.

[19] Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana (Nashville and Chicago: Southern Publishing Co., 1890), p. 301.

[20] 1840 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, p. 167.

[21] See Find a Grave memorial page of Julia Ann Yocum Welsh, Rutherford cemetery, Cameron Parish, Louisiana, created by Melinda Fawvor Dickerson.

[22] See Find a Grave memorial page of Elizabeth Ann Welch Dockery, Eppes cemetery, Shreveport, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, created by Heather with a tombstone photo by Heather.

[23] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, District Court file #4326, bundle 190.

[24] 1840 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, p. 172. The census entry spells James’s surname as Burdwell.

[25] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Marriage Bk. 35, p. 227.

[26] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Mortgage Bk. A, pp. 126-7.

[27] “Democracy of Natchitoches,” Southern Reformer (2 November 1844), p. 2, col. 1.

[28] “Southern States,” Southern Reformer (27 April 1844), p. 3, col. 6.

[29] “Large Turnip,” Opelousas Patriot (27 March 1845),p. 2, col. 3.

[30] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, District Court, file #3734; and Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Judicial Mortgage Record Bk. C, pp. 154-5.

[31] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff’s Sales Bk. 5, pp. 26-7; recorded 7 February 1846 and filed 10 March.

[32] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Conveyance Bk. 39, p. 417, #4749.

[33] See supra, n. 2.