Ouachita Parish History Tidbits

Author: Lora Diane Peppers

  • Hotel Virginia Postcard

    What a great old postcard photo of the Virginia Hotel in it’s heyday! The building (now owned by Vantage) is absolutely gorgeous inside!

  • Monroe Firemen, Circa 1920

    I happened to stumble across this photo in the collection of the State Library. It shows Monroe Firemen and their firetruck in front of the old City Hall. Pretty neat!…

  • The First Female Pilot on the Ouachita River

    This lost little piece of Ouachita history comes to us all the way from an Iowa newspaper. It details the fight for the right of a woman to pilot a…

  • A Description of Island DeSiard

    The following beautiful article was written in 1890 by a female resident of the “Island” this area is roughly where Sterlington is now. The island is bordered by the Ouachita…

  • A New York Lawyer Describes the Duels He Has Seen

    This is a very interesting article. Most of the described incidents took place outside the parish/state but there are a couple of Ouachita Parish incidents that he describes. During the…

  • The Filhiol Family’s Claim to Hot Springs Arkansas

    Did you know that Jean Baptist Filhiol and his descendants had a claim to the Arkansas Hot Springs? The fight in the courts lasted for generations, but ultimately it was…

  • More on the Calhoun Experimental Station

    This one was written three years earlier than the previous article. It goes into a very detailed description of what the station was doing. The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA) February…

  • Calhoun Experimental Station

    The recent controversy over what to do with the land that was once the LSU Research Center in Calhoun, got me to thinking about what is known about it. The…

  • The 1848 Murder (?) of Thomas Reynolds

    This intrigues me to no end. It talks about a murder by poisoning of a father by his son. The son had run to Texas and hid there for many…

  • Garrett and Munholland Law Office, Circa 1895

    Take a look at this Monroe photo, part of the Franklin Garrett Papers at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/05ddd/id/478397 . The photo is misidentified as the 1870’s. At…