In Memory of a Faithful Dog and Friend - 1937

Many of us consider our pets a part of our family.  The following article which appeared in the October 15, 1937 edition of the Monroe News Star shows to what extent some will go to honor the friendship and love of a faithful dog.

Monroe News Star - 10/15/1937

(Transcription)

Tombstone Placed At Grave Of Dog

Harrisonburg, La., Oct. 15

(Special)--P. P. Bates, retired merchant of Harrisonburg, and former clerk of the court of Catahoula parish has just completed work on the erection of a tombstone in memory of his faithful dog, "Red."

When Red died, in July, 1933, at the age of four years, his master, believing him "too good a dog for the buzzards to eat," built a coffin and buried the dog in the shade of a large pin oak tree in the rear of his lot. The large tree was just outside of his property on land belonging to an old negro, John Moore.  Wanting the tree to stand "forever" as a shade to the grave of his dog, Mr. Bates made an attempt to buy the adjoining land. Terms could not be reached on the purchase of the property, so the tree was bought with the understanding that it would never be cut.




Today the large pin oak tree stands at the head of the dog's grave and shades the site of the grave throughout the day.

The following epitaph is inscribed upon the face of the monument:

"In Memory of 'Red,' my faithful dog--died July, 1933; age four years--death robbed me of a faithful friend.  P. P. Bates."


Seventy-eight years have passed since Mr. Bates sought to honor the memory of his faithful dog and friend.  I wonder if the old pin oak still stands and provides shade to Red's resting place?

Louisiana Hog Dogs Back to Work - 1950

The following article appeared in the March 31, 1950 edition of the Altoona Mirror in Altoona, Pennsylvania:

Transcription:

Louisiana Hog Dogs Are Put Back to Work
By William Johnston

Jonesville, La.--The floods brought a new moment of glory back for the hog days of Catahoula parish, a vanishing breed that is the pursued instead of the pursuer.

Once more the dogs were out in the pecan and oak woods, looking for droves of hogs, turned out to fatten on the pecans and acorns, and wild after a few months of freedom.

As soon as the dogs found a drove of hogs they started nipping at the meanest looking boars they could find.  It was for the good of the hog, which would have drowned if the floods caught them.

But the boars, with savage grunts, took out after the dogs with all the sows, shoats and pigs following them.  The dogs led the hogs into pens and jumped into the clear on the other side.

Farmers closed the gates in the pens.  Thus some thousands of hogs were saved from the floods.  The renaissance of the hog dogs brought a touch of nostalgia back to Allen J. Swayze, aged 75, a retired Catahoula parish stockman.

Three generations ago there were three big families in Catahoula, the Swayzes, McMillans [McMillins] and Alexanders, and they probably developed the hog dog.

Thirty years ago the Swayzes, McMillans [McMillins] and Alexanders owned 30,000 hogs among them.  Everybody in Catahoula parish doesn't own that many hogs now.

"All this high water and the bad feeding just don't make woods hog raising as good as it was," Swayze said.  "They still got a few dogs that can work hogs.  But nothing like we used to have."

"A good hog dog might be yellow or leopard or have dark blue spots on a white or gray coat--look something like a hound, weigh about 60 or 70 pounds."

Altoona Mirror - 3/31/1950

"But a good hog dog won't have any hound blood at all.  Hound blood ruins a good hog dog, makes him timid.  They ain't exactly a breed.  We just call them curs.  But the best ones usually have glass (light colored) eyes."

"You have to train a hog dog a little.  But he takes natural to finding and driving woods hogs."

"I guess the best ones I ever had were a female named Tollie and a couple of males, Ring and Drummer.  Two or three of us neighbors would saddle up and take the dogs out in the swamp.  Tollie was a good find dog.  She'd locate a herd on a ridge and start circling."

"No barking, like hounds, unless we on the horses didn't know where they were.  Then the dogs would bay.  Drummer was my driving dog.  When the herd was pretty well gathered up, I'd yell at Drummer to get up front and start moving them."

"Drummer would nip and the boars and lead sows and all those hogs would rally, their tails rubbing and their faces pointed outward.  They'd lunge at Drummer and he'd take off in the direction we wanted to go.  Tollie and Ring would be follow dogs."

"If a hog tried getting out of the herd, he'd get chased back.  We'd move along like that as much as five miles.  Two dogs can handle as many as 100 hogs and not lose a single one."

Tales of Whales in North Catahoula Parish

Transcribed from Ouachita River Foundation, Ouachita's Prehistoric Era:

The lower portion of the Ouachita Valley was once part of a prehistoric sea, that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to well above the Arkansas-Louisiana line.  Evidence of this sea has been well documented by geologists and paleontologists, who have discovered rare fossil finds in certain areas along the Ouachita River.  

The first man to discover and document fossil proof of this prehistoric sea was Judge Henry Bry.  Judge Bry was an amateur geologist-paleontologist from Northeast Louisiana, who explored many areas along the Ouachita River.  His greatest find was made in 1829, when he found the fossil remains of a large prehistoric sea mammal.  

The remains of this gigantic sea creature were embedded in the sides of a steep hill running along a creek that emptied into the Ouachita River several miles below Columbia, Louisiana.  The bones were found along a curved line that stretched about four hundred feet in length with bones missing at intervals along the path of discovery.  The fossilized remains were exposed in the side of the hill after a hard rain, and appeared to have been buried approximately forty feet below the earth's surface.  

Judge Bry recorded that a local farmer living near this site, previously unearthed from this same find, large fossilized rib bones, which he took and used as andirons for his fireplace.  Others living in the same area had found huge, fossilized backbones (some weighing 40 pounds) which they used as doorstops and flower pot stands.   Perplexed by the way the farmers treated these extremely rare finds, Judge Bry later wrote:  "You can't expect a scientific memoir from folk who has lived their entire lives in the most remote forest of Louisiana; nor, expect them to know anything about keeping pace with the progress of science".  

Judge Bry sent samples of these fossil finds to numerous paleontologists, as far away as London, England; seeking to identify them.  After years of study these learned paleontologists came to the opinion that the animal Bry discovered was a whale-like mammal  A size and type that had never been found before.  This mammal was listed in a special category named "Zeuglodon cetoides". 

Many years later, a group of people from Northeast Louisiana University in Monroe discovered a large backbone of a whale in part of the chalk hills located north of Enterprise in Catahoula Parish.  This location would match the location description given in the article above (several miles below Columbia).

The following two Catahoula News-Booster photographs from their November 25, 1976 edition reference this discovery.

For another interesting read on Judge Henry Bry's discovery, check out Southern Memories, Unique Stories from the American South.

Cotton, Cotton Gins and Mules....Sicily Island early to mid-1800s

From De Bow's Review, Vol. 12, 1852

Dr. A. R. Kilpatrick describes the cotton grown in Sicily Island in the early to mid-1800s:
 

Black Seeds from Cotton

Up to about 1810, the 'black seed' cotton was the only kind raised here, or, in fact, any where in our country.  

A person could not pick more than one hundred pounds of the 'black seed' cotton; it grew very large on the rich lands, and the bolls were apt to rot before opening; and besides all, the yield of lint was very small to the amount of gross weight.  

The common way of planting them was in checkers, or hills, about four feet one way, and a foot and a half or two feet the other, and even then the limbs would interlock. 

Bears, Panthers, Wolves, Gators, White Perch....Sicily Island in the early 1850s

Dr. A. R. Kilpatrick writing in De Bow's Review, vol. 12 about Sicily Island in the early 1850s :

Bears were very numerous and the meat formed an important article of the settlers diet.  The oil was used for cooking, and to grease leather, machinery; also used medicinally, and to dress the hair of the beaux and belles.  The skins were used for many domestic purposes, and also as articles of commerce.  In G. W. Lovelace's mercantile books, is seen this bill of articles, shipped on a keel or flatboat, in 1813; Bear skins, 243; Deer skins, 450; Beaver skins, 28.

The bear, when very fat, weigh from 500 to 700 pounds.  It has been repeatedly asserted by old hunters, that no person has ever found a she bear with cubs in her womb.  But Henry and Stephen Holstein, on Sicily Island, state positively that they have seen the young frequently about the size of a large flat bean, but perfectly formed.  They were instructed by the Indians how to search for them.  When the cubs are first born, they are not as large as a grown rat, and are devoid of hair or fur, like a young rat.  

Several citizens of Sicily Island went, in the month of Nov. 1851, on a bear hunt, up in the swamps of Franklin Parish, taking about thirty hounds and curs, an ox-team and wagon, two negroes, plenty of tents, bedding corn and other necessaries, and were out more than two weeks, killing ten bear and five deer.  They would have killed more, but unluckily their best dog was killed, and the others so much crippled that they were compelled to quit.  The region of country where they hunted was so low, flat and wet, that they could not haul their meat away; so they constructed a scaffold ten feet high, salted the meat away upon it, covered it with a tent, and so left it, hoping at some time to get it away.