Early Settlers in Madison Parish

By Tina Johnson

Have you ever wondered who were the first known settlers in your parish or county? I did, and much to my surprise I found the answers in the rich histories and articles that have been written on Madison Parish. In my review and study of the history of Madison Parish, I came across a succinct and colorful history of the parish entitled, Notes From the History of Madison Parish, by William H. Murphy. The history of the parish began with the Louisiana Territory, a vast area of land claimed by France and extended from the Alleghenies westward to the Rockies and from the Gulf of Mexico to the region around the Great Lakes. Five national flags have flown over the territory. The Ouachita and Tensas tribes of Indians lived in the territory and were found near the grounds by the first white settlers. Remnants and archaeological artifacts found along with the Indian Mounds testify to the fact that a very sophisticated civilization existed and flourished many thousand of years before the territory was settled by the white man.

In his article on the Earliest Settlers in Madison Parish, Robert Sevier tells us that the first actual landowners who arrived in the territory were interested in the agriculture and favorable location along the Mississippi. A year before the Louisiana Territory was sold to the U.S. by France in 1803, Anthony Crockett, Thomas Patterson, Elijah Clark and James settled in the southeast section of what would later become Madison Parish. Ezekiel Lowe and Alexander McCormick settled along the Tensas River.

            Other settlers who came in after 1803 included Ezra and Thomas Marble, John Perkins, David Huffman, Abraham Insco, Robert Coderman John Barney, Mosses and G. W. Graves, Ehileab Smith, Gibson C. Bettis, Sr. and James Douglas. Most of these settlers located either on the Tensas River or along the banks of the Mississippi, opposite Walnut Hills.

In early 1083, prior to the U.S. purchase of the territory, there existed a settlement of people on Bayou Vidal, which is now the boundary between Madison and Tensas Parishes. It was only after the U. S. Government took possession of land owned by Joseph Vidal, for whom the bayou was named, that more Americans began to move into the territory. Many came by land, others by flatboat and precious few had title to the land they claimed. The settlers were by no means rich upon their arrival, but a few did own slaves. There were very few domestic animals because the frequent high waters would destroy them. The crops of choice were corn, sugar cane and eventually cotton.

Sevier tells us that “Madison Parish was named and bounded after many legislative acts. Its area was placed within the “County of Ouachita” in 1805 by the Territorial Council of Orleans.”  The area in which we now live was settled by people coming from the older states who began moving here in the latter half of the eighteenth century while the Territory was under Spanish rule. The 1769 census of Ouachita, which embraced the present Madison Parish showed that there were only 110 inhabitants in the whole district of Ouachita. The 1806 census listed 232 and half of those were slaves.

Because of the danger of flooding and crop devastation, little immigration took place into the delta region.  The area remained populated by the planters along the river and the “swampers” of the back country. Madison Parish was populated by two settlements on the Tensas River along with some ferry operators, and two on Walnut Bayou. One of these was Crescent Plantation, built in 1832 and is still standing today.

However, increasing numbers of people moved into the parish as a result of the depression of 1837. Between 1836 and 1845, Madison parish flourished with new settlers.  Financial loss and unemployment precipitated the mass movement of people into the area. James Downes, editor of the Richmond Compiler, noted in a March 15, 1842 editorial that “Emigration is pouring in our borders from Maine to Mississippi.” with the vast majority of settlers from Mississippi. The greatest population increase was not in white planters but in slaves. The white population was 1,210 in 1840 and 1293 in 1860. In the same periods, the black population increased from 3,923 to 9,863. The records show that the total population in 1860 was 11,156 and the black to white ratio was nine to one.

The first parish seat was established in Richmond, on the banks of Roundaway  Bayou where it joined Brushy Bayou, approximately two miles south of Tallulah. By the Civil War, the settlers of Madison Parish represented all classes of southern society. There were large plantation owners with many slaves, small planters with few slaves, yeoman farmers who owned no slaves, squatters on the small islands back in the swamps who were called “swampers”, and bear hunters and raftsman who lived as they did before the advent of the steamboats.

William Murphy tells us that the newcomers cleared the ground in favor of the new crop, cotton. They cleared all the land facing the water course in the western part of the parish and formed a continuous line of plantations along the banks of the streams. Wealth, population, and land values continued to increase until they reached their highest peak in 1861, the height of Madison’s prosperity.  Needless to say, the Civil War, followed by the Reconstruction period, sent the parish into a downward spin and ushered in a new chapter in the history of Madison Parish.

Tina Johnson, a Tallulah native, serves as the Madison Parish Tourism Commission Assistant Director. She has a B.S. Degree from Grambling State University and a Masters Degree in Library Science from LSU, Baton Rouge. She became the first certified librarian for the Ouachita Parish Public Library during the Civil Rights era. Tina, a former resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, returned to her hometown two years ago after spending much of her career working in Washington, D.C.