Columns

I was looking for something else when I came across a listing of every post office in the United States at the beginning of 1851. It points up the fact that most of south Louisiana was still sparsely settled just fifteen years before the Civil War, and that it was no easy task for mail or people to get across swamps, marshes, and prairies in those days.

He crossed the Sabine in 1852 and wandered through what is now Calcasieu Parish for several months, “ending with a visit to Lake Charles and its three Catholic families.” He said in his autobiography that he was the first priest to come to the area in at least 20 years. (The Reminiscences of a Texas Missionary, San Antonio, 1899)

Seventy-five sugar mills operating in Louisiana in 1800 produced five million pounds of sugar that sold for eight cents a pound, netting about $400,000 to the planters. That was a lot of money in those days, and the sugar industry was just getting started. The crop became so important that the government decided to protect it with a tariff that has remained in effect in one form or another ever since, although not without some challenges.