| Elliot d'Evereaux Coleman, I | |
|---|---|
| Sheriff of Tensas Parish Louisiana, USA |
|
| In office 1936 – 1960 |
|
| Preceded by | John Hughes |
| Succeeded by | William M. "Max" Seaman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1881 Live Oak Plantation Waterproof Tensas Parish, Louisiana |
| Died | May 26, 1963 (aged ca. 82) Ferriday, Concordia Parish |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Democratic Party |
| Spouse(s) | Jane Young Coleman (married 1907-1963, his death) |
| Children | Louis Coleman Jane Coleman |
| Occupation | Law-enforcement officer |
| Coleman, as a Tensas Parish deputy sheriff, married the daughter of the sheriff, W. C. Young, who vacated the office thirty-one years before Coleman himself became sheriff. | |
Elliot d’Evereaux Coleman, I (1881-May 26, 1963), was from 1936-1960 the sheriff of Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana.[1] Earlier, he had been a state police bodyguard of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, Jr., on September 8, 1935, the night of Long's assassination.
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Coleman was born to E. D. Coleman and the former Lou Ellen Pollard on the Live Oak Plantation in Waterproof in southern Tensas Parish. He was educated in the Waterproof public schools,[2] which have since closed. Youngsters in Tensas Parish now attend school in St. Joseph.
At the age of seventeen, Coleman became a deputy sheriff under W. C. Young, the sheriff from 1880-1905[1] and Coleman's future father-in-law. Coleman served as a justice of the peace and was a member of the Tensas Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body akin to county commissions in other states. He was a delegate to the 1921 Louisiana Constitutional Convention, superseded by the conclave that met in Baton Rouge in 1973.[2]
As one of the bodyguards of Huey Long, Coleman testified that he twice shot Carl Weiss, the young Baton Rouge physician confirmed as Long's assassin,[2] though the Weiss family has long disputed the official version of events.
Coleman was a prohibition agent when he was elected sheriff in 1936. He defeated incumbent John Hughes, who had served since 1905, when Coleman's father-in-law vacated the post. There was a third Democratic primary candidate named Dan Morris of Newellton, who made a strong showing. Coleman won the position, however, because Hughes declined to pursue a runoff election, reasoning that much of Morris' votes would likely switch to Coleman in a second race. Hughes, closely identified with the planter aristocracy, lost support from both political factions when he was forced to deny that he was anti-Long.[3]
After his victory in 1936, Coleman was reelected in 1940, 1944, 1948, 1952, and 1956. In 1960, however, he was unseated[2] by his fellow Democrat William M. "Max" Seaman, the younger brother of Louisiana State Representative J.C. Seaman, also from Waterproof. At the time of his retirement, Coleman was at seventy-nine the oldest serving sheriff in Louisiana.[4] Max Seaman was elected sheriff again in 1964 and 1968 but died in office in October 1968 and was succeeded by his chief deputy, Theo "Bill" Poe (1912-1988) of Newellton, who served until 1984.[1]
During his long tenure as sheriff, Coleman directed several attempts to hold the Mississippi River within its levees. At the Tensas Parish centennial ceremony on April 6, 1943, Coleman delivered a speech "High Lights of High Waters", which recounted several occasions during which the river tore through the levees to inundate the alluviual farming area of Tensas and adjoining parishes.[5] On that occasion, then District Attorney Jeff B. Snyder of Tallulah in neighboring Madison Parish, echoed Coleman's observances, saying that he could recall the time when there were "no levees, no bridges, ferries nor roads, but the richest soil in the world, more fertile than the Valley of the Nile River. It was a hunter's paradise."[5]
Coleman was a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which nominated the Truman/Barkley ticket.[6]
In 1907, Coleman married the former Jane Young, and the couple had three children, Louis Coleman, Jane Coleman, and Elliot D. Coleman, II.[2] Coleman died in Ferriday in Concordia Parish, from which Tensas Parish was carved in 1843. He is interred at the Natchez City Cemetery in Natchez, Mississippi.[7]
Some Coleman descendants still reside in Tensas Parish. His great-grandson, Elliot Coleman, IV, who was born some four years after Coleman’s passing, died in 2009 at the age of forty-two.[8]
In 2005, Ferriday newspaper publisher Sam Hanna, Sr., filed one of his "One Man's Opinion" columns about Coleman's historical legacy.[9]
| Preceded by John Hughes |
Sheriff of Tensas Parish, Louisiana
Elliot d’Evereaux Coleman, I |
Succeeded by William M. "Max" Seaman |