| Tensas Parish, Louisiana | |
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Tensas Parish Courthouse at St. Joseph
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Location in the state of Louisiana |
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Louisiana's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | 1843 |
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| Named for | Tensas or Taensa Native Americans |
| Seat | St. Joseph |
| Largest city | Newellton |
| Area - Total - Land - Water |
641 sq mi (1,661 km²) 602 sq mi (1,560 km²) 39 sq mi (100 km²), 6.04% |
| Population - (2010) - Density |
5,252 11/sq mi (4/km²) |
| Time zone | Central: UTC-6/-5 |
Tensas Parish (French: Paroisse des Tensas) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The seat of the parish is St. Joseph. In 2010, the population of Tensas Parish was 5,252; it is the least-populous of all sixty-four parishes.[1]
The name Tensas is derived from the Taensa people.
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Tensas Parish was the home to many succeeding Native American groups in the thousands of years before European settlements began. Village and mound sites once built by these peoples have now become archaeological sites. One example is the Flowery Mound, a rectangular platform mound just east of St. Joseph measuring 10 feet (3.0 m) in height and 165 feet (50 m) by 130 feet (40 m) at its base and a summit measuring 50 feet (15 m) square. Core samples taken during investigations at the site have revealed the mound was built in a single stage and because the fill types can still be differentiated it suggests the mound is relatively young. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in a midden under the mound reveals that the site was occupied from 996–1162 during the Coles Creek period. The mound was built over the midden between 1200–1541 during the Plaquemine/Mississippian period.[2] The corners are oriented in the cardinal directions.[3] Several others include Balmoral Mounds, Ghost Site Mounds, and Sundown Mounds.
During the American Civil War, private citizens, particularly planters, organized, equipped, and transported military companies. In Tensas Parish, cotton planter A.C. Watson provided one company of artillery with more than $40,000.[4] In April 1862, Governor Thomas Overton Moore, reconciled to the fall of New Orleans, ordered the destruction of all cotton in those areas in danger of occupation by Union forces. Along the levees and atop Indian mounds in Tensas Parish, thousands of bales of cotton burned for days.[5] At the time, Tensas Parish was second only to Carroll Parish (subsequently divided into East and West Carroll) in the overall production of cotton in Louisiana.[6]
Near Newellton is the Winter Quarters Plantation restoration, where Union General Ulysses S. Grant and his men spent the winter of 1862-1863, prior to launching the assault in the spring and summer of 1863 against Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the northeast of Tensas Parish.
In 1864, Captain Joseph C. Lea of the Missouri guerrillas, with two hundred men, moved into Tensas Parish and came upon a fortification held by four hundred Federal soldiers under the command of Colonel Alfred W. Eller. Lea inflicted heavy casualties and drove the men to the Mississippi River, where they boarded their boats. Lea seized a federal warehouse with gunpowder, groceries, and medical supplies. Facing attacks from the Union forces who tried to return to their fortification, Lea managed to secure seventy-five Federal wagons and cotton carts, all of which he dispatched to Shreveport.[7]
Franklin Plantation, owned by a physician, Allen T. Bowie, was considered the most elegant of the antebellum homes about the oxbow lake, Lake St. Joseph, near Newellton. A Missouri Confederate wrote that the area was "unsurpassed in beauty and richness by any of the same extent . . . in the world."[8] Union officers in charge of the XIII and XVII Corps kept close watch on the troops to prevent looting as the men marched southward headed indirectly to Vicksburg. When General William Tecumseh Sherman's XV Corps joined Grant's forces, however, the soldiers became lawless. On May 6, 1863, rowdies from General James Madison Tuttle's division burned most of the mansions which fronted Lake St. Joseph, including Dr. Bowie's beloved Franklin Plantation.[8]
Toward the end of the war, schools were established for African American children in northeastern Louisiana, including Tensas and Concordia parishes, some through the sponsorship of the American Missionary Association. According to the historian John D. Winters of Louisiana Tech University, the students "ranged in age from four to forty, were poorly clothed, loved to fight, and were 'extremely filthy, their hair filled with vermin.' Religious instruction, with readings from the Bible and prayers, was emphasizsed while reading from primers and studying spelling and writing rounded out the course work. The program stressed 'a maximum of memory and a minimum of reasoning.' The schools sponsored by the Christians societies were gradually taken over by a board of education and supported by special property and crop taxes. These schools operated primarily along the Mississippi and few, if any, were established in the interior [of Louisiana]."[9]
By the turn of the 20th century, with Civil War memories still present in the people's minds, St. Joseph numbered no more than 720 residents (and Tensas Parish, 19,070), most having been engaged in cotton growing and related river work.
Prior to January 1964, when fifteen African Americans were permitted to register, there were no black voters on the Tensas Parish rolls. Tensas was hence the last of Louisiana's sixty-four parishes to enfranchise African-Americans.
In 1962, Tensas Parish, with only whites registered, gave the Republican Taylor W. O'Hearn, later a state representative from Shreveport, 48.2 percent of the vote in a race for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Russell B. Long. Tensas Parish also voted for Republican presidential nominee Barry M. Goldwater in 1964, when few blacks were yet registered.
After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, large numbers of Tensas Parish blacks began registering to vote. These new black voters were staunchly Democratic; since then, the parish has been a Democratic stronghold. Some white Democrats, however, have continued to win some public offices in the parish, including Sheriff Rickey A. Jones and several school board members.
Tensas Parish was de jure desegregated until the fall of 1970; however, the schools remain de facto segregated by parental decisions. The majority of white students attend the private Tensas Academy in St. Joseph; nearly all African American pupils attend the public schools, where few whites are registered; enrollment in the public system, now based in St. Joseph, has declined in recent years.[10] The former Newellton High School in Newellton and Waterproof High School and Lisbon Elementary School in Waterproof have closed because of decreased enrollments. Tensas High School in St. Joseph is the latest consolidation in 2006 of the former Joseph Moore Davidson High School of St. Joseph as well as Newellton and Waterproof high schools.
In May 2010, only three whites out of forty students graduated from Tensas High School. Ten whites graduated from Tensas Academy, and four whites from the Newellton Christian Academy.[11]
In the 1860 presidential election, Tensas Parish supported by plurality the Constitutional Union Party candidate, U.S. Senator John Bell of Tennessee, who pledged merely to support the Constitution of the United States, the Union, and the "enforcement of the laws." Louisiana as a whole narrowly cast its electoral votes for the Southern Democratic choice, Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Regular Democratic nominee Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois ran poorly in Louisiana, and the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was not listed on the state ballot.[12]
Historically, Tensas Parish is heavily Democrat in orientation. In the 2008 presidential contest, the successful Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois, won Tensas Parish, 1,646 (54.1 percent) to 1,367 (45.0) for the Republican standard-bearer, U.S. Senator John S. McCain of Arizona.[13] In 2007, however, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal, polled a plurality of 40 percent in Tensas Parish. The parish gave a plurality of 48 percent to Secretary of State Jay Dardenne. Both Jindal and Dardenne were easy statewide winners in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 20, 2007. A GOP candidate even won a seat on the Tensas Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body, with the victory of Emmett L. Adams, Jr., in District 1 over fellow Republican Patrick Glass. Adams prevailed, 207-179 (54-46 percent).
In 2004, the Democratic ticket of John F. Kerry and John Edwards carried Tensas Parish, 1,460 to 1,453 for President George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore, won Tensas Parish by 250 votes. The Democratic electors polled 1,580 votes that year to 1,330 for the Bush-Cheney ticket.
In the 2004 U.S. Senate primary election, Tensas Parish gave a plurality to the Republican candidate, Congressman David Vitter of St. Tammany Parish. Vitter polled 1,145 votes (41 percent) compared to 881 ballots (32 percent) for his chief Democratic rival, Congressman Christopher John of Crowley, the seat of Acadia Parish. There was no general election to determine if Vitter would have surpassed 50 percent plus one vote to obtain an outright majority in this traditionally Democratic parish. [1]
Prior to 1968, each parish regardless of population had at least one member in the Louisiana House of Representatives. The last member to represent only Tensas Parish was Democrat S. S. DeWitt (1914–1998) of Newellton and later St. Joseph. DeWitt won the legislative post in 1964 by unseating 20-year incumbent J.C. Seaman of Waterproof. He lost the seat in the 1971 primary to Lantz Womack of Winnsboro in Franklin Parish.
Tensas Parish is considered the fastest declining parish in the state. No other parish has lost such a large percent of its population as has Tensas. Every year families, mostly white, leave the parish relocating towards more urbanized areas.
Between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007, Tensas Parish lost 173 residents, or 2.9 percent of its population. Police Jury Vice President Jane Merriett Netterville (born ca. 1956) of St. Joseph expressed surprise at the latest exodus figures considering that some had moved there after Hurrican Katrina. "Maybe the loss was the people who died. We have a large elderly population," she told the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. Netterville explained that younger people leave Tensas Parish because of the scarcity of higher-paying jobs.[14]
Tensas Parish has one principal cemetery, Legion Memorial, north of Newellton.
The parish has a total area of 641 square miles (1,661 km²), of which 602 square miles (1,560 km²) is land and 39 square miles (100 km²) (6.04%) is water.
St. Joseph is located adjacent to the Mississippi River levee system.
There are three communities in the parish: Newellton, St. Joseph, and Waterproof. Newellton was founded by the planter and attorney John David Stokes Newell, Sr., who named it for his father Edward D. Newell, a North Carolina native. All three communities are linked by Highway 65, which passes just to the west of each town. The developed Lake Bruin State Park lies near St. Joseph. Lake Bruin is an oxbow lake created by the meandering of the Mississippi River.
| Historical populations | |||
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| Census | Pop. | %± | |
| 1850 | 9,040 |
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| 1860 | 16,078 | 77.9% | |
| 1870 | 12,419 | −22.8% | |
| 1880 | 17,815 | 43.4% | |
| 1890 | 16,647 | −6.6% | |
| 1900 | 19,070 | 14.6% | |
| 1910 | 17,060 | −10.5% | |
| 1920 | 12,085 | −29.2% | |
| 1930 | 15,096 | 24.9% | |
| 1940 | 15,940 | 5.6% | |
| 1950 | 13,209 | −17.1% | |
| 1960 | 11,796 | −10.7% | |
| 1970 | 9,732 | −17.5% | |
| 1980 | 8,525 | −12.4% | |
| 1990 | 7,103 | −16.7% | |
| 2000 | 6,618 | −6.8% | |
| 2010 | 5,252 | −20.6% | |
| Tensas Parish Census Data[15] | |||
As of the census[16] of 2000, there were 6,618 people, 2,416 households, and 1,635 families residing in the parish. The population density was 11 people per square mile (4/km²). There were 3,359 housing units at an average density of 6 per square mile (2/km²). The racial makeup of the parish was 43.43% White, 55.38% Black or African American, 0.05% Native American, 0.12% Asian, 0.29% from other races, and 0.74% from two or more races. 1.25% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 2,416 households out of which 30.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.10% were married couples living together, 20.20% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.30% were non-families. 29.30% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.90% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.14.
In the parish the population was spread out with 26.50% under the age of 18, 10.00% from 18 to 24, 25.10% from 25 to 44, 22.90% from 45 to 64, and 15.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 97.80 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.20 males.
The median income for a household in the parish was $19,799, and the median income for a family was $25,739. Males had a median income of $26,636 versus $16,781 for females. The per capita income for the parish was $12,622. About 30.00% of families and 36.30% of the population were below the poverty line, including 48.20% of those under age 18 and 29.60% of those age 65 or over.
Public schools in Tensas Parish are operated by the elected seven-member Tensas Parish School Board.
Tensas Parish is served by a weekly newspaper, the Tensas Gazette based in St. Joseph. Some 1,300 copies are circulated each Wednesday throughout the parish.[19]
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