A letter from a person with the initials of F.A.B. to the editor of the New Orleans Republican Newspaper in 1874 extolled the wonders of farming in St. Tammany Parish.
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Text from the above article:
An Invitation from St. Tammany to the Swampers
COVINGTON, April 10, 1874.
EDITOR REPUBLICAN:
Seeing by your paper that the whole river bottom is again in danger from an overflow from the Mississippi, it has occurred to me that the time is propitious to call the attention of the small farmers of that region to the advantages St. Tammany parish possess over ail such localities as theirs for the home of a poor man, and to invite them to move to it.
1. We never have overflows, nor do our lands require us to spend half our earnings in draining them.
2. Our lands cost so little at first that we can afford to fertilize them to the highest extent—so that they will produce as good crops as the best bottoms—and they will still be cheaper than the lands they now occupy.
3. We have no levees to keep up.
4. We have no swamp or other miasmatic fevers.
5. And lastly, we have no mosquitoes.
Now if these be not sufficient to set these poor deluded people, who will rush to the swamps for homes, to thinking, then there is no use talking sense to mortals of their mould.
Still, I have further reasons :
The St. Tammany farmer, after he has spent ten dollars per acre in all for his land and the fertilizing of it, can make just as good (if not better) crops than the swamp farmer. His sugar cane produces heavier juices and more sugar to the acre, his sweet and Irish potatoes are better and will keep longer, his rice and fruits are just as good, and his children will grow up sound, healthy people with rosy cheeks and muscular bodies, not miserable, enervated victims of the shakes without sufficient energy left in them to get in out of the rain.
Besides all this, the St. Tammany farmer has no bad neighbors. There are no vegetable, fruit, sheep and cow stealing vag-a-bonds there who constantly depredate upon the industrious farmers as on the coast (as I have been told), and who render it almost impossible for him to obtain one-half the fruits of his labors. Our population, white and black, are respectful of each other's rights, are hospitable to the stranger, and good neighbors.
In his hours of leisure, the St. Tammany farmer has the lordly buck and stately turkey for his game. The streams which flow around his lands furnish him delicious trout, rock fish and bass, and on the wild lands nearby are found terrapins which would gladden the heart of a London alderman. He does not have to send to the city for every bit of meat which he eats, for his cattle, sheep and hogs keep fat upon the grasses and masts of a free range almost limitless.
His beverage is icy cold water from his spring or well, pure as crystal, not the hot contents of a cistern, teeming with wiggletails and pollywogs, nor the turbid waters of the Mississippi, containing in suspension God knows how much filth, disease and rottenness. He never needs ice, and such is the buoyancy which the perfume-laden breezes of the pine forests imparts that ardent spirits are not a necessity, as in the swamps.
Therefore, what say these water-surrounded inhabitants of the swamps... will they accept my invitation and come to St. Tammany? There is land enough for all and many more besides.
F. A. B.
New Orleans Republican Newspaper\ April 12, 1874
Another letter the following year again explored St. Tammany Parish in glorious detail.
The Advantages of St. Tammany as a Summer Resort
New Orleans Republican Newspaper
Sr. TAMMANY PARISH, July 30, 1875.
EDITOR REPUBLICAN:
Now that the citizens of New Orleans are hunting a quiet and cool place, near at
hand for their business, in which their families may spend the summer, with your
permission I will call their attention to St. Tammany parish. All know very well it is
one of the healthiest of the State, but it holds out many inducements to pleasure
seekers.
The trip across Lake Pontchartrain in the Camelia, built for pleasure trips,
is a superior recreation of itself. The vessel has every accommodation desired by passengers, and its officers make their comfort their especial business. Captain Hanover has been at her wheel many years, and every one knows him; Captain Nixon, in the office, is an aid at the service of all, and both do credit to the agent, C. M. Soria, Esq., who has spared no expense in fitting up the boat.
Mandeville, whose residents like to call the queen city of the lake, is the first stopping place, and only three hours run from New Orleans. Here is an excellent hotel and good bathing. Next the steamer stops at Madisonville, on the Tchefuncta, high above overflow, dry and healthy, and filled with old live oak trees.
From here the Camelia goes to Covington, at the head of navigation, and only three miles from here are the celebrated Abita Springs. The water of these springs has been proved excellent for all rheumatic complaints and the removal of general debility. In Covington are three excellent houses—the City Hotel, the Sterling and Wilson houses. In Mandeville the Colume House is equally good.
An excursion to St. Tammany is the cheapest that can be indulged in from New
Orleans, and the people there ought to learn more of their near neighbors across the lake. Besides the Abita Spring, the water of which is becoming a favorite in New Orleans, are the red and white sulphur springs of Mr. George Ingram, which find favor with many invalids.
To those who desire permanent homes, there are many opportunities to purchase chimp farms. There are three German settlements, and all doing well. There are churches and schools in all the towns, and the parish boasts a newspaper, the St. Tammany Farmer.
For a quiet summer, health and pleasure, St. Tammany offers more advantages than any other parish within easy reach of New Orleans.
Yours, truly, BETWEEN TWO RIVERS.
The letters must have had an impact, because a few years later...
JANUARY 18, 1892, The Times Picayune Newspaper
A THRIVING PARISH Rich and Beautiful St. Tammany
Its Population and Products Rapidly Increasing.
Healthful, Fruitful and Prosperous
Since the last census the growth and development of St. Tammany parish, in Louisiana, has rapidly increased in. population, in wealth, in products, in manufactures, and the important position it occupies in the eyes of the world as a health resort, all entitle it to some-
thing more than a passing notice.
In the last ten years St. Tammany has doubled her population; between 800 and 1000 new farms have been opened within her borders; new saw mills have been erected, equipped with the latest and most improved machinery; brickyards have sprung up from one end of the parish to the other, notably among these, and the finest in the state, are those at Slidell, St. Joe, a few miles further in the interior, others on the Abita, one or two on the Bogue Falaya, Bayou Lacombe and Bonfouca.
The culture of cane has assumed important proportions in the last twenty years. Every farmer has a cane mill. and not one of them needs to travel outside of the limits of his own farm for his sugar and molasses, while its export, which is large, is shipped by steamer, schooner and the East Louisiana Railroad.
Its truck farms, with their products of corn, potatoes, fruits and vegetables come to perfection in the parish. The output of her tar, turpentine. rosin factories, the sand, wood and charcoal industries give profitable and renumerative employment to hundreds of men and fifty or sixty schooners. as witness the statistics of the arrivals and departure of vessels from and to the Old and New basins daily.
The culture of the fleecy staple also has become of no mean importance in adding to the income of the St. Tammany farmer. The grape is indigenous to the soil, and the vineyards of St. Tammany have attracted the attention of every visitor and stranger, and wine of no mean quality and in paying quantities is produced.
Rice Arises
I come now to speak of the cultivation of a cereal which sixteen years ago was started as a mere experiment, and which have more than realized the wildest dreams of the most visionary farmer who ever entrusted one of its grains to the bosom of mother earth. I mean rice, and in order to understand fully the gigantic growth and progress of this branch of the industry of our parish, I may be pardoned if I digress and give a brief history of the cultivation of this important product in the state of Louisiana.
In 1876, I think, or thereabouts, the United States government's report showed that there were three rice producing states only, in the forty-four composing this union, namely: South Carolina, with 100,000 barrels a year; North Carolina, 55,000 barrels a year; Georgia, 50,000 barrels a year; Louisiana. showing up with the merely nominal number of 5000 barrels a year. The total amount of barrels from the four states, as will be perceived, being 210,000 barrels yearly.
But mark the change—it sounds like a fairy tale—Louisiana in 1890 comes to the front with a record of 350,000 barrels of rice, and in the year just closed it is estimated that she has with increased acreage added 50,000 or 75,000 barrels more to the output of the previous year, making a total of over 400,000 barrels, thus more than doubling the rice product of North and South Carolina and Georgia, the three and only other rice producing states of the Union.
Of this crop of 1891, over 400,000 barrels, the parish of St. Tammany has contributed 50,000 barrels, one-half of the total rice crop of the state of South Carolina; which until a few years ago, held the position and was considered as the foremost, the banner state of the Union, in this respect. Is not this a just cause of pride, that St. Tammany should produce 50,000 barrels, one- eighth of the rice crop of the entire fifty-nine parishes of the state.
Health Haven
In addition to all this, and not least, after the most careful research into facts and figures, the United States government's official report as to the health statistics of the United States places St. Tammany at the head of the list in point of health; San Antonio, Tex., second, and Waukesha third. St. Tammany has for some forty or fifty years been prominently held up before the world as a health resort, free, entirely free, from yellow fever, cholera and malaria, as witness the certificates and opinions of some of the most distinguished physicians of our own and neighboring states.
St. Tammany during the last four years has been out of debt, pays dollar for dollar to all to whom she may become indebted, has a surplus of some $7000 or $8000 in her treasury, has added in that tune nearly $600,000 to her assessable property, lowered the rate of taxation from 16 mills to 18 mills and put all its bridges in excellent order.
The police jury of the parish, appointed four years ago, have been mainly instrumental in this good work, and deserve the highest credit. They have, in their every act, kept steadily in view the honor, the prosperity and the advancement of their parish.
To Poitevent and Favre, the lumber kings of our state and of Mississippi, we raise our hats in acknowledgment of the immense benefit which has accrued to old St. Tammany in consequence of that spirit of enterprise, which has prompted this far seeing and energetic firm in building, at their own venture and expense, a line of railway (a branch of the Northeastern or Queen and Crescent Route) directly west from Pearl River.
Captain John Poitevent, while building, gave it the soubriquet of the "Little Transit Route," twenty-four miles to the Abita Springs (now famous throughout the world), and to Covington, thus reducing the hours of travel between New Orleans, Covington and Abita Springs, which formerly occupied from six to eight hours, to two hours and a quarter, a certainty of communication, a telegraph line to the Abita Springs and Covington, daily communication to and from these points. Solid trains, handsome freight cars, with a Wednesday and Sunday excursion in summer, and Sunday excursions throughout the winter, exclusive of the regular daily trains.
Property has increased in value all over the parish from 100 to 2000 per cent, according to location, and there is scarcely a foot of public land to be purchased in its length and breadth.. Game abounds—the deer, turkey, woodcock, partridge, grassee, kipe, robin, garde solief, snipe, duck; while the rivers and bayous swarm with fish, always so that the hunter and fisherman will always find ample cause for congratulation that they have not forgotten their rod or gun; while for the lover of nature no grander or more diversified forests exist on the planet, no finer specimens of that monarch of the forest, the oak, can anywhere meet the eye: there are no clearer, limpid, lovely and more romantic streams than are to be found here, nor are fairer women or braver men to be met with the world over.
Few parishes of the state can boast of more material and positive advancement - Ours is not a boom, but a steady growth.
J. S. Bossier.
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