100 Years Ago This Week

What was going on 100 years ago this week? CLICK HERE for a link to the St. Tammany Farmer of August 9, 1919. The link is provided by the Library of Congress and its Chronicling America service.

Click on the sample images below to see larger versions.

 

 

Yearbook Pictures from Lyon High 1942

Several pictures from the 1942 Lyon High School (Covington High) annual were shared by Alex Ferrer over on the Facebook page for "Remember Covington."  The yearbook was called The Poplar Leaves. The yearbook was owned by his uncle Alexander Leon Ferrer, after whom he was named. Click on the images to make them larger.

 

See also: 

Class of 1968 Plants Poplar Trees

Evelyn Pittman Visits Folsom Elementary

A few years ago, in 2007, Folsom area resident Evelyn Pittman visited with fifth grade students at Folsom Elementary School to go over her photo scrapbook and tell them about the history of the school and the village. Here are two pictures of her talking to students some 12 years ago.

She retired from Folsom Elementary after teaching second grade there for 24 years.

Click on the images to make them larger. 

 Mary Evelyn Blackwell Pittman was born on April 28, 1924, in Folsom, LA.

She was well-known throughout the community, especially for her singing in the church choir. She also sang at weddings for friends and family. Sandy Leblanc over on Facebook recalled that in the 1959/1960 school year she had two nieces, a nephew and several second cousins in her class. "So Mrs. Pittman was soon Aunt Evelyn to the whole class," she said.

To watch a video featuring an interview with Mrs. Pittman, CLICK HERE.

Mrs. Pittman passed away on July 21, 2015 at her home in Folsom.  Her obituary printed on the E. J. Fielding Funeral Home website, said that Evelyn loved children and was a born teacher. 

She began teaching in 1942 immediately after graduating from Covington High School. There was a shortage of teachers during World War II and she was recruited right out of high school to begin teaching at the old Savannah Branch School on a teaching certificate, which was based on a test issued by the school board in lieu of a college diploma. 

After her first year of teaching, the Savannah Branch School was closed and combined with the Folsom Consolidated School (later relocated and named Folsom Elementary). Thus began her 40 year teaching career. She attended Southeastern Louisiana University during her summer breaks where she obtained her bachelor’s degree and certification.

She was an active lifetime member of First Baptist Church Folsom where she taught children in Sunday School and sang in the church choir. She loved to cook. 

She was survived by her son David Pittman, two daughters Jane Pittman and Ann Hatcher. She was preceded in death by her husband, J. C. Pittman, and her parents Fleet and Tera Wascom Blackwell.

 

In 1982 she was present for the dedication of the J.C. Pittman Memorial Fire Station in Folsom, named in honor of her late husband. For more information about J.C. Pittman, CLICK HERE.

To see the collection of some of her historic photos on display at the Folsom Elementary in 2007, CLICK ON THIS LINK.

Dracula Wants An Alvin

In the early 1980's, the Playmakers Inc. community theater group went all out to bring Dracula to the stage.  A lot was at stake for the actors and stage crew.

Here are some photos from that effort. Click on the images to make them larger. 

Abita Springs Hotels

In 1980 a historical preservation survey of Abita Springs included a map of the several hotels that were located in the town in the early 1900's. Here is the map, with slight graphic improvements. Click on the image to make it larger. 

Source: Map 5, Page 22, of the Abita Springs, LA Historical Preservation Survey, June 1980
Prepared by the St. Tammany Parish Planning Commission

According to the survey publication, the Bossier hotel was built in 1867, and the Long Branch Hotel was completed in June of 1880. The Long Branch was built by Joseph Gazin and the main building consisted of 18 rooms with halls and galleries up and down "fitted with every convenience."

The first excursion train arrived at Abita Springs on Sunday, June 26, 1887, and that fostered an even greater need for hotel accommodations. 

The Simon's Hotel opened on August 14, 1887, "offering visitors a French kitchen with Parisean style cooking. By late 1888 hotels included the Bossier House, Labat's Hotel, the Long Branch and Simon's.

The report states that "in January 1891, the fine cottage of Gustave Martin and the unfinished two story hotel building of Matthew Brown were entirely consumed by fire." Later in the year, fire destroyed the newly built Bossier Hotel.

Click on the above image to make it larger.

By 1892, local newspapers were noting that Abita Springs had hotels named Moran's Hotel, Martin's Hotel, Summer's Hotel, Bossier's Hotel, Labat Hotel, Long Branch and Simons, in addition to the "rumor" of the Great Northern Hotel.

"In 1895, there is mention of the Gem Hotel owned by Rose Martin and A.A. Cooley's Evergreen Cottage," the preservation survey stated. "In April of 1898 the Abita Springs Hotel was opened with Widow O. Aubert being the proprietress."

The Abita Springs Hotel burned in 1900 and was rebuilt with steam heat to accommodate year-round visitors. 

  

In 1903 the Mutti Hotel was named in the local newspapers, along with Duqusne Cottage, Ozone Cottage Company, Strain's Cottage, and Spring View Cottage. 

 

 

News Item January 1, 1921

 "Many fine hotels and cottages were established in Abita Springs due to it development as a major resort center," the preservation survey explained. "The larger hotels such as the Bossier House, Labat, Mutti, Simon's, Long Branch, Abita Springs Hotel and Cottage Company, New Abita Springs Hotel and the Ozone Belt Hotel and Cottages consisted of a main building with several 'bachelor' and 'family' cottages. "

 
"These hotels were very well patronized at a time when Abita Springs was at its height of popularity. Accommodations for some two thousand guests were available in Abita at its zenith. 

"In addition to the hotels, several houses and cottages were established to accommodate summer visitors. Lorio, Barclay, Morin, Martin's, and Strain Cottages to name a few all offered room and board to weekend and summer visitors. "

The survey went on to describe the extensive gardens that surrounded some of the Abita hotels, gardens of which much of the landscaping and plantings still existed in 1980, when the survey was written.  

 

 

 

 

See also:

Cardinal's Rest

New Abita Springs Hotel Opens 

Jim and Ann Murphy

Special education teachers are special. It's right there in the job title. And those individuals who assist special education teachers through their workdays are also special. Ann Murphy was one of those people.

Years ago the Special Education program in St. Tammany Parish was looking into ways to better meet the individual challenges of the special needs children within the St. Tammany Public School System. Ann Murphy knew that was where she wanted to be.  She went to school for special education classes and took the test and received her certificate as a Certified Para Educator.  

She felt she could make a difference and knew where she was needed.  She chose to work with children with behavior problems.  Ann did make a difference working with her students at Mandeville, Covington, and Pontchartrain Elementary.  She later took sign language classes.   Since she used her hands to express herself, she wanted to see if she could help the hearing impaired students; and she did.  

Ms. Murphy really enjoyed teaching and noted that she should have been a teacher from the start.  She saw herself as a problem solver, a listener for the children, patient and encouraging.  She liked to set a good example and gave advice, especially from past experiences.  She always loved being around children; she needed them, and they needed her. 

They moved to St.Tammany in 1992, while Ann was working in the accounting department of Ochsner Hospital on Jefferson Hwy. Two years later, Ann became a certified para-educator and got a job with the School System. She and her husband are retired now. To read about who they are, where they came from, and what their days are like nowadays, click on this link which will take you over to the retired teachers website. 

  Jim and Ann Murphy

Fishing At St. Paul's Pond

For decades the pond at St. Paul's College and High School in Covington has provided many a youngster's first experience in fishing. On afternoons and some weekends, there were always two or more kids trying their luck with cane poles, fishing rods and (on some occasions) nets. 

Here are a couple of pictures from 20 years ago of members of a Cub Scout group and their siblings trying to reel in a few.

 

The joy of fishing at St. Paul's pond

Over on Facebook, quite a few people said the above pictures stirred a few of their own memories of fishing at St. Paul's. Mayor Mark Johnson remembered catching a few outstanding catfish, and Tim O'Conner recalled how in the 1970's, the school cafeteria would give out bread crumbs to youngsters to help them bait a hook or just feed the ducks at the pond. 

There were also ducks at the St. Paul's pond

(St. Tammany Farmer April 22, 1976)

Preparing a Post for Tammany Family

The putting together of a daily post article for the Tammany Family blog is not a simple process. Here are a few of the steps necessary to bring the articles to our readers.

1. Find pictures or newspaper clippings that would be of interest to folks who live in St. Tammany Parish. Since I have four file cabinets full of 40 years worth of information, more than 14,000 negatives, a couple hundred photographs, and a hundred or so slide transparencies, that is not as difficult as it would seem (although it is getting harder to find good material.) I used to have more than 3000 photographs, but Hurricane Katrina tore the roof off my storage building and drenching rain soaked several boxes full of pictures. They pretty much all stuck together after that. I tried saving some of them, but the effort didn't pan out.

2. If the pictures I need are in negative form, then I scan them, clean up the scanned image using an image editing program, and size them for posting to the internet. If they are already a photograph, scan them and size them for the internet. If a slide, scan them at high resolution, take a half hour or so to clean them up (using an image editor software program), and then resize them for the internet. For some reason, 40 year old slides really get dusty and dirty, not to mention the loss of color accuracy, which has to be restored through the color controls on the software. Sometimes pressing the "adjust color automatically" button works perfectly (but not always).

3. If the source is going to be a newspaper clipping or magazine article, then scan the material, clean it up, and try to use OCR (optical character recognition) to generate computer text from the printed text. This only works if the scanned article is clear enough. Many times I have to re-type the entire article to get it into the blog post. If I have trouble reading it, I just post it as an image to the blog and readers are on their own.

4. If the source includes an audio file, I have to digitize the original recording, usually taken from a tape cassette at real time, and put the audio in computer form. Many of those recordings have to be "cleaned up" using a sound editing program. 

5. If the source is a video file, then the fun really begins. I have to digitize the video, which means burning it into a DVD from the original video cassette VHS format, and then from the DVD I pull a video that I can convert into a format that YouTube will receive.  Digitizing and editing video requires heavy duty video editing software, and sometimes that takes hours to accomplish, especially if I want the finished video to look good, sound good, and be less boring than the original raw footage through the use of judicious editing. 

6. Once all the source material is prepared, then I have to write some introductory paragraphs for the blog, insert all the text, pictures, and video that will accompany it, and then find some "further information" on the subject that I will place in links at the bottom of the blog article. Searching the internet, using a variety of search engines, for the related material to the subject matter of the blog sometimes takes a while. Those links are placed under a "See also..." label. 

7. Then the blog article is read twice, which pretty much always discovers that some editing and transitions are called for, and then up it goes to the blog.

Software used during the above processes:

Epson Scanning Software
Paint.net image editor
Corel PaintShopPro image editor
Abbyy Fine Reader OCR Software
Foto-sketcher Image Enhancement Software
Audacity Audio Software
Corel Video Studio

100 Years Ago This Week

What was going on 100 years ago this week? CLICK HERE for a link to the St. Tammany Farmer of August 2, 1919. The link is provided by the Library of Congress and its Chronicling America service.

Click on the sample images below to see larger versions.

 

 

SLU Honors Local Students 1973

In 1973, this article appeared in the newspaper naming local students who had won honors at Southeastern Louisiana University. Click on the image to make it larger.