Finding old photos and honoring an ancestress

from Union Parish Louisiana!  Which I really had no idea where it was located...and there it is right next to Union County, Arkansas.

I've been trying to match ancestors with photos of where they lived.  And my great times six grandmother, Sarah Jones Traylor, died in Union Parish.  There must have been others of my ancestors there too, but for now, I just found she moved in with her son who lived there for the last few years of her life.

The Belled D'Arbonne, Ouachita River, Union Parish LA - yes full of bales of cotton

During the 1830s, the Ouachita River Valley attracted land speculators from New York and southeastern cities. Its rich soil and accessibility due to the country's elaborate river steamboat network made it desirable. Developers cultivated land for large cotton plantations; dependent on slave labor, cotton production supported new planter wealth in the ante-bellum years. Steamboats ran scheduled trips between Camden, Arkansas and New Orleans, for example. A person could travel from any eastern city to the Ouachita River without touching land, except to transfer from one steamboat to another.

One of the investors from the east was Meriwether Lewis Randolph, the youngest grandson of Thomas Jefferson. He was building a home on the Ouachita River in what is now Clark County, Arkansas, when he died of malaria in 1837. He had been appointed Secretary of the Arkansas Territory by President Andrew Jackson in 1835, and had relinquished his commission when Arkansas became a state in 1836. SOURCE: Wikepedia

 Sarah Jones Traylor had had 12 children, so I don't know if she may have lived with some others of them first, but this is where she is known to have died, though there's no marker that I've found yet.

not a known relative - Rev. Elias George, Marion, Union Parish, LA

And the wonderful photos that were available did astound me.  So I'm going to share this batch all together now.

Sarah Jones Traylor was born in Sussex County, VA, and most of her children were born in Perry County, Alabama.  She lived from 1780 till 1847.  Her husband Champion Travis Traylor lived from 1770-1832.

Bill Jinks Cotton Gin, Spearsville, Union Parish, LA

The Hollis' of Spearsville, Union Parish, LA

Schools in Union Parish, LA

Another cotton gin in Union Parish, LA

Union Parish, LA - here unloading a steamboat on the Ouchita River.



Today's Quote:

Grateful living is important in the world because in our constant pursuit of more and better we can easily lose sight of the riches that lay right in front of us and within us.

Guri Mehta