Acadia Parish, LAGenWeb
Biographical Sketches - Page 9
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Theopha Simon
October 27, 1894
Theopha Simon is a native of this section, having been born in Vermilion parish in 1872, and is of one of the oldest and most prominent families of Southwest Louisiana. The ground work of his business education was obtained at the parish school in his parish and a long commercial course at Acadia College gives him that business tact which has enabled him to successfully cope with older and longer established competitors and build up a trade to be proud of. He opened up a general merchandise business in Crowley in Nov., 1893, and has enjoyed a steady increase in trade ever since. He is a man of integrity and energy and deserves the confidence that his increasing business evidences.
John G. Sloane
October 27, 1894
John G. Sloane is a native of Acadia parish, being born only a few miles from where Crowley now stands on November 23, 1866. His early years were spent on the farm and in gaining a common school education. At the age of nineteen he went to the Luka (Miss.) Normal Institute from which he graduated with honors in 1886, receiving the degree of Batchelor of Didactics and Master of Accounts. Following his graduation he taught school one year in St. Landry parish and was married December 30, 1886.
Mr. Sloane moved to Crowley in 1887 and was chosen marshal and tax collector, which offices he held for two years. He was also appointed a notary public in 1887. In October of 1889 he accepted the position of book-keeper with the firm of Roos, Kaplan & Co. and is still employed in that capacity. Mr. Sloane was elected a member of the town council in December of last year and was shortly thereafter appointed town treasurer. He is a prominent member of the Masonic and K. of P. fraternities, being a member of the grand lodge of the latter society
John W. Smith
October 24, 1903
The story of the career of a hustler is always interesting, even if it is confined within narrow limits and devoted to the commonplace affairs of life. The subject of this brief notice is a thirty-third degree hustler, and his life has been a varied one. He has pulled a locomotive throttle on nearly every big line in the West, besides spending several years as an engineer on the Great Lakes and along the Atlantic Coast, from Halifax to the Caribbean seas.
John W. Smith was born in St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., Jan. 29, 1862. His name is English, but his ancestors were Kings in Tipperary before the year of the big wind. At the age of seventeen he shipped as an engineer’s assistant aboard a steamer plying on the Great Lakes. In due time he secured an engineer’s certificate, and until 1885 plied his vocation from Montreal to Duluth, on the chain of lakes, and from Halifax to Kingston, Jamaica, on the Atlantic. In 1885 he went West, and for several years was employed as a locomotive engineer, mainly in the Southwest. In 1898 Smith came to Crowley and went to work as engineer for the Abbott-Duson Canal Company. During the milling season he was engineer at the Crowley mill.
In 1901, he managed the Keystone ranch, in Prairie Hayes, and produced a big crop. In the fall of that year he went into the general merchandise business at Abbott, now Egan postoffice, his firm being known as Smith, Laughlin & Scanlan. A few months since Mr. Laughlin withdrew from the firm. The firm of Smith & Scanlan owns the Black Diamond farm, formerly the Blind Mule ranch, and is also interested with Wm. M Egan in a large tract of land, consisting of farms and town lots. They are also interested in the Egan rice mill.
John W. Smith is a valuable citizen, progressive, energetic and reliable.
Cleophas Sonnier
July, 1903
In Cleophas Sonnier, the young man to whom the police jury of Acadia parish awarded a scholarship in the Louisiana State University, the police jurors have selected to receive an education a young man who is destined to reflect credit on the parish as well as on himself and family. Young Sonnier is not only bright and studious, but he is ambitious and his ambitions run in the direction of learning and intellectual pursuits.
Young Sonnier has not yet reached the point in his career where he can be pointed out as a successful man, his career thus far has been such as to inspire belief in his future, and the story of his struggles for an education inspire respect in him and in the friends in whom his earnestness has brought to his side.
Sonnier is nineteen years old. He was born at Church Point and is of the pure old Creole stock that has given to Louisiana many brilliant men of brains and so many fair women. He is a farmer’s son and at thirteen years of age did not know his alphabet and could speak only a few words of English. A neighbor, Tom Opry, observing that the child was unusually bright, taught him his letters, and later he learned to read under the instruction of Charles A. Cundeff. The boy paid for the instruction given him by working in the cotton field.
As the boy’s intelligence began to broaden he became an inveterate reader of books, and the libraries of Church Point were scouted to furnish him with reading matter. A. B. Childs lent him many good books, and the other citizens loaned him an occasional volume.
Soon the youngster began to long for an education. His family were unable to furnish the means for a term at school and so the boy had to hustle for himself. He was equal to the occasion. He canvassed for a “Life of McKinley” and earned a few dollars, which his mother saved for him. Then he hunted and trapped coons and sold their hides. One day the attention of Thelismare Guidry was attracted to the boy and on learning of his ambition the big-hearted merchant offered to help him. Perhaps he remembered how the elder [Jean] Barousse had helped him when he was a poor boy. Mr. Guidry helped Sonnier to take his first term at the Crowley University School last year. Last fall the boy despaired of earning enough money for another year at the school, but at the last moment his generous patron told him to get ready for school and he would guarantee the means. Hon. Homer Barousse, Father [Auguste] Rogers, J. T. Colligan, Emile Leger and Dr. Wm. Childs, who had become interested in the boy, contributed to the fund, the first three giving ten dollars each and the others giving five dollars each. This made forty dollars, and Mr. Guidry gave sixty, making $100 for another term at school. The boy made a good record at school and when the police jury offered a University Scholarship to the young man passing the best examination, he went in for it and won, and will receive a university education at the expense of the parish.
The Signal feels that the police jury deserves to be congratulated on the selection of a young man of Cleophas Sonnier’s caliber to be the recipient of the university scholarship. The boy has the timber in him to make a good and useful man who will be a credit to the parish and to the state.
Rev. W. O. Stephens
July 23, 1904
Sunday at the morning service Rev. W. O. Stephens, pastor of the Christian church, resigned his charge and announced that on the first day of August he would assume charge of the Christian church at Baton Rouge. The departure of Mr. Stephens, who is one of the most popular of Crowley’s ministers of the Gospel, will be generally regretted.
Mr. Stephens is a native of Mississippi, but has lived in Texas from early childhood. He graduated from the University of Texas with the class of 1893, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Subsequently he took a post-graduate course in law, graduating from the Texas University law school in 1895. During his student days Mr. Stephens was a devotee of athletic sports and it was he who originated and trained the first foot ball team the Texas University ever put into the field. Later, while professor at the Christian University at Waco, he organized a successful team.
After spending about two years in university work Mr. Stephens entered the practice of law, in which he was successful. After practicing law about two years, he decided to enter the ministry, and in October 1901, he came to Crowley and organized the local church of which he has since been pastor.
Mr. Stephens’ work in Crowley has been too well known to require more than passing notice. He not only organized the local congregation, but built and paid for one of thee best church edifices in Crowley. From the first he has been a hard worker, and his work has been on practical lines. Within two years after his arrival here he had built, furnished and paid for his church. He leaves his congregation out of debt. The financial affairs of his church have been conducted entirely on business lines.
Mr. Stephens is an able and earnest preacher. Outside of the pulpit in his church work he has been ably assisted by his wife, who has been an indefatigable worker and is even now at the home of her parents in Texas recovering from the effects of overwork among the sick and needy.
The promotion to the charge of the Baton Rouge church is a flattering one to Mr. Stephens. It is the most important church of this denomination in the State, and his position will be that of the most influential pastor of his denomination in Louisiana. He regrets leaving Crowley, where his work has been productive of so much good, but he feels that it is his duty to go where he is called. The people of Crowley will sincerely regret to lose him and his estimable wife, and both have the warmest wishes for the future from a large circle of friends and admirers.
Hampden Story
October 27, 1894
Hon. Hampden Story was born on Story plantation, St. Bernard parish, La., forty years ago. He was educated at the Western Military Institute of Kentucky and University of Nashville, graduating from the latter place. Returning to New Orleans he entered the law firm of Leo, Tinney & Miller, reading under the direction of now Associate Justice H. C. Miller. He also attended the law lectures of the University of Louisiana for two years and was admitted by the Supreme Court of Louisiana to the practice of law in 1875.
Mr. Story held several political positions at various times in his parish. He was district attorney pro tempore, member of the school board and the police jury. In 1880 he was elected to the upper house of the Legislature and was for several years the accredited delegate from the parish of St. Bernard on the Democratic State Central Committee. From 1886 to 1893 Mr. Story resided in San Diego, Cal., and practiced law under the firm of Deakin & Story. In the fall of 1893 he returned to Louisiana and settled at Rayne, resuming the practice of his chosen profession. He here joined Judge J. E. Barry, of Crowley, the firm being Barry & Story. Mr. Story is a gentleman of exceptional ability and has already established a good practice.
J. Roy Theriot
October 3, 1903
When a young man has most of his history ahead of him there is generally very little to say about him, unless it may be to speculate as to his future. The subject of this brief memorandum turned his majority only last month, having been born at Houma, La., Sept. 11, 1882. His biography is therefore necessarily a brief one.
Young Theriot is of good old Louisiana stock. He received a substantial education in the public school of his native place and early distinguished himself for his aptness as a student. Leaving the public school at an early age he entered the College of Pharmacy at New Orleans, and graduated with distinction in due time.
His first employment as a pharmacist was with A. J. Godard, of Abbeville, for whom he worked four years acquiring an intimate practical knowledge of his business.
In December 1902, soon after his twentieth birthday young Theriot bought out the Gueydan drug store of the A. J. Godard Drug Co. He at once began to make friends in Gueydan and soon became very popular. He has acquired a good business and is in a fair way to be one of Gueydan’s most substantial business men.
J. J. Thomas
October 27, 1894
J. J. Thomas is the pioneer in Crowley in the implement and machinery business, in which he has been eminently successful. He was born in Lewisburg, N. C., October 6, 1888, and was educated at Franklin Institute, N. C., also attending Parishes’ school, in Philadelphia. He resided for a number of years in Mobile, Ala., and embarked later in the drug business in Wilson, N. C. In 1863 he joined the 40th North Carolina Regiment of the Confederate Army and was stationed at Baldhead Island on the Atlantic Ocean, near Wilmington, S. C., and served to the end of the war. He moved to Crowley in 1890 and engaged in his present business. He is also a large land owner here and is extensively engaged in rice culture.
Mr. Thomas is a gentleman of brilliant education, a true type of a southern gentleman and a staunch Democrat. On the 19th of September, 1893, he married Miss Mollie Martin, of Pensacola, Fla.
Ben F. Toler
May 30, 1903
No more enterprising and reliable business man can be found in Acadia parish than Ben. F. Toler, the Iota lumberman. Mr. Toler is enterprising in every sense of the word, and since coming to this country he has made his presence felt. He is one of the pillars upon which the thriving town of Iota leans. He is all that represents good citizenship.
Mr. Toler was born in Attala county, Miss., on March 19, 1861. On September 16, 1896 he was married to Miss Minnie Dodd, the daughter of Hon. Joseph Dodd, of Hiawatha Co., Miss. Mr. Toler has always been of an ambitious disposition, and as a boy, he struggled to secure an education to lift him on to higher and greater things and to better equip himself for the battles and trials of life. He spent some time in the State University of Mississippi, finishing his education at the National Normal University at Lebanon, Ohio.
After leaving Ohio, Mr. Toler came to Crowley and secured a position as associate editor of the Signal, which was then a small weekly paper. His next vocation was that of a school teacher. In 1892 he left Crowley for Lafayette parish, where he spent three years installing new ideas in the heads of young America. However, a longing came over him to live once more ‘mid the scenes of his childhood, and he left Louisiana for his native state. He went to Kosciusko, where he founded the Mississippi Farmer. This he sold and again came to Crowley in 1901, going to work for his brother, T. J. Toler. In July of the next year he went to Iota where he started the large lumber business he is now conducting.
Thomas J. Toler
October 27, 1894
Councilman Thomas J. Toler was born in Attalla County, Miss., January 30, 1858. He had the benefit of a common school education only and from the time of leaving school until coming to Crowley in 1886 he was engaged in farming. After one year here in the employ of W. W. Duson he purchased of Collins & Duson their lumber yard. He has continued in the lumber business up to the present time, the firm being Fontenot & Toler, but recently succeeded to the entire ownership of the business. Mr. Toler was also engaged in the drug business for a time, and was in December of last year elected a member of the town council.
Nothing is so successful as success, and a man who has made a conspicuous success is Mr. Toler. Landing here eight years ago (before the town was platted) with a five dollar bill in his pocket he has by his indomitable courage and shrewd bussiness ability succeeded in accumulating considerable property, being worth today not less than $20,000 to $25,000.
Rev. P. Van Alfen
May 28, 1904
Reverend Father P. Van Alfen was born at Zeltbommel, Holland, Jan. 22, 1870, and is therefore now a little over thirty-four. As the prefix in his name indicates, Father Van Alfen is of excellent birth, his father being a man of substance and high standing. He received his secular education in the college at Rolduc, Holland, while his training in philosophy and theology was gained at the famous seminary at Bois le Duc. After his ordination as a priest, May 24, 1894, Father Van Alfen came to America, amd in the fall of the same year became associated with Father Van de Ven, then pastor at Lake Charles. Father Van Alfen had charge of missions at Lake Charles until 1898, when he became pastor of St. Michaels.
During his pastorate of six years in Crowley Father Van Alfen has won and kept the esteem and confidence of all men, regardless of creed, and his parishioners look upon him as their best friend – as a true spiritual counselor and guide.
Father Van Alfen is not only a good churchman, but he is a good citizen, public spirited and progressive. He is proud of his church and of Crowley, and both are proud of him. The Signal hopes he will celebrate his silver jubilee as a bishop, provided the bishopric can be moved to Crowley.