Horseback Trips Over Bare Prairie Was Woman's Job

Golden Anniversary Edition of the Crowley Daily Signal Pub. 1949, page 88

A lone young girl, riding a horse over the bare prairies, for miles without of sight of anyone is a picture hard to call to mind this present day and time. But this is a vivid memory of one of the pioneer settlers of the Gueydan Prairie, Mrs. Hampton Campbell.

That was her chore, to ride from the family home near the resent site of Riceville to Mermentau several times a week. Many times, she remembers, her horse would flush pheasants or scare prairie chickens and occasionally a startled deer would eye her progress curiously.

Born Anna Kutsch, in Meiringen, Switzerland, to parents who were natives of Alsace-Lorraine, she came to America with her family when she was nine years old and landed in New York. Two years later, in 1886, they came to Louisiana and settled on Bayou Queue de Tortue, just across from the present site of Riceville.

In 1896 Anna Kutsch married Hampton "Hamp" Campbell, a nearby inhabitant. The Campbells settled on a section of the old 1775 Spanish grant of land to Mitchell Lyons.

Campbell forebearers had come over to Georgia with Oglethorpe, the English adventurer and explorer. His forefathers later settled along the Vermillion river.

"There was not much of Crowley," Mrs Campbell reminisces, "when we were married. We used to travel by horseback and surrey, following ridges and cow trails to what is now Crowley."

"This country has made many improvements, and land values have increased greatly since the Signal became a daily," she added.

At that time, she said, neighbors were few and widely scattered, but now the prairie has been settled and neighbors are much closer together.

After the death of her husband Mrs. Campbell continued to live on in their pioneer home but in September she will move to the new home she is building in Gudydan.

Their son, Melchoir, is a rice farmer and cattleman on this same land and a leader prominent in agricultural organizations.