THE EARLY YEARS
On January 18, 1838, the Parish of
Caddo was created by an act of the state
Legislature. The new parish was needed because of
dramatic population growth in the far northwest
portion of the state.
Caddo Parish came into being just as
the town of Shreveport did two years earlier. Namely,
because of the clearing of the Great Raft, a mighty
logjam that had engulfed the Red River for centuries.
The Raft's removal meant the fertile land along its
banks could be economically cultivated since the
opening of the river allowed for the rapid shipment of
agricultural products to market.
Opening the river also opened the
northwest Louisiana area to the rest of the world.
More and more settlers began flocking to this region.
As the Shreveport vicinity grew, so too grew the need
for local government and law enforcement. By the end
of 1837 the need for law and order in this burgeoning
backwater of the state was growing intense. Thus it
was that the Legislature opted to carve the
northernmost portion of Natchitoches Parish into a new
parish. The parish seat would initially be located at
the village of Wallace on the south shore of Wallace
Lake. That location, chosen because it was near the
demographic center of the parish, was brief, however,
and by the early part of 1839 the seat of government
was firmly settled upon Shreveport.
The name of Caddo Parish was suggested
to honor the Caddo Indians, the ancient residents of
the area and signatories of the Caddo Treaty of 1835,
which had ceded the land to the United States.
The legislative act creating Caddo Parish and the
parish charter of Caddo Parish both provided for the
appointment of a parish judge, a police jury, a clerk
of court, and a sheriff. Thus the Caddo Parish
Sheriff's Office was created together with the Parish
itself on January 18, 1838, and though from the start
the parish had a sheriff, his was initially an
appointed office. Caddo Parish did not come to
possess its own elected sheriff for another
eight years.
During the first eight years that
Caddo Parish existed the sheriff was appointed by the
state's governor and this appointment was confirmed by
the Legislature. The sheriff served as the parish's
chief law enforcement officer and also collected local
taxes. At this time the state District Court
maintained the courthouse and the parish Police Jury
maintained the single-cell parish jail. Within the
town of Shreveport, law and order was maintained by
the city's Constable of Patrol and his band of
volunteer officers, a system which worked for the
town's first few years before the community's growth
rendered it inadequate, eventually replacing it with a
city police department.
The first sheriff of Caddo Parish was
Alexander Boyd Sterrett. At the time Caddo Parish was
carved out of Natchitoches Parish, Sterrett had served
as the Natchitoches Parish sheriff's deputy for this
area. Being familiar with the area and already
performing the duties of sheriff in the territory of
the new parish, Sterrett was appointed Caddo Parish
sheriff by Governor Edward Douglas White in January,
1838.
The appointment came despite some
allegations of the mishandling of local taxes in
1837. According to state records, Deputy Sterrett,
then tax collector for the sheriff of Natchitoches,
failed to pay into the treasury $792.31 collected by
him. He was ordered to do so, with interest added, by
the Seventh Judicial Court, and apparently did. After
that there appear to have been no further problems
and, in all fairness to Sterrett, there was never any
evidence of actual wrongdoing cited, only of alleged
negligence in turning over the taxes collected in a
timely manner.
Sheriff Sterrett had formerly served
as a public official in both Natchitoches and Rapides
parishes and had resided for a time in Alexandria. His
wife, Martha, was the sister of Jim Bowie, the Texas
revolutionary who fell in the defense of the Alamo.
Sterrett served as Caddo sheriff from
the parish's creation until his death in a gunfight
with Shreveport merchant Charles Albert Sewall in
August, 1840. According to court records, Sterrett
had entered Sewall's store on Texas Street demanding
payment on a bill for a shipment of paper that
Sterrett, a merchant as well as the sheriff, had
delivered to him. Sewall claimed the shipment was
short and would only pay part of the bill. Sterrett
insisted and the encounter took a violent turn.
Sewall grabbed a seven-inch knife and threatened the
sheriff with it. The sheriff grabbed the knife but
Sewall ran to the rear of the store, returning with
two cocked pistols, one in each hand.
Witnesses said that Sewall told
Sterrett he was trespassing and ordered him out but
Sheriff Sterrett hurled a Bowie knife at Sewall, just
missing him. Sewall fired, killing Sheriff Sterrett
instantly. Sewall was indicted in state court for the
murder of the sheriff and was released on $20,000 bond
collected by friends and relatives, a staggering sum
in those days when one dollar had approximately the
buying power of twenty dollars today.
Sewall claimed self-defense and
numerous witnesses who had seen the altercation unfold
from the street and the porch of Porter's Hotel
agreed. Two attempts at convicting Sewall ended in
mistrials and a third resulted in the dismissal of the
case in 1841. Sewall was released and lived as a free
man and respectable Shreveport merchant for another
five years until he died. Sterrett, Caddo's first
sheriff, was also the first and only sheriff of the
parish to be killed, though whether technically in the
line of duty or not is disputable. In any case, it
would be another 79 years before the Caddo Parish
Sheriff's Office would lose another lawman to gunfire.
Sheriff Alexander Boyd Sterrett was
evidently buried in the first Shreveport City
Cemetery, located at the northeast corner of Fannin
and McNeill streets. Graves in this cemetery were
moved to the Oakland Cemetery by 1866. Presumably
Sheriff Sterrett's grave was moved as well but it is
now unmarked and its location unknown.
Sterrett's successor as Caddo Parish
Sheriff was Matthew Watson, who was appointed. This
appointment continued for almost six years until the
first public referendum to elect a sheriff for Caddo
Parish was held. Watson was at that time elected to
the office he already held and continued through 11
more year-long terms.
Watson remained Caddo sheriff until
1858 when he declined to run a twelfth time. It was
during Sheriff Watson's administration that the
original role of the Sheriff's Office was solidified.
The sheriff served first and foremost as the chief law
enforcement officer of Caddo Parish. Under his
jurisdiction came the first authorization for the
hiring of deputies to assist the sheriff and maintain
the parish jail and its prisoners. Another duty was
the capture and return of runaway slaves. The sheriff
also served as tax collector and, though he collected
the taxes levied by the Police Jury, he remained
accountable to the Police Jury for monies they
allocated to him for the operation of his office,
running the jail, and so forth. In 1846 the first
permanent jail facility was built on the McNeill
Street side of the Public Square (where the parish
courthouse stands today), replacing a remarkably
escape-friendly lean-to at the rear of the rented
courthouse used at the time.
Throughout the 1840s and 1850s the
various divisions of parish government remained quite
small and their roles often overlapped, with the
Police Jury taking on many of the civil duties later
assigned to the sheriff. It was during Sheriff
Watson's term of office that the duties of the sheriff
and other parish officials began to be more rigidly
defined than they previously had been and the
foundations of the modern Caddo Sheriff's Office began
to be laid.
Little is known about Matthew
Watson's successor, Thomas R. Simpson. Simpson was
first elected in 1857 and served a single one-year
term. In 1865 he became sheriff again, serving three
one-year terms before leaving office in 1868. Though
many Caddo Parish sheriffs have served multiple terms
of office, Sheriff Simpson is the only person to have
held the office of sheriff twice in non-consecutive
terms.
In the earliest days of the Sheriff's
Office, the sheriff either had no deputies or had only
part-time deputies. The sheriff had the authority to
create temporary deputies as needed but typically the
only permanent paid position in the office was that of
the sheriff himself. As far as can be ascertained,
this situation did not change until the time of the
Civil War. However, it was common in the early days
for the sheriff to set up "patrols" or organized
groups of sworn citizen volunteers who literally
patrolled their sections of the parish on a regular
basis, making arrests and investigating citizen
complaints as needed.
Generally, the presence of the
sheriff's patrols, or the perception that they might
be present, maintained law and order fairly well.
Additionally, the sheriff served summonses and
subpoenas, was (from 1854 onward) authorized to
convene grand juries, summoned jurors for state
trials, and administered oaths of office to parish
officials in the absence of a judge (which was
commonplace in those days when judicial districts were
huge and travel within them time-consuming for the
judges).
Beyond these, the principal duties of
the first sheriffs were to act as a law enforcement
agent for the parish and to serve as jailer,
executioner, and tax collector. In the early days of
the parish the latter duty was typically deemed the
most vital by the police jury, which controlled the
purse strings of parish government. Crime was either
less frequent in those days or more broadly defined
than today. For in November, 1855, the sheriff was
congratulated by the court on the "entire absence of
crime" in Caddo Parish during the previous six months!
Sheriff's sales were amazingly
frequent occurrences in early Caddo Parish and for a
time the parish even employed a full-time auctioneer
on its payroll. Steamboats, slaves, real estate in
town and land and property, such as plantations and
farms frequently were placed on the auction block by
the sheriff because of delinquency and non-payment of
taxes. Between 1848 and 1854 virtually all sheriff's
sales took place at the Palmetto Hotel, later called
the Nelson House, located at the northeast corner of
Texas and Spring streets. The most popular for the
hotel, however, was the City Exchange, owing to the
auctions and sales that took place there. After the
Exchange burned in 1854 the site of the sales was
moved to the City Hotel, later known as Cumpston's
Hotel and still later as the Caddo Hotel. This hotel
stood in the 200 block of Milam Street. Sometimes
sales were also held at Bogel's Hall, a hotel on Texas
Street.
Simpson's first term as sheriff was
followed by the election of Colonel Henry John Grey
Battle. In 1859, during Colonel Battle's time in
office, the first permanent Caddo Parish Courthouse
was built on the site today occupied by the Caddo
Courthouse. Prior to that the courthouse and
sheriff's, clerk's, and judges' offices were located
in rented quarters throughout downtown. The jail had
occupied its location on the Public Square since
1846.
Colonel Battle was one of Caddo
Parish’s most prominent citizens. Years later when
death came suddenly for Colonel Battle he was widely
mourned by the citizens of Caddo Parish and the
courthouse was decorated in black for his funeral.
Colonel Battle's tenure as sheriff was
followed by that of Nathan Hass, who held office at
the time of the outbreak of the Civil War. He was
also sheriff at the time of the completion of the
first permanent parish courthouse. Elected in 1860,
Hass remained in office for two year-long terms.
The duties of the Sheriff's Office
would be greatly increased and its resources tried to
the limit during this period as over 20,000 refugees
from South Louisiana poured into Caddo Parish -- most
of them into Shreveport -- a town previously having a
population of less than a quarter of that amount.
Further complicating matters was the fact that during
the chaos of war no one fully understood who was in
charge of maintaining order within the parish: the
sheriff or the military, both of which deemed
themselves responsible, a situation which occasionally
led to tensions between the civil and military
authorities.
During the middle of the chaos of war,
just as the state government prepared to move to
Shreveport and just after the Trans-Mississippi
Department of the Confederate Army had set up its
headquarters here, Sheriff Hass opted not to seek
re-election. Israel Wilson Pickens, a former deputy
in south Caddo Parish, followed him in office.
Sheriff Pickens' administration was in charge during
the bulk of the Civil War and it was to his office
that fell the task of maintaining order during the
last days of the war after the Trans-Mississippi's
surrender in June, 1865.
When federal occupation forces
overtook Caddo Parish in 1865, Pickens was relieved of
his duties as sheriff by the authorities.
Nevertheless, he was twice re-elected by popular vote,
in 1866 and 1867, though he was forbidden to serve by
the federal government. He also was elected sheriff
by popular vote in the election of 1873 but, due to
the machinations of the Reconstruction government of
the state, was not allowed to serve then, either.
As Union troops entered the city of
Shreveport and as federal directives instructed that
all former Confederate offices, even at the local
level, were dissolved and all officials relieved of
their duties, a total disregard for law and order
gripped the community. Citizens and soldiers alike
raided former Confederate army depots and warehouses,
looting them and taking all they could carry.
Documents were strewn in the streets and the sheriff,
stripped of his authority, could do nothing but stand
by helplessly as it all occurred. The invading army
seized property and set up its own provisional
headquarters on Crockett Street, where the Festival
Plaza is now located.
Although, as noted, Israel Pickens was
popularly re-elected, the Reconstruction government of
Louisiana refused to allow him to serve. Rather,
former Sheriff Thomas R. Simpson was recalled from
retirement by the federal administration and appointed
to serve once again. For the next three years he
rebuilt the Sheriff's Office and, despite Sheriff
Pickens' popularity, Sheriff Simpson did much to
restore the public's confidence in his office, a
confidence that in many other parishes was all but
non-existent during that same period.
While there was discord in the
Sheriff's Office during Reconstruction, with one
elected sheriff unable to serve and another appointed
sheriff lacking the full cooperation of his
constituents, the situation was far better than that
found in city government at the same time. In
Shreveport there was virtually no order whatsoever
during the early years of Reconstruction. The police
force was all but non-existent. Consequently, the
Shreveport Police Department at the time commanded
little public respect and got even less cooperation,
leaving the Sheriff's Office to maintain order both in
the parish and in the city as well. Further, the
Sheriff's Office was utilized by parish, state, and
city governments alike to collect taxes, a role that
put enormous and undue stress upon the very limited
manpower and financial resources of that office.
Although after 1868 the problems faced
by the Sheriff's Office began to ease as other
branches of government stabilized and resumed their
pre-war responsibilities, the burdens thrust upon the
relatively stable Sheriff's Office did not entirely
diminish until the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
Meanwhile, in 1868 John J. Hope was
appointed sheriff. As with so many political
appointments during the Reconstruction era, parish
sheriffs often rose and fell with the governors who
appointed them. Hope, though a Confederate veteran,
had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States
while a prisoner of war and had been paroled at
Shreveport in June, 1865. Sheriff Hope, though only
briefly in office, was nevertheless influential in
Shreveport in the years just preceding and just after
the Civil War.
Only months after Hope’s appointment,
he was replaced by John J. O'Connor, a young lawyer
and former Confederate Colonel. O'Connor served until
his sudden death in 1870 at the age of 25. O'Connor
was probably the youngest person ever to serve as
sheriff of Caddo Parish. He was only 23 when he
entered office.
Sheriff O'Connor's successor was
Michael A. Walsh, then a commission merchant. After
serving as Caddo Parish Sheriff, Walsh would be
appointed Mayor of Shreveport in 1873, serving in
office during part of the disastrous yellow fever
epidemic, which claimed nearly a quarter of the city's
population.
Walsh's successor as sheriff was his
deputy, James M. Wilson, owner of a meat packing
business located on Cypress Bayou. Arriving at Shreve
Town in 1838, Wilson was one of the Caddo Parish's
true pioneer citizens. Sheriff Wilson was also an
early town constable and collector of taxes for
Shreveport, a job that prepared him for his later
duties as Caddo sheriff.
Wilson served as sheriff until 1874 and
was succeeded by Alonzo Flournoy, who held that office
until 1876. Flournoy was the first of three
Flournoys, including his son, J. Pat, and grandson,
J. Howell, who would serve as sheriff of Caddo
Parish. Alonzo was a prominent planter, residing in
Greenwood. Unfortunately for Sheriff Flournoy,
Reconstruction politics, still dominant in Louisiana
in the mid-1870s, prevented him from effectively
carrying out his duties. Indeed, some accounts of
past officials of Caddo Parish neglect to mention the
term of Alonzo Flournoy at all.
William Heffner was the successor to
Sheriff Flournoy. Prior to becoming sheriff, Heffner
was a dry goods merchant. As sheriff he appointed
former sheriff James Wilson to be his chief deputy and
appointed his own son, James, to be a deputy as well.
Heffner's successor as sheriff was
Josiah D. Cawthorn, who served a single one-year term.
Little is known about Sheriff Cawthorn's life beyond
the fact that he was a planter in Caddo Parish and was
elected Sheriff in 1878.
