Tax Collector For Winn & Jackson Parishes, 1864

[Dan Hadley]

Apparently many early Winn Parish records were lost in a courthouse fire in 1886. I came across some info on John Morris, tax assessor and collector for Winn & Jackson Parishes in 1864.

Excerpt from March, 1960 articles in the Winn Parish Enterprise News-American (I omitted the lengthy list of taxpayers' names):



"Winn Parish As I Have Known It (Articles No. 173 & 174)

by Harley B. Bozeman

For the past several years there is hardly a week that I do not get a letter
from someone asking for information about some old time Winn Parish family who
lived here as far back as the Civil War days.

Many times I can give these people no help at all, prior to the burning of our
old courthouse and all its records in 1886, going back to the Civil War days
was impossible, there just were no public records about anything or anybody
here in Winn Parish.

The only official record of Winn Parish during the four years that this area
of Louisiana was controlled by the Southern Confederacy that I know exists is
the tax index book of 1864 by John O. Morris, compiled when he was tax
assessor and collector for both Winn and Jackson Parishes. Hasson Morris, the
grandson, has this 1864 Winn Parish Tax Book. Hasson has made it available to
me. For it I am printing a list of over 600 Winn Parish people who were
assessed and paid Confederate taxes in 1864, that's 96 years ago.

Below are the names of Winn Parish taxpayers listed in "The Index of Tax
Assessments of Winn Parish. October 13, 1864" by John O. Morris, Esq.,
District Tax Assessor for Winn and Jackson Parishes, during Civil War days,
when the parish seat of both parishes was apparently at Louisville
(Gansville). Louisiana was a member of the Southern Confederate States."

Dan Hadley

[CSchneider]

Re: Tax Collector For Winn & Jackson Parishes, 1864

Early Winn Parish seems to be a difficult research topic. As if the fire that burned the parish's original court house in 1868 didn't destroy enough Civil War period records (including those for Grant Parish, which was formed from the southern part of Winn Parish after the war), fires in 1886 and 1917 finished the job. At least we had the census and a few other records to use when putting together a background primer for Company G.

I wonder what the poor subsistence farmers who made up almost the entire population of the parish (and voted overwhelmingly to send an anti-secession delegate to the convention in 1861) thought of that Confederate tax-in-kind.

-Craig Schneider