By Jessica Gorman

This week’s article didn’t exactly turn out according to plan. However, what I found proved to be more interesting than I anticipated. And so, I decided that I would share this work in progress.

In Rusk County, Texas between Henderson and Mt. Enterprise lies the town of Minden. The first settlers are said to have been a Lewis family from Georgia who settled there in 1849. When a post office was established in 1850, it was named Minden, reportedly by H.W. Watson who was said to have been from Minden, Louisiana. So, who was H.W. Watson? Unfortunately, I’m not sure.

Mr. Watson has proven to be illusive. The historical information for Minden, Texas is consistently vague and has proved unhelpful. I have searched for H.W. Watson in census records, vital records, newspapers, and other sources. He would have been too old to have been born here, but I have searched for anyone in Rusk County with children born in Louisiana.  I have employed the genealogical strategy of trying to identify what is known as a FAN club. A person’s FAN club consists of friends, associates, and neighbors who can provide clues to records or locations where a person may have lived.  So far, my most likely candidate is a William Watson who was born in Tennessee in 1815 and had at least one child born in Arkansas in the early 1840s. So, it would be entirely possible that they may have lived here for a few years in the 1840s before moving on to Texas and have not been here during a census year. My next step, when time allows, will be digging through land records.

Searching for clues, I tried to identify those first settlers, the Lewises, hoping that they might lead me to some helpful information.  I found a Charles Lewis with wife born in Georgia and children born in Alabama. Interestingly, Mr. Lewis was born in New York and was a lawyer. Just as our Charles Veeder was. This family didn’t exactly match the description of that “family from Georgia,” but still seem to be the only Lewis family there at the time so I took a closer look. And then, surprisingly, I discovered a C. Lewis, lawyer, born in New York in 1806, listed on the 1870 U.S. Census Mortality Schedule for Claiborne Parish. M.F. Lewis, born in Georgia, along with her son J.C., born in Texas, were living in Claiborne Parish. Married daughters, Fanny Pior and Eliza Cornelius, were also in Claiborne Parish.  It would seem that Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and at least three of their children moved from Rusk County to Claiborne Parish where Charles Lewis died. 

So, did H.W. Watson live in Minden, move to Texas, name the town, and then Charles Lewis, early settler of that town, later move to Claiborne Parish? Right now, our connection, or connections, to Minden, Texas seem to be a tangled up mess, but I’ll dig a little deeper and try to unravel the mystery.

(Jessica Gorman is the Executive Director of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, Webster Parish Historian, and an avid genealogist.)