By Jessica Gorman
Robert Walton Bowden Skipworth was born 23 December 1862. He was the son of Rev. Nathaniel Monroe Skipworth and Cornelia Bowden. The family moved to Louisiana in the 1850s and lived in Claiborne and Bossier Parishes until just after the birth of the youngest child, George Franklin in November 1873. The family then moved to Oregon. In 1940, a letter from Walton Skipworth was published in the Webster Review. In that letter, he tells that about a year and a half prior, he had returned to Louisiana for a visit.
Skipworth recalled that Minden was the first town he ever saw. His father was both a doctor and a farmer. The family farm was located in Cotton Valley and business was done in Minden. He specifically remembers his father doing business with Chaffe, Shea, and Loye as well as Alfred Goodwill.
Dr. Skipworth soon turned his attention to the work of the Methodist church and became Presiding Elder of the Shreveport district. It was this work that sent the family north to Oregon in 1874. Rev. James E. Bradley and his family also made the move. It took just under a month to make the trip from Louisiana to Oregon by way of train and steamship. The Bradleys later returned to Louisiana, but the Skipworths remained in Oregon.
Walton Skipworth’s childhood memories of Minden spanned the mid-1860s through early-1870s. In his letter, he shares his reaction to the Minden he encountered on his visit in 1939.
“After more than 60 years’ absence, the approach into the town from the Dorcheat side – the road and the slight elevation – seemed perfectly natural, and, while the clear running stream of water that used to be there was missing, its place was easily located despite change and development.
Covering the long gap from childhood to advanced years, I rejoiced to be able to exclaim, ‘What a beautiful town.” Residences and residential streets, shady trees, fine churches, with large congregations, able pastors, choirs and equipped Sunday schools with advantages and opportunities for young people. I was pleased, too, with your splendid negro school and the advantages offered the colored people.
On your main street I was glad to note the marks of thrift and prosperity, heavy traffic, busy stores, and moving people. Either side of Main street was lined with automobiles where afore I had looked upon horses and buggies and wagons. Out on the outskirts I had even seen oxen and clumsy vehicles.
How strange to see this new Minden!”
Skipworth shared his excitement at meeting his childhood friend from Cotton Valley, Mr. Charlie Davis, at the courthouse. He visited the graves of others he had once known in cemeteries at Minden, Cotton Valley, and Fillmore. The church where he remembered his father preaching at Fillmore was still there and he marveled at the oil well he found on the property that had once been the family farm.
Walton Skipworth followed in his father’s footsteps and became a Methodist minister. As he makes mention of the centennial celebration of the Methodist church in Minden, which occurred in 1939, it would seem that this was the reason for his visit.
(Jessica Gorman is Executive Director of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, Webster Parish Historian, and an avid genealogist.)