By Jessica Gorman

Louisa Maples was born 28 December 1846. She was the fourth child of William C. Maples and Mary Margaret Evans and their first child born in Louisiana. The Maples family had come to the area just two years earlier from Tennessee. That trip was documented by a cousin of Mary Margaret Evans.

Members of Mary Margaret’s family, including her parents and her grandmother, left Liberty, Tennessee on 17 October 1843. Reportedly, their original destination was Fayetteville, Arkansas where an uncle to Mary Margaret, Onesimus Evans, had lived for several years. Along the way, they stopped at Woodbury where they were joined by an aunt, Mrs. Emily Garrison. While they are members of the same family and may have both been on that trip, Mrs. Emily Garrison is not to be confused with Miss Emily Garrison whom I’ve written about before. The group made a second stop at Germantown, Tennessee where they visited with a cousin, Riley Evans.

If their original destination had been Fayetteville, they must have learned some information from Cousin Riley that led to a change of plans. It is important to note that this was about the same time that questions had arisen concerning a bank that Onesimus had started. He left Arkansas and headed for Texas.

Two days before Christmas, the group boarded a steamboat bound for Red River where they transferred to a packet boat to make the journey northward. They arrived at Port Caddo, on Caddo Lake, about 5 January 1844. Just four days after their arrival, Margaret Reed Evans, Mary Margaret’s grandmother died. She is buried in Marshall, Texas.

The Maples family, along with Mary Margaret’s parents, Dr. John R. and Martha Evans, settled in an area of Bossier Parish that is now Webster Parish and established a plantation which came to be known as Maplewood. Here, Louisa was born in 1846.

In 1850, the family bought a “town home” in Minden for the children to attend school. That home had been built by Colonel William Bates. It still stands on Fort Avenue and is thought to be the oldest existing home in Minden. In September, Martha Evans died. Little Louisa died the following January, just days after her fourth birthday, and was buried next to her grandmother in the Minden Cemetery.

The Maples family and Dr. John R. Evans continued to live in Minden until about 1860. At that time, they returned to Maplewood until after the Civil War and then moved to Shreveport. The home where they lived is thought to be the oldest existing home in the city.

Little Louisa Maples is my distant cousin. I didn’t know this when I cleaned her grave in 2021. It is only through my work at the cemetery that led me to my job at the museum that this story found its way to me in the most unexpected way.

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