Saturday, November 27, 1999

By Eric J. Brock
Shreveport Historian

In the year 1838, Caddo Parish was created by an act of the state Legislature and carved out of a portion of what was then a huge Natchitoches Parish. The parish charter of Caddo provided for the post of sheriff to be created, among other offices. Thus began a colorful history.

The first sheriff of Caddo Parish was Alexander Boyd Sterrett, who had previously served as a deputy of the sheriff of Natchitoches Parish overseeing the area which became Caddo. He was appointed at the time of Caddo’s creation and remained in office until killed in a gunfight in August 1840. Sterrett was the brother-in-law of Jim Bowie, hero of the Alamo and alleged inventor of the Bowie Knife. In 1836, he had also worked with Captain Henry Miller Shreve in laying out the town site for Shreveport and had served as the first city surveyor of Shreveport.

Sterrett’s successor was Matthew Watson, also a gubernatorial appointee. As such, he served for almost six years, but by 1846 population growth in Caddo made it necessary for the office of sheriff to become an elected one. In that year a public referendum put Watson, already serving as sheriff, in office as the first elected sheriff of Caddo. Watson, a native of Missouri, had been one of the area’s earliest settlers. For several years he had been a planter of some prominence in the parish, operating "Idlewild," his large cotton plantation just west of town (today

Little is known about his successor, Thomas R. Simpson, who had come to the area sometime after 1851. He was 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.

Simpson’s first term as sheriff was followed by the election of Col. Henry John Gray Battle to that office. Col. Battle had previously been a city trustee (councilman) and city treasurer. He also was co-owner of one of the city’s first drug stores and later, in the 1870’s, would become editor/publisher of The Shreveport Times. Battle Street, a small street just south of downtown, is named in his honor.

In 1859, during Col. Battle’s time in office, construction of the first permanent Caddo Parish Courthouse was begin on the site today occupied by the Caddo Courthouse. Prior to that, the courthouse and sheriff’s, clerk’s and judges’ offices, as well as the parish jail, were located in rented quarters throughout downtown.

Col. Battle’s tenure as sheriff was followed by that of Nathan Hass, who held the office at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War. He as also sheriff at the time of the completion of the first permanent courthouse. Elected in 1860, Hass remained in office for two year-long terms.

He was followed by Israel W. Pickens, son of a family of pioneer settlers in Caddo and DeSoto Parishes. Pickens, a planter, owned much of the land now occupied by the Cedar Grove neighborhood. The Pickens family cemetery, in which he is buried, is located on the edge of a church parking lot on the west side of St. Vincent Avenue near West 74^th Street. In 1863, Pickens gave over the use of the parish courthouse to the state Legislature, which h made it the Louisiana Capitol after the government’s flight to Shreveport. Israel Pickens served as sheriff until the end of the war, at which time he was removed from office by the federal occupation government, which appointed former Sheriff (Thomas R.) Simpson in his place.

In 1868, John J. Hope became sheriff. A real estate developer in Allendale, Hope and his wife, Sarah Snow Hope, moved to Danville, Kentucky, around 1870. That same year, John J. O’Connor, a lawyer and former Confederate colonel, became sheriff, serving until his sudden death in 1870, when Michael A. Walsh became the next sheriff. In late 1873, Walsh, who had been postmaster before becoming sheriff, was elected mayor of Shreveport.

Walsh’s successor as sheriff was James W. Wilson, a pioneer settler in the area and the owner of a meat-packing business. Wilson agitated to have a new courthouse built or at least to enlarge and repair the old one, which was only a decade old but already inadequate and in poor condition. His pleas to the police jury fell on deaf ears, however, and no new courthouse was forthcoming. Nevertheless, a frame house was moved to the McNeill Street side of the courthouse square and fenced, barred and generally remodeled to serve as the parish jail, which it did for some 20 years.

Wilson served as sheriff for six years and was succeeded by Alonzo Flournoy, whose two terms were impeded by roadblocks thrown in his way by the state’s Reconstruction authorities. Flournoy was followed by William Heffner, a former gold-rush ‘49er who served for three terms and made ex-Sheriff Wilson his deputy. Late4r Heffner was engaged in the cotton business. Heffner’s successor was J. D. Cawthorne, who served a single one-year term.

In 1879, John Lake became sheriff. Lake’s administration marked the beginning of the modern Sheriff’s Office in may ways. Certainly it marked the agency’s greatest period of growth since its establishment.

John Lake was born in South Carolina but grew up in Shreveport. A graduate of Furman University in South Carolina, he served as an officer under Wade Hampton during the Civil War, returning home to Shreveport after the conflict, engaging in cotton planting in rural Caddo Parish. As sheriff, Lake added a substantial number of deputies and effectively increased the law enforcement capabilities of the office (whose principal duties, in many respects, had been previously limited to tax collecting).

Sheriff Lake accomplished what Sheriff Wilson had been unable to do: In 1890 the old courthouse was demolished and a new one built. Several times larger and with room for the Sheriff’s Office, jail, parish offices, judge’s chambers, Clerk of Court and police jury, the new Romanesque Revival courthouse became symbolic of Sheriff Lake’s progressive administration and Caddo Parish’s 19^th Century growth and importance.

Next week: The 20^th Century Sheriffs.