Early 18th and 19th Century History Of Livingston Parish

Livingston Parish History

Livingston Parish was initially part of the Florida Parishes. The parish was created on February 10, 1832, when the state Legislature split St. Helena Parish in two. Historians differ regarding which one, but the parish was absolutely called after either Robert or Edward Livingston. In 1869, the parish lost territory when Tangipahoa Parish was developed. It later got extra land when Maurepas Island was made part of the parish.

Livingston Parish consists of 642 square miles on 410,880 acres and is 32 miles long by 30 miles wide. The geographical landscape of the parish differs from rolling terrain covered by slash pine and hardwood forests in the northern part to rich cypress forests and marshes that border on Lake Maurepas and the Amite River in the southern end.
Livingston Parish has 8 municipalities, with Denham Springs being the largest. Other municipalities are Albany, French Settlement, Killian, Livingston (the parish seat), Port Vincent, Springfield, and Walker.

The Old Courthouse In The Picture Above

Livingston ended up being the parish seat in 1941 when the courthouse was moved there from Centerville (Springville). The town is situated around in the north main part of the parish, about 25 miles east of Baton Rouge on U.S. Highway 190.

Livingston lies in the heart of the heavily forested area of the parish. Although various other trees are common in and around Town Of Livingston, especially hardwoods in the low area, it was the pine, then as now, that attracted the lumber companies to Livingston. In reality, a lumber company, the Lyon Lumber Company of Chicago, Illinois, brought the town into presence.

The Lyon Lumber Co. was incorporated in Louisiana on January 3, 1903, as the Lyon Cypress Lumber Business, with John William Gary as president and John Kellogg Lyon as secretary. The company developed a sawmill at Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish, straight south of Livingston, to cut cypress logs into lumber. The business extended a logging railroad into the cypress swamp north of Garyville to bring logs to the mill. As the cypress was cut, the railway was extended northward.

By 1915, the company had actually reached the Amite River and the end of the cypress. The mill was renovated to cut pine and wood. The name of the company was also altered at this time to Lyon Lumber Co. It was also in 1915, on June 4, that the Garyville Northern Railway Company was included under the basic law of Louisiana.

The Development Of Livingston Parish In The Early 19th Century

Their very first goal in Livingston Parish was to get a proper crossing location with the Baton Rouge to Hammond railroad, which was then referred to as the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railway, now the Illinois Central Gulf. Considering that the majority of the Lyon Lumber Co.'s land holding's in Livingston Parish was generally fixated the old town of Doyle (now a part of Livingston); the business wished to acquire land in Doyle. Hungarian Settlement is one of the largest areas of Hungarians and the yearly Harvest Dance.

Nevertheless, the company was unable to obtain sufficient land for their centers in the existing town of Doyle, which was laid out in lots right after the Baton Rouge, Hammond & Eastern Railway was completed in 1908. They, therefore, chose the vacant land simply west of Doyle as the site for their brand-new centers, which included, to name a few things, a railway station, a coal chute, and repair sheds.

Today north-south road from Livingston through Frost to Verdun, LA Hwy 63, inhabits the old Garyville Northern roadbed. By train, the town of Garyville was 35 miles south of Livingston.

In Memory Of War Veterans Of Livingston Parish

The new Town Of Livingston was entirely company-owned by an affiliate of the Lyon Lumber Co., the Garyville Land Co., Inc. It was surveyed into lots in April of 1917. A provision was made for a park when the town was laid out. Today, the courthouse complex inhabits the park website.

The extent to which Livingston was a company town can be seen from records that reveal that "when all the wood was cut (about 1931), the business closed and everybody moved away except about twelve households. The company sold everything-- even the church."

The town was, without a doubt, named for the parish, which was named for Edward Livingston. Nevertheless, it is not known when the name Livingston was provided to the town or who picked the name. The post workplace was developed on August 7, 1917, with Edwin A. Leland as the first postmaster. The town was included on November 4, 1955, with the list below authorities: Winson Hoover, Mayor; Victor Smart; Fuqua Sibley and Willie Lee Duffy, Aldermen; and Johnnie Sartwell, Marshall.

As in the past, the harvesting of forest products and being the parish seat still plays a major role in the economic life of the town.