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Police Jury
In the U.S. state of Louisiana, the typical governing body of the parish is called the Police Jury (French: ''le Jury de Police''). Not every parish is governed by a Police Jury, but 38 of the 64 parishes use this system. The Police Jury is the legislative and executive government of the parish, and is elected by the voters. Its members are called ''Jurors'', and together they elect a ''President'' as their chairman. The President presides over the Police Jury and serves as the titular head of the parish government. The Police Jury is akin to the commissions or councils that govern counties in most other states. Police juries range in size, depending on the population of the parish, from three to fifteen. Many parishes are quite rural and therefore have small police juries. Wide latitude is given to organize and administer the police jury's business. Like other elections in Louisiana, parish elections typically occur in odd-numbered years, and use the open primary system. O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana
Avoyelles (french: Paroisse des Avoyelles) is a parish located in central eastern Louisiana on the Red River where it effectively becomes the Atchafalaya River and meets the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 42,073. The parish seat is Marksville. The parish was created in 1807, with the name deriving from the French name for the historic Avoyel people, one of the local Indian tribes at the time of European encounter. Today the parish is the base of the federally recognized Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe, who have a reservation there. The tribe has a land-based gambling casino on their reservation. It is located in Marksville, the parish seat, which is partly within reservation land. History Native Americans occupied this area beginning around 300 BC. Varying indigenous cultures flourished there in the following centuries. Today on the banks of the old Mississippi River channel in Marksville, three large burial mounds have been preserved from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evangeline Parish, Louisiana
Evangeline Parish (french: Paroisse d'Évangéline) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,984. The parish seat is Ville Platte. History The parish was created out of lands formerly belonging to St. Landry Parish in 1910. The majority of the area was originally settled by French Canadian colonists and former colonial marines (''coureurs de bois'') from such outposts as Fort Toulouse and Fort Kaskaskia and later included 19th-century French-speaking soldiers and immigrant families. The early generations were born in colonial French colonies, which included the enormous Louisiana territory ('Upper and Lower' Louisiana) known as "la Nouvelle France", and later were born under Spanish rule. Many people of Evangeline are primarily of French, English, and Spanish descent from Louisiana's colonial period. Examples of the French family names are Fontenot, Brignac, Ardoin, Bordelon, Vidrine, Courville, Gaspard, LaFleur, Cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana
East Feliciana Parish (french: Paroisse de Feliciana Est, es, Parroquia de East Feliciana) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2010 census, the population was 20,267, and 19,531 in 2020. The parish seat is Clinton. Established when Feliciana Parish was divided in 1824, both East and West Feliciana parishes are part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area. They are also considered part of the Florida Parishes, at one time part of Spain's West Florida colony. History The parish was part of Feliciana Parish, which was founded and named in 1810 by Spaniards who then controlled the territory. The Spanish governor, Bernardo de Gálvez, named it in honor of his wife, Marie Felicité. After the United States annexed this territory, population continued to increase. It had been developed for sugar cane plantations and business was thriving. In 1824, the state legislature divided the parish into East Feliciana Parish and West Feliciana Parish, so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Carroll Parish, Louisiana
East Carroll Parish (french: Paroisse de Carroll Est) is a parish located in the Mississippi Delta in northeastern Louisiana. As of 2020, its population was 7,459. The parish seat is Lake Providence. An area of cotton plantations in the antebellum era, the parish in the early 21st century has about 74% of its land devoted to agriculture. History This area is part of the delta along the western edge of the Mississippi River, long subject to the seasonal flooding that gave the area fertile soils. It was occupied by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. European explorers encountered the historic tribes of the Caddo and Choctaw in this area, as well as the Natchez on the east side of the Mississippi River. In the 1830s, the United States forced out most of the people of the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory to make way for development by European Americans. Areas along the river were cleared and developed for cultiva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DeSoto Parish, Louisiana
DeSoto Parish (French: ''Paroisse DeSoto'') is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish was formed in 1843. At the 2010 U.S. census, the population was 26,656; at the 2020 census, its population increased to 26,812. Its parish seat is Mansfield. DeSoto Parish is part of the Shreveport– Bossier City metropolitan statistical area. History It is a typical misconception that the parish was named after Hernando de Soto, the Spaniard who explored the future southeastern United States and discovered and named the Mississippi River. The parish was in fact named after the unrelated Marcel DeSoto, who led the first group of European settlers there, to a settlement historically known as Bayou Pierre. The parish's name is also commonly misspelled following the explorer's name as "De Soto Parish," but it is properly spelled following the settler's name as "DeSoto Parish." The Battle of Mansfield was fought in DeSoto Parish on April 8, 1864. General Alfred Mouton ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concordia Parish, Louisiana
Concordia Parish (french: Paroisse de Concordia) borders the Mississippi River in eastern central Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,822. The parish seat is Vidalia. The parish was formed in 1807. Concordia Parish is part of the Natchez, MS–LA Micropolitan Statistical Area. It is historically considered part of the Natchez District, devoted to cotton cultivation as a commodity crop, in contrast to the sugar cane crop of southern Louisiana. Other Louisiana parishes of similar character are East and West Carroll, Madison and Tensas, all in this lowlying delta land. On the east side of the Mississippi River is the Natchez District around the city of Natchez, Mississippi.John C. Rodrigue, ''Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862--1880'', LSU Press, 2001, p. 176 History Prehistory Concordia Parish was the home to many successive Native American cultures for thousands of years before European en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claiborne Parish, Louisiana
Claiborne Parish (french: Paroisse de Claiborne) is a parish located in the northwestern section of the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish was formed in 1828, and was named for the first Louisiana governor, William C. C. Claiborne. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,170. The parish seat is Homer. History John Murrell moved his family from Arkansas to the Flat Lick Bayou area about 6 miles west of present-day Homer in 1818, and they became the first known non-natives to permanently settle in Claiborne Parish. As more settlers moved into the area, the Murrell house served as a church, school and post office. When the state legislature created Claiborne Parish out of Natchitoches Parish in 1828, all governmental business, including court, began being held in the Murrell house. This continued until the new parish's police jury selected Russellville (now a ghost town located northeast of Athens) as the parish seat. As the population began swelling in what was then t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catahoula Parish, Louisiana
Catahoula Parish (french: Paroisse de Catahoula) is a parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 10,407. Its seat is Harrisonburg, on the Ouachita River. The parish was formed in 1808, shortly after the United States acquired this territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. History Prehistory Catahoula Parish was the home to many succeeding Native American groups in the thousands of years before European settlements began. Peoples of the Marksville culture, Troyville culture, Coles Creek culture and Plaquemine culture built villages and mound sites throughout the area. Notable examples include Peck Mounds, and the Troyville Earthworks. The Troyville Earthworks have components dating from 100 BCE to 700 CE during the Baytown to the Troyville-Coles Creek periods. It once had the tallest mound in Louisiana at in height; it was the second-tallest mound in North America (after Monk's Mound at Cahokia Mounds). This mound was des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cameron Parish, Louisiana
Cameron Parish (french: Paroisse de Cameron) is a parish in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 5,617. The parish seat is Cameron. Although it is the largest parish by area in Louisiana, it has the second-smallest population in the state, ahead of only Tensas. Cameron Parish is part of the Lake Charles, metropolitan statistical area. History This was part of La Louisiane, colonized by the French beginning in the 17th and early 18th century. They encountered the Atakapa and Choctaw indigenous peoples, who had occupied this area for thousands of years. In the late 1700s, after France had ceded New France (Canada) and other holdings east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain following its defeat in 1763 in the Seven Years' War, a number of French-speaking refugee families from Acadia settled in this part of coastal Louisiana. Some had fought against the British with Indian allies during the war in Acadia. Among the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caldwell Parish, Louisiana
Caldwell Parish (french: Paroisse de Caldwell) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 10,132, making it the fifth-least populous parish in Louisiana. The parish seat is Columbia. Most residents live in the country even beyond the three rural communities in the parish. History Caldwell Parish was formed in 1838 from part of Ouachita & Catahoula Parishes. The prominent geographical feature is the Ouachita River which divides the parish into alluvial farmland on the east bank and pineland hill country on the west. The area was originally occupied by Native Americans as evidenced by the Indian mounds built along the Ouachita & Boeuf Rivers 3500 B.C. – 1500 A.D. In the late 1700s the Spanish government began issuing land grants on the east bank farmland to settlers who were all French. Their French names such as Ferrand, Hebert, Duchesne and Oliveaux are still common to the parish. The first community in the parish was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana
Calcasieu Parish (; french: Paroisse de Calcasieu) is a parish located on the southwestern border of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 216,785. The parish seat is Lake Charles. Calcasieu Parish is part of the Lake Charles metropolitan statistical area; it is also located near the Beaumont–Port Arthur ( Texas), Lafayette, and Alexandria metropolitan areas. Calcasieu Parish was created March 24, 1840, from the parish of Saint Landry, one of the original nineteen civil parishes established by the Louisiana Legislature in 1807 after the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The original parish seat was Comasaque Bluff, a settlement east of the river and later called Marsh Bayou Bluff. On December 8, 1840, it was renamed as Marion, Louisiana. In 1852 Jacob Ryan, a local planter and businessman, donated land and offered to move the courthouse in order to have the parish seat moved to Lake Charles. As th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
