New Carthage, Louisiana, also known as Carthage Landing, was a 19th-century Mississippi River boat landing and village surrounded by cotton-producing agricultural land and undeveloped wetlands. New Carthage was located in, successively, Concordia Parish, Madison Parish, and Tensas Parish in Louisiana, United States. Destroyed by a combination of the American Civil War and the power of the Mississippi River, nothing remains of New Carthage today.
New Carthage, Louisiana was located at 32°12′50″N91°07′34″W / 32.2140°N 91.126°W at an elevation of 75 ft (23 m). [1]
The boat landing and settlement along the right bank of the Mississippi River opened sometime prior to 1831. [2] [3] [4] [5] There was a Planter's Hotel in the settlement as of 1836. [6] New Carthage was located in Concordia Parish before Madison Parish was set apart in 1838. [7] According to one account it preceded Vidalia as the original Concordia parish seat. [8] A riverboat passenger of 1838 recorded in his diary, "Left Vixburg on th 7th, lay at New Carthage on 8th. Found the citizens preparing for a ball and celebration of 8th Jan. Lay there Sabbath and Monday 8th both for wind." [9] : 81
The Carthage crevasse initially broke through in May 1840, which raised the water level in nearby swampland and eventually reached as far as the Tensas. [10] (A crevasse was essentially a "leak" along the presumed boundary of the river; crevasses were unpredictable and thus problematic for capital investors, albeit often an ecological and geomorphological resource of significant value.) [11] According to the Mississippi Free Trader of Natchez, the crevasse was "about fifty yards in width and about thirty feet deep, from the river to the bayou in the rear of the town. The rupture is below the village, and the water rushes through it with a velocity sufficient to suck in flat boats that coast along that shore. One, laden with hay, was a day or two since drawn in and stove against some timbers and sank. By the present time the rise in the river has probably overflowed the entire front of New Carthage. The irruption of the water through the crevasse has not raised the water in the Roundaway Bayou; it has only augmented the rise lower down and on the Tensas." [12] The opportunity for a government matching grant to improve the levee was ignored until another flood occurred in 1844. [10] As of 1846 the Mississippi River crevasse was continuing to inundate land near New Carthage, so local landowners and businesspeople were attempting to organize funding for a levee improvement project. [13] Potentially navigable inland waterways in the vicinity of New Carthage in 1846 included Roundaway Bayou and Bayou Vidal. [14] There was also a stagecoach route to New Carthage in the 1840s. [15]
The six post offices in Madison Parish in 1851 were Chesterfield, Dallas, Milliken's Bend, New Carthage, Richmond, and Young's Point. [16] The steamboat Montgomery burned at New Carthage in 1851, killing two people and destroying 2,000 bales of cotton. [17] In 1852, a planter living near New Carthage was looking for a 30-year-old man named Henry Owen, a runaway slave who could be readily identified if captured, as he had been tattooed and branded with the names of his current and previous legal owner. [18]
The great Mississippi flood of 1859 inundated vast stretches of land near Vicksburg, including at Warrenton, Palmyra Settlement, and New Carthage, which at that time had about 200 residents. [19] As of 1859, the plantations around New Carthage were said to be comparatively small and produce staple crops and a modest quantity of cotton. [19] A later account claimed that 10,000 to 15,000 bales of cotton were shipped out of Carthage annually prior to the war. [20] The show boat Banjo had performances scheduled at New Carthage in 1860. [21] By the time of the American Civil War, Madison Parish had a total of five towns of any size: Richmond (the county seat), Tallulah, Milliken's Bend, Delta, and New Carthage. [22]
During the American Civil War, New Carthage was a valuable landing along the River and thus saw fighting. General Ulysses S. Grant and his troops camped at nearby Point Clear and Ione Plantation. [23] [24] As told by the defeated Confederate governor of Louisiana shortly after the war:
[In 1862], Colonel Harrison, with a small body, composed of the Tensas cavalry and some other troops, were stationed as pickets near New Carthage, a pretty village on the Mississippi River, in Madison Parish. Lake St. Joseph forms a horse-shoe, an arabic arc, about eighteen miles long, which curves with its convex side towards the River, either end about one mile distant from the River, terminating in a small bayou. New Carthage is situated about eight miles above the north end of the lake. Just below New Carthage lies the magnificent estate of Somerset, formerly belonging to Hon. John Perkins, who is now a colonist at Carlotta, in Mexico...Grant now advanced in earnest. Harrison had a sharp fight near New Carthage, with Grant's foremost troops; but finding that the vanguard, who were beaten back at first, grew every moment more and more in numbers and in strength upon his hands, as fast as the armed men did from the serpent's teeth of Cadmus, Harrison was compelled to fall back, burning the bridges and disputing the road, as he slowly retired. The Federals had kept their counsels so close and so well, that no one suspected that Grant was really advancing in all his strength to invest Vicksburg or assail it in the rear. As the Levees were broken, the whole country was submerged except on the ridges. The lake-bank formed one of these ridges, on which ran the only road now practicable." [25]
There was still a post office at New Carthage in 1873. [26] Convict labor was being used to maintain levees in the vicinity of New Carthage in 1878. [27] According to a Mississippi state agricultural report of 1878, the River, the swamp, and the forests were conspiring to reclaim Madison Parish: "...along nearly all of these numerous bayous the lands are high enough to be cultivated, and generally have been so. But the war and the crevasses in the levees since, have caused large quantities of these lands to be abandoned...On the Mississippi river, south of the village of Warrenton...the front lands are low to within five miles of New Carthage. North of Warrenton to the northern limits of the parish, the river banks are under cultivation. The plantations formerly cultivated, along Willow and Joe's bayous, Tensas river, and Bayou Macon, are now, with but few exceptions, abandoned and lying idle, growing up in cockle weeds, cottonwood groves, and swamp underbrush. Back of all the bayous are found the usual low woodlands and swamps, which can scarcely be indicated except on a map." [28]
In 1879, a resident wrote a local newspaper with a current description of the settlement, which had become part of Tensas Parish due to a boundary change: "I dare say you never heard of New Carthage, but it is place, and only a place. One boat lands here each Saturday to give us our pork, meal, flour, and needs. We have a postmaster and postoffice, but no mail route or mail boat...Bayou Vidal is the boundary line dividing Tensas and Madison Parishes and fifth and seventh Wards of the respective parishes...In times agone, Bayou Vidal had a bridge across it at Point Clear, but during the war this bridge was destroyed. Since then, during five months of the year, we have to cross by flat boat, paying twenty-five and fifty cents for each crossing, and having delay, trouble, and often lose a mule or wagon in the bayou. During the other seven months, a low water bridge is made and kept up by neighbors. Now this bridge would be a community bridge between Tensas and Madison Parishes, and could be built for eight hundred dollars." [29] McLellan's store at New Carthage burned down in 1879. [30]
Carthage Landing was ultimately wiped off the map by the combination of the American Civil War and Mississippi River flooding and erosion. [31] Interstate 20 now serves the general vicinity. [32] As of 1982, there was a historical plaque on Louisiana Highway 603 south of Mound that marked the approximate location of the lost town. [20]
Concordia Parish is a parish that borders the Mississippi River in eastern central Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 18,687. The parish seat is Vidalia. The parish was formed in 1807.
Lake Providence is a town in, and the parish seat of, East Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana. The population was 5,104 at the 2000 census and declined by 21.8 percent to 3,991 in 2010. The town's poverty rate is approximately 55 percent; the average median household income is $16,500, and the average age is 31.
The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. The Union Army of the Tennessee under Major General Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the river by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The Natchez District was one of two areas established in the Kingdom of Great Britain's West Florida colony during the 1770s – the other being the Tombigbee District. The first Anglo settlers in the district came primarily from other parts of British America. The district was recognized to be the area east of the Mississippi River from Bayou Sara in the south and Bayou Pierre in the north.
The Tensas River is a river in Louisiana in the United States. The river, known as Tensas Bayou in its upper reaches, begins in East Carroll Parish in the northeast corner of the state and runs roughly southwest for 177 miles (285 km) more or less in parallel with the Mississippi River. The confluence of the Tensas and the Ouachita rivers, in Jonesville in Catahoula Parish, creates the Black River, not to be confused with Black Lake in Natchitoches Parish in north-central Louisiana.
The Atchafalaya Basin, or Atchafalaya Swamp, is the largest wetland and swamp in the United States. Located in south central Louisiana, it is a combination of wetlands and river delta area where the Atchafalaya River and the Gulf of Mexico converge. The river stretches from near Simmesport in the north through parts of eight parishes to the Morgan City southern area.
Disharoon's Plantation was located in Tensas Parish, Louisiana and was used as a steamboat landing on the Mississippi River by Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War.
Milliken's Bend is an extinct settlement that was located along the Mississippi River in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States for about 100 years. In its heyday, the village had a boat landing, two streets of businesses, residences, churches, a four-room schoolhouse, a ferryman, and roads connecting it to Lake Providence, and Tallulah.
The 114th Ohio Infantry Regiment, sometimes 114th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
The 49th Regiment Indiana Infantry was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
The Battle of Lake Providence was fought on June 9, 1863, during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Confederate troops from the Trans-Mississippi Department were trying to relieve Union pressure during the Siege of Vicksburg. Major General Richard Taylor, primarily using Walker's Greyhounds, prepared a three-pronged attack against Union positions at Milliken's Bend, Young's Point, and Lake Providence, which was scheduled to take place on June 7. The strike against Lake Providence was conducted by 900 men led by Colonel Frank Bartlett.
Charles C. Cordill, was a cotton planter and politician from Tensas Parish in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Louisiana. He was a member of the Louisiana State Senate from 1884 until 1912 in which he represented both Tensas and neighboring Concordia Parish to the south.
Clyde Vernon Ratcliff, Sr., was an American cotton planter and politician from Newellton, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat from 1944 to 1948 in the Louisiana State Senate. He represented the delta parishes: Tensas, Madison, East Carroll, and Concordia, a rich farming region along the Mississippi River in eastern Louisiana ranging from Vidalia to Lake Providence. The four parishes elected two senators at the time, and Ratcliff's seat-mate was Andrew L. Sevier of Tallulah in Madison Parish.
Blackhawk is a rural community near Shaw in Corcordia Parish, Louisiana, United States, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. It was one of the last rural areas of Louisiana to receive reliable phone service, after Centennial Wireless built a cellular tower in 2005. Crops grown at Blackhawk include sugarcane. In recent years, the Vicksburg District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has worked on strengthening a section of the mainline Mississippi River levee system near Blackhawk.
Bruinsburg is an extinct settlement in Claiborne County, Mississippi, United States. Founded when the Natchez District was part of West Florida, the settlement was one of the end points of the Natchez Trace land route from Nashville to the lower Mississippi River valley.
The Mississippi River was an important military highway that bordered ten states, roughly equally divided between Union and Confederate loyalties.
The Duckport Canal was an unsuccessful military venture by Union forces during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Ordered built in late March 1863 by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the canal stretched from the Mississippi River near Duckport, Louisiana, to New Carthage, Louisiana, and utilized a series of swampy bayous for much of its path. It was intended to provide a water-based supply route for a southward movement against the Confederate-held city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as high water levels made overland travel difficult. Manual digging was provided by 3,500 soldiers from Grant's army and was finished on April 12. The next day, the levee separating the canal cut and the Mississippi River was breached, and water flowed into the canal. Trees that had grown up in the bayous and falling water levels that reached as shallow as 6 inches (15 cm) at one point hampered the use of the canal, and the project was abandoned on May 4. Grant moved men and supplies through the overland route, which had been made more accessible by the same falling water levels that doomed the canal. After some inland maneuvering and a lengthy siege, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, marking a significant turning point in the war.
The 66th United States Colored Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment composed of African-American troops recruited from Mississippi that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The 66th Regiment was posted on garrison duty in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and fought several skirmishes with Confederate troops around the Mississippi River before being mustered out of service in 1866.
Goodrich's Landing, earlier known as Pecan Grove and later known as Illawara, was a placename connected to a steamboat landing and plantation in Carroll Parish, Louisiana, United States. Goodrich's Landing was the site of the American Civil War battle of Goodrich's Landing in 1863.
Duckport was a plantation and boat landing in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States, best known today as one of the endpoints of the unsuccessful Duckport Canal project during the American Civil War. An alternate name for the Duckport Landing was Sparta.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.Municipalities and communities of Tensas Parish, Louisiana, United States | ||
|---|---|---|
| Towns |  | |
| Village | ||
| Unincorporated communities | ||
| Ghost towns | ||