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In 1859 David French Boyd joined the staff of what later became Louisiana State University. The first Superintendent was William Tecumseh Sherman, and he and Boyd became close friends and intimate correspondents in spite of war and reconstruction. Boyd succeeded to the presidency of the school in 1865 and, after a career full of heartbreak, hardship and personal suffering, he died in Baton Rouge in 1899, as penniless as he was when he entered Louisiana forty-two years before. The spelling of the original is retained throughout, with bracketed inserts made to clarify Boyd's passages.
* * *
Notes of Travel from Homer, La. thro' Arkansas---the Indian Nation & Texas (1)
- July 27th 1858-Left Homer (2) on a fine gray horse with $............---in
my pocket. The weather was fair & hot in the morning & evening---but
about 10'clk just after dinner it rained a very refreshing shower--- Saw
nothing in the morning of note unless it be a naked biped in
a house near road-side. Modesty & manners prevented my observing
closely enough to determine whether it was a man or one of the fair sex.
Stopped for dinner (a good one too) at Parson Waters just from Georgia.
He looked like he was fonder of good living than hard preaching. The destroying
angel ---conceit---had worked him for her own. Left about 3 1/2
o'clk--- The country passed thro' in the evening was like that seen in
the morning not interesting. The La. part was sandy and rather broken.
Timber chiefly pine-red sport oak.---Chinquepin---with some black oaks---underbrush
generally dense. There was also much sweet-gum. The Arkansas lands are
more flat & sandy, not so well watered. 1st impressions of Ark. was
a large scarecrow on the side of the road--- a sawyer with his gun as if
in the act of shooting me or something else--- & a big bull-dog with
his usual welcome--- This was at the house of one Mr. House (3).
- _______________________
- 1. Boyd's fragmentary account of his journey is recorded in a small leather-bound notebook now
- preserved in the David F. Boyd Papers (Department of Archives, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge).
- 2. Small town in Claiborne Parish, northwest Louisiana.
- 3. I. T. House was elected Surveyor in the first election of County officers held in Columbia County,
- February, 1853. The county was created partly from Hempstead County,
in the previous year. Dallas Herndon, (Editor) Annals of Arkansas
(4 vols., Little Rock, [1947?]), II, 671.
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