Louisiana AHGP

Part of the American History and Genealogy Project

Tulip, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana

Tulip, in the southeastern part of the parish, was an important trade center until the completion of the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Texas Railroad in 1884, when Arcadia, in Bienville Parish, competed for the trade of the district.

Here, for many years, P. Marsalis & Sons carried on a large general store without serious opposition. Among the old settlers of this vicinity are the Watsons, Marsalises, Whites, Gandys, Pomby, Leslie and Hays, with others named in the list of first land buyers of the township.

A steam saw and grist mill, a steam cotton gin, a school-house, a commodious Methodist meeting-house, and a cumber of steam cotton gins and saw-mills in the immediate neighborhood make up the industries, no less than five or six steam whistles being in easy hearing of the village.

A lodge of Masons, known as Tulip Lodge No. 187, was organized in 1867, and still works under the charter of that date.

The Methodist Church is the final development of a series of organizations that went before it. In 1847 or 1848 William McCue settled near the Dansby place and with the assistance of others, built a log house in which was organized a small membership.

As others began to move into the neighborhood, Rev. James Watson, Josiah Watts, M. Kenebrew, William Oliver, and others, in order to have the church more centrally located, it was taken down and moved two miles farther south. It there took the name Walnut Grove. About 1855 a large frame building was erected about half a mile east to take the place of the log house, and to it was given the name of Pisgah. Here it, continued until 1872, when the class was divided, one section being attached to Homer and the other to Tulip, where a new house was built at a cost of $1,500.

Biographical Sketches| Claiborne Parish

Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana, Southern Publishing Company, 1890