Document of the Month Pages - 2025 Archive
We were pleased to begin these pages in April 2012 and have presented a variety of historical documents of interest to our members and visitors. This page is an archive of documents for the year 2024 in reverse chronological order.
2025 Documents
Frederick Orlando Kennedy
(12/1/25) In December of 1958, a tragic accident occurred during the filming of a movie on T.L. Miller's Farm at Cane River near Natchitoches. According to the local newspaper, members of the cast of John Ford's production, "The Horse Soldier," were out of town before the Christmas Festival, but a few crew members remained. On the last day of shooting, 48-year-old Hollywood stunt man, Frederick Orlando Kennedy, broke his neck. The script called for Kennedy to fall from a horse and pretend to be hurt in order to gain sympathy and a kiss from the star, Constance Towers. Kennedy fell as directed, but when Miss Towers ran to kiss him, she found him gasping for breath. He was rushed to the hospital, but was dead on arrival. His remains were shipped to Los Angeles and interred in Hollywood Cemetery. In 1982, Kennedy was inducted into the Hollywood Stuntman's Hall of Fame. He was a native of Ainsworth, Nebraska, and the son of Orlando Kennedy and Cora Mae Palmiter. His death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Statewide Deaths, 1958, vol. 18, #921).
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Walter Inglis Anderson
(11/1/25) Walter Inglis Anderson was an American artist who worked in various media–painting, pottery, printing, and sculpting. He is considered a visionary by many experts. Born in New Orleans in 1903 to George Walter Anderson and Annette McConnell, he attended schools in New Orleans, Pennsylvania, and New York. After being awarded a prize, he studied art in Paris. In 1928, his brother, Peter Anderson, opened the Shearwater Pottery Factory in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where Walter worked as a designer. After leaving the pottery business for a few years, he focused on painting, drawing, and printing. In the latter years of his life, he once again worked as a decorator at the pottery. Some of his works were damaged or destroyed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Several of those that survived have been featured PBS's television show, Antiques Roadshow, and were valued in the thousands of dollars. He died in New Orleans in 1965 at the age of 62 and was buried in Ocean Springs. His death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1965, vol. 0, #8567).
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Survey of Land Near Bunkie (1825)
(10/1/25) During the first and second week of October 1825, James Haggard surveyed three tracts of land at the request of the three landowners, Middleton Glaze, Captain James Murdock, and Joseph H. Boon. The tracts were located on the left bank of Bayou Boeuf near Bayou Hoffpower. The city of Bunkie in Avoyelles Parish would later be established nearby. The tracts, which totaled 1,738 acres, were located in Township 1 South, Range 3 East. The survey and accompanying plat can be found in a collection of St. Landry Parish documents at the Louisiana State Archives and which were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah in the 1980s (Accession P1985-4). Many of these documents have been abstracted and published by Le Comité in numerous books and articles.
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Pope Leo XIV
(9/1/25) Within hours of learning that Robert Prevost of Chicago had become Pope Leo XIV, New Orleans genealogist Jari Honora discovered that the new pope had a connection to Louisiana. Thinking that the Prevost family might have had French Canadian roots, Honora began researching his family tree. He soon discovered a Louisiana connection, not on the paternal side but on the maternal side. The 1887 marriage certificate of his maternal grandparents, Joseph N. Martinez and Louise Baquié, was recorded in New Orleans. This document can be found in the vital records held by the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Marriage, 1887, vol. 715, p. 12).
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Isaac Monroe Cline
(8/1/25) Isaac Monroe Cline was the chief meteorologist at the U.S. Weather Bureau in Galveston, Texas, when a devastating hurricane struck the island in September of 1900. Nine years earlier, he had written an article dismissing the possibility that a hurricane would ever do serious harm to Galveston. Upon the approach of the hurricane, Cline breached Weather Bureau protocol to issue a warning about the approaching hurricane without first securing authorization. Nevertheless, thousands were killed, including Cline's wife and unborn child, in what remains today as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. After the hurricane, the Weather Bureau moved its center for the Gulf Coast and Cline moved with it. In New Orleans, he worked with distinction until his retirement in 1935. He died at the age of 93 in the city on August 3, 1955. His death certificate, on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1955, vol. 0, #4559), indicates that he was born in Monroe County, Tennessee, in 1861, the son of Jacob Cline and Mary Willson. He was buried in Metairie Cemetery.
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Delta Air Lines
(7/1/25) Delta Air Lines had its start in March of 1925 as a crop dusting company called Huff Daland Dusters, Inc., in Macon, Georgia. In the summer of 1925, it moved to Monroe, Louisiana, and in 1928, it was renamed Delta Air Service after the Mississippi Delta region. The following year, it began passenger operations, but ceased in 1930. The company was reorganized as Delta Air Corporation, then became known as Delta Air Lines. It moved its headquarters from Monroe to Atlanta in 1941. This month's document is a photograph of a crop duster spraying fields. Accompanying it is a poster announcing the demonstration of dusting "for the control of hoppers, weevils, or worms" to be held on Wednesday, September 15th (1926), one mile north of Clarkedale, Arkansas, weather permitting. Both documents can be found in a collection entitled "Delta Airlines Photographs Collection" (Accession N1988-095) on file at the Louisiana State Archives.
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Lillian Hellman (1905-1984)
(6/1/25)
Lillian Hellman was the author of several successful plays, screen plays, and memoirs. Born Lillian Florence Hellman in New Orleans on the 20th of June 1905, her father was Max B. Hellman, a native of New Orleans and the proprietor of a shoe store, and Julia A. Newhouse, a native of Demopolis, Alabama. Her family moved to New York when she was a teenager. In the 1940s, her career slowed when she was blacklisted in Hollywood for her suspected association with the Communist Party and famously refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. She died in Massachusetts in 1984. Her birth certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Births, 1905, vol. 130, p. 632).
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Emanuel Blessig
(5/1/25) The earliest New Orleans death certificates are a mixed bag of genealogical information. Some provide the bare minimum required by law, while others are a veritable treasure trove of family details. This month's document is an example one of those gold mines. The declarant, or person giving the information, registered the death of Emanuel Blessig some 18 years after Blessig's death. Bernard Stehl, a grocer in the city of Lafayette, then part of Jefferson Parish, had been appointed undertutor for Blessig's minor children and may have been attempting to document their relationship for inheritance purposes. In May of 1843, Stehl declared that Blessig died in 1825, was a native of Strassbourg in France, and was married in 1820 by the Reverend Sylvestre Larned, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, to Maria Dirmeyer, a native of Ihringen, Amt Breisach, Grand Duchy of Baden. Furthermore, the couple had three children, Maria Amalia, Salomea Caroline, and Emanuel. Blessig's death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1825, vol. 9, p. 455).
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The Battle of Pleasant Hill, April 9, 1864
(4/1/25) The Battle of Pleasant Hill, fought on April 9, 1864, was part of the Union Army's Red River Campaign in North Louisiana to capture Shreveport. The day before the battle, Union forces had retreated from Mansfield, where they suffered a defeat, and had taken up a position at Pleasant Hill, located about three miles southeast to the southeast in Sabine Parish. Losses from the battle were heavy for both the Union and the Confederacy, but historians generally agree that it was a tactical victory for the Union. Brigadier General Joseph H. Mower commanded two divisions of the Union Army during the Red River Campaign. He was later promoted to major general. A native of Vermont, Mower died of pneumonia at the age of 43 in New Orleans on the 6th of January 1870. His death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1870, vol. 46, p. 671).
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Mildred Childe Lee
(3/1/25) Mildred Childe Lee was the youngest child of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Mary Parke Custis. She was born at Arlington House in Virginia in 1846 and attended a boarding school in Virginia. During the Civil War, she joined her mother in Richmond and knitted clothing for Confederate soldiers. After Richmond fell to the Union Army, the Lee women remained at home while the city burned. She nursed her father during his final illness in 1870, and after her mother's death in 1873, she traveled and did volunteer work. She and her sister Mary were on hand for the unveiling of the statue of their father in New Orleans in 1884. While on another visit to New Orleans, Mary Childe Lee suffered a stroke and died on the 27th of March 1905. According to her death certificate, she had been in the city for 24 days. Her remains were shipped to Lexington, Virginia, where she was interred in the crypt with her parents and sister. Her death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1905, vol. 134, p. 1102).
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Oscar James Dunn
(2/1/25)
Born into slavery in 1826 and freed by his stepfather, Oscar James Dunn rose to become the first African American elected to an executive office in Louisiana. After the Civil War, he worked in various capacities to aid the newly freed laboring class of African Americans. Soon afterwards, he entered into politics and in 1868, he became a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, running on the ticket with gubernatorial candidate, Henry C. Warmoth. Warmoth and Dunn won the election based on the newly enfranchised Black voting bloc and the exclusion of former Confederates from the polls. When Warmoth became unable to discharge his duties as Governor, Dunn stepped in and performed admirably. Dunn's success put him on track to become Governor of Louisiana in the 1872 election. In November of 1871, however, Dunn became violently ill and died a few days later. Doctors who examined him determined his cause of death was "congestion of the brain." Some researchers claim he was poisoned. His death certificate, on file at the Louisiana State Archives, indicates he died at No. 332 Canal Street in New Orleans at the age 46 on 22 November 1871 (Orleans Deaths, 1871, vol. 53, p. 32). He was buried at St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Dunn was married in 1866 to Ellen Marchand Boyd. The couple had no children, but Dunn adopted her three children from a previous marriage.
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May Thomas Leake Robinson
(1/1/25) May Edna Thomas Leake Robinson was one of only a few newspaper women in Louisiana in the 19th century. In 1892, she founded and edited the True Democrat in St. Francisville with her husband, W.W. Leake, Jr. A nearby newspaper described it as one of the state's "most ably edited and most influential newspapers as well as…one of the cleanest–mechanically and otherwise." After Leake's death in 1901, his widow served as the newspaper's sole editor until 1906 when she hired Elrie Robinson, a Texas printer, as associate editor and publisher. Robinson and Leake married two years later and ran the newspaper together until her death in 1925. At her death, the St. Francisville newspaper wrote, "Mr. Robinson had few if any superiors among Southern women writers in the field in which she labored. Her knowledge was deep and she handled many subjects." Although her death certificate indicates she was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E.D. Thomas, her parents were William Thomas, a carpenter from Tennessee, and Lydia (or Mary Caroline) Odom from Catahoula Parish. She died 3 June 1925 of post operative anemia following an operation, with a contributory cause of breast cancer. She was buried in Grace Episcopal Church in St. Francisville. Her death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Statewide Deaths, 1925, vol. 20, #8698).
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