Ashland, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana

Ashland corporate limits sign

Louisiana State Highway 153 as it passes through Ashland

The Ashland Baptist Church (2008)

Renovated Ashland Baptist Church (2009) under pastor Dave Moore

Ashland is a village, incorporated in 1963 and located in the northernmost portion of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States, just south of the Bienville Parish line. The population was 291 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Natchitoches Micropolitan Statistical Area.

The Ashland mayor is W. Gahagan Lee. The village council consists of Wayne Best and Carol Doyle, both Democrats, and Vincent Brown, a Republican. The police chief is Fred Holland, a Democrat.

History

No businesses exist in Ashland though there were a half dozen in the 1950s. One convenience store, located just north of town inside adjoining Bienville Parish, serves the village.

The former Ashland High School was originally a one-room structure that opened in 1907. School records date to 1913. The school building burned in 1918, and no school was held for a year. There was no graduating class in 1951 because there were no students in the newly-begun twelfth grade. The previous building, since razed, opened in 1919 and closed in 1981 because of parish school consolidation. The school mascot was the "Bearcats". A private Ashland Community School operated for another two years from 1981-1983 at the Ashland Baptist Church.

Dovie Lillias Lay Dupree (1899-1969) taught a generation of first-graders at the former Ashland High School. Her husband, Alvah Hume Dupree (1901-1974), operated a store across the street from the school.Ther three Dupree daughters were also educators. Gloria Dupree Anderson (1936-2009) taught at Ashland High School from 1964 until its closing. She then continued her teaching career until retiring with forty-three years in the profession.

Children in Ashland attend public schools in Goldonna and Campti, with kindergarten through eighth grades attending Goldonna Elementary and ninth through twelfth grades assigned to Lakeview High School on Louisiana Highway 9 north of Campti. The former Ashland school site is now occupied by a fire station manned by volunteers. The former school gynmasium was converted into the Ashland Community Center, where Ashland High School alumni held class reunions. The community center burned to the ground in the summer of 2009. A former Natchitoches Parish branch library located across from the high school site and the Dupree store closed years ago. Nearby was a horseback riding club arena.

Harrison Welborn Ayres (1900-1985), a graduate of the former Ashland High School, practiced law from 1925-1942 in Arcadia and Jonesboro. In 1942, he was elected state district court judge for Bienville, Claiborne, and Jackson parishes, a position that he held until January 1, 1954, when he became a judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals based in Shreveport. Judge Ayres served on the appeals court until his mandatory retirement at the age of seventy-five on April 30, 1975.

The Ashland Baptist Church, Ashland Village Hall, the Masonic lodge hall, and the U.S. Post Office remain the principal entities in the village. The church underwent major renovation in 2008-2009.

The former Ashland High School gymnasium was converted into the Ashland Community Center, but the structure was destroyed by fire in the summer of 2009.

File:Lillias Lay Dupree (Revised) 1955 001.jpg

Dovie Lillias Lay Dupree taught a generation of first-graders at the former Ashland High School. She died at the age of seventy on May 11, 1969.

Geography

Ashland is located at 32°6′59″N 93°6′53″W (32.116429, -93.114751)Template:GR.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 70.2 km² (27.1 mi²). 70.2 km² (27.1 mi²) of it is land and 0.1 km² (0.04 mi²) of it (0.07%) is water.

Demographics

As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2000, there were 291 people, 121 households, and 87 families residing in the village. The population density was 4.1/km² (10.7/mi²). There were 149 housing units at an average density of 2.1/km² (5.5/mi²). The racial makeup of the village was 86.60% White, 10.31% African American, 2.41% Native American and 0.69% Asian. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.72% of the population.

There were 121 households out of which 27.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.0% were married couples living together, 14.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.3% were non-families. 25.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size was 2.88.

In the village the population was spread out with 21.3% under the age of 18, 8.2% from 18 to 24, 26.5% from 25 to 44, 24.7% from 45 to 64, and 19.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 98.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.2 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $23,438, and the median income for a family was $31,875. Males had a median income of $27,083 versus $23,750 for females. The per capita income for the village was $12,652. About 33.7% of families and 32.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38.1% of those under the age of eighteen and 30.4% of those sixty five or over.

Infrastructure

The boundaries of the community now extend well beyond the former village proper. Louisiana State Highways 153 and 155 intersect as they pass through Ashland. Highway 153 extends northward to Castor and southward to Campti, and Highway 155 proceeds westward toward Martin and Coushatta, the seat of neighboring Red River Parish.

Cemeteries

The village has two cemeteries. The larger Old Ramah Cemetery south of the former Ashland High School on Highway 153 is a community cemetery open to all.The cemetery is not connected with the nearby New Ramah Baptist Church in southern Bienville Parish just north of Ashland.

Entrance to Ramah Cemetery in Ashland

File:Murrl Hathorn.jpg

Murrl M. Hathorn, great-grandson of Squire Hathorn, was president of the Hathorn Cemetery Association from 1978-1979.

Pat's Chapel at the Hathorn Cemetery in Ashland

Annual Hathorn Cemetery homecoming in Ashland (2008)

Graves at the Hathorn Cemetery

The smaller Hathorn Cemetery, located west on Highway 155 toward Coushatta, was established in 1862 and, under a 1984 decision of the cemetery board, is available only to those related by birth or marriage to the extended Hathorn family. Most of those interred at the cemetery were of the Baptist faith. The first grave, located in a dogwood patch, is the resting place of a child of Harrison Hamilton Hathorn (1826-1896), known as Squire Hathorn. In the early 20th century, two other children, whose fathers were log haulers, were interred at the location, their graves having been marked by rocks. It was at that point that the name "Hathorn Cemetery" was coined. Gertrude Bamberg Dupree (1907-1995) of Goldonna affirmed that the original land was donated by Squire Hathorn, her great-grandfather. Others claimed that the land came from Mr. and Mrs. George J. Walker, who had acquired it by bartering 2.25 acres for a hunting dog. Or perhaps a lumber company donated the first acre. A cyclone fence was erected to enclose the property in 1954.

The Hathorn Cemetery is one of the few in the area to have a chapel on the grounds. "Pat's Chapel", dedicated on June 1, 1968, was named in honor of Patrick Hansel Coffey (1899-1967), who supervised the construction from extensive volunteer labor in the community, but he died five months before the completion. A grandson of Squire Hathorn and a son of the former Xanthogene Rosaline Hathorn (1855-1945), Coffey is interred at the Old Ramah Cemetery beside his wife, the former Mattie Pullig (1905-1956). Thelma Walker McCain (1903-1988) made the recommendation to the cemetery board to name the chapel in Coffey's honor. A water system had been completed earlier in 1963, and in 1971, pine trees inside the cemetery proper were removed for safety and future space needs. The Hathorn Cemetery Association of Ward 2, a non-profit corporation domiciled in Ashland, has operated the cemetery since July 17, 1978. The association was incorporated in 1988. It holds annual memorial services on the Saturday morning prior to the first Sunday of June, with an area minister invited to speak in the chapel. Kenneth M. Hathorn (born 1939) of Shreveport is the chairman and past president of the six-member cemetery board. His father, Murrl Manly Hathorn (1910-1984), a great-grandson of Squire Hathorn, joined the cemetery board in 1968 and served as president from 1978-1979. Until his retirement in 1975, Murrl Hathorn was an employee in the Natchitoches office of the Valley Electric Membership Corporation, a part of the Rural Electrification Administration. He was thereafter the first manager of the Mansfield Valley Electric office.

References