Covington: Living History & Covington's Founding Families

Walk up the wooden steps at H. J. Smith's Sons Hardware store on Columbia Street in Covington and meet the fifth generation of Smiths to work in the business, founded in 1875.

In his museum next to the hardware store, "Red" Smith will show you 1910 receipts for wagon wheels and farm implements delivered by schooners, which docked at the foot of Columbia Street.

Former Covington City Councilwoman Pat Clanton calls the Columbia Street Landing the "birthplace of the city." When the Bogue Falaya River became polluted, the path to the landing became overgrown and forgotten. Clanton worked to reclaim this part of the city's history, and it is now the site of many public gatherings.

Everywhere you turn in Covington, you bump into history.

The ox-lots

Mayor Keith Villere notes that Covington is on the National Register of Historic Places not because of its architecture, but because of a unique characteristic of its mid-town layout, the ox-lots. Each block in mid-town has an open center that can be reached by an alley from two streets. "These lots were more French in origin than English. The English had one huge square in the village, not open areas in the center of each block. The original use was not to stable oxen. That came later," he says. In recent years, the city went to court to reclaim the ox-lots as city property because businesses were encroaching on them.

Sunnybrook: Andrew Jackson's camp

In 1814, on his way to meet the British, Andrew Jackson passed through Wharton, as Covington was then known. His overland route took him from Mobile to Madisonville, where his troops boarded a mail packet run by William Collins, brother of the founder of Covington.

It is believed that Jackson traveled what might have been an old Indian trail and is today known as Military Road. One of Jackson's men, an engineer, kept a diary in which he described the river, which the Indians called Little Bogue Falia. The troops stopped at "the old cantonment." The owners of Sunnybrook on Military Road believe Jackson camped on their property. Legend has it that the general hung two men from one of the historic trees on the property, six of which are members of the Live Oak Society.

(The diarist wrote that Wharton was a small new town containing "a few ordinary buildings." He suggested that only pine trees would grow here and that tar and turpentine would be good products to export, but the settlers would have to be "much more industrious." Jackson's engineer was correct. In the 19th century, the Covington area did indeed export tar, pitch, turpentine and charcoal, in addition to lumber, sand, bricks and lime. In the 20th century prior to World War II, St. Tammany became known as the "pink parish" with the blossoming tung oil trees on vast farms.)

The Read house and General Butler

Legends about Civil War General "Spoons" Butler are tied to the Read house at the end of South America Street in Covington. Butler and his troops occupied New Orleans during the Civil War, and he supposedly used the house as his northshore headquarters. He confiscated the valuables of those who refused to pledge allegiance to the Union; hence, the nickname, "Spoons."

He was also called "Beast" Butler because he issued an order stating that any woman showing disrespect to his soldiers would be considered a woman of the streets plying her trade. A copy of the edict is displayed in the house.

The river and the lake

"Covington became the hub, the main trading center, linking the river to the lake and New Orleans," says former parish archivist Todd Valois. From its early years until 1936, schooners and, later, steamers traversed the lake, stopping at Mandeville, Lewisburg, Madisonville, and then up the two rivers to Old Landing at the end of Jahncke Street and the Columbia Street Landing in downtown Covington.

The boats brought supplies for the town and neighboring farms and plantations; they brought relocating families with all their belongings; and they brought excursionists, who were coming to visit for the day or the week. Cotton was brought in from north of town and Mississippi plantations. The wagons pulled by teams of oxen reportedly lined Columbia Street from the cemetery to the landing.

In the 1850s, the U.S. government announced that the northshore was the second healthiest place in the country, because of so few deaths from diseases such as yellow fever and malaria. That, coupled with the discovery of minerals in the many springs, brought a flood of people seeking healing, rest and recuperation in the pine-scented air of Covington and its environs. Physicians thought the ozone air had favorable effects on diseases of the lungs and throat.

The vacationers needed a place to stay, and Covington and its environs were dotted with resorts and hotels, where the cost was about $1 a day, including meals. One 1850s boarding house was the Swiss Chalet run by the Hosmer sisters on Jahncke Street, which was named after the German family that donated the shell for the road. A carriage called the ferry line ran down Jahncke to Old Landing. The Hosmer family operated a sawmill on the Bogue Falaya River. They sold 1,100 acres to the Benedictine monks in 1901.

The Farmer

Carol Jahncke researched back issues of The Farmer and compiled the book, "Mr. Kentzel's Covington." Kentzel was an early publisher of the paper that was founded in 1874 and is believed to be the oldest continuously operating business in St. Tammany Parish. Jahncke's book tells how the editor would rally town folk behind projects he deemed important-a railroad, school, town hall, fire company and, especially, good roads and bridges.

The Farmer's publisher today is Karen Goodwyn Courtney, the great-granddaughter of Nat Goodwyn, who began setting type at the paper in 1911.

Christ Episcopal Church

St. Tammany lost 1,000 men between the censuses of 1850 and 1860, leading some to believe they were Confederate soldiers. Bishop Leonidas Polk, who would become known as the "Fighting Bishop," dedicated Christ Episcopal Church in 1847. The church is considered the oldest continuously occupied, non-residential building in the parish.

The courthouse and Tugy's

As the city watches the fourth courthouse being constructed, few realize the structure housing the first one, built in 1818, still stands in the Claiborne Hill area, which was the parish seat. The walls are 18 inches thick. On the grounds is a cottage believed to predate the courthouse.

The Courthouse Annex on Boston Street was the grand old Southern Hotel, built in 1907. Covington Special Projects Coordinator Jan Roberts hopes to see it become an inn when the new courthouse opens. Mayor Villere notes that Tugy's, first opened in the hotel by Mr. Tugenhaft, is probably the only bar in a courthouse building in the United States!

Mill Bank Farm

Katie Planche Friedrich's grandfather left New Orleans for the northshore during the Civil War. "The family spoke Parisian French," she says. "As a child, I can remember my parents and aunts abruptly switching to English when I entered the room." Her father opened the first icehouse in Covington in the early 1900s. Friedrich still lives on land on the Bogue Falaya River settled by her father, who was quite the entrepreneur, operating the water works and the electric company. He also brought a French baker to Covington. "Papa named his place Mill Bank Farm, after the sawmill on the river." Today, Friedrich's bed and breakfast in the circa 1830 house carries the same name.

Schoen Middle School

The oldest school in St. Tammany-Schoen Middle School on Jefferson Ave., circa 1915-was recently converted to administrative offices. It has its own claims to fame. Lee Harvey Oswald attended briefly, and Governor Earl K. Long's sanity hearing was held in the stifling school gym in 1959. Long had been committed to the state mental hospital in Mandeville. The PTA served lemonade, and some students were allowed to observe the spectacle.

The railroad, the causeway and intercity rivalry

The causeway would eventually flood the northshore with newcomers, but it was the railroad, which finally punched through to Covington in 1887, that first changed the face of the city. An 1880s issue of The Farmer tells New Orleans reporters to cease calling Covington a suburb. "This is a clean, moral, healthy place...and we do not want New Orleans to make itself respectable by counting Covington as a suburb."

Just recently, the parish council heard local residents fuss about the St. Tammany Tourist Commission billboard on the interstate stating that St. Tammany was "New Orleans Northshore."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Covington's founding families live on

"Jacques Dreux was my great-great-great-great-uncle," Covington Mayor Keith Villere says slowly. "He was the one who sold the land to the founder of Covington, John Wharton Collins."

The mayor divulged this bit of family genealogy when he was asked if he had some stories to share about historic Covington. It is the same throughout this town, which is the parish seat of St. Tammany. All over the community, one meets people whose relatives settled here a long, long time ago.

The mayor's ancestor was given a Spanish land grant of 40 arpents x 40 arpents above the confluence of the Tchefuncte and Bogue Falaya Rivers. He intended to found a town and name it St. James or St. Jacques. His town never developed, howeverÑperhaps because of the changing political situation prior to the area's incorporation into the United States in 1810.

John Wharton Collins, Covington's founder, came to Louisiana in 1810 to join his brother William, who had staked out 600 acres on the northshore below the Badon Plantation on the Tchefuncte River. Sisters of the two brothers married Robert and Henry Badon. The editor of The Farmer newspaper in Covington, Butch Badon, is Henry's great-great-great-grandson. "The boys' mother, Catherine, got 1,600 acres through a Spanish land grant in 1785," Butch says.

Collins opened a mercantile store in New Orleans on Magazine Street, not far from the Livaudais plantation, which would become the Garden District. He married a French woman who was a ward of the Livaudais. The Livaudais were godparents to the couple's only child, Thomas Wharton Collins.

On May 16, 1813, John Collins purchased Dreux's property for $2,300, using his wife's dowry of $2,000. Inscribed on the map that was presented to Parish Judge James Tate was "The Division of St. John of Wharton, founded on July 4, 1813, is humbly dedicated to the late Thomas Jefferson." Collins named the town Wharton after his grandfather. When Collins approached the legislature for a charter in 1816, it was granted. The name of the town was changed to Covington, however, in honor of a hero of the War of 1812.

A local Collins descendent, Thomas Wharton Collens, Jr., suggests some citizens couldn't stand the thought of being named after British gentry. Thomas, who lives in a retirement community north of Madisonville, says, "Their feelings about the British were not the greatest. Remember, they had just finished fighting them in the Battle of New Orleans."

That is a more likely reason than what some writers have suggested: that the people didn't like Collins. At the first election, he and three of his close friends were elected to the Board of Trustees, and his nephew John Gibson, for whom Gibson Street is named, became town treasurer.

Collins named the divisions of his town after relatives, but tacked the word "saint" before each: St. Mary, St. Ann, St. Thomas, St. George, St. William, St. Albert and St. John, which is downtown Covington. "He made them all saints," says Thomas, with a chuckle. He gave his streets names such as Temperance, Economy and Industry; some remain, but others have been erased from the town map.

Collins was not to enjoy his town for very long. He died at age 35, when his son was six years old. Thomas thinks Collins never recovered from service in the Battle of New Orleans. "I think he probably died of pneumonia," he says. Collins was buried on land later donated by his widow for use as a cemetery, which is across the street from City Hall.

His widow married his nephew John Gibson. They raised young Thomas Wharton Collins, who later changed the spelling of his name to Collens. (Some think he had become enamored of the French culture and wanted his name to be pronounced "Co-lon," with the accent on the second syllable.)

His local namesake says, "Collens achieved international fame for his writings on labor. He was one of the first to advocate the eight-hour day, which was revolutionary then; most people worked from dawn to dusk."

Collens' portrait, which hung in the Louisiana Supreme Court Hall of Fame, is now in Thomas' office. He donated all of Collens' papers to the Historic New Orleans Collection. Glancing at the painting, Thomas says, "He was fluent in French and became the official interpreter for the state legislature. He was a poet, a playwright, a newspaper publisher, a university economics professor and a judge."

The founder of Covington must have looked down with pride on his son.

Much of the research for these articles on Covington was done in the Louisiana reference section of the St. Tammany Parish Library. Especially useful were publications by the St. Tammany Historical Society that will delight any history buff, Ann says.

She heartily recommends the book, St. Tammany Parish L'Autre Cote du Lac by Frederick S. Ellis.