Place:Minden, Webster, Louisiana, United States


Coordinates32.617°N 93.283°W
Located inWebster, Louisiana, United States
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Minden is a small city in and the parish seat of Webster Parish, Louisiana, United States. is located twenty-eight miles east of Shreveport (in Caddo Parish). The population, which has been stable since 1960, was 13,082 at the 2010 census. The 2000 population had been 13,027; growth over the decade was hence .4 of 1 percent. Minden is 51.7 percent African American.




On October 15, 2012, an ordnance bunker at nearby Camp Minden exploded, but the blast was contained with minimal damage. Camp Minden is the site of the former Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant, once the major area employer. In December 2012, police began the removal of 2,700 tons of explosives from Camp Minden, leading to evacuations in the nearby town of Doyline.



the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Early settlement





Civil War

During the American Civil War, a large Confederate encampment, which housed some 15,000 soldiers was located east of Minden. At the time Minden was a supply depot for the troops. Some thirty Confederate soldiers who died in the Battle of Mansfield and another engagement at Pleasant Hill are buried in the historic Minden Cemetery located at Pine and Goodwill streets and Bayou Avenue. A modern cemetery, Gardens of Memory, opened in 1957 off the Lewisville Road north of Minden.



Coldest state temperature


Will Life



1933 tornado


Ben F. Turner, Sr. (1883–1934), was the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway express agent in Minden and the volunteer fire chief. During the 1933 fire, he sustained a heart attack and hence died the next year of cardiac failure. Oddly, Ben Turner's grandfather had died in 1835 while fighting a fire at a brush arbor meeting in Georgia. Ben Turner's son, Harold Martin "Happy" Turner (1911–1988), was a well-known boarding house, restaurant owner, and civic booster in Minden.

George N. Turner

Unrelated to Ben or Happy Turner, George N. Turner (1919-2013) of Minden won two Bronze Star medals and the Oak Leaf Cluster as a member of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. One of the Bronze Stars was for "bravery above and beyond the call of duty". Turner was engaged in combat during World War II at Omaha Beach and the siege of Bastogne. He received a battlefield commission from General Maxwell D. Taylor and was discharged with the rank of captain. After his military service, Turner was the long-term office manager of the Minden branch of the Louisiana Department of Labor Workforce Commission, usually called "the employment office." Upon retirement from state civil service, Turner, a widely knownm figure in the community, completed at the age of sixty-five his college degree from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. For sixty-two years, he was a deacon of the First Baptist Church of Minden.

1946 lynching case

A racially-tinged beating and lynching case in 1946 led to a parish-wide cover-up involving Minden police, the Webster Parish Sheriff's Department, the coroner's office, and several well-known individuals in the community. The crime was the only lynching in Louisiana that year. J. Edgar Hoover himself is quoted in FBI documents as having said: "We had incontrovertible evidence of a multiple-agency cover-up." John Cecil Jones was an honorably-discharged veteran of World War II and a cousin of Albert Harris, Jr. A woman in rural Webster Parish was the catalyst of a trespassing investigation that involved both Jones and Harris, who was questioned by a sheriff's deputy and subsequent sheriff, O.H. Haynes, Jr., about the alleged crime. Harris was released to a mob in nearby Dixie Inn, taken to a rural area and bound, covered, and beaten by several other men. Albert Harris, Sr., feared for his son's life and sent him out of the state. Deputy Sheriff Haynes went to retrieve Harris from his house. When he arrived and discovered that Harris, Sr., had sent the son away, Haynes broke the senior Harris' jaw. Harris, Jr., was eventually delivered to Haynes' custody. John Cecil Jones, the cousin, was picked up at his workplace in Cotton Valley. Both were jailed, tortured, and beaten multiple times by Haynes and another deputy, Charles Edwards. On August 8, 1946, Haynes released both men to a mob in front of the old jail. The two were driven south of Minden. Jones received the brunt of the beatings and torture. Both were left for dead.

This is an excerpt from the report of Webster Parish Coroner Dr. Thomas A. Richardson on the death of Jones:

Head shows numerous bruises, face is blackened from trauma, laceration on right side of head between right ear and occiput (back of head), eyes were degenerated, face and neck show numerous bruises, left shoulder was burned, arms were darkened from being bound, severe blow on right-side back and shoulder, numerous bruises on the back, chest and ribs were thrashed and beaten and caved in to the point where the skin had been sheared off, they slashed his scrotum, knees and legs were badly bruised, calves and arms were darkened, hands and feet had sand on them as if they had been in water, green fluid exudes from the mouth when pressure is applied to the abdomen; body found on [Minden businessman] Frank Treat's pond."

According to R. Harmon Drew, later a state representative but then the assistant district attorney for Bossier and Webster parishes, jail records had been manipulated. According to the FBI, Dr. Richardson tampered with and concealed evidence taken from the crime scene, including a mechanical pencil and a wristwatch.

Whitfield Jack of Shreveport, Barry Booth, A. S. Drew, and Harmon Caldwell Drew were defense attorneys for Haynes, Edwards, and the other defendants. R. Harmon Drew was defense counsel for the then Minden Police Chief Benjamin Geary Gantt, who was ultimately not indicted, although multiple witnesses' testimony stated that various city police officers had escorted the mob vehicles to the city limits. Newspaper writer Paul Corvin likened city police at the time to the Gestapo but did not write such accordingly out of fear for his life.

Eugene H. Lowe, Jr., the American Legion post vice-commander, said that local law enforcement personnel were outlaws and his sentiments echoed those of the reporter Corvin. Eventually, Harris, Jr., fled Louisiana, and the NAACP, and the FBI became involved in the case. Federal indictments were handed down and deputies Haynes and Edwards and four others were arrested and tried for violating the civil rights of Jones and Harris, Jr. Ultimately, an all-white jury did not convict any of the six defendants.

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