Tensas Parish, Louisiana
|Tensas Parish, Louisiana|
Tensas Parish Courthouse at St. Joseph
Location in the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana's location in the U.S.
|Founded||March 17, 1843|
|Named for||Taensa people|
|• Total||641 sq mi (1,660 km2)|
|• Land||603 sq mi (1,562 km2)|
|• Water||38 sq mi (98 km2), 6.0%|
|• Density||8.7/sq mi (3.4/km2)|
|Time zone||Central: UTC−6/−5|
Tensas Parish (French: Paroisse des Tensas) is a parish located in the northeastern section of the State of Louisiana; its eastern border is the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 5,252, making it the least-populous parish in Louisiana. The parish seat is St. Joseph. The name Tensas is derived from the historic indigenous Taensa people. The parish was founded in 1843 following Indian Removal.
The parish was developed for cotton agriculture, which dominated the economy through the early 20th century. The 56 percent black population is made up of descendants of workers in its history of plantation agriculture. Many African Americans continued to work in the parish after the Civil War, but others left in the Great Migration of the 20th century. In the 1910 census Tensas Parish had 15,614 African Americans (92 percent) and 1,446 whites (8 percent). In 1940, there were 11,194 blacks (70 percent) and 4,746 whites (30 percent). People have left for job opportunities in other places.
- 1 History
- 2 Antebellum development
- 3 Geography
- 4 Communities
- 5 Demographics
- 6 Education
- 7 Government
- 8 The Tensas Gazette
- 9 Communities
- 10 Notable people
- 11 Politics
- 12 See also
- 13 References
- 14 External links
- 15 Gallery
Tensas Parish was the home to many successive indigenous groups in the thousands of years before European settlements began. Village and mound sites once built by these various peoples are known today as archaeological sites. One example is the Flowery Mound, a rectangular platform mound just east of St. Joseph and measuring 10 feet (3.0 m) in height and 165 feet (50 m) by 130 feet (40 m) at its base; the summit measures 50 feet (15 m) square. Core samples taken during investigations at the site have revealed the mound was built in a single stage. Because the fill types can still be differentiated, the mound is thought to be relatively young. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in a midden under the mound reveals that the site was occupied from 996–1162 during the Coles Creek period. The mound was built over the midden between 1200–1541 during the Plaquemine/Mississippian culture period. The corners are oriented in the cardinal directions. Several other related sites include Balmoral Mounds, Ghost Site Mounds, and Sundown Mounds.
Following Indian Removal in the 1830s, this area was developed for cotton plantations, the leading commodity crop before the Civil War. Planters moved into the area from the eastern and upper South, either bringing or purchasing numerous enslaved African Americans as workers. They developed plantations along the river, which was needed for access to markets. The 1861 United States Coast Survey map shows that at that point, 90.8% of the county's inhabitants were slaves.
During the American Civil War, private citizens, particularly planters, organized, equipped, and transported military companies. In Tensas Parish, cotton planter A. C. Watson provided one company of artillery with more than $40,000. In April 1862, Governor Thomas Overton Moore, reconciled to the fall of New Orleans, ordered the destruction of all cotton in those areas in danger of occupation by Union forces. Along the levees and atop Indian mounds in Tensas Parish, slaves oversaw the burning of thousands of bales of cotton, which took days to accomplish. At the time, Tensas Parish was second only to Carroll Parish (subsequently divided into East and West Carroll) in the overall production of cotton in Louisiana.
Near Newellton is the Winter Quarters Plantation restoration, where Union General Ulysses S. Grant and his men spent the winter of 1862–63, prior to launching the assault in the spring and summer of 1863 against Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the northeast of Tensas Parish.
In 1864, Captain Joseph C. Lea of the Missouri guerrillas, with two hundred men, moved into Tensas Parish and came upon a fortification held by four hundred Union soldiers under the command of Colonel Alfred W. Eller. Lea inflicted heavy casualties and drove the men to the Mississippi River, where they boarded their boats. He seized a federal warehouse with gunpowder, groceries, and medical supplies. Facing attacks from the Union forces who tried to return to their fortification, Lea managed to secure seventy-five Federal wagons and cotton carts, all of which he dispatched to Shreveport.
Franklin Plantation, owned by physician Allen T. Bowie, was considered the most elegant of the antebellum homes along Lake St. Joseph, an oxbow lake near Newellton. A Missouri Confederate wrote that the area was "unsurpassed in beauty and richness by any of the same extent... in the world." Union officers in charge of the XIII and XVII Corps kept close watch on the troops to prevent looting as the men marched southward headed indirectly to Vicksburg. When General William Tecumseh Sherman's XV Corps joined Grant's forces, however, the soldiers became lawless. On May 6, 1863, rowdies from General James Madison Tuttle's division burned most of the mansions which fronted Lake St. Joseph, including Franklin Plantation.
Toward the end of the war, schools were established for African American children in northeastern Louisiana, including Tensas and Concordia parishes, some through the sponsorship of the American Missionary Association. According to the historian John D. Winters of Louisiana Tech University, the students
ranged in age from four to forty, were poorly clothed, loved to fight, and were 'extremely filthy, their hair filled with vermin.' Religious instruction, with readings from the Bible and prayers, was emphasized while reading from primers and studying spelling and writing rounded out the course work. The program stressed 'a maximum of memory and a minimum of reasoning.' The schools sponsored by the Christian societies were gradually taken over by a board of education and supported by special property and crop taxes. These schools operated primarily along the Mississippi River and few, if any, were established in the interior [of Louisiana].
By the turn of the 20th century, St. Joseph had 720 residents. Tensas Parish had 19,070. Much of the population was still engaged in cotton agriculture, although as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Others worked in trades associated with river traffic.
During and after the Reconstruction era, white Democrats acted to suppress black and Republican voting in the state and in this parish with its large black majority. They enforced Jim Crow laws and rules through intimidation and violence, including lynchings. From 1877 to 1950, there were 30 lynchings of blacks in Tensas Parish, most around the turn of the 20th century; it was among the four parishes in Louisiana with the highest number of lynchings in this period.
Prior to January 1964, when fifteen African Americans were permitted to register, there were no black voters on the Tensas Parish rolls. That year the parish consisted of 7,000 blacks and 4,000 whites. Whites had controlled the political system since the late 19th century and passed a new constitution to disenfranchise blacks, an exclusion that lasted for more than 60 years. Tensas was the last of Louisiana's parishes to allow African Americans to register to vote in the 20th century.
In 1962, when only whites could vote, Tensas Parish gave Republican Taylor W. O'Hearn 48.2 percent of the vote in a race for the U.S. Senate against powerful incumbent Democrat Russell B. Long. Hearn later was elected as a state representative from Shreveport. In 1964 Tensas Parish voted for Republican presidential nominee Barry M. Goldwater, at a time when few of Tensas Parish's thousands of black residents had yet registered to vote.
After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, large numbers of Tensas Parish blacks began registering to vote. These new black voters were staunchly Democratic, as the national party had supported their drive for civil rights. Since then, the parish has been a Democratic stronghold. Some white Democrats have been elected to public offices in the parish, including Sheriff Rickey A. Jones and several school board members.
Tensas Parish was de jure desegregated until the fall of 1970. The schools have largely remained de facto segregated by parental decisions and the founding of private academies. The majority of white students attend the private Tensas Academy in St. Joseph; nearly all African-American pupils attend the public schools, where few whites are registered. Enrollment in the public system, now based in St. Joseph, has declined in recent years as population has declined. The former Newellton High School in Newellton and Waterproof High School and Lisbon Elementary School in Waterproof have closed because of decreased enrollments. Tensas High School in St. Joseph was consolidated in 2006 from the former Joseph Moore Davidson High School of St. Joseph, as well as Newellton and Waterproof high schools.
In May 2010, the graduating class of forty students at Tensas High School included three whites. Ten white students graduated from Tensas Academy, and four whites from the private Newellton Christian Academy.
Historically, Tensas Parish has been heavily Democratic in orientation, although alliances have shifted over the decades.
In the 1860 presidential election, the parish supported by plurality the Constitutional Union Party candidate, U.S. Senator John Bell of Tennessee, who pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, the Union of states, and the "enforcement of the laws." Louisiana as a whole narrowly cast its electoral votes for the Southern Democratic choice, Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Regular Democratic nominee Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois ran poorly in Louisiana, and the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, also of Illinois, was not even listed on the state ballot.
After gaining the franchise after emancipation and the end of the Civil War, most African Americans in Louisiana and other southern states joined the Republican Party, electing candidates who made up a biracial legislature in Louisiana. White Democratic groups worked through intimidation and fraud to suppress black Republican voting during and after the Reconstruction era. At the turn of the 20th century, Louisiana passed a new state constitution with provisions that created barriers to voter registration in order to disenfranchise African-American voters and cripple the Republican Party. Louisiana was effectively a one-party state and part of the Solid South for several decades.
Following passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, blacks supported the national Democratic Party because of its leadership in supporting their movement for civil rights. Many southern white Democrats began to shift to the Republican Party, initially for national elections and gradually for local and state offices.
In 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, prevailed in Tensas Parish with 1,645 votes (50 percent). Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts trailed with 1,556 (47.3 percent).
In 2000, the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore, won Tensas Parish by 250 votes. The Democratic electors polled 1,580 votes that year to 1,330 for the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney ticket. In 2004, the Democratic ticket of U.S. Senators John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina carried Tensas Parish, 1,460 (49.6 percent) to 1,453 (49 percent) for Bush-Cheney.
In the 2008 presidential contest, Democratic nominee Barack Obama of Illinois won Tensas Parish, 1,646 (54.1 percent) to 1,367 (45 percent) for the Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. In 2012, President Obama again carried the parish, with 1,564 votes (55.6 percent), while rival Mitt Romney polled 1,230 votes (43.7 percent). The Obama-McCain and Obama-Romney voter divisions in 2008 and 20012 are consistent with the racial complexion of Tensas Parish.
In the 2004 U.S. Senate primary election, Tensas Parish gave a plurality to the successful Republican candidate, U.S. Representative David Vitter of St. Tammany Parish, who polled 1,145 votes (41 percent) compared to 881 ballots (32 percent) for his chief Democratic rival, Congressman Chris John of Crowley. There was no general election to determine if Vitter would have surpassed 50 percent plus one vote to obtain an outright majority in this traditionally Democratic parish.
In 2007, the successful Republican gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal, polled in Tensas Parish 40 percent. Tensas gave a plurality of 48 percent to Secretary of State Jay Dardenne. Two Republican candidates ran for a seat on the Tensas Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body, and Emmett L. Adams, Jr., won over fellow Republican Patrick Glass, 207-179 votes (54-46 percent).
Under the state constitution, prior to 1968, each parish -regardless of population- elected at least one member to the Louisiana House of Representatives. That year the US Supreme Court ruled that states had to develop legislative districts that were based on roughly equal populations and had to be redistricted after each decennial census, based on the principle of "one man, one vote". It said there was no constitutional basis for state legislatures to be based on geographical districts (such as one representative per parish), as that system had resulted in inequities: particularly marked under-representation of more urbanized areas and an unequal dominance of state legislatures by rural areas. Louisiana and numerous other states had not regularly conducted redistricting, although there had been dramatic population shifts since the turn of the 20th century.
The last member to represent only Tensas Parish was Democrat S. S. DeWitt of Newellton and later St. Joseph. DeWitt won the legislative post in 1964 by unseating 20-year incumbent J.C. Seaman of Waterproof. He lost the seat in the 1971 primary to Lantz Womack of Winnsboro in Franklin Parish.
The parish seat of St. Joseph is located adjacent to the Mississippi River levee system, which protects the eastern border of the parish along the river.
The largely rural parish has three communities: Newellton, St. Joseph, and Waterproof. Newellton was founded by the planter and attorney John David Stokes Newell, Sr., who named it for his father Edward D. Newell, a native of North Carolina. All three communities are linked by Highway 65, which passes just to the west of each town.
Adjacent parishes and counties
National protected area
The mostly rural parish has continued to lose population. Between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007, Tensas Parish lost 173 residents, or 2.9 percent of its population. Police Jury Vice President Jane Merriett Netterville , a Democrat from St. Joseph, expressed surprise at those figures, as a number of people had moved into the parish in 2005 and 2006 as refugees from New Orleans and coastal areas after Hurricane Katrina. "Maybe the loss was the people who died. We have a large elderly population," she told the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. Netterville explained that younger people leave Tensas Parish because of the scarcity of higher-paying jobs.
Tensas Parish has one principal cemetery, Legion Memorial, established in 1943 and located just north of Newellton. A new entrance sign to the cemetery has been erected.
|U.S. Decennial Census
As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 5,252 people residing in the county. 56.5% were Black or African American, 41.9% White, 0.2% Asian, 0.1% Native American, 0.5% of some other race and 0.8% of two or more races. 1.2% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race).
As of the census of 2000, there were 6,618 people, 2,416 households, and 1,635 families residing in the parish. The population density was 11 people per square mile (4/km²). There were 3,359 housing units at an average density of 6 per square mile (2/km²). The racial makeup of the parish was 43.2% White, 55.6% Black or African American, 0.1% Native American, 0.2% Asian, 0.29% from other races, and 0.9% from two or more races. 1.4% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 2,416 households out of which 30.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.10% were married couples living together, 20.20% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.30% were non-families. 29.30% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.90% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.14.
In the parish the population was spread out with 26.50% under the age of 18, 10.00% from 18 to 24, 25.10% from 25 to 44, 22.90% from 45 to 64, and 15.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 97.80 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.20 males.
The median income for a household in the parish was $19,799, and the median income for a family was $25,739. Males had a median income of $26,636 versus $16,781 for females. The per capita income for the parish was $12,622. About 30.00% of families and 36.30% of the population were below the poverty line, including 48.20% of those under age 18 and 29.60% of those age 65 or over.
Public schools in Tensas Parish are operated by the elected seven-member Tensas Parish School Board.
|Sheriff||Rickey A. Jones|
|Coroner||Keith D. Butler, RN, EMT-P|
|Assessor||Donna R. Ratcliff|
|School Board Superintendent||Dr. Paul E. Nelson|
|Parish Police Jury||Police Jurors|
|District 1||Larry W. Foster (President)|
|District 2||Danny Clark|
|District 3||Thomas B. Crigler|
|District 4||Mabel Trevillion (Interim)|
|District 5||Roderick "Rod" D. Webb|
|District 6||Bubba Rushing|
|District 7||James E. Davis, Jr. (Vice President)|
|6th Judicial District||Parish Judicial Leaders|
|Judge of Division "A"||John D. Crigler (Chief Judge)|
|Judge of Division "B"||Michael E. Lancaster|
|District Attorney||James E. Paxton|
|Clerk of Court||Christina "Christy" C. Lee|
|Parish School Board||Board Members|
|District 1||Jennifer Burnside|
|District 2||James E. Kelly, Sr. (Vice President)|
|District 3||Sidney McLemore (President)|
|District 4||Annice Miller|
|District 5||Esaw Turner|
|District 6||Steven D. Vinson|
|District 7||John L. Turner|
The Tensas Gazette
Tensas Parish is served by a weekly newspaper, The Tensas Gazette, which began in 1871 under the title The North Louisiana Journal. It was renamed The Tensas Gazette in 1886. Some 1,300 copies are circulated each Wednesday throughout the parish.
Josiah Scott (born 1874 in Vidalia) was reared by a maternal uncle who was the editor of the Concordia Sentinel. At the age of twenty, Scott took over The Tensas Gazette, then owned by Judge Hugh Tullis. In 1906, Scott purchased the paper from Tullis and continued as editor until his death in 1953. He was known for political commentary over the decades.
Upon Scott's death, Paul Alexander Myers, Jr., and his wife, the former Patricia Wilds (1924-1999) purchased The Tensas Gazette and operated it together until his death in 1964. Thereafter until her retirement in 1988, Mrs. Myers owned and published the paper. From 1974 to 1988, she concurrently owned the Richland Beacon-News in Rayville, in Richland Parish. The daughter of Oliver Newton Myers (1900-1965) and the former Alice Robinson (1898-1948) of Natchez, Mississippi, Myers graduated from the former Joseph Moore Davidson High School in St. Joseph and the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. As a member of the Louisiana State Park Foundation Board, she was instrumental in the reopening of Winter Quarters State Historic Site south of Newellton. She was a member of the Tensas Development Board, the Tensas Garden Club, the Lake Bruin Country Club, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1997, she was named "Citizen of the Year" by the St. Joseph chapter of Rotary International. The Myerses had four children: Paul Alexander "Andy" Myers, III, of Gulf Breeze, Florida, LaRue Myers Cooper of Dry Prong, Morris Newton Myers of Temecula in Riverside County, California, and Alice Robinson "Robin" Myers of St. Joseph, who is named for her maternal grandmother. A Roman Catholic, Mrs. Myers is interred at the Natchez City Cemetery.
No longer under local ownership, The Tensas Gazette is now published by Louisiana State Newspapers, Inc. After years in a downtown location, The Tensas Gazette moved to 118 Arts Drive near the new Tensas Parish Civic Center off U.S. Highway 65.
- Henry Watkins Allen, Confederate States of America general and Civil War governor of Louisiana, grew cotton in Tensas Parish near Newellton in the years prior to the war before he relocated to Baton Rouge and became a public figure.
- Ray R. Allen, municipal secretary-treasurer and finance director in Alexandria, Louisiana (1963–1979), graduated from Newellton High School (ca. 1937).
- Daniel F. Ashford (1879-1929), member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1916 until his death; planter, first person in Tensas Parish to own an automobile and a wristwatch.
- Andrew Brimmer, the first African American appointed (by President Lyndon B. Johnson) to the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., was born in Tensas Parish.
- Clifford Cleveland Brooks, cotton planter; member of the Louisiana State Senate from 1924 to 1932
- Sharon Renee Brown, Miss Louisiana USA 1961, Miss USA 1961, was Miss Waterproof that same year.
- W. W. Burnside, planter; mayor of Newellton, 1924-1940
- Buddy Caldwell, district attorney from East Carroll, Madison, and Tensas parishes and thereafter attorney general of Louisiana, elected 2007.
- Claire Chennault of the "Flying Tigers," though born in Commerce, Texas, lived for a time in Waterproof in southern Tensas Parish.
- Elliot D. Coleman (1881–1963), sheriff of Tensas Parish from 1936–1960 and a bodyguard at the assassination of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, Jr.
- George Henry Clinton, chemist, lawyer, member of both houses of the legislature from Tensas Parish.
- Charles C. Cordill, Louisiana state senator from Tensas Parish from 1884 to 1912
- Brenham C. Crothers (1905-1984), Ferriday cattleman who represented Tensas Parish in the Louisiana State Senate from 1948 to 1952 and again from 1956 to 1960
- Joseph T. Curry (1895-1961), Louisiana state representative from Tensas Parish from 1930 to 1944
- William Mackenzie Davidson, first mayor of St. Joseph after incorporation, 1901-1930
- James Houston "Jimmie" Davis, singer, songwriter and governor; owned farm property in Tensas Parish.
- S. S. DeWitt, state representative from Tensas Parish from 1964 to 1972
- Sarah Dorsey, author and benefactor of Jefferson Davis
- Emmitt Douglas, president of the Louisiana NAACP from 1966–1981
- C. B. Forgotston (1945-2016), Hammond attorney, political activist, and state government watchdog
- Troyce Guice, a member of the Louisiana Levee Board and the Mississippi River Bridge Commission, twice a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
- Neal Lane "Lanny" Johnson, a former Tensas school superintendent and current superintendent in Winnsboro; Louisiana state representative (1976–1980).
- Howard M. Jones (1900-1980), state senator from Tensas Parish from 1960 to 1968.
- Jack Keahey (1935–2007), the longtime member and president of the Tensas Basin Levee Board.
- Samuel W. Martien (1854-1946), planter from Waterproof and member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1906 to 1920
- J. H. Netterville (1879-1943), manager of three area plantations for the Panola Company; member of the Tensas Parish School Boardr
- James Albert Noe, Sr., former governor of Louisiana; once owned farm property in Tensas Parish.
- James E. Paxton, district attorney of East Carroll, Madison, and Tensas parishes; St. Joseph resident
- Edwin G. Preis (1916-2011), Waterproof native and the mayor of Newellton, 1972 to 2000
- Phil Preis, Baton Rouge attorney; gubernatorial candidate in 1995 and 1999
- Clyde V. Ratcliff, Louisiana state senator from 1944 to 1948 and planter in Newellton until his death in 1952
- Dan Richey, former Louisiana State Senator who represented Tensas Parish
- J.C. Seaman, state representative from Tensas Parish from 1944–1964; promoter of Lake Bruin State Park
- Jefferson B. Snyder, district attorney for Tensas, Madison, and East Carroll parishes from 1904-1948
- Robert H. Snyder, state representative from Tensas Parish from 1890–1896 and 1904–1906, Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives in the second term, died in office; Lieutenant governor from 1896–1900
- Garner H. Tullis, civic leader in New Orleans.
- Thomas M. Wade (1860-1929), member of Louisiana House of Representatives from 1888 to 1904, Louisiana State Board of Education, and Tensas Parish School Board; Tensas school superintendent for some twenty years after 1904
- Leon "Pee Wee" Whittaker, blues musician originally from Newellton
|2016||46.4% 1,182||52.3% 1,332||1.3% 34|
|2012||43.7% 1,230||55.6% 1,564||0.6% 18|
|2008||45.0% 1,367||54.1% 1,646||0.9% 27|
|2004||49.0% 1,453||49.6% 1,469||1.4% 41|
|2000||44.2% 1,330||52.5% 1,580||3.3% 100|
|1996||32.3% 1,000||60.7% 1,882||7.0% 217|
|1992||35.3% 1,153||51.0% 1,666||13.7% 447|
|1988||50.0% 1,645||47.3% 1,556||2.7% 89|
|1984||53.5% 1,956||44.5% 1,628||1.9% 71|
|1980||43.5% 1,645||54.1% 2,046||2.5% 94|
|1976||42.2% 1,553||56.6% 2,081||1.2% 43|
|1972||50.5% 1,729||45.8% 1,568||3.8% 129|
|1968||19.1% 503||32.0% 845||48.9% 1,290|
|1964||89.6% 1,655||10.4% 192|
|1960||42.2% 510||20.5% 247||37.3% 451|
|1956||35.0% 359||31.6% 324||33.4% 343|
|1952||50.5% 703||49.5% 688|
|1948||6.9% 72||22.9% 239||70.2% 734|
|1944||20.1% 160||80.0% 638|
|1940||9.0% 95||91.0% 957|
|1936||2.8% 23||97.3% 812|
|1932||4.4% 29||95.5% 635||0.2% 1|
|1928||21.5% 96||78.5% 350|
|1924||5.9% 21||94.2% 338|
|1920||5.8% 15||94.2% 243|
|1916||2.4% 5||96.7% 204||1.0% 2|
|1912||0.4% 1||91.7% 220||7.9% 19|
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- Winters, p. 103
- Winters, p. 181
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- Franklin Plantation, historical marker, Newellton, Louisiana
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- Lynching in America, Second Edition: Supplement by County, p. 4, Equal Justice Initiative, Mobile, AL, 2015
- Jordan Flaherty. ""Did a Racist Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town Overthrow Its Black Mayor and Police Chief?", March 26, 2010". Dissident Voice. dissidentvoice.org. Retrieved June 12, 2010.
- Tensas Gazette, 12 May 2010
- Winters, pp. 6-7
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- "2010 Census Gazetteer Files". United States Census Bureau. August 22, 2012. Archived from the original on September 28, 2013. Retrieved September 2, 2014.
- "Jane Merriett Netterville". voterportal.sos.la.gov. Retrieved October 9, 2013.[permanent dead link]
- 2theadvocate.com | News | Northern parishes still losing population — Baton Rouge, LA
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- John Marvin Bush, "The Tensas Gazette: A Brief Sketch," North Louisiana History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Summer 1974), pp. 135-137
- Henry E. Chambers, History of Louisiana (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1925), pp. 206-207
- "Patricia Wilds Myers". files.usgwarchives.net. Retrieved June 8, 2013.
- "Tensas Gazette". mondotimes.com. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
- James Matthew Reonas, Once Proud Princes: Planters and Plantation Culture in Louisiana's Northeast Delta, From the First World War Through the Great Depression (PDF). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Ph.D. dissertation, December 2006, pp. 262-263. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 21, 2013. Retrieved July 19, 2013.
- Henry E. Chambers, History of Louisiana, Vol. 2 (Chicago and New York City: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1925, p. 71)
- "Membership of the Louisiana House of Representatives, 1812-2012: Tensas Parish" (PDF). legis.la.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 4, 2013. Retrieved July 14, 2013.
- "Membership in the Louisiana State Senate, 1880-2012" (PDF). legis.state.la.us. Retrieved July 15, 2013.
- William M. Davidson obituary, Tensas Gazette, January 24, 1930
- Obituary of Samuel Winter Martien, Tensas Gazette, June 7, 1946, p. 6
- Frederick W. Williamson and George T. Goodman, eds. Eastern Louisiana: A History of the Watershed of the Ouachita River and the Florida Parishes, 3 vols. (Monroe: Historical Record Association, 1939), pp. 985-986
- "James E. Paxton". sixthda.com. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
- "Edwin G. Preis". Baton Rouge Morning Advodate, July 29, 2011. Retrieved August 2, 2011.
- Obituary of Clyde V. Ratcliff, Sr., Tensas Gazette, October 8, 1952
- Frederick W. Williamson and George T. Goodman, eds. Eastern Louisiana: A History of the Watershed of the Ouachita River and the Florida Parishes, 3 vols. (Monroe: Historical Record Association, 1939, pp. 569-571)
- "Garner H. Tullis", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 2 (1988), p. 800
- Yearbook of American Clan Gregor Society, pp. 101-103. Richmond, Virginia: Appeals Press, 1916, Egbert Watson Magruder, ed. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
- Leip, David. "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections". uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- Tensas Progress Community Progress Site for Tensas
Tensas Parish welcoming sign on United States Highway 65
The Tensas Parish Civic Center is located at 115 Arts Drive off U.S. Highway 65 in St. Joseph.
Former location downtown in St. Joseph of the weekly newspaper, The Tensas Gazette (established 1886).
Flowers Landing Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation at 2302 Louisiana Highway 888 northwest of Newellton, serves a rural clientele.
Boating on popular Lake Bruin in Tensas Parish near St. Joseph
The hay harvest south of Newellton (2016)