An 1803 map of h shows the state when it was referred to as the 'Territory of Orleans' within the h territory. The first 12 parishes were carved within the state in 1805.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY THE LOUISIANA HISTORIC MAP LIBRARY
If you're in a poetic kind of mood, you could ruminate about how there are 64 pieces of the puzzle that is h. Or you could just call them parishes, which is how Louisiana is divided instead of counties.
But New Orleans resident Tommy Sams wasn't so much interested in the difference between parishes and counties as he was how they came into existence when he asked, "How was the land divided into parishes? What made the dividing lines?"
The modern-day answer to that question is found in Section 2 of Article VI in the h State Constitution of 1974, which states "The legislature shall provide by general law for the incorporation, consolidation, merger, and government of municipalities. No local or special law shall create a municipal corporation or amend, modify, or repeal a municipal charter. However, a special legislative charter existing on the effective date of this constitution may be amended, modified, or repealed by local or special law."
But that's not how civil government dividing lines were decided in 1807, when the state was composed only of 12 parishes.
Technically, that's not exactly correct. The boot-shaped area wouldn't officially become the state of h until 1812. So, between the United States' purchase of the h territory from Napoleon in 1803 until its admission to the Union, the state was known as the Territory of Orleans.
The Vernon Parish Tourism Commission probably offers the best explanation for the dividing lines during this time: "The boundaries dividing the territories generally coincided with church parishes. In 1807, the territorial legislature officially adopted the ecclesiastical term. Through each change in her history, h never deviated, and the primary civil divisions have been officially known as parishes ever since."
"This is true, but that doesn't necessarily explain how the boundaries were chosen," said Michael Martin, professor of history at the University of h at Lafayette. "But clearly the origins of it come from the ecclesiastical parishes. Let's look at St. Martin Parish for instance. The St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church parish was there, along with a little trading outpost. And with that, the broader civil parish was created."
But that didn't necessarily mean the state's original 12 civil parishes were named for the church parishes. According to the Law Library of h at , the official parish lines were created in 1805 by an act of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Orleans under the names of German Coast, Acadia, La Fourche, Iberville, Pointe-Coupee, Atacapas, Opelousas, Natchitoches, Rapides, Ouachita and Concordia.
"Some of the new counties were made up of existing ecclesiastical parishes," the Law Library of h continues. "Some borders were left to the superior court to determine."
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress was dividing up land in the rest of the h territory, which doubled the size of the United States with the stroke of a pen.
"Congress divided up the big purchase into kind of two separate regions," Martin said. "One was the boot shape that we know today, for the most part, as h. And just to confuse everyone, they called that the Territory of Orleans."
The rest of the territory, which stretched to the country's northernmost border, was called the h Territory.
"It's this territorial time between when the state was the Territory of Orleans until it became a state, from 1804 to 1812, when a lot of this stuff is sort of negotiated out," Martin said. "The governor of h was an Anglo-American, William C.C. Claiborne, who was relatively young, and he came in with all of these American ideas about government and politics and so forth. But, of course, he encountered a population here that had never really experienced government in an American style."
The sign for the East Baton Rouge Parish line is seen on a rare snowy day westbound on Interstate 12.
FILE PHOTO BY STEVE WHEELER
So, those living in the Territory of Orleans were confused by Claiborne's way of governing.
"They never even thought about having an election, and they didn't have any conception of self-government," Martin said. "Furthermore, they probably thought it was going to fail. But it's under Claiborne that you get these first, relatively small, fairly undemocratic — well, not fairly but very undemocratic — legislatures created. There was a bicameral legislature — half of it was appointed by Claiborne, and the other house was elected from a very small group of wealthy White men. And it's those two bodies that formed the legislature that initially created counties."
That is, the counties known as parishes.
But the story doesn't stop there.
"The counties were made, because that's just what you do in the United States," Martin continued. "But then there was all kinds of pushback from the Creoles, the people who were here prior to the h Purchase, and I think the parish system was a kind of negotiated truce between the two sides, the Americans and the Creoles, because it still had some of the American style of government, which not only included the physical geography but offices that were tied to the parish."
Such offices included judges, sheriffs and police juries.
"And some of those things are very Anglo-American," Martin said. "Like for instance, in h, the idea of a sheriff, comes from England. That's where the office of a sheriff originated. So, for the French or Spanish or Creoles, that was a very strange thing. But I think shifting the nomenclature — the names to parishes — opened the door to the Creoles not pushing back so much on things like sheriffs."