John Lyons (Louisiana)

Capt. John Lyons lived in a section of Louisiana that is today known as Acadiana or Cajun country. The region, originally home to the Appalousa and Atakapa people, was first colonized by the French and Spanish, and later became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. The Opelousas and Attakapas districts of Orleans Territory and later the U.S. state of Louisiana were polyglot places, with as many French as English speakers. The region was a patchwork of cypress swamps, palmetto swamps, old-growth forest, and wet prairie, interspersed with countless bayous, tributaries and distributaries of the Mississippi River watershed, watercourses that ebbed and flowed seasonally, opening and closing passageways in and out of the region. In the early 19th century, the region had a very meager network of surface roads, trails, bridges, and ferries; the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railroad was organized in the decade prior to the American Civil War but was not built through the area until the 1880s. During the first 60 years of the American era, the major commercial products of the region were cotton, sugarcane, and cattle (which grazed the region's natural grasslands), along with smaller-scale production of timber, corn, and market vegetables. Rice came later. Cotton and sugarcane were cultivated by enslaved laborers on plantations. == Life and work ==

Lyons was an emigrant from Ireland to the United States, born in County Leitrim about 1821 or 1822. Lyons was , with a ruddy complexion, black hair, and gray eyes. In 1842 Lyons enlisted at Albany and signed up for a multi-year enlistment as a private in a U.S. Army artillery unit; he is believed to have participated in the Mexican-American War. In 1853 a John Lyons Sr. of Roberts Cove, Parish of Saint Landry, died and the residue of his estate, including 53 slaves, six creole horses, and about 1400 head of cattle, was auctioned off. In 1854 John Lyons won the contract to build the Waxia drawbridge over the Courtableau. His work was admired: In 1855, Lyons was administrator of the estate of a neighbor named David Hudspeth, whose plantation was along Bayou Boeuf. Sometime in the late 1840s or 1850s, Lyons began commanding river steamboats that traveled the waterways of west-central Louisiana between inland ports, from Washington, Louisiana, down to New Orleans. As one 1891 history of the region explained, "St. Landry is well watered and drained by its numerous streams and bayous. The Atchafalaya River, which borders its eastern limit, connects the parish by steamboat with the Mississippi River and New Orleans. The Bayou Courtableau, formed by the junction of the Crocodile [recte Bayou Cocodrie] and Boeuf, affords good navigation to Washington the entire year, except a short period in summer when there is usually extreme low water. The Bayou Boeuf is the means of transportation for the planter, and the Crocodile for the lumber men." Washington, sometimes called Washington Landing, is located about north of the parish seat of Opelousas, and had developed into a thriving trading center and inland port in the years before the civil war. According to a 1974 journal of the Louisiana Historical Association account of 19th-century water transportation in Louisiana, "Washington, Louisiana to New Orleans was a distance of about , which took 35 or 40 hours by water." At one point she ran late because she was stranded on an Old River sandbar. In partnership with J.B.A. Fontenot, Lyons established a freight warehouse at Washington Landing in 1856. In March of that year, Lyons was compelled to place a notice in the newspapers "TO THE PUBLIC IN GENERAL...There is a report circulating through the country and New-Orleans, that the steamer Mary Bess is an unsafe boat, and that there is no insurance on her. I deem it my duty to contradict all such reports, and tax the man or men who have circulated them as infamous liars. Come and see our papers of insurance at Washington, La. 2d. February, 1856." In June 1856 the Mary Bess was one of five steamboats that burned at the Algiers landing in New Orleans. The commander of the Mary Bess, one Capt. Holmes, was believed to have been killed in the fire. The New Orleans Picayune-News was unable to determine if the Mary Bess was insured; she was valued at . In 1857 the government of St. Landry Parish determined to pay John Lyons to repair the bridges over Bayou Carron and Bayou Toulouse. In 1858, Lyons' Bayou Belle would "leave Washington for and all intermediate landings, every Wednesday at 10 o'clock, A.M. and New-Orleans every Saturday at 5 P.M. The Bayou Belle being of very light draught and well calculated for the trade, planters and shippers can rely on her remaining in the trade, and running in all stages of water." In March 1859 The New Orleans Crescent reported that the Bayou Belle had arrived in town bearing "with 59 bales cotton, 29 hhds. sugar and 36 bbls. and 133 bbls. molasses, and leaves again this evening." At the time of the 1860 census, Lyons lived in Saint Landry Parish, with his wife, four daughters and son. His occupation was planter, he owned real estate worth , and his personal estate was worth . The 1860 slaves schedules for Louisiana record that John Lyons owned 38 people, the oldest being a 60-year-old man, the youngest being a one-year-old girl. Also in 1860, Lyons' brother-in-law John Fahey lived in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, five houses down the road from A.P. Carriere, more properly, Pierre Arthéon Carrière, a 30-year-old clerk with three children and total property valued at $500. "Artayon Carrier" may be an Anglophone's phonetic spelling of Arthéon Carrière, as the letter from "Bostonian" (written November 12, 1863 and published in the New-York Tribune about the ''Harper's Weekly images and story of "poor Peter") also attests that the name of overseer who whipped Peter was Artayon (not Artayou'') Carrier. == American Civil War and death ==

In spring 1863, an enslaved man by the name of Peter escaped Confederate-controlled Louisiana and made his way to the U.S. Army, which was operating under General Nathaniel P. Banks' General Order 12, Promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation: "Officers and soldiers will not encourage or assist slaves to leave their employers, but they cannot compel or authorize their return by force." A photograph of Peter's heavily scarred back and excerpts from his explanation of what had happened to him were widely promulgated to the general public by anti-slavery advocates. In January or February 1864, a Southern Unionist named Dennis Haynes who was attempting to get out of Louisiana "tried to get on board of a flat-boat to go down the bayou to the Atchafalaya river, but I was informed by a Frenchman, a Union man, that Dick Taylor would allow no cotton to be shipped from there by private individuals; that all the cotton shipped was '[Confederate] government' cotton; that a Captain Lyon was hired by 'Little Dick' to purchase cotton for him, to be delivered at the mouth of the Cortabla, at fifty cents, Confederate money; that 'Little Dick's' brother-in-law was then delivering the cotton to merchants from Illinois, who were paying for it in gold and silver." A report to Confederate governor of Louisiana Henry Watkins Allen described in detail the presence and actions of the U.S. Army in 1863 and 1864. The account of happenings in St. Landry was provided by Louisiana militia brigadier-general John G. Pratt, and one Col. John E. King. It mentioned the killing of Lyons as part of the wartime circumstances in the region, albeit as a one-off event distinct from the main invasion: "On the 22d of March the rear guard of the 'grand army' passed the northern limits of St. Landry. — Since then, with the exception of occasional visits to the wooded outskirts, from military posts on the Mississippi, by marauders who came to open a ballot box, in which to deposit their own votes; or to capture or marder an unoffending citizen, this district has been free from the tread of the enemy....Recently a raid was made in that part of St. Landry which stretches along the upper Atchafalaya, by a body of federal troops from Morganzia. A party of soldiers from this body, conducted by a soi-disant Union man who had been driven from the country for his crimes, went at midnight to the house of Mr. John Lyons, once well known as a popular and skillful commander of steamboats on the inland waters of this district, then a respectable planter, and calling him out from his bed, cruelly murdered him on the threshold of his own door." In 1870 property that belonged to the estate was being auctioned off, including the family home in Washington, and a warehouse lot that had once stood near the saw mill and the drawbridge on Bayou Cortebleau. ==In popular culture==

Jayson Warner Smith played Lyons in the 2022 film Emancipation directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Will Smith. == See also ==