Chronicled in Newspapers.com between 1854 and 1910
Children hear stories about their families and carry those stories with them throughout their lives. In time, they may retell those stories to their children which get passed down through the generations. Sometimes, the stories get distorted; sometimes a story is told verbatim. One day a story that was retold will be challenged but the original storyteller is no longer available to verify the story or explain the context. Nevertheless, with the resources available today, one can go to a newspaper website to investigate a story and confirm the suspicions, contradict the story, clear up distortions, or give cause for questioning what was heard.
Yesteryear vs Today
As a child, I heard my share of family stories of my grandparents, great grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles of long ago. Some of the stories stayed with me and I retold them to my children. Some of the stories I discussed with my mother before she died. Recently, I asked my 91-year-old uncle to confirm a story about his great-grandmother; but sadly, his attention to family stories was never his forte. Memory lapse is not the culprit in this case; my uncle told me numerous times over the years he just didn’t listen to the stories.
Recently, I spent endless hours perusing Newspapers.com while collecting context of time and location for a biography I was writing. The period of interest was 1840 to 1910. The surname was Provost – “one of the largest and most opulent Creole families on the bayou.”[1] The place was Louisiana, more specifically Iberia Parish. It is unbelievable how many times Provost was found in the newspapers for that time and place. In addition to the surname Provost, there are the terms provost marshal and provost guard, and provost of a university or school which appear copious times in the newspapers. In Jeanerette, Louisiana, there is at least one street named Provost which appears in tax lists too many times to count. There was a racecourse with Provost in the name recounting the results of horse races, and there was a family by the name Provostry who was featured in many newspaper articles.
Newspapers published the voting records of my Provost ancestors in their official capacities three to four times a week. That was interesting but it got a little repetitive and boring. Reading about my ancestors attending card and garden parties was fascinating. But what intrigued me most was the number of tragedies reported on the Provosts of Louisiana. Some involved my Provost ancestors, some involved Provosts not related to me. The tragedies reported were shootings, a possible murder, a fire, and an occupational injury, to name a few.
From reading the many articles about the people of Louisiana with the surname Provost and matching those names to my Provost family tree, I came across at least three Provost family lines that may not be related. One family that lived in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana; one that lived in Orleans Parish, Louisiana; and my ancestral family that lived in Iberia Parish. Nicholas Provost (1749 to 1816) purchased land in the 1770s[2] which became the town of Jeanerette in 1878, a small community in Iberia Parish.[3] In addition to the Provost family, the Prevost family also appears frequently in the records. The Provost and Prevost families intermarried over several generations, and their surnames were not always spelled consistently, as was common in earlier records. At times, Provost appeared as Prevost, and Prevost appeared as Provost.
Following will be a review of selected tragedies involving my ancestral Provost family found in Louisiana newspapers published between 1850 and 1910. I will attempt to explain how the individuals in the articles are related to Emile Louis Provost (1902 to 1991), my maternal grandfather (see Figure 1).
[1] “By Telegraph,” The Times (Shreveport, Louisiana), 1 July 1883, p. 1, col. 2; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 14 April 2026). The bayou would be the Teche in Jeanerette, Louisiana.
[2] Katherine Hill, The Provost Family Tree: Marie Jeanne Prevost and Nicholas Provost of Jeanerette, Louisiana (Goliad, Texas, 2000) p. 7.
[3] “Jeanerette History,” The City of Jeanerette Louisiana, Jeanerette.com.