The Thornton Sisters of Minden, Louisiana
Webster Parish, at the start of TRIUMPH OVER TRAGEDY, was home to three amazing centenarians, the Thornton sisters. Since the opening of the exhibition we are sad to announce that we have lost two of the sisters – Carrie and Rosie. When the first of these sisters, Maggie, entered the world 115 years ago the country into which she was born was very different from our nation today. More than 60% of Americans still lived on farms, the telephone was still not present in most American homes, and the automobile was an oddity being developed by a few pioneers. It would be nearly a decade before the first airplane flight and more than a decade before Marconi’s first efforts at a radio broadcast. Our society was scarcely more than a generation removed from the Civil War and the post-war amendments that gave full rights to African-Americans, yet the United States Supreme Court had just endorsed and established the institutional segregation and discrimination that would remain in place for most of the lifetime of the Thornton siblings.
In their combined 326 years of life, these sisters have seen the telephone become an afterthought, and all the modern communications devices we now rely on in our daily lives, from radio to television to the Internet. They have seen the automobile move from a novelty to perhaps the most significant invention in terms of societal change. They have seen the airplane emerge and the dramatic move forward to space travel and a man on the moon. They have seen our country shift from a rural society to an urban culture. After suffering through the discrimination and injustice of “separate but equal” for some seven decades, they had the chance to see the Civil Rights movement and our nation finally taking the steps to live up to the words of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal.”
Written by John Agan, Parish Historian
ARCHITECTURE INFORMATION:
Webster Parish-Minden.
Gym, Minden High School, McIntire and Ash Streets.
Architect: Edward F. Neild, Jr.
Completed: 1939. Cost: $128,268.
Historian’s Note: First gym in Louisiana with an indoor swimming pool.
Sources: Somdal & Associates.
1930s Images: 1 elevation blueprint, 1 signage blueprint.
Webster Parish-Springhill.
Elementary school – two buildings (one is now Springhill Junior High School on W. Church Street and the other is Springhill Junior High School’s gym on North Arkansas Street).
Architect: Edward F. Neild, Jr.
Completed: 1939. Cost: $88,191 (both buildings).
Historian’s Note:
Sources: Somdal & Associates.
1930s Images: 1 elevation blueprint.
