Timothy Redux

In 1971 the Shreveport (Louisiana) Times carried a story about the demolition of the old Webster Parish courthouse in Minden. Inside the cornerstone was a box containing a Confederate flag and a ribbon from a 1905 convention of the United Confederate Veterans of Camp Henry Gray, held in a town identified by the Times as “Timothea.” In fact, there never was such a town, but there the matter rested until last year when Bob G. Burford, a seventh-grade history teacher at Greenacres Junior High School in Bossier City, started working with his students to find a local photograph suitable for inclusion in “Readers’ Album.”

They came up with this picture of the tough old veterans—and the flag from the cornerstone—at their convention. Today, the town they met in is as dead as the cause they gathered to celebrate.

The town, writes Burford, was in fact called “Timothy, a thriving little community with stores, a church, post office and many residents until the growth and prosperity of nearby Springhill sapped all but a few rural farmers from the community. Today the Timothy graveyard (itself overgrown except for an occasional “graveyard working” by descendants of those buried there) is all that remains to mark the place where Timothy once prospered. Most residents of Webster Parish are not even aware that there ever was such a settlement.

“Most of the figures in the picture have been identified with the help of some old-timers in the Springhill area, and several are indeed sleeping their eternal sleep in the old Timothy graveyard.”

We continue to ask our readers to send unusual and previously unpublished old photographs to Carla Davidson at American Heritage Publishing Co., 10 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020. Please send a copy of any irreplaceable material, and do not mail glass negatives. AMERICAN HERITAGE will pay $50.00 for each one that is run.