List of parishes in Louisiana explained

Parishes of Louisiana
Category:Second-level administrative division
Territory:State of Louisiana
Current Number:64 Parishes
Population Range:Greatest: 448,467 (East Baton Rouge Parish)
Least: 3,764 (Tensas Parish)
Average: 71,465
Area Range:Largest: (Plaquemines Parish)
Smallest: (West Baton Rouge Parish)
Average:
Government:Parish government
Subdivision:cities, Towns, Census designated place, Unincorporated area

The U.S. state of Louisiana is divided into 64 parishes in the same manner that Alaska is divided into boroughs, and the remaining 48 other states are divided into counties. Louisiana's usage of the term "parish" for a geographic region or local government dates back to the French colonial and Spanish colonial periods.

Thirty-eight parishes are governed by a council called a police jury. The remaining 26 have various other forms of government, including: council-president, council-manager, parish commission, and consolidated parish/city.[1]

History

Louisiana was formed from French and Spanish colonies, which were both officially Roman Catholic. Local colonial government was based upon parishes, as the local ecclesiastical division.

Following the Louisiana Purchase, the territorial legislative council in April 1805 divided the Territory of Orleans (the predecessor of Louisiana state) into 12 counties. The borders of these counties were poorly defined, but largely coincided with the colonial ecclesiastical parishes.[2]

On March 31, 1807, the territorial legislature created 19 parishes without abolishing any of the old counties (which term continued to exist until 1845). In 1811, a constitutional convention was held to prepare for Louisiana's admission into the Union.[3] This organized the state into seven judicial districts, each consisting of groups of parishes. In 1816, the first official map of the state used the term parish, as did the 1845 constitution. Since then, the official term for Louisiana's primary civil divisions has been parishes.

The 19 original parishes were joined by Catahoula Parish in 1808. In 1810 four additional parishes were created from the formerly Spanish West Florida territory—these are part of what is now referred to as the Florida Parishes.

By April 1812, Attakapas Parish became St. Martin Parish and St. Mary Parish. On April 30, the state was admitted to the Union with 25 parishes.

By 1820, Washington Parish was added, and Feliciana Parish split into West and East in 1824. The next year, Jefferson Parish was carved from Orleans Parish. By 1830, Claiborne Parish was created, and the old Warren Parish was mostly absorbed into Ouachita Parish, only to return as Carroll Parish a few years later.

In 1838, Caddo Parish was created from Natchitoches, as were Madison and Caldwell parishes in the east. In 1839, Union Parish was formed from Ouachita, and Calcasieu was formed from St. Landry in 1840.

Five parishes were created in 1843: Bossier, DeSoto, Franklin, Sabine, and Tensas. Morehouse Parish and Vermilion Parish were formed from Ouachita and Lafayette parishes, respectively, in 1844. The next year, Jackson Parish was formed, the old county units were abandoned, and the units were officially referred to as "parishes". In 1848, Bienville Parish was formed from Claiborne Parish. In 1852, Winn Parish was formed, while parishes further south added and lost land.

In 1853, Lafourche Interior Parish was renamed to Lafourche Parish. During Reconstruction, state government created a number of new parishes, with the first being Iberia and Richland parishes. Plans for creating a parish like Iberia from St. Martin and St. Mary parishes had dated from the 1840s. (A surveying error in Iberia's creation broke St. Martin Parish into two non-contiguous parts, making it and Norfolk County, Massachusetts as the only county-level units with their own exclaves.) Tangipahoa and Grant parishes followed in 1869. In 1870, the fifth Reconstruction parish, Cameron, was created, which was followed by the sixth, seventh, and eighth parishes (Red River, Vernon, and Webster, respectively) in 1871. The ninth parish to be formed under Radical Republican rule was Lincoln, named after the late president and formed in 1873. In 1877, the old parish of Carroll divided into East and West Carroll parishes, which are unofficially called the tenth and eleventh Reconstruction parishes, as the project ended that year.

No new parishes were formed until 1886, when Acadia Parish was formed from St. Landry. Again, no new parishes were formed, this time until 1908, when the western half of Catahoula parish became LaSalle parish.

In 1910, the parish count rose to 61 with the creation of Evangeline Parish, and the 62nd, 63rd, and 64th parishes (Allen, Beauregard, and Jefferson Davis) were created from areas of Calcasieu Parish. There were several minor boundary changes afterward, the most substantial being the division of Lake Pontchartrain among Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, Orleans, Jefferson, St. John the Baptist, and St. Charles Parishes in 1979.

Listing

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Former parishes

Territorial counties

On April 10, 1805, the Territorial Council enacted a map dividing the territory into 12 counties based upon ecclesiastical districts established under Spanish rule. In 1807, the Territorial Council revised the 12-county system to create 19 civil parishes.[4]

The original twelve counties defined by the Territorial Legislative Council in 1805 were:[4]

On December 7, 1810, William C. C. Claiborne, governor of the Orleans Territory, annexed the short-lived Republic of West Florida to the United States and Louisiana as Feliciana County. On December 22, 1810, the county west of the Pearl River was organized in four civil parishes: East Baton Rouge, Feliciana, St. Helena, and St. Tammany. Later, in 1824, Feliciana Parish was divided into East Feliciana and West Feliciana parishes.[4]

Fictional parishes

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Parish Government Structure - Police Jury Association of Louisiana. Police Jury Association of LA. February 23, 2019.
  2. Web site: Bryansite - Louisiana parishes. Tabor. B..
  3. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Louisiana/_Texts/LHQ/1/4/Admission_to_the_Union*.html The Admission of Louisiana into the Union
  4. Web site: 2009 . John H. . Long . Tuck Sinko . Peggy . Louisiana: Individual County Chronologies . 2024-08-05 . Atlas of Historical County Boundaries . The Newberry Library.

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