William Henry Seymour (September 8, 1840 – December 24, 1913), was an American politician and amateur

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

best known for having written a history of

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

Early life

Seymour was born in Warrenton,

Warren County Warren County is the name of fourteen counties in the USA. Some are named after General Joseph Warren, who was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill in the American Revolutionary War: * Warren County, Georgia * Warren County, Illinois * Warren County ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

. He lived in Europe as a child, then moved to Louisiana while still a dependent of his parents.

Career

At the outset of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, he enlisted in the

Confederate Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

, becoming an artillery sergeant and receiving an honorable discharge. In 1863, he moved to Algiers, Louisiana, where he was initially employed by the Opelousas Railroad. Algiers, across the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

from

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

, was then an independent municipality, but would be within a few years

annexed Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...

to the city. Seymour took an interest in local affairs and was elected in 1864 to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, where he was the youngest delegate. Also in 1864 Seymour was elected

justice of the peace A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or ''puisne'' court, elected or appointed by means of a commission ( letters patent) to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the sa ...

and president of the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

police jury In the U.S. state of Louisiana, the typical governing body of the parish is called the Police Jury ( French: ''le Jury de Police''). Not every parish is governed by a Police Jury, but 38 of the 64 parishes use this system. The Police Jury is the ...

. In 1865, Seymour was elected to the Louisiana state legislature. Seymour authored ''The Story of Algiers'', a 128-page history published in 1896. The book was republished in 1971 and has been referenced in New Orleans and Louisiana histories. An index of the book is on-line.

Judicial career

He was admitted to the state

bar association A bar association is a professional association of lawyers as generally organized in countries following the Anglo-American types of jurisprudence. The word bar is derived from the old English/European custom of using a physical railing to separ ...

in 1881. From 1892 through 1896, he served as elected

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

of the Third City Court.

References

Cited references General references * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Seymour, William H. Writers from New Orleans 1840 births 1913 deaths Historians from Louisiana