Post Offices Located along Boeuf River

The Richland Beacon-News, Rayville, Louisiana
13 Apr 1963, Sat  •  Page 4

BY THE B0EUF WITH BETH Back in the days when Boeuf River was an important means of transportation, it is safe to assume that the river was also an important means of communication. Because I thought it was, I wrote to the Post Office Department for a list of Post Offices along the Boeuf. From the National Archives and Records Service comes the following names:

Girard, Charlieville, Alto, Lucknow, Hebert and Mason.

The Post Office over at Girard was established on November 16, 1870, with Jeremiah J. Baldwin appointed postmaster on the same date. After Mr. Baldwin, the following people served consecutively as postmaster through the year 1929: D. Killingworth, Julian Gay, Julian P. Gay, J. R. Brown, Dempsey D. Morgan, Kate Myrick, Mrs. Kate E. Watts, John R. Myrick, Frank M. Binion, Laura E. Wright, Robert L. Binion and Miss Robbie Binion.

When I learned Miss Binion had been a Girard postmaster, I called her for a story. She tells me that Mrs. Wright had the post office in her home while she was postmaster. Then her father, Mr. Robert Binion took over the post office rather than have it lost for Girard and made a place for it in the back of his store. His store was on the Oak Ridge Road, not far from the present post office building.

To Miss Binion’s knowledge, Riverboats did not deliver mail to Girard. However, four trains with two going in each direction furnished the little hamlet with good mail service. Mail for Lucknow was left at Girard also, then delivered by horsemen over the rugged river road. I was fascinated with Miss Binion’s account of the Girard ferry that she described as the ferryman pulling across the river by means of some ropes and pulleys.

He lived nearby where you could yell to him for ferry service. One of Miss Binion’s river stories….is about Ben McKay, a colored man who was the government’s water gage reader.

“Ben took the readings “somewhere near the train bridge,” then brought them up to the store where he asked Mr. Binion to fill out “those government forms.”

Miss Binion said of her Girard home, “We were surrounded by water.” After my recent plane trip over our section, I’ll say Miss Binion was so right.

The Richland Beacon-News, Rayville, Louisiana
13 Apr 1963, Sat  •  Page 4