Descendants of

IN MEMORY OF OUR PARENTS
A Tribute
On July 1, 1846, at the threshold of a log cabin home, prattled a baby boy. Not many rods behind the cabin and on either side, a virgin forest spread its branches and rustled its leaves. Here bird songs echoed and all the calls of innocent wild life that hid or frolicked among the greenness, mingled in one soft, swelling symphony of joy. In the sunlight of the cleared spaces about the house, bees droned and butter-flies flashed among the waving corn and the heavy headed wheat. Sometimes an ox-cart moved slowly along the road, and the child's eyes brightened and he tossed his arms and laughed gleefully. Occasionally a passing wagon would pause while the driver advanced to the well in front of the cabin. Lowering a wooden bucket, he would bring up a draught of such sparkling water, so clear, so pure, so cold, as seldom is yielded from the hidden reservoirs of nature. Sometimes greetings were exchanged, for a capable mother bustled about the house and yard; a brown-haired father labored near by, and the voices of older children called to one another; for the baby boy, twenty-three days past his first birthday anniversary, was the eighth child of his parents, and there were only two little graves. All this beauty and activity were ex-pending their intensity of living on the little farmstead in Switzerland county, Indiana, where Supply Walker, Sr., and his wife, Susanna, were chiselling and shaping from fertile soil a wonderful inheritance of honor, health, resource-fulness and peace for their posterity, born and yet to be born. The sun of that July day shone hot. The baby boy fell asleep at last and was carried to the waiting box cradle within. While the little one sleeps in his primitive southern Indiana home, let us glirnpse another scene. Nestling among hills and streams near Alexandria, KY, lay another homestead. Here the angels of life and death had battled fiercely, but while the baby boy slept, the angel of life was proclaimed the victor and a tiny baby girl breathed and wept. She was the fourteenth child of Jeremiah Benedict and his wife, Elizabeth, and they named her Angie Line.
 
Years passed. Presently in Kentucky a little maiden tripped to school from a home where a widowed mother, unaided by their father's help and counsel, was watching over her boys and girls. In the Indiana home, little James Theodore was growing sturdily. More brothers and sisters were being born and the "clearings" about the farm house were growing more extensive. Play, school and labor claimed the boy's attention. Then came the roar of the Civil war guns. Too young for the actual battle front, Theodore Walker enlisted in the "Home Guards." Near this time the Hand that guides brought the young girl from her Kentucky hills environ-ment to teach in the schools of Ohio and Switzerland counties in Indiana. And thus Angie L. Benedict and James Theodore Walker met. On December 25, 1867, they were united in marriage. To this union were born two sons. Harvey and Supply, Jr.; and six daughters--Cora, Susie, Eliza-beth, Lutha, Mary and Nellie. Of these, all but Mary are living. On January 25, 1918, from a home built near the site of the early log house, Angie L., wife of James Theodore Walker, passed to the house of many mansions. James Theodore Walker lingered in the old home almost nine years. Then, just as the last of October was tinging with beauty the maples he had planted, just as the nuts he loved to gather were falling fast, he became slightly ill. A few more days passed. Then, without suffering, at 11:30 a.m., on November 5, 1926, the long, busy, useful, happy life closed. Of his seven sons and daughters, 10 randchildren and five great-grandchildren, all stood by his open grave except Stanton Walker and his two little sons of Washington, DC, and Hazel Walker of Mississippi.
 
Close up the book. All its pages are written, Tenderly close it and lay it away. Sweet is the perfume exhaling around it, Perfume of memories breathing today. Close up the volume. God's hand holds the seal of it. Close up the volume. Its author would rest. Fold his tired hands and lower the lashes, Fathomless peace stays the heart in his breast. Just let him rest! All his volume is written, Just let him rest! Close and lay it away, Just note the perfume exhaling around it,
 
Perfume of memories living today.

Octavie Couvillon, ( 1845- 9/?/1904), grew up in the Bayou Des Glaises area in a community known as "Zimmer" which is a few miles South of Bordelonville, Louisiana. She attended a private school there to gain a very meager education and later help her father, Zelien, in the operation of the family general merchandise store. Octavie was a very attractive and beautiful girl in her youth but, as she grew older, she accumulated weight and size. By the time she had passed her thirtieth year she had grown enormously weighting well over three hundred pounds. This, however, never was a deterrent in her popularity nor did it hinder her in her work and social activities. Rather, she was generally regarded as a meticulous person with a jolly disposition and one with a tremendous ability to get things done. She married Francis Marion Pavey, who was born February 23, 1840 in Indiana. Francis Marion came to Louisiana with his father when he was a captain on a steamboat plying up and down the Ohio, Mississippi, and Atachafalya Rivers. His social and religious philosophies being in common with the French Catholics of Avoyelles community. Octavie and Francis Marion were married in St. Hyacinthe's church, Moreauville, on February 10, 1870, settling immediately after at Hamburg, Lousiana, where he had previously purchased a large track of land then referred to as the Callihan Tract and which is now knows at the "Beridon's Plantatin". Later he established a general merchandise business which they operated successfully until their deaths. This resourceful couple became very popular in their social, business, and farming enterprises and at the time of their deaths were considered very wealthy and commanded a tremendous influence over the area. It was only mine months and a few days after their marriage that she gave birth to a set of twin girls who lived only fourteen days, this being the closest that they got to having a family of their own. Later, however, they adopted a little girl, a daughter of her brother, Fulgence, named Doralysse Sarah. Octavie died in St. Louis, Missouri while attending the 1904 World's Fair of pneumonia as a result of being overheated. Her body was returned to Louisiana and interred in Sacred Heart Cemetery, Moreauville. Her widower, Francis, married a second time to Blanche Couvillion, Francis died of acute indigestion, now heart trouble, in 1909 and was buried in Moreauville.

Ira S. Couvillion, 1966.
NO.1., FULGENCE COUVILLON, ( 12/8/1842 - 11/04/1901), grew up in the community of his birth where he attended a private school to earn a meager education and to later take his place among the leaders of his community and parish. He was crippled at the age of six in a fire accident and it was for that  reason that he had not participated in the Civil War, but being of a patriotic and aggressive nature, took it upon himself to devote all of his time to make shoes for the soldiers who were fighting not far from his community. Many a poor "Johnny Reb" were saved the aches and pains of bare feet in cold weather because of his kind generosity. It was said that he had contributed 585 pairs, on record, not counting the many dozens that he had handed out personally without going through the regular channels and therefore unrecorded. This was certainally a great contribution for a person who could barely use his hands. Fulgence never attended school where English was taught and the only language spoken during his time in his area was French. Yet he educated himself to a point where he could speak, read and write English fluently and was often consulted to interpret the language. It was on the basis of this virtue that made him a sort of a community lawyer, a position that he was heavily depended upon by the neighborhood and which, as time went on, saved his friends and fellowmen may law suits and unnecessary legal expenses. He was elected Justice of the Peach in his twenty-fourth year, this being his first political venture, receiving his commission from the Governor of Louisiana, in 1866 "for the sixth ward of Avoyelles." While he was still officiating this office in 1877, he was appointed Jury commissioner ( now school board and police jury member); He held this important office until 1894, when he ran for and was elected parish assessor, remaining in this office until 1898 when he retired because of ill health. He then accepted a position as parish jailer in Marksville where he had moved his family after his election as assessor, dying a year after his appointment as jailer. His remains rest in Sacred Heart cemetery, Moreauville. Fulgence married Leonore Ann Pavey who was from Warsaw, Illinois , and a daughter of J. Benjamine Pavey and Maria Gibbs. John B. being a collateral descendant of Msgr. Antonine Pavey who had succeeded Msgr Antoine Adolph Dupuch as Archbishop of the Catholic SEE of algiers. (Archbishop Antoine Pavey died in 1866.). Fulgence and Leonore married in the then Ste. Hyacinthe, ( now Sacred Heart), Catholic Church in Moreauville on December 16, 1876 by Father Thomas A. Revours. Seven dchildren were born to their happy union. Leonora Add died in Baton Rouge where she was living with her daughter, Flavie, on January 31, 1933 at the age of 81 years and she too was buried in Sacred Heart Cemetery.