Masons & The Westport Fight by Brother J. Gary “Gar” Pickering, Managing Editor Originally Published in the The Louisiana Freemason Weekly eEdition for Oct. 4, 2019
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Sam Todd Lodge photo from 1915 with Brother Mayo Moore in attendance. Louisiana Masonic Library & Museum Archives.
n Christmas Eve 1881, at the crossroads of what is now LA Hwy 113 and LA Hwy 462, in a place called No Man’s Land, a fight broke out. This fight was between the descendants of pioneers who had come to these woods several generations before, known as Ten Milers, due to their proximity to Ten Mile Creek, and new arrivals, outsiders, from other parts of Louisiana and the South. Many of these settlers had come from New Orleans, Alexandria, and elsewhere around the state. As they travelled West from Alexandria, they would have crossed the “Dead Line”, which was just west of Hineston. It is said that the fight
The Louisiana Freemason // Spring 2020
started over a horse race a few days prior; the losers accusing the winners of cheating. History shows than the fight was over much more than just a horse race, and this day was the day it was settled that the new folks needed to move along. One of the families that had settled on this side of the Calcasieu River was that of a merchant named Joseph W. Moore, of County Mayo in Ireland, who had made his way to this frontier by way of New Orleans, where he had first arrived from Ireland. It is said that he left Ireland in an escape, after he killing the hound of an
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