Joseph Barton Elam, Jr.

Joseph Barton Elam, Jr. (June 1, 1878 – October 24, 1935), was a politician, businessman, and journalist in his native Mansfield in DeSoto Parish in northwestern Louisiana.^[1]​

Biography[edit]

Elam was the son of the former Mary Elizabeth Stewart and Joseph Barton Elam Sr., a lawyer who served in the Louisiana House of Representatives, as Speaker of the House during the American Civil War, and thereafter in the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana's 4th congressional district.^[2]​

Elam graduated from the Episcopalian-affiliated private Sewanee University in Sewanee, Tennessee. He worked as a journalist in Chicago, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri, and Oklahoma, before he returned to Mansfield, where he studied law privately and organized the DeSoto Abstract Company. He founded the newspaper, the Mansfield Progress, which merged with the Mansfield Enterprise, of which he became the editor. On June 25, 1912, he married the former Margaret Taylor, daughter of Johnetta Morgan and James Taylor of Nashville, Tennessee and Cleburne, Texas, respectively. Their children were Joseph Barton, III (born 1914), Johnetta (born 1915), Mary Stewart (born 1917), and Margaret Taylor (1919-1977).^[3]​

Elam was the mayor of Mansfield from 1914 to 1920, in which capacity he was the president of the Louisiana Mayors Association, now the Louisiana Municipal Association. He founded and edited the periodical, Louisiana Municipalities. He was a chairman of the Louisiana State Democratic Central Committee. He was employed by Standard Oil in Louisiana in the land development division. He was the secretary of the Louisiana-Arkansas Division of the trade association, the United States Oil & Gas Association, then known as Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association. Elam was affiliated with Kiwanis International and was a communicant of the Episcopal Church.​

He died in Shreveport at the age of fifty-seven and is interred at Highland Cemetery in Mansfield.^[3]​

After her husband's death, Margaret Taylor Elam, moved her children to the capital city of Baton Rouge so they would be near Louisiana State University. Their daughter, also named Margaret Taylor Elam, married the attorney Richard Harmon Drew, Sr., of Minden, whom she met at LSU and who was later the Webster Parish member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1972 and 1978. One of their three children, Elam's grandson, is Harmon Drew, Jr., of Minden, a judge since 1998 of the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeal for the Second District, based in Shreveport.

References[edit]