Columns

A heroic daughter and a bale of cotton saved her father’s life when the steamboat Lessie Taylor sank just after leaving the busy St. Landry port at Washington on Feb. 3, 1878.
The boat had been running regularly to New Orleans for nearly a decade by then and was regarded as one of the better steamers operating on Bayou Courtableau before it ran into a streak of bad luck. The late David Jasper McNicoll recalled in a memoir about Washington in the 1800s that the sinking was such a big deal that “folks used to mark time by that event.”

Promoters were not subtle when they tried to lure fishermen to Lake Catahoula in St, Martin Parish in 1921, “Every throw brings in a fish,” the notice in the St, Martinville Messenger promised. “Some of our local sports catch as many as four 18-inch perches at one throw.”

The Vatican last week formally accepted the case for sainthood for Charlene Richard, just a week before the 65th anniversary of her death on Aug. 11, 1959. For thousands of people a formal declaration isn’t necessary. They know that Charlene, is certainly “the little Cajun saint.”
The movement for her canonization has taken years to reach this point and will likely drag on for years to come, The Diocese of Lafayette closed its investigation in January and delivered a thousand or more stories and interviews about her life to the authorities in Rome.