E. S. Dortch

Elam Sparks Dortch, known as E. S. Dortch (September 13, 1841 – April 29, 1943), was a cotton planter and politician from Haughton in northwestern Louisiana. At the age of 101, he was the last surviving Confederate States Army veteran from his adopted Bossier Parish.

Biography

Dortch was born in Claiborne County near Port Gibson in western Mississippi but came as a child to Bossier Parish, located opposite the Red River from Shreveport. As a young man, he worked in Fillmore in eastern Bossier City as a clerk for the merchant Elias Connell. Dortch's subsequent estate in southeastern Bossier Parish was known as "Ash Point." It was twice ravaged by flooding but survived.^[1] He operated a mercantile store on his plantation.^[2]

During the American Civil War, Dortch enlisted in the Bossier Volunteers, officially Company D of the 9th Regiment, commanded by General Richard Taylor, a son of Zachary Taylor. The Bossier Volunteers left from the then Bossier Parish county seat of Bellevue, later moved to Benton, where it remains. Dortch reached the rank of colonel under General Stonewall Jackson and was wounded at the 1862 Second Battle of Bull Run in Prince William County, Virginia, was captured as a prisoner of war by the Union Army at the 1864 Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in Spotsylvania County in eastern Virginia and held until the cessation of hostilities in 1865. Dortch was thereafter affiliated with the Benevolent Association of Confederate Veterans and the United Confederate Veterans.^[1]

Dortch served as a Democrat in the Louisiana State Senate from 1900 to 1908. He represented Bossier and neighboring Webster parishes for two terms and was succeeded by the banker William Benton Boggs^[3] of Plain Dealing in northern Bossier Parish. Dortch was also a justice of the peace for many years,^[2] a member of the Bossier Parish Police Jury, the parish governing board akin to the county commission in other states, and the Bossier Parish School Board.^[1]

Dortch's wife, the former Susan Rebecca Platt (1856-1885), died at the age of twenty-eight.^[4] He did not remarry and was left to rear two daughters, Pearl and Ola Lee. A twin sister of Ola Lee died in infancy. Dortch died at the home of his daughter, Pearl Colbert in Atlanta, Georgia. Second daughter Ola Lee West also survived her father.^[1]

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