The Opelousas courier., 1892-02-27
Curious LOTTERY ancestry.
Baton Rouge Advocate.

Baton Rouge Advocate.
The New Orleans States has. been
delving ameng the musty records of
Louisiana legislation. and was reward
ed with some valuable information III
regard TO ancient lotteries in the State
and the promoters of such ungodly
schemes in past generations. At every
tnrn the searcher found lotteries OF all
kinds-for ~levees. for streams, for Ii
b%rarles, for colleges, for academies, for
churches and for charitable or purely
private interests, while the founders
and promoters of them were men
whose brighten the page OF the
early history of Louisiana, whose ser
vices to the State make their memories
enduring in the hearts of the people,
and the record of whose honorable
lives is pointed to with pride by their
descendants of to day.
We have neither space nor time to
60 over the rechrd in detail. but pro
pose to touch % it briefly, hoping to
again refer to4t hereafter as an object
lesson" worthy of study and contem
plation. These lotteries were not
purely benevolent in object, but were
adopted as u measure of raising a rev
enue for the purposes for which they
were established, They hourished in
the good old times when the Louisiana
State Lottery had not come to disturb
the whole priceless domain of good
morals" and to "trail the honor OF
Louisiana in the DUST as, W are in
formed by the Anti Lottery Address
recently issued is now the case. In
some of them the tickets sold realized
$4,000 while the prizes amounted to
only $40, 1000 in others the projectors
proposed to pay back so per cent of the
total receipts to the ticket holders,
though in some cases the gifts consist
ed of lands, live stock, books or house
hold furniture, estimated at about
twice their value.
The most notable church lotteries
were the Christ Church lottery, char.
tered in 1910, which healped to build
the Episcopal Church of that name in
New Orleans, now the wealthiest con-
grigation in the city the Presbyterian
Church of New Orleans, now Rev. DIR.
B. M. Palmer's; the Evangelical lottery,
in 1928, to build an Evangelical Church
in New Orleans, and other church lot
teries granted as follows: In 1926, for
the st. Francis Church at Natchitoches;
in 1927, for the Catholic Church at st.
Martinsyille, and in 1928 for the Church
of St. Joseph at Baton Rouge. Among
tho educational lotteries incorporated
in that day may be mentioned the
lCollega of Louisiana lottery chartered
about 1880, for the purpose OF raising
$40, 1000 to establish a college at Jack
son, of which Centenary is the success
sor; also lotteries to aid or establish
colleges or academies al Baton Rouge
Natchitoches, Alexandria, CovingtoE
and other places, and last but not leas
a lottery to raise money to found tn
University Of Louisiana.
On the 7" roll of honor" indeDtifet
with these various lotteries, We fni
the names of julien Poydras, John L
Grymes, John McDonogh,, Levy Eos
ter, who not only voted for three of tn
denominations but in a ferVent speech
recommended that plan of raising reve
nue.; Gen. Philemon Thomas, .Brancl
;, w. Miller, Alfred Hennen, Louis I
DeBlanc, and a host of others, anon
whom are the ancestors of some of th
} leading anti lottery advocates of th
} present day. In the presence of thes
illustrious men, standing before th
J honored shrines of their patriotism, W
may ask ourselves whether our philoso
phy is wiser or our morality pure
than theirs; whether, in fact, we hav
not grown %squeamish ratherthan virtu
Gus, and if modern piety is not rathe
/ fashioned after that %puritanical typ
which strains at a gnat and swallow
a camel.