John Martin Goyne 1/6/1861 to 1/11/1912

As told By: Emma Ruth Goyne Boles

To Gwendolyn Sawyer Smith

Mama, my grandmother, would tell me about the way it was when she was young. I remember well her stories about Rocky Branch, the people, and family. She would say it wasn't easy going places back then. I was just a bunch of trails criss crossing, in and around the woods, no real roads. One of the most interesting things she talked about was how after the civil war, some of the men couldn't find their way home. At the time one could get to West Monroe, if you knew the way, but the trails were rough, and often either washed out, or under water, mostly trips to town would be to go to Farmerville. To get to Monroe, they had to go threw Sterlington, then on to Monroe, and that would be a 2 day trip, there and back.

There wasn't any school there, so during the school months Mama was boarded out with the Wall's who owned a large plantation. They had a daughter Eva, close to mamas age and they got alone well, for a long part of mamas young life they were close as sisters. Soon as school was out Mama would come home.

It was around the time Mama was 9 years old, her father John Martin Goyne, got a contract with the state of La. to cut a road from Cross Roads to West Monroe, he was to be paid $75 when the road was finished. Mama was born in 1897, so expect this was some where around 1906. He started at Cross Roads, and worked toward the now Rocky Branch area, which at some time or another was named Colson. He would track threw the woods looking for the highest ground, so the road wove in and around. It was all cut with a ax, and crossbow saw, his only help was a mule, to pull the trees over out of the way. When he got to a rocky branch, he built a small store, and some of the family run it, while he went about cutting the rest of the road. I have the lock, and key that was on this store, and my son was given the tool that was used to open wooden crates supplies came in.

His work wasn't easy as he had a bad boil on his knee that bothered him, it would go away, only to come back again worse than ever, at times it was all he could do just to walk. Then one day when his knee was hurting really bad he cut a tree that fell onto another tree, that had a huge hornets nest in it, the nest came crashing down in a cloud of mad hornets, talking after him. He took off running fast as he could, and he out ran the hornets, and was later to have said he forgot all about the boil. Being out of breath he sit down on a log to rest, and saw his leg was all bloody, and at first thought he'd run into something, but his boil had busted, and his running had pumped all the infection from it, and it never came back again.

When he was working on the West Monroe end of the road, on Fridays when Mama would get out of school for the week-end he would bring her home. Mama would tell me, she loved her father more than anyone else, and it was those rides back and forth with him that she enjoyed more than anything else in her childhood.

It took him 2 years to cut the road, at which time the state said it didn't have the money to pay him. I don't know if he ever got paid for it or not, Mama didn't think he ever did get paid.

He did take advantage of the road he'd cut, by putting in a house boat on the D'Arbonne, and running it as a ferry.

When I was a kid, the road would often go under water, and couldn't get back and forth to West Monroe. My dad drove one of the dump trucks, as they worked on the road to built it up over the high water mark, and at that time you could still see some of the old road twisting and turning in and out threw the woods.

The Bar Pits alone the sides of 143, was where the dirt came from to build the road up higher.

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