Oil City's "American Trilogy"

My hometown of Oil City, Louisiana has its own "American Trilogy". Remember the song by Mickey Newbury and sung by Elvis Presley that represented the parties involved in the Civil War? It is actually an arrangement combining parts of earlier songs "Dixie", "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and "All My Trials", representing the Confederacy, the Union, and the American slave respectively. Interestingly, the town has former residents representing each component of the trilogy.

Texas Seymour Magee (1845-1933) Private, CSA, Company A, 27th Texas Partisan Rangers of Dismounted Cavalry. This term refers to troops that traveled by horseback, but fought on foot. Company A was known as the "Texas Invincibles" and recruited from the Daingerfield area. The 27th (known as Whitfield's Legion and itself part of the larger Ross Cavalry Brigade) fought in northern Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi, including notably at Vicksburg and in the Atlanta campaign. Not much is known about his later life other than that he lived in Bossier City (1930) shortly before his death. He is buried locally in Evans Cemetery.

Schuyler B. Nichols (1846-1925) Private, USA, 1st New York Veteran Cavalry, Company B. Initially based in Washington , D.C., the 1st NY Vets fought primarily in Virginia and West Virginia. After the war, he had a long career as a railroad engineer around the midwest and south, before eventually moving to Oil City and becoming an oil man in the early 1900s. Mr. Nichols died and is buried in Palacios, Texas.

Schuler B. Nichols in undated photo

Ist New York Veteran Cavalry Banner

Robert "Uncle Bob" Ledbetter (1859-1942) was born a slave and lived in the area all his life. The uncle of famous songster Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter as well as local bluesman Noah Moore, Uncle Bob is notable for being interviewed and recorded for the Smithsonian in 1940 by John Lomax, a University of Texas professor and folklorist who, during the 1930s and 1940s toured the country recording local songs and stories of related cultural life he saw was about to go away with homogenization brought on by mass media. Lomax had earlier discovered Lead Belly (who also lived in Oil City for a short time) while visiting Louisiana State Prison in Angola. He recorded both Uncle Bob and Noah in Oil City in 1940; the former talking of his life and singing in his deep, gentle, baritone voice accompanied by the former, as well as Noah playing and singing his repertoire separately.

"Uncle Bob" Ledbetter in 1940

Here is the 1940 interview of Uncle Bob by John Lomax, preserved in the Smithsonian Institution.

There are surely others in OC's past that fall into one of these groups, but these individuals are the ones identified so far. Texas and Schuyler have been added to the Remembering OC's Veterans page.

In tribute to all is Mickey Newbury performing his musical arrangement, American Trilogy.

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