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Homer is a town in and the parish seat of Claiborne Parish in northern Louisiana, United States.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 Named for the Greek poet Homer, the town was laid out around the Courthouse Square in 1850 by Frank Vaughn. The present-day brick courthouse, built in the Greek Revival style of architecture, is one of only four pre-Civil War courthouses in Louisiana still in use. The building, completed in 1860, was accepted by the Claiborne Parish Police Jury on July 20, 1861, at a cost of $12,304.36, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its courthouse, built in 1860, is one of four courthouses in Louisiana built before the Civil War that are still used today, the others are in St. Francisville, St. Martinville, and Thibodaux. The population of Homer was 3,237 at the 2010 census. ==History== Claiborne Parish was strongly Confederate during the Civil War. In 1863, a company of volunteers ineligible for conscription was organized in Homer to promote the war effort. Nevertheless, some Homer-area farmers hurried to Monroe during the war to trade their cotton for scarce items with the Union.〔John D. Winters, ''The Civil War in Louisiana'', Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963, ISBN 0-8071-0834-0, pp. 307, 406〕 The former newspaper, the ''Homer Iliad'', was published by Arkansas native William Jasper Blackburn during Reconstruction. Blackburn also served a year in the United States House of Representatives; as the Claiborne Parish administrative judge, a post which no longer exists; and as a member of the Louisiana State Senate. Andrew R. Johnson (1856–1933), a native of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, was president of Homer State Bank and served on the Claiborne Parish School Board and then in the early 1910s as the mayor of Homer. The town already had a municipal home-rule charter. Johnson's administration worked to bring electric lights and water works to fruition. In 1916, Johnson was elected to the first of two terms, without opposition, to the state senate. Johnson considered a gubernatorial bid in 1924 but declined.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Mike Miller, "Andrew R. Johnson," from Henry E. Chambers, ''A History of Louisiana'', Vol. II, Chicago and New York City, 1925, pp. 147–148 )〕 Earlier, while residing in northern Natchitoches Parish, Johnson laid out and in 1901 named the village of Ashland.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Ashland )〕 Johnson donated land for the former Ashland High School.〔H. Welborn Ayres, "History of Ashland, Louisiana", manuscript written for Ramah Cemetery Association, 1979〕 Johnson is interred in Coushatta in Red River Parish.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Andrew R. Johnson )〕 The Herbert S. Ford Memorial Museum operates across from the parish courthouse in the former Claiborne Hotel (completed 1890). The museum claims the oldest compressed bale of cotton in existence in the United States. This cotton display is believed to have been baled about 1930.〔Cotton exhibit, Herbert S. Ford Memorial Museum, Homer, Louisiana〕 Adjacent to the cotton exhibit is the "Black Gold", a replica of an oilfield roughneck—a general laborer worker who loading and unloads cargo from crane baskets and keeps the drilling equipment clean—employed in the early 1930s by the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company. The exhibit has a recording which explains how a farm family, growing mostly cotton and corn faced great economic travail in Mississippi but relocated to Claiborne Parish to take advantage of the oil and natural gas boom. "Oil changed our lives forever. We owe a lot to the men, mud, and mules that made it happen," concludes the recorded message. In 1921, oil was discovered in Homer; in 1921, another strike followed in Haynesville in northern Claiborne Parish. The boom continued through the 1930s and brought many customers to the then booming Hotel Claiborne, which had been established in 1890 and declared a state historic site in 1984.〔"Black Gold" exhibit, Ford Memorial Museum〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Homer, Louisiana」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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