Quack-a-Falaya Rotary Club of Covington

Sometimes community challenges require community solutions - - assisting with special needs children, keeping our rivers and streams clean and / or giving our youth a safe and positive environment in which to grow.  Contributions to the this Saturday's Quack-a-Falaya Duck Race benefit the Miracle League, Keep Covington Beautiful, the Covington Boys and Girls Club and the Lake Ponchartrain Basin Foundation ... all organizations dedicated to community solutions.

20 bucks gets a duck : ) If you're so inclined to support the Miracle League, keeping our rivers clean and / or the Boys and Girls Club, respond to this e-mail. $20 gets you a rubber duck in this Saturday mornings' "duck" race.

City Hall Re-Opened

As of today, September 22nd, City Hall has re-opened to the public. While in quarantine, we freshened up the entire downstairs with a new coat of paint. We also found time to launch a new website: WWW.COVLA.COM

Columbia Street … the Old West Courtesy St. Tammany Clerk of Court Archivist, Robin Leckbee Perkins

When we think of the Old West, we often think of Texas, Arizona or Oklahoma, but during the 1800's the port city of Covington was the wild frontier. Columbia Street was a wide dirt road with saloons, shops, wooden sidewalks, wagons and horses.

In 1874 the building we know today as the St. Tammany Art House was a general store, coffee house, grocery and liquor store run by Louis and Helen Fresch. On May 23rd of that year the Freschs determined that Matt Perry and Luke Allison had been "overserved" and thus denied the men further access to the establishment.

Perry and Allison commenced to slamming the door violently, contrary to Section 9 in the Revised Statue. They were swinging pistols and firing their guns in the street. Mr. Fresch a-spied Matt Perry creeping up the alley between the store and where H. J. Smith's Son is today (H.J. Smith and Sons would not open until 1876). He saw Perry fire a shot through the window, narrowly missing Mrs. Fresch. The round ball rolled about the floor of the store. The two men then headed up the street where they began to verbally abuse and terrorize the Fresch's son with obscenities and death threats. At this point a crew of workmen attempted to avoid the two scalawags, but eventually had had enough. The workmen took away Perry and Allison's guns - - and then beat the tar out of them. Today, we know Luke Allison's great, great (maybe 3 greats) nephew as Wayne Allison, bike mechanic at Brooks bicycle shop : )

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Rooted in History, Focused on the Future

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