The Patriot Archive

Glenmora is a small town in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana. Founded in the 1860s, by the 1890s its population still numbered fewer than 100. The completion of a rail line from Alexandria to Lake Charles through the virgin pine forest of central Louisiana brought jobs to Glenmora, and by the 1920s the town had grown to about 1,500. The local economy was based on lumber milling and the production of naval stores. As timber resources dwindled and more land was cleared, truck farming expanded, with strawberries becoming Glenmora's principal crop. The Missouri Pacific Railroad and other owners of deforested land sponsored "colonization" projects to settle new farmers.

The Patriot was founded in June 1917 by Benjamin Walter Barnes. Within a few months, Barnes sold it to William W. Perry, a Methodist minister. By 1922, the Patriot had come under the management of Thomas Willis Cooper and his wife Nettie Cooper. In 1958, it was consolidated with another newspaper to form the Patriot-Tribune.

Published weekly in four to eight pages, the Patriot typically carried a mix of local, national, and international news. Local items included personal notes from Glenmora and the nearby towns of Lecompte and McNary, news of churches and social organizations, and reports on businesses. The paper was founded shortly after U.S. entry into World War I and contains much information on the conflict, including its effects on life in Louisiana. Like many country papers of its day, the Patriot carried regular columns on progressive farming techniques and the Good Roads movement, as well as short essays on social issues by prominent writers from around the world.