Esaw Lawson: A Life from Slavery to Freedom in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana

Esaw Lawson was born around 1846 according to the 1900 United States Federal Census. While researching the U.S. Freedmen Contract, 1865- 1878, I found Esau on  Sharkey Mills Plantation. in St. Helena Parish, with his father Henry Lawson When Esaw Lawson passed away on June 18 at around 95 years old, his life marked nearly a century of profound change in the American South. Born into slavery before the Civil War, Lawson lived to see emancipation, Reconstruction, and the rise of the Jim Crow era—periods that reshaped the nation but often left Black Southerners navigating persistent inequality.

As a young man, Lawson was enslaved by Tom Davidson of Springfield in Livingston Parish. Like many formerly enslaved individuals, his early life was defined by forced labor and limited autonomy. After emancipation, he remained in the region, building a life in the same communities where he had once been held in bondage.

Over the years, Lawson became a familiar presence in and around Amite. He worked for local employers, including a period as a groundskeeper for the Gullett Gin Company, where he was responsible for maintaining the property and its surroundings. His work, like that of many Black laborers of his generation, was essential yet often underrecognized.

In his later years, Lawson lived in Reid’s Quarter, a Black neighborhood in Amite. Though his health declined during his final year, he remained known among residents across the town and surrounding countryside. Prior to 1910, no record of a name for the school for African-American in Kentwood. It was stateted that Esaw Lawson was the head of the first School. The school, which ws the first Training School for African Americans in Tangipahoa Parish. Esaw Lawson was asked to suggest a principal for the school and he submitted the name of Oliver Wendell Dillion

His funeral drew a large crowd, an indication of the connections he formed over decades in the area. He was laid to rest in Butler Town Cemetery, closing a life that stretched from slavery into the modern age. 

Citation

The Roseland Herald (Roseland), 23 June 1933, p. 1, obituary of Esau Lawson; digital image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/854092121/ : accessed 27 April 2026).