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"	ELMWOOD MANOR ^	" ‘ ‘	'	~
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This old home originally stood on a 550 acre plantation. The land comprised all that area of north Bay St. Louis from and including Leopold Street from the Bay of St. Louis back to Jordan River. Ejnnjoori M.wm: wag hn-iJj- afcnni- t-jig yA-jn* -Vfl^7 (it is Said there is a brick somewhere to the rear of tHe house which bears this date) by the first Jesse Cowand who died in 1853^and was buried ?n the old Cowand cemetery on Leopold Street along with his wife, several of his children and descendants. There used to be a dirt road from Boardman Avenue through the woods to and past the cemetery but this has long since become overgrown with underbrush and trees.
My grandfather, Charles T. Cowand (youngest son of Jesse Cowand), was born in the southwest second floor bedroom of Elmwood in 1846.
In the 1820s the first Jesse Cowand purchased the property where Elmwood now stands from Melitte Lessassier. This was an original land grant from the Spanish government to Melitte Lessassier The bricks used in Elmwood were brought from Spain and had been used as ballast in ships. During those early days the beachfront extended out some 500 or more feet from where it now is, which land has been eaten away by numerous storms in the past and now covered with water. In the early days there were Indians in this area and they had piled up shells on the beachfront from clams which they had gathered and eaten. These clam shells were crushed and used in the mortar in the building of Elmwood.
The first Jesse Cowand originally lived in Mew Orleans, having moved there from Virginia just before the War of 1812, where he took part in the Battle of Mew Orleans and following which war he established a place of business in New Orleans.
^During the latter part of the 1820s Jesse Cowand had built a home (now the home of the Hunter Kimbroughs) in which they lived until Elmwood Manor was built and where they later moved. My grandfather's older brother (the second Jesse Cowand), in later years when the property was divided among the heirs, became the owner of the present Kimbrough property. This Jesse Cowand was the father of Qertrude Cowand Penney. There used to be another four room building to the rear connected to the main house by a covered porch, which was moved in the early 1920s to the south of the main dwelling near the stream and used as a rental house.
This house was destroyed in the hurricane of 1947.
There is yet one small piece of this property still in the Cowand family of this original purchase, besides the family cemetery on Leopold Street, and it is located on Julia Street and now belongs to my brother, Malcolm A. Cowand.