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re: Who would you say are the top 10 richest people in Lake Charles?
Posted on 3/1/25 at 5:35 pm to Ric Flair
Posted on 3/1/25 at 5:35 pm to Ric Flair
A lot has changed over the last 50 years when it was 5 families who controlled the city. Gray/Stream. Burton/Lawton Burton's daughter married a Shattuck) , Weber/King/Noland. Krause/Managan and Bels, including Nobles. Leach married a Welch, Buddy was a sideshow shipped off to Leesville not to be around.
Gardners were once part of the Bel family but went bankrupt trying to drain the marsh on the north side of Lacassine Reserve for rice production. A Bel put together the deal to buy the land using Houston oil money and family owning 51%. The Bel family sold a huge chunk of timber land and the timber company in the late 1990's for cash. I it was over 70,000 acres in Allen Beauregard Jeff Davis and Calcasieu parishes. Only one member of the board voted against the sale. J.A. Bel et al, Quatre Parish Company. A.B "Ab" Fay was head of the Bel companies in the 1960's and 70's He was chair of the GOP for Texas in the 1960's and Ambassador to Trinidad under Nixon. His mother was a Bel. His father a RR engineer from NOLA.
Matilda Gray donated her rice crop two years in a row to England and France right after WWII. She owned the largest collection of Faberge Eggs outside of Russia. She donated her research and manuscripts along with a lot of money to make Tulane the top school for Archeology in the USA, It specialized in Pre Columbian studies. She owned a huge ranch in Guatemala which also had highly skilled craftsmen to make identical copies of antique furniture she liked but was not for sale.
The Ged oilfield, source of the Gray/Stream wealth was the most productive oilfield per acre of land in the history of oil. It was discovered after kerosene smell was found in water wells for cattle.
Gardners were once part of the Bel family but went bankrupt trying to drain the marsh on the north side of Lacassine Reserve for rice production. A Bel put together the deal to buy the land using Houston oil money and family owning 51%. The Bel family sold a huge chunk of timber land and the timber company in the late 1990's for cash. I it was over 70,000 acres in Allen Beauregard Jeff Davis and Calcasieu parishes. Only one member of the board voted against the sale. J.A. Bel et al, Quatre Parish Company. A.B "Ab" Fay was head of the Bel companies in the 1960's and 70's He was chair of the GOP for Texas in the 1960's and Ambassador to Trinidad under Nixon. His mother was a Bel. His father a RR engineer from NOLA.
Matilda Gray donated her rice crop two years in a row to England and France right after WWII. She owned the largest collection of Faberge Eggs outside of Russia. She donated her research and manuscripts along with a lot of money to make Tulane the top school for Archeology in the USA, It specialized in Pre Columbian studies. She owned a huge ranch in Guatemala which also had highly skilled craftsmen to make identical copies of antique furniture she liked but was not for sale.
The Ged oilfield, source of the Gray/Stream wealth was the most productive oilfield per acre of land in the history of oil. It was discovered after kerosene smell was found in water wells for cattle.
3
Posted on 3/1/25 at 6:11 pm to Chastains
Gray family
Posted on 3/1/25 at 6:16 pm to CitizenK
quote:
quote:I don’t know Spook but Matilda Gray was a great woman She was considered the richest woman in the USA in her day.
Had a pretty suite French quarter place saw her faberge stuff there and some furniture that belonged to Marie Antoinette
Posted on 3/1/25 at 9:56 pm to choupiquesushi
quote:
Had a pretty suite French quarter place saw her faberge stuff there and some furniture that belonged to Marie Antoinette
A Paris mansion and a penthouse on Fifth Ave in NYC. She greatly benefitted American Legion Post 1 in Lake Charles on 2nd Ave. I was told she would visit annually and the ladies auxilary would be bring out the sterling tea set but she drank Old Fashions. She had loaned centuries old Persian carpets which they had hung on the walls but she demanded that they were rugs and should be walked on so removed from the walls and back onto the floors. They disappeared after she died. There were sent out for cleaning and never returned.
Posted on 3/1/25 at 10:02 pm to CitizenK
Another old timer with a lot of money was Horace Austin who owned Lake Charles Stevedores and Lake City Stevedores. They pretty much controlled the city docks of the Port of Lake Charles for decades. It was the largest point of VW Beetle and Bus imports in the 1960's and 1970's. It was THE rice port for the USA until the 1968 strike. Rice was the top diplomatic crop for exports. The Gov gave it away like crazy up to 1981. It was where urea fertilizer was bagged and placed aboard ship for Olin.
Horace Austin had bags of Krugerrand, at his home adjacent to Drew Park, which he counted once a year. It was said that while others were wealthier in town, he could put up more actual cash than anyone else.
Horace Austin had bags of Krugerrand, at his home adjacent to Drew Park, which he counted once a year. It was said that while others were wealthier in town, he could put up more actual cash than anyone else.
Posted on 3/1/25 at 11:37 pm to Chastains
The lawyer who wrote the golf book
Posted on 3/2/25 at 11:04 am to CitizenK
quote:
5 families who controlled the city
Do these families still own a bunch of land in Lake Charles or did they die off and sell a bunch of it
Posted on 3/2/25 at 11:55 am to Chastains
I'm not sure why I would readily know this or how I would even start researching it.....
Posted on 3/2/25 at 1:20 pm to CitizenK
quote:
Do these families still own a bunch of land in Lake Charles or did they die off and sell a bunch of it
Last I knew, which was 5 years ago or so, they still own a lot of land in the area.
quote:
She owned the largest collection of Faberge Eggs outside of Russia
Unless something has changed, these are all still in the family. Held in a private foundation. I used to work on their accounts and it was fascinating. I didn’t know that kind of wealth existed in South LA.
Posted on 3/2/25 at 2:48 pm to NCNurse
quote:
Pirate? Know of the family but don’t get the reference….
Mike Leach, the "Pirate."
Likely the best smartest football coach to have ever coached.
Posted on 3/2/25 at 4:39 pm to jordan21210
quote:
Unless something has changed, these are all still in the family. Held in a private foundation. I used to work on their accounts and it was fascinating. I didn’t know that kind of wealth existed in South LA.
Do you think the son Spook Stream is worth $100,000,000+ or even a billion?
Posted on 3/2/25 at 7:07 pm to jordan21210
Matilda’s Faberge Egg collection is on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Has been on exhibit there for years.
Posted on 3/3/25 at 8:58 am to LakeChuckTigah
The collection was at NOMA in New Orleans until Katrina. Black Water got them out. Then it was on display in Nashville when Spook lived there.
Posted on 3/3/25 at 9:07 am to Chastains
quote:
Do you think the son Spook Stream is worth $100,000,000+ or even a billion?
His son manages the estate now. Likely the vast majority is in trust. He does like his time on his luxury sailing yacht, Kawil, which is available for anyone to charter. In the past he was a pretty good businessman starting then building companies (not huge) then selling them. He found great staff and management.
I well remember NOVA 104, KGRA, which is now KBIU FM radio. It was one of the best FM stations in the nation with a great mix the first few years. It first aired with Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner. It has the best sound equipment to be found anywhere on the planet as well. It was an album rock with a little of the Cosmic Cowboys and a touch of South American progressive jazz. Just excellent all the way around with top music of the mid 70's when it went on air in the Summer of 1976.
He had his hands in a number of things around Lake Chuck to enhance the city. Judge Roy Beans, which became Scarlet O's after he sold it to DC Flynt next to the Post Office in the former Jalal's restaurant, Gandalf;s which brought in a lot of acts from Austin was a live music venue in Downtown. A T-Shirt printer with a silk screen press. American Erectors which was a crane and rigging company, .which gobbled up projects at the Port of Lake Charles and the plants.
The first sort of Mardi Gras celebration in Lake Chuck was a Zydeco band on a flat bed truck in the parking lot of Judge Roy Bean's in 1876. There was even a parade or anything else back then,
This post was edited on 3/3/25 at 9:14 am
Posted on 3/3/25 at 9:23 am to jordan21210
quote:
Unless something has changed, these are all still in the family. Held in a private foundation. I used to work on their accounts and it was fascinating. I didn’t know that kind of wealth existed in South LA.
Ha, look at Cameron Parish friend. Big wealth, industrial and mineral.
Some of the wealthiest people in these parishes are unknown, they are quiet and do not do any financial transactions in Lake Charles.
The majority of these folks' wealth is handled in Houston/Dallas whereas to keep all the information away from the Lake Charles gossip mills.
Sometimes the narrative is exactly what people want written haha.
Posted on 3/3/25 at 9:44 am to CitizenK
quote:
Buddy was a sideshow shipped off to Leesville not to be around.
he and his wife Laura were good friends with my parents, I always thought of him to be a big doofus that wanted so badly to be an "inside the Beltway" pol, she was a very sweet lady and long time LSU BoSThis post was edited on 3/3/25 at 9:47 am
Posted on 3/3/25 at 11:46 am to Chastains
I do not know. Fifty years ago has been a blur, no chauffeur.
Shell Beach Drive offered a lakefront view to a chosen few. That I know is true.
Country Club kids had the clout, never a draught.
Wealth divided, still one-sided? What do you think?
Shell Beach Drive offered a lakefront view to a chosen few. That I know is true.
Country Club kids had the clout, never a draught.
Wealth divided, still one-sided? What do you think?
Posted on 3/3/25 at 3:38 pm to jizzle6609
quote:
Ha, look at Cameron Parish friend. Big wealth, industrial and mineral.
A few of them do but not to the amount that the timber/oil families in Lake Chuck
Henning with Cameron Telephone and Mercury Cellular.
The Henry Davis trust owns most of Cameron along the water and swaths of marshland. I know them.
The Sanners in Hackberry who my mother lived with while teaching in Hackberry during WWII. Khaki clothes unless going to a board meeting then a custom made suit and Kole Hahn shoes is what Joe Sanner wore.
They still don't have the amount that the several older families have, though W. T Burton was a latecomer to the party.
Posted on 3/3/25 at 3:44 pm to CitizenK
quote:
A few of them do but not to the amount that the timber/oil families in Lake Chuck
Henning with Cameron Telephone and Mercury Cellular.
The Henry Davis trust owns most of Cameron along the water and swaths of marshland. I know them.
The Sanners in Hackberry who my mother lived with while teaching in Hackberry during WWII. Khaki clothes unless going to a board meeting then a custom made suit and Kole Hahn shoes is what Joe Sanner wore.
They still don't have the amount that the several older families have, though W. T Burton was a latecomer to the party.
Again, there's some very quiet very wealthy people in the surrounding area.
Posted on 3/3/25 at 5:53 pm to CitizenK
Pally Lawton wore kaki clothes and cowboy boots almost every day.
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