Slidell: Named for a Confederate Diplomat by His Son-in-Law

Slidell did not exist before the railroad. In eighteen eighty-two, the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad laid tracks northward from Lake Pontchartrain toward Meridian, Mississippi, and established a construction camp on the first high ground it found. That camp became a town.

The man who named it was Baron Frederic Emile d'Erlanger, a European banker who helped finance the railroad and, during the Civil War, had arranged a major bond issue for the Confederacy on behalf of Confederate diplomat John Slidell. Erlanger had married Slidell's daughter Mathilde, making the old diplomat his father-in-law. When the new station needed a name, the Baron chose to honor his late father-in-law. Slidell was chartered in eighteen eighty-eight, and within a generation it had a brick plant, a lumber mill, a creosote operation, and a shipyard that would contribute to both World Wars. Today it is the largest city in St. Tammany Parish, grown from a railroad camp named for a man who spent the Civil War lobbying Napoleon the Third.