Jim Bradshaw: It was easy to track the warehouse thief

The thieves who broke into Captain Gerand Carriere’s warehouse in the steamboat town of Washington in October 1873 might get an A for effort but would surely flunk a basic burglary course.
The warehouse was a tempting target. Carriere ran several successful businesses and was a wealthy man.
When he married Elize Roquebert de la Morandier in 1837, the marriage contract said the captain, then 27 years old, owned a $6,000 interest in Carriere, Gradnigo & Co.
That would be about $200,000 today, and that was only one of his ventures.
He was the first mayor of Washington after it was incorporated in 1836, and his tenure lasted for at least three decades.
A photo taken during the Civil War in 1863 shows Carriere, identified as mayor, and Union General Nathaniel Banks on the steps of Carriere’s home on Main Street, which federal troops used as a hospital.
The house still stands and, according to local lore, the ghost of a soldier returns regularly to it in search of his leg that was amputated there.
Carriere was a steamboat captain and later was a boat owner.
An advertisement in 1867 lists him as master of the steamboat Cleoma.
In 1873, he is included in a Washington Directory published in the Opelousas Courier as owner of a warehouse on Bayou Courtableau and “: dealer in groceries, Western produce, forage.”
The 1850 census listed his occupation as “steamboating,” but later census reports call him a “commission merchant.”
David Jasper McNicoll, who was born in 1876, recalled in a memoir about his youthful days in Washington, that “Captain Carriere had a thriving steamboat landing and cotton warehouse in the northeastern part of Washington.”
This was almost certainly the warehouse that was the target of our inexpert thieves.
According to news reports of the day, they were looking for money when they  broke open an iron chest that was in the warehouse, but there was nothing in it.
“Not finding what they wanted,” the Opelousas Courier reported, “they turned their attention to a larger safe, which was nearby.”
They couldn’t get that one open, so, “discouraged by the difficulties they met, they [had to] content themselves with … a barrel of flour and provisions.”
The theft was discovered at daybreak, when the steamboat Minnie tied up at the warehouse landing.
“The clerk of the boat, finding the doors open, entered the warehouse and called, but received no answer. He then went and roused the warehouse clerk.”
They discovered that the door had been broken open, that someone had tried to open the safe, and that a barrel of flour was missing.
Stealing the flour was the big mistake made by the thieves, who were led by a man named Henry Heard.
They had no way to carry the heavy barrel, so they simply rolled it to Henry’s house.
It being dark at the time, they may not have noticed that the barrel had a leak.
All the two clerks had to do was follow a white trail of flour that led directly from the warehouse to Henry’s door.
They found the flour, along with packages of coffee, rice and other provisions inside.   
Poor Henry could do nothing but confess and give up the names of his fellow barrel-rollers.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.