Shreveport man helps with mystery of 1942 wedding band found in Echo

With the help of Maynard Dean of Shreveport, Annette Sharp may be close to solving the mystery of a 1942 wedding band discovered while cleaning out her parents’ house in Echo.

Sharp said Dean searched through old newspaper archives and located three Town Talk articles that might indicate who owns the wedding band.

One is the marriage announcement of Charles W. Schultz who was stationed at Fort Livingston and Lucille Jackson Schultz of Alexandria who were married at a private residence on Dec. 4, 1942 in Alexandria.

The ring was engraved with initials of the couple (“CWS” and “LJS”) and the marriage date, 12-4-42. The initials were first thought to be “CWL” and “LSL.” Sharp even thought one set was “CWP,” but as her daughter was showing the ring to others, they concluded that the last letter may be an “L” instead of a “P.” 

Now, it’s been concluded that the last letter of the initials is an “S” due to the way the engraved letter is not connected at the top.

Since they thought the last letter of the initials was an “L” and there are so many families in Echo whose last names start with “L,” Sharp thought that it belonged to the Lacombes, Lamberts or Lachneys.

“I looked at the initials on there and I got with all of our family historians, if you will, and nobody could place that with a family member,” said Sharp in a previous Town Talk article.

The second article from 1968 is a transfer of land announcement from Wayne E. Jackson Sr. and Mrs. Hattie H. Jackson to Wayne E. Jackson Jr. and Lucille J. Schultz. 

A third article from 1985 is about a car accident on Highway 28 East “near the turnoff to Esler Regional Airport” in which Mr. Schultz, 65, died and Mrs. Schultz, 70, sustained moderate injures. The article lists them as residents of Groves, Texas. 

Sharp would like to find the family of the couple to whom the ring belongs.

“I hope they had children and grandchildren,” she said. “The ‘final’ story should be the return of the ring – hopefully.”

She would also like to know how her grandmother ended up with the ring. 

It was while clearing out 60 years’ worth of stuff from her parents’ house that Sharp’s grandson Austin Worsham, 13, discovered the ring that does not belong to anyone in their family.

The wedding band was mixed in with a bunch of coins in a plastic bag.

Sharp is now on a mission to look for the family of the ring’s owner so she can return a piece of their family’s legacy to them.

“Mother would keep baggies of coins and she would have Dad’s old 35-millimeter canisters that she would put quarters in,” said Sharp. 

Her mother is the late Joan Ann Beauregard Hathorn and her father the late Kellett William Hathorn. She doesn’t believe that her mother knew anything about the ring. 

“I was just turning stuff over to Austin for him to do what he wanted with and he discovered the ring,” she said. 

Her oldest daughter, who she says is clairvoyant, wore the ring and told Sharp that it didn’t belong to any of their family members. It was something used to barter.

In a vision, her daughter saw two women having a conversation and a man in the background telling one of the women, “Yes, it’s okay to do it.”

“And it’s 14k gold which seems to lend some credence to the fact that they used it to pay for something between my grandparents and whomever,” she said.

Sharp’s grandparents on her maternal side were Octave Guy and Anna Needham Beauregard.

“And they probably had a little more than everybody else,” she said. “And I suspect that somebody came to get money or borrow money. Or perhaps even pay for their sharecropping. I don’t know. But I would love to give this ring back to the family.”

Sharp got in touch with St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Echo to see if they had records on who was married on that day.

“They had one wedding on that date and it was Dauzats,” she said.

They suggested she get in touch with the St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Hessmer. Unfortunately, they have no records of anyone who married on that date.

So that makes her think the couple may have been Protestant.

Sharp hopes by sharing the story that maybe someone would be able to put them in touch with the right family so she can return a piece of their history.

For anyone who might be able to help her on her quest to find the family, Sharp can be contacted at asharp1952@gmail.com.