Richard Maxwell Drew

Who was Richard Maxwell Drew?

Richard Maxwell Drew was an attorney and politician in Claiborne Parish in North Louisiana. His family was among the first settlers of what is now Webster Parish, established in 1871 as a breakaway from Claiborne Parish.

Drew was a son of Newitt Drew and Sarah A. Sally Maxwell Drew, natives of Southampton County in Virginia, who later moved to Wilson County, Tennessee, and then northwestern Louisiana. Richard Maxwell Drew was born in his father's Overton community on Dorcheat Bayou near Minden, Louisiana, the seat of government of Webster Parish. The community was subsequently obliterated by yellow fever. Drew's brother, Thomas Stevenson Drew, who was twenty years his senior, became the governor of Arkansas in 1844. Thomas S. Drew was the namesake of Drew County, Arkansas.

R. M. Drew married the former Sarah Jessie Cleveland in 1846. At seventeen, he was already practicing law. At twenty-three in 1845, he was a district judge in Claiborne Parish, and a delegate to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1845. For the last two years of his short life, Drew was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives.