Editing Harvey, Louisiana (section)

==History==
During the French colonial era, the first owner of this land was [[Jean Baptiste d'Estrehan|Jean-Baptiste d'Estrehan de Beaupre]],<ref>[http://www.lahistory.org/site21.php ''Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' online, 2008] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171020122638/http://lahistory.org/site21.php |date=October 20, 2017 }}, accessed September 22, 2015.</ref> royal treasurer and comptroller for the [[Louisiana (New France)|French Louisiana]] colony. He established a plantation here. He used his [[History of slavery in Louisiana|slaves]] to dig the ditch that would become the Harvey Canal, cutting south from the banks of the [[Mississippi River]] to the back of [[Bayou Barataria]], to provide better access.

Years later, d'Estrehan paid German settlers in the area to work on widening the ditch; they used wooden shovels. He paid them with small parcels of land located downriver in Mechanicsham, now the city of [[Gretna, Louisiana|Gretna]]. D'Estrehan built his home where the ditch met the river banks, naming the settlement "Cosmopolite City".<ref name="reeves">Reeves, William D. (William Dale), ''Harvey: The Canal, the Family, the Community''; ''The Times-Picayune''; date: April 17, 1949; page 97; location: New Orleans, Louisiana.</ref>

Harvey was founded as a company town at its founding, developed by Joseph Hale Harvey (born March 7, 1816). During this time, Joseph Harvey would rename Cosmopolite City after his family surname. Harvey's wife, ''née'' Louise Destrehan, was a great-granddaughter of Jean Baptiste d'Estrehan. She was the daughter of Nicolas Noel d'Estrehan and granddaughter of [[Jean Noel Destréhan]].

Harvey and Destrehan initiated construction of the canal locks leading to the Mississippi. Their son, Horace Harvey (c. 1860-1938), carried on development of the canal and its surroundings.<ref name="reeves" /><ref>Ray Samuel, "Grand Canal of an Oil Empire", ''New Orleans States Magazine'', pp. 5-7, The Times-Picayune</ref>