William André Elfer

Born in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, on November 17, 1882, he was a Louisiana-born writer whose surviving published reputation rests mainly on Breeding minks in Louisiana for their fur: A profitable industry, issued in New Orleans in 1909. The book presents mink breeding as a promising business and is framed as the result of his own experiments, giving it the feel of a practical handbook as much as a book.

Library and public-domain records consistently attribute that 1909 volume to him, and modern readers are most likely to encounter his name through Project Gutenberg, Open Library, or library catalogs preserving the title. Although biographical information about him is limited, the record suggests he was writing from direct local experience rather than from a purely academic distance.

He died on March 27, 1972. Even with only a small surviving bibliography, his work remains interesting as a snapshot of a very specific moment in Southern agricultural history and of the inventive, niche nonfiction that small presses once brought into print.