The city of Covington is the parish seat in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. The population was 8,765 at the 2010 census. It is located at a fork of the Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte River. The site was first settled in 1769 and incorporated in 1813. Covington, which sits in the fork of the Tchefuncte and Bogue Falaya Rivers, was founded by John Wharton Collins, a New Orleans merchant who migrated from Philadelphia soon after the Louisiana Purchase. Collins purchased the original town site of some 1600 acres in 1813. Collins sub-divided a portion of the site into streets and lots and called his development the Division of St. John of Wharton. However, when the Legislature granted the community a charter in 1816, the name was changed from Wharton to Covington in honor of General Leonard A. Covington, a hero of the War of 1812.
