George Washington Flowers Memorial Collection DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ESTABLISHED BY THE FAMILY OF COLONEL FLOWERS h i ^ ^ /y Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/pikecounty01cone PIKE COUNTY MISSISSIPPI 1798-1876 Pioneer Families and Confederate Soldiers Reconstruction and Redemption BY LUKE WARD CONERLY NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE BRANDON PRINTING COMPANY I909 Copyright, 1909, by Luke W. Conerly. THE FLOWERS COLLECTION C T4-7"P Co tfye Pioneer (Ancestors Patriotic anb Deooteb tDomen anb Confcberate Solbiers of pike County, Mississippi (Ttys JDork is Debicateb Ctje Gutter 3WW3 Introduction The object of 'writing this book was the preservation of the names of the Confederate soldiers of Pike County, Mississippi. In presenting it to the public the author does so with the con- sciousness of having performed a sacred duty, purely and simply, and he believes that 'without his w ? ork much would have been lost of historical interest and importance to the future of Pike County and to the historian. It was not a part of his plans to enter into details of the Civil War except such as related to Pike County and the gallant men whose names appear on the rolls of the companies incorporated in the work and remembrance of the women of that period; and, in connection with them, it seemed just and proper to go back to the early days of the pioneer settlement of the territory embraced in Pike County and give a record, as far as possible, of the brave men and women who left their homes in the older States to locate in the wilds and amid the dangers of a new territory ; men and women who became the ancestors of a hardy, self-reliant race of unbending fortitude and heroic virtues. To his mind there is a glory enshrining their memory akin to that which belongs to and embelishes the Revolution of ’76. An examination of records in the Department of Archives and His- tory in the State House disclosed to the writer that the muster rolls and records "were incomplete, being those made out and filed in 1861, and not containing names of recruits that entered the Confederate service with these companies and served through the war, nor any final statements, thus leaving out of the records a large number of 376773 men who were engaged in the most eventful scenes of the great con- flict, and some companies not appearing among the records at all. This made it necessary to obtain them otherwise, which has required many years and a most careful revision through the aid of survivors of the different companies The names of many who went into the service with other commands have been lost, but the author feels that so far as concerns the names of members of companies organized in and going out from Pike County his record is measurably correct, and trusts that his care and labor and great personal expense will prove useful, instructive and valuable, as well as interesting, and will be appreciated by those into whose hands it may come. History of Pike County, Mississippi CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF MISSISSIPPI. The territory of Mississippi was owned and occupied by the Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Chocchuma, Tunica and Yazoo Indians. The Chickasaws and Choctaws were the most powerful and occu- pied the northern, central and southern parts of the territory. The Natchez lived along the Mississippi River, the Biloxies and Pascagoulas on the Gulf coast, and the Tunicas and Yazoo tribes lived on the Yazoo River. The Chocchumas lived in the eastern part of the territory. Spain nominally possessed this territory until 1699, when the Trench under Pierre LeMoine d’Iberville made a settlement at Biloxi and called it Louisiana, with Biloxi the seat of government. In 1763 Mississippi Territory became a province of England, known as West Florida, and a province of Spain in 1781, the Spanish seat of government being at Natchez. In 1795 the Natchez district became a part of the United States, and the Mississippi Territory was formed by act of Congress in 1798. While a territory of Georgia that portion lying east of the Missis- sippi River between latitude 31 0 and the mouth of the Yazoo River was called the county of Bourbon. In 1795 Georgia sold to four companies about three millions of acres of this territory for two and one-half cents per acre. The census of 1800 gave Mississippi Territory a population of 8,850 for the counties of Pickering, Adams and Washington, and the census of 1810 gave a population of 40,352 for the counties of Picker- ing, Adams, Washington, Baldwin, Amite, Claiborne, Franklin, Madi- son, Jeflerson, Warren, Wayne and Wilkinson. 10 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The District of Mobile, lying east of Pearl River, west of the Per- dido and south of the 31st degree of latitude, was annexed to Missis- sippi in 1812. Hernando DeSoto and his Spanish followers were the first white men mentioned in our histories to explore the territory now the State of Mississippi. They came in on the Black Warrior and Tombigbee Rivers in 1540. In 1673 Pere Jacques and Louis Joliet came down the Mississippi River, probably as far as Natchez. In 1683 LaSalle, a French explorer, passed down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. A colony was planted on the Bay of Biloxi in 1699 by Pierre LeMoine d’Iberville. Fort Rosalie, where Natchez stands, was built in 1716 under direc- tion of Bienville, Governor of Louisiana. In 1721 a colony was started at Pascagoula. The Mississippi Territory became a part of Georgia in 1732. In 1809, under the administration of Gov. David Holmes, the Indians began to give trouble and in August, 1812, Fort Mims was attacked by 1 ,000 Creek Indians and their British allies under Weather- ford, McQueen and Francis, and 260 of the garrison massacred. The following year their holy city, Escanachaha, was destroyed by an expedition of Mississippians under General Claiborne. PIKE COUNTY. The territory of which the county of Pike is a part was originally occupied by the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Natchez Indians. According to our histories, the first European who visited the region of country of which the State of Mississippi was then a part, was Hernando DeSoto, a Spaniard who, having projected the con- quest of Florida, came from Cuba in 1539 with a considerable force and traversed the country to a great distance, and, in the spring of 1541, first discovered the Mississippi River, five or six hundred miles above its mouth. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 11 In 1683 M. LaSalle visited the same region and gave it the name of Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIVth of France. We are told by early writers that over this -undefined but vast extent of country the French claimed jurisdiction, and, in 1716, they began a settlement at Natchez on the Mississippi River, and erected a fort. In 1763 they ceded the country east of the Mississippi River to the English, and the latter ceded it to Spain in 1783. In 1798 the Spaniards abandoned it to the United States. In 1798 the territory lying between the western boundary of Georgia and the Mississippi River, and which until now had been claimed by Georgia and called the Georgia Territory, was erected by Congress into a district territorial government by the name of the Mississippi Territory. Under this government, with Winthrop Sargent at its head, the Territory was divided into two counties — the southern portion being called Adams County and the northern portion Pickering County. Under acts of December 9, 1811, all that tract of country within the following boundaries, to-wit: “Beginning on the line of demarka- tion where the fourth range of townships east of Pearl River inter- sects the said line, thence west with said line of demarkation to the sixty mile post east of the Mississippi, being the first range of town- ships west of Tansopiho; thence north on said line of townships to the Choctaw boundary line; thence along the said Choctaw boundary line to the fourth range of townships east of Pearl River; thence with said range to the beginning, shall constitute a county which shall be called Marion” (named in honor of Gen. Francis Marion). John Ford, George H. Nixon, William Whitehead, Stephen Noble and John Graves were appointed commissioners for Marion County with power to establish a seat of government, which was located on Pearl River at a place called Columbia. At this period the country was comparatively an unbroken wilder- ness with but few inhabitants who had been lured by the thoughts of adventure to abandon their homes in the older States of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, and with their families and transportable property, penetrated the depths of this wilderness 12 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI as pioneers, to begin the foundation of new homes and a great State government. John Applewhite and Jacob Ford, with others from North Carolina, with their families, embarked in flatboats on the Cumberland Riv er, floated down to Natchez and moved across to Pearl River and settled, and Michael Harvey came in there from Georgia in 1808. As far back as 1798 immigrants began to come in and locate on the different . The Alford Bridge over Bogue Chitto River in the Northern Part of Pike County streams threading the extensive territory embraced in Marion County, the Pearl and Bogue Chitto Rivers receiving the larger number and extending in groups along the Tansopiho, the Otopasas, Magees Creek and their numerious tributaries. John Warren is said to have settled on the Otopasas about seven miles north of the town of Holmesville as early as 1799; and John Magee even earlier than this on Magees Creek, and Jacob Owens on Dry Creek about 1800. Between this time and 1816 they came in HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 13 larger numbers, locating themselves more nearly to the beautiful clear-water streams and tributary branches. The river and creek bottoms were covered with a dense growth of wild cane and the pine hill regions with a wild pea commonly known as partridge pea, beggar lice and other rich vegetation and grasses, affording magnificent pasturage for horses, cattle, sheep, goats and hogs; and the swamps with mast-producing trees, and the streams abounding with an inexhaustible supply of fish. Wild deer, turkeys, bear, wolves, panthers, cats, coons, opossums, beavers, otters, squirrels and the numerous feathered tribe for game were practically inexhaustible. Reports going back from those who were first to venture into these regions to their friends and kindred in the States induced others hence, and during the intervening years prior to 1815 the population had increased so as to be numbered by the thousands instead of the few dozens, scattered over the 20,000 square miles of this county of the Mississippi Territory. Nearly, if not all, of the first settlers of Marion County embraced within the designated lines of Pike County squatted on public lands, built their homes and lived on them long befoie a squiring deeds from the government, and hence the map of the first entries cannot be relied upon as a guide to determine the date ot settlement, and some of them not for nearly a half century afterwards. Vi hile yet a territory the seat of government of Mississippi was locateo alternately at Washington and Natchez. By an act of December 9, 1815, of the Territorial General Assem- bly, the county of Marion was divided in the following manner, which record was transcribed from the county records of Pike several years betoie the destruction of the courthouse in Magnolia, when the records of couit were lost: "Beginning on the line of demrkation at the southeast comer of Amite County, running from thence east along said line thirty miles; thence a line to run due north to its intersection with the summit of the dividing ridge between the waters of Bogue Chitto and Pearl Rivers, after the same shall cross the waters of Magees Creek; thence along the said ridge until it intersects the south- ern boundary of Laurence County; and all that tract of territory fromerly a 14 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI part of Marion County, lying north and west of the lines thus described, shall form a new county to be named Pike” (in honor of General Zebulon Pike). Until the commissioners appointed to fix the permanent seat of justice had designated the spot, the place of holding court in Pike County was at the residence of Gabriel Allen, who acquired owner- ship to the north half of section 28, township 3, range 9 east in Janu- ary 17, 1815, and March 8, 1816, on the west side of the Bogue Chitto River, near the geographical center of the new county. Benjamin Bagley, Peter Felder, Sr., Obid Kirkland, William Bullock and David McGraw, Sr., were appointed commissioners to fix on the site for public buildings, to be located at the most eligible place within three miles of the geographical center of the county of Pike, said place so fixed to remain as the permanent seat of justice. These commissioners Were required to procure, by purchase on the best terms, or by donation, as much land as necessary for the seat of justice, provided the quantity was not less than forty acres nor more than one hundred and sixty acres, and to have an equal regard for eligibility of situation and the convenience of the inhabitants, so as to promote the best interests of the county. Said lands to be laid off in town lots, reserving a sufficient quantity for a public square, a courthouse, jail and church ; the balance to be sold and the proceeds used for county purposes. The commissioners having located the spot and procured the prop- erty as required by the law, an act was passed by the General Assembly, December 11, 1816, ratifying the action of the commissioners and giv- ing it the name of Holmesville, in honor of Maj. Andrew Hunter Holmes.* The commissioners, in selecting this spot for a seat of justice, acted with great wisdom, not only on account of its being near the geo- graphical center of the county, but from a picturesque point of view, *Major Andrew Hunter Holmes was an army officer: Captain, of the 24th Infantry, in 1812; he was major June 8th to September 4th, 1813; was major 32nd Infantry, April 18, 1814. He was killed August 4th, 1814, in an attack on Fort Mackinac, Michigan. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 15 its sanitation and its availability as a business center and watering facilities. The town was located on a sloping hummock, partly in section 28, acquired by Gabriel Allen, and partly in section 21, acquired by R. Hardly, at the base of a high range of pine hills gently circling its western and southern borders, spreading out fan-like northeastward, with the beautiful Bogue Chitto River forming its northeastern boun- dary. This stream takes its rise from a multitude of springs and branches that come out north and west of Brookhaven, in Lincoln County, Bogue Chitto and Johnson stations, and flows in a southeasterly direction through Pike County and Washington Parish and empties into Pearl River in St. Tammany Parish, La. It is one of the most lovable and picturesque streams to be found anywhere in the South. Its waters, coming from pure limpid springs that supply its numerous tributaries, flow softly and sweetly over gravel beds from the northern boundary of the county till it passes away in its meanderings into Louisiana, mirrowing in its bright waters the grand scenery bordering either side of it for over a hundred miles. At intervals, and alter- nately, it is overlooked by high ridges covered with majestic pine, oak, beech, magnolia and a multitude of other valuable growth, that moan eternally as they are fanned by the ocean’s breezes. Its waters, like all other inland streams, were full of fish, and its forests inhabited by wild game in great abundance, and the trapper and the hunter had all the employment desired. Just at the foot of the hammock, on which the town of Holmesville was built, was a ravine or slough that reached from the river above, passing on down and emptying into it below, forming a small island between the base of the town and the river. Along this ravine was a network of fresh-water springs which were utilized for drinking and household purposes by the first settlers, but wells were afterwards dug and good water obtained at a depth of twenty feet and over. The river for a long distance in front of Holmesville was deep and unfordable and had to be crossed on flatboats made for the purpose and used as public ferries. The first one of these was located above 16 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI the town some distance near the home of widow Mulligan, known as Carroll’s ferry, where General Carroll, commanding a small division of Tennessee troops, crossed on his route to New Orleans during the War of 1812 and 1815. This was afterward abandoned and another one was established below the island in front of the town and was worked by Solomon Quin, a negro slave who belonged to Mrs. Martha Quin, widow of Col. Peter Quin, one of the original settlers of the town. For many years after this Solomon was a noted ginger-cake and com beer vendor at all the gatherings and occasions of public interest in the history of Holmesville. General Carroll, above mentioned, marched through the country all the way from Tennessee to New Orleans and cut his trail, or path, through the forests as he traveled, for the purpose of reaching New Orleans in time to aid Gen. Andrew Jackson in defence of that city against the British invaders under General Packingham. His route through Pike County was nearly due north and south, crossing Bogue Chitto above the town of Holmesville at a point afterwards known as Carroll’s ferry, and passing down on the west side of the river, keeping the main ridge route as nearly as practicable to Love’s Creek, through the Brumfield, Forest, Leggett, Pound, Walker and Simmons neighborhood, and thence due south on through Washington Parish, La. After the battle of Chalmette, fought on the 8th of January, 1815, General Carroll returned with his Tennessee troops through Pike County the same route he had blazed out on his advance, and camped for awhile on Loves Creek. There were a few pioneer settlers in this section at that time with family names as above mentioned. While camped here he lost one of his men and buried him in the woods beside the trail he had cut out and marked the grave with a slab hewed out of a tree cut from the woods. In this particular section this trail has since been kept well marked and the pioneer settlers, their children and grand children and great grand children have kept an eye on the grave of this gallant Tennessee soldier all along down the passing years. While compiling notes and records for this work the writer had occasion to accept the hospitality of Henry S. Brumfield, who lived HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 17 nearby, and who was born and raised in the neighborhood. Mr. Brum- field’s ancestors and others had transmitted to him a knowledge of this grave and he made it a point to care for it in order that its identity might not be lost. He mentioned the circumstances to the writer and the following morning went with him and showed him the grave, a note of which was taken at the time. In 1907 Congress passed an act making appropriation for the Chalmette Cemetery, records and monuments, or memorials, to the heroes of that bat- tle. This fact coming to the knowledge of the writer, he addressed a letter to Hon. Luke Wright, Secretary of War, acquainting him with the traditions and history of Gen. Carroll’s march through Pike County and the death and burial of this soldier in an isolated place in the woods of Love’s Creek, suggest- ing that if the government would furnish a suitable, lasting slab or mark for the grave, Mr. Henry S. Brumfield and himself would put it up, both being ex-Confederate soldiers and feeling an interest in so doing; and, inasmuch as the government was going to make Chalmette a National Cemetery and mark the graves of soldiers who fell there, it seemed to him proper that the govern- ment should have a consideration for, and not overlook the remains of this one who had served in that memorable campaign, whose name had been lost by the decay of the wooden slab that bore its inscription, but the identity of whose last resting place was without a question of doubt in his mind. The result was that the matter was referred to the Quartermaster General of the army, and through correspondence between Captain P. W. Whitworth, Quar- termaster U. S. A., Washington, D. C., and the writer, and Captains Louis F. Gerrard and Arthur Cranshon, Quartermasters U. S. A., and Major Arthur M. Edwards, Commissary, U. S. A., New Orleans, La,, arrangements were made and instructions given to Capt. Thomas O’Shea, Superintendent of the Chalmette Cemetery, to be accompanied by the writer from Gulfport, to proceed to Pike County, locate the grave and disinter the remains and convey them to New Orleans for reinterment in the Chalmette Cemetery. This was done October 9, 1908. Arriving at Magnolia on the night of the 5th, they proceeded the following day, being conveyed to the spot by Henry Brum- field, Jr., where they procured the assistance of Elisha Thornhill and son and Capt. Frank Grouche, formerly of Baton Rouge, ex-officer of the regular army of the Spanish War period, who assisted in the work of taking up the remains. Ninety-three years had passed since the event. The soldier was buried in his uniform without a coffin. The remains were flattened to a thickness of about one inch and the bones greatly crumbled. There was a thin, dark streak indi- cating the uniform, and some of the army brass buttons used at that time were recovered, and some of the teeth — altogether perhaps about fifteen or twenty pounds, which were placed in a zinc-lined box prepared for the pur- pose. On the 7th of October, the remains were conveyed to New Orleans and on the 8th reinterred at Chalmette. Mr. Elisha Thornhill, above mentioned, 2 18 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI is a grandson of William Thornhill, one of the first pioneer settlers of the Tyler- town district. He married Hettie Forest, a daughter of David W. Forest and Amelia Hall and granddaughter of Richard Forest and Mary , from Alabama, who settled near Love’s Creek, where he raised his large family of sons and daughters. Capt. Frank Grouche is a son of Mr. Alex. Grouche, the noted hotel keeper in the city of Baton Rouge. He married Etta Mahier, daughter of Mrs. A. T. Mahier, both of the first French families of that city. The following letters were received by the author from the War Department in reference to this incident : WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE QUARTERMASTER GENERAL. ( 234 - 383 ) Mr. Luke W. Conerly, Washington, August 18, 1908. Gulfport, Miss. Sir: I am directed by the Quartermaster General to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of July 18, 1908, addressed to the Secretary of War, reporting the finding of the grave of one of General Carroll’s men in Pike County, Miss., who died while traveling with his command on the way to New Orleans in 1814-15; and in which you request that a suitable marker be furnished for his grave, which is now only temporarily marked with a slab hewed out of yellow pine, and is decaying very rapidly. In reply you are informed that an effort has been made to obtain the name and service of this soldier from the records of the office of The Adjutant General of the Army, but I regret to state that such effort has proved fruitless. If, however, no objection be interposed, the necessary steps will be taken for the disinterment of these remains and shipment to the national cemetery at Chal- mette, La., for reinterment. There the grave will be appropriately marked and perpetually cared for. Respectfully, P. Whitworth, Captain and Quartermaster, U. S. A. WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE QUARTERMASTER, 416 HIBERNIA BANK BUILDING. Mr. Luke W. Conerly, New Orleans, La., August 20, 1908. Gulfport, Miss. Sir: The Quartermaster General of the Army has furnished this office with a copy of his communication to you dated August 18, 1908 (No. 234,383), relative to your report of the finding of the grave of one of General Carroll’s men in HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 19 Pike County, Miss., who died while traveling with his command on the way to New Orleans, La., in 1814-15. With a view of having the remains disinterred and removing same to the Chalmette, La., National Cemetery, near New Orleans, La., for reinterment, I have the honor to request that you please furnish this office with the follow- ing information, viz.: 1. The name, date of death, etc., of the deceased, and any other informa- tion which you might give bearing on the subject. 2. If practicable, the exact location of the grave, and the approximate dis- tance to the nearest railroad leading to this city. 3. The approximate cost of making a pine box 10x10x26 inches, of one inch lumber. 4. Approximate cost of disinterring, boxing, and conveying the remains to the nearest railroad leading to this city. It is thought that the information desired under items 3 and 4 could be obtained from some of the local undertakers in the vicinity. Thanking you in advance for your courtesy, I am, Very respectfully, Arthur Cranshon, Captain and Quartermaster, U. S. Army. P. S. A self-addressed envelope is enclosed for reply, which need not be stamped. C. WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE QUARTERMASTER, 416 HIBERNIA BANK BUILDING. (ioii.) New Orleans, La., September 21, 1908. Mr. Luke w. Conerly, Griswold , Harrison County, Miss. Sir: Referring to your letter of September 1st, 1908, I have the honor to inform you that the Quartermaster General of the Army has approved the application of this office that you accompany the Superintendent of the Chalmette, La., National Cemetery to the grave of one of General Carroll's men buried in Pike County, Miss., as stated in your communication referred to above. In this connection, you are further informed that this office will furnish the necessary transportation to cover the journey, and in addition you will be al- lowed not exceeding $3.00 per diem for your necessary expenses. In order to facilitate matters in this respect, will you please inform this office at the earliest practicable date when it will be agreeable for you to take 20 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI this trip, and in doing so please allow at least three (3) days’ latitude in order that all arrangements can be perfected, and that no confusion may arise. Also give full directions as to where you may be found, so that the superin- tendent will have no trouble in locating you. Thanking you in advance for your courtesy. Very respectfully, Louis P. Garrard, Jr., Captain and Quartermaster, U. S. Army. By Arthur M. Edwards, Major, Commissary, U. S. Army, In charge of office. WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE QUARTERMASTER, 416 HIBERNIA BANK BUILDING. (ion.) Mr. Luke W. Conerly, Gulfport , Miss. New Orleans, La., September 30, 1908. Sir: In compliance with instructions contained in 2nd indorsement, office of the Quartermaster General of the Army, dated September 14, 1908 (234,383), you will please proceed at the earliest practicable date after receipt of this communication, to this city, reporting upon arrival to this office for instruc- tions, and accompany the Superintendent, Chalmette, La., National Cemetery, to Pike County, Miss., for the purpose of positively locating the grave of one of General Carroll’s men buried there, who died while traveling with his command on the way to New Orleans in 1814—15. Upon completion of this duty you will return to your home, Gulfport, Miss., via New Orleans, La. Actual expenses not exceeding $3.00 per day will be allowed, and whenever practicable receipts should be obtained for expenditures on account of meals and lodgings while traveling under these orders. Transportation will be furnished by this office. The travel directed is necessary in the public service. Very respectfully, Louis F. Garrard, Jr., Captain and Quartermaster, U. S. Army- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 21 WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE QUARTERMASTER, 416 HIBERNIA BANK BUILDING. (ion.) Mr. Luke W. Conerly, New Orleans, La., September 30, 1908. Rural Delivery, Route No. 3 , Gulfport, Miss. Sir: Replying to your favor of 22nd instant, I have the honor to enclose here- with Transportation Request P-No. 8126, covering journey between Gulfport, Miss., and this city. This request should be presented to the agent of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Gulfport, who will furnish you a regular ticket in exchange. It is desired, if practicable, that you come to New Orleans on Monday morning, October 4th, on the train arriving here at 8:50 a. m., and on arrival call at the office, room 416, Hibernia Bank building, comer Carondelet and Gravier Streets, and meet the Superintendent of the National Cemetery, and both then can leave on the evening train for Magnolia, Miss. Trusting this may be agreeable to you, I beg to remain Very respectfully, Louis F. Garrard, Jr., Captain and Quartermaster, U. S. Army. WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE QUARTERMASTER, 416 HIBERNIA BANK BUILDING. Mr. Luke W. Conerly, New Orleans, La., October 8, 1908. Gulfport, Miss. Sir: Upon the receipt of a letter from you addressed to the Secretary of War, the Quartermaster General of the Army directed this office to take up the mat- ter with a view to disintering the remains of one of General Carroll's men whose burial place was known to you, and have the remains given a lot in the Chalmette National Cemetery. This matter was taken up with you, and re- quest was made of you to accompany the Superintendent of the Chalmette National Cemetery to this burial place in order that he might make the disin- terment. This you did and the matter has been satisfactorily attended to, due to your assistance, and I have the honor to thank you for the services rendered. Very respectfully, Louis F. Garrard, Jr., Captain and Quartermaster, U. S. Army. 22 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI BONES OF SOLDIER OF WAR OF 1812 INTERRED IN CHALMETTE CEMETERY Events of the stirring days at the close of the war of 1812 were recalled yesterday by an incident which took place at the Chalmette National Cemetery when the bones of a Tennessee soldier, a hero of the battle of Chalmette, who had died in Mississippi while returning to his home, found their last repose in the cemetery by order of the Secretary of War, Luke Wright. No ceremony attend- ed the reinterment of what remained of the unidentified body of the soldier; simply the act of burial in the grave provided by the national government. No one was present but the Superintendent of the Chalmette Cemetery, Thomas O’Shea who saw that the soldier’s- bones were decently laid beneath the sod in a zinc-lined box provided for the purpose. Behind the discovery of the body of the veteran buried ninety-three years ago is a pretty story, and that the bones were honored with interment in the national cemetery is due to the energy of a Confederate veteran, Sergeant Luke W. Conerly, of Gulfport. Six years ago Mr. Conerly, who was a native of Marion County, Miss., learned while making a search of the old records of Pike County, which was formerly a part of Marion, that there was the body of a soldier of 1812 buried in a grave near the banks of Love’s Creek, about eleven miles from Magnolia, on the place of the Brumfield family. By making inquiries he learned the exact location of the grave, and began to make efforts to secure the removal of the body to the Chalmette Cemetery. Last year there was an act passed by Congress authorizing the removal of the bodies of soldiers to national cemeteries at the government’s expense, and Mr. Conerly corresponded with Secretary Taft. He said that the only person who had an exact knowledge of the location of the grave was Henry S. Brumfield, a grandson of the original owner of the Brumfield plantation, who is a man well advanced in years. This caused the department to act quickly, and last week Capt. Louis F. Garrard, Jr., United States Quartermaster here, received orders to have Mr. Conerly find the grave and exhume the remains. The exhumation was made Wednesday. Mr. Conerly and Superintendent O’Shea of the Chalmette Cemetery being piloted to the grave by Mr. Brumfield and an aged negro servant. It was found that the pine slab which had marked the grave had rotted away until there was no part of the inscription left by which it could be identified. Mr. Brumfield said that the records in his family were that the soldier had been one of the brigade of Gen. Carroll, of Tennessee, who had lost a man while returning from the battle of Chalmette in 1815, when the Tennesseans had given valuable aid to Gen. Andrew Jackson. No trace of the unfortunate soldier’s name could be found, except that the records said the name had been cut in a pine slab which had been placed to mark the grave. Mr. Conerly said that the veteran must have been a man of about six feet in height, from the size of the grave, which had been dug in a porous clay that held the original shape in which it had been cut to form the grave. Only the teeth and a few of the larger bones were found in what was left of the soldier. He had evidently been buried uncoffined, but as evidence that a soldier had been buried there two tarnished and rust -eaten brass buttons were found by Mr. Conerly. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 23 With them were fragments of a blue uniform. Mr. Conerly said that the total weight of the remains must have been about fifteen pounds. The bones and other remnants were reverently placed in the box and taken to Magnolia, where they were shipped to New Orleans, arriving Wednesday night. Yesterday morning a report was made to Capt. Garrard, and the re- mains were interred in the national cemetery. Mr. Conerly came to New Orleans with them. He said that he was engaged in writing a history of Pike County, and that the most gratifying result of his work had been the finding of the bones of this soldier. — New Orleans Times- Democrat, October 9, 1908. A VETERAN OF l8l2. A survivor of the famous battle of New Orleans, fought on the 8th day of January, 1815, who has lain in a lonely grave for ninety-three years in Pike County, was disinterred by order of the United States War Department Wednes- day, and the fragments of his bones taken to the national cemetery at Chal- mette and re-buried there. The story of the finding of this ancient veteran’s grave by the War Depart- ment makes a chapter of interesting history. In the war of 1812—15 with England, its most conspicuous battle was that fought between ten thousand of Wellington’s trained soldiers under Gen. Pak- enham, and less than five thousand pioneer frontiersmen under Gen. Andrew Jackson, on the field of Chalmette, near New Orleans. Although the Treaty of Ghent between young America and the mother country was signed on Christ- mas Eve of 1814, both Pakenham and Jackson were ignorant that peace had been declared, and when the British general came up the Mississippi River to capture New Orleans, “Old Hickory” was lying behind cotton bales with five thousand deadly rifles peering between them. Pakenham, himself a great military leader and strategist, disembarked his troops and formed them on the plain on the west shore of Lake Borgue. In solid phalanxes and with beauti- ful precision, the Wellington soldiers advanced upon that long line of cotton bales. When the enemy came within two hundred yards the pioneers fired, and the resulting slaughter was terrific. No less than twenty-five hundred Britons bit the dust, and the magnificent army was thrown into the utmost confusion. Jackson won the victory with practically no loss and saved the city of New Orleans from sack and pillage. In that army of American pioneers was a band of men — how many is not known — who had marched from Tennessee under Gen. Carroll. Passing through Mississippi’s great pine forests, they blazed a trail. That trail passes entirely through Pike County, and can be easily traced to this day. After the war was ended, and Gen. Jackson had disbanded his army, Gen. Carroll and his troops returned to Tennessee by the same trail. It is a matter of tradition that they camped for some time at a place ten miles east of Magnolia, and on what is now land belonging to Mr. H. S. Brumfield. While there, presumably recu- perating, one of them died and was buried. His comrades laid him in a grave 24 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and marked the spot with a slab of yellow pine, hand-hewn and polished. During all these years, the grave has been carefully marked. Mr. Henry S. Brumfield, Sr., one of the best known citizens of this county, states that he himself has replaced the wooden slab several times, so that the identity of the grave can be established without question. Last June, Mr. Luke Conerly was made acquainted with these facts, and, in company with Mr. H. S. Brumfield, visited the grave. He collected all the traditional data available with reference to the soldier’s death and burial, and furnished the same to the War Department, requesting that the government provide a permanent mark for the grave and, if possible, ascertain the name of the soldier. The War Department satisfied itself as to correctness of the facts, and the investigation resulted in Capt. Thos. O’Shea, Superintendent of the National Cemetery at Chalmette, being directed to disinter the remains and re -bury them in Chalmette. Last Wednesday morning, accompanied by Mr. Conerly, Capt. O’Shea came to Magnolia. They drove out to the grave and were met there by Mr. H. S. Brumfield, owner of the land, and Mr. E. T. Thornhill, of Walker’s Bridge. On beginning the work of disinterment, it was found that the clay soil was packed as hard as though it had never been disturbed, but on reaching a depth of five feet it was soft and loamy. At this depth, the bones of the veteran were discovered. There was no sign of a coffin, and it is probable that none was available for his burial. The bones were loose and a great many of them had wholly disintegrated. Some fragments of the soldier's uniform were unearthed, but these crumbled to dust as soon as touched. The most important discovery, however, and one which clinches the question of identity, was two brass buttons such as were used on military uniforms in the war of 1812. The buttons had re- tained their original form, but the lettering on them was undecipherable. Capt. O’Shea carefully gathered every bone that could be found, and placing them in an ordinary wooden box, took them to New Orleans with him on the afternoon train. There they were placed in a casket and interred with mili- tary honors in the national cemetery. So far, it has been impossible to ascer- tain the name of the soldier, and hence upon his tomb will be engraved the sim- ple but significant words: “unknown soldier U. S. A. war of 1812.” — Magnolia Gazette. Closely clustered around Holmesville, who figured in its conception and its birth, were David McGraw, Gabriel Allen, C. Brent, R. Hardley, John Smith, Peter Quin, Sr., John Kaigler, Anthony Perryman, Ben- jamin Bagley, William Love, Henry Ragland, Plans Hamilton, Josiah Martin, David Morgan, James Y. McNabb, David Cleveland, Jeremiah Williams, Phillip and Joseph Catchings, J. Peck, Jonathan Catchings, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 25 John Felder, David Winbome, John Magee, Solomon Causey, David Dixon, Dr. Wiley P. Harris and Joseph Thornhill. In January, 1816, J. Y. McNabb was elected clerk of the Inferior and Superior Courts, and David Cleveland was elected sheriff, and they entered into bond on the 29th day of January, 1816. In August, 1817, Laban Bacot was sheriff, under the new State regime. In the fall election of 1818, Henry Quin was elected clerk and Laban Bacot sheriff. James Y. McNabb issued the first marriage license in Pike County, February 13, 1816, to Jacob Keen and Keziah Gates. The ceremony was performed by Vincent Gamer, justice of the peace. The map of the survey of the town of Holmesville shows that a portion of the town is located on lands formerly owned by Gabriel Allen, in section 28, and a portion on lands formerly owned by R. Hardley, acquired by him in 1812, being the southwest quarter of section 21, township 3, range 9 east. At this time Peter Quin owned the northeast quarter of section 29, which comers with the southwest quarter of section 21 and the northwest quarter of section 28 — the map indicating that Holmesville is located in sections 21 and 28. There has been some speculation as to the original ownership of the public square in the old town of Holmesville, it being claimed that it was donated conditionally and was to be permanently the seat of justice, and that a removal of the seat of justice would work a reversion of the ownership to the heirs of the donors or vendors. The law creating the new county and authorizing the appoint- ment of the commissioners also empowered them to procure by pur- chase or donation, to the county, a tract of land for a permanent seat of justice, not specifying any conditions as to what should be done with it except as provided by this act. The act speaks for itself, and surely intended a fee simple title and the inalienable right to control and use or dispose of it as county property; because it says the com- missioners must sell the land in town lots, reserving enough for a public square, a courthouse, jail and church. Then, if the public square should revert, why not all the other lands sold into town lots and reserved for a church also revert, in event the public interest demanded 26 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI at some future time the removal of the seat of justice. The closest investigation by the writer of the records before their destruction by fire failed to disclose any reservations or conditions on the part of those dealing with the commissioners. This square of ground is a sacred and historical spot, and it should be held by the county of Pike in perpetua. Around it clusters some glorious memories, from the date of its fixture as a seat of justice to that when it ceased to be such, and to the present day. The history of Pike County is indis- solubly interwoven with it for ninety years. From here heroes went and gave their life-blood for Mississippi’s cause — the children and grandchildren of its pioneers, and here, it is claimed by many, that Pike County’s monuments should be erected to commemorate the deeds of her heroic men and her matchless women. In 1817 Mississippi was admitted into the Union as a State, and David Holmes, who had served as Governor since 1809, was elected Governor by the people. The act of Congress passed March 1, 1817, authorizing a State government of the Mississippi Territory, defining its boundaries, reads as follows: “Sec. 2. The said State shall consist of all the territory included within the following boundaries, to-wit: Beginning on the river Mississippi at the point where the southern boundary line of the State of Tennessee strikes the same, thence east along the said boundary line to the Tennessee River, thence up the same to the mouth of Bear Creek, thence by a direct line to the northwest corner of the county of Washington, thence due south to the Gulf of Mexico, thence westwardly, including all the islands within six leagues of the shore, to the most eastern junction of Pearl River with Lake Borgne, thence up said river to the 31st degree of north latitude, thence west along the said degree of latitude to the Mississippi River, thence up the same to the beginning.” Winthrop Sargent received his appointment as first Governor of Mississippi Territory by John Adams, President of the United States, in 1799. He was succeeded by W. C. C. Claiborne in 1801. Robert Williams was appointed Governor in 1805, and was succeeded by David Holmes in 1809. In 1820 an act was passed by the General Assembly of Mississippi to incorporate the town of Holmesville. An election was held and HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 27 James C. Dickson, Peter Quin, Jr., I. Aiken, Wiley P. Harris and Major Lea were chosen trustees; Buckner Harris, assessor, collector and town constable, and William Orr, treasurer. Previous to this, in 1819, William Dickson, Peter Quin, Peter Felder and Matthew McEwen presided as justices of the orphan’s court, which had juris- diction in probate matters. In 1822 this system was changed by the Legislature. Jeremiah Bearden and Reddick T. Sparkman constructed a hotel in Holmesville and operated it for many years; also Thomas Guinea. Jack Summers owned and operated a tan yard at the upper part of town near the river and the present location of the bridge. Following is a list of county civil officers after admission of the State in the Union: PIKE COUNTY CIVIL OFFICERS. 1818. Names. Dates. Commissioned. James Y. McNabb . . . February 6 . . . .Chief Justice of the Quorum. Richardson Bourman . . . . . . February 6 . . . .Justice of the Quorum. Peter Quin, Jr . . . February 6 . . . .Justice of the Quorum. Laban Bacot . . .February 6 . . . .Assessor and Collector. Benj. Bagley . . . March 10 ... . . .Chief Justice of the Quorum. Ralph Stovall . . . April 10 . . Justice of Peace. James Baggett . . .April 10 . .Justice of Peace. William Carter . . . April 10 . .Justice of Peace. Matthew McEwen . . . April 10 . .Justice of Peace. Nathaniel Wills . . . April 10 . .Justice of Peace. Nathan Sims . . .April 10 . .Justice of Peace. Thomas Arthur . . .April 10 . .Justice of Peace. Benj. Morris . . .April 10 . .Justice of Peace. William Carter . . .April 10 . .Justice of Peace. Henry Quin . . .April 10 . . . . . .Justice of Peace. Josiah Martin . . . April 10 . . . . . .Justice of Peace (resigned.) James Gorden . . . April 10 . . . . . .Constable. Jessee Craft . . . April 10 . . . . . .Constable. Am Verdaman . . .April 10 . . . . . .Constable. Edward Bullock . . . April 10 . . . . . .Constable. James Legett . . .April 10 . . . . . .Constable. Henry Hale . . Constable. Nathaniel Gaugh . . . April 10 . . . . . .Constable. 28 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Names. Dates. Commissioned. Thomas Rouse . Constable. Henry Goldman .... April io . Constable. Joseph C. Smith .... April io . Constable. Nathan Morris .... April 12 . Justice of Peace and Quorum. Wiley P. Harris .... May i . Ranger. James C. Dickson .... May i . County Surveyor. David Dickson .... May i . Notary Public (resigned.) Peter Quin ■ • July 3 . County Treasurer. 1819. Laban Bacot .... January 19 . . . Assessor and Collector. Jesse King .... February 6 . . . Justice of Peace. Eleazer Bell .... February 6 . . . Justice of Peace. William Dickson .... February 20 . . Justice of Quorum. Peter Felder, Sr .... February 20 . . Justice of Quorum. Mathew McEwen .... February 20 . . Justice of Quorum. Eleazer Bell .... February 20 . . Justice of Quorum. Felix Allen .... April 17 . County Treasurer. Leonard Vamado .... April 17 . Justice of Peace. John Wilson .... April 17 . Justice of Peace. William Donohoe .... April 17 . Constable. Simon Osteen .... April 17 . Constable. Henry Goleman .... April 17 . Constable. Buckner Harris .... April 17 . Constable. Nathaniel Goff .... April 17 . Constable. William Norman .... April 17 . Constable. James C. Dickson .... July 16 . Justice of Peace. Jesse Harper • ■ • • July 16 Justice of Peace. Philemon Martin • ■ • ■ July 16 Constable. Floyd Williams July 16 Constable. Zaccheus Davis • ■ • • July 16 Constable. Laban Bacot .... August 14.... Sheriff. Peter Quin, Sr . . . . August 14 ... . Coroner. Jesse Craft . Constable. Thomas Harvey . Constable. Abden Taylor . . . . November 15 . Constable. Laban Bacot 1820. . . . . February 3 . . . Assessor and Collector. Elbert Burton Ranger. Jacob I. Pernell . . . . February 25 . . Constable. Samuel Roberts . . . . February 25 . . Constable. Daniel Thomas . . . . April 12 Justice of Peace. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 29 Names. Dates. Commissioned Thomas Rule . . . April 12 Constable. James C. Breland . . . April 12 Constable. Abden Tyler . . . April 12 Constable. Richard Quin Justice of Peace. Jesse Craft . . . October 7 . . . . Justice of Peace. Elbert Hines . . . October 7 ... . Justice of Peace. Derril H. Martin . . . October 7 ... . Constable. William Carter . . . October 7 ... . Constable. Thompson Wallace .... . . . October 7 ... . Constable. 1821 Laban Bacot . . January 3 . . . Assessor and Collector James Y. McNabb . . February 12 . . Justice of Quorum. Samuel Higginbottom . . . . . May 30 Ranger. James Bridges . . May 30 Constable. Thomas Gatland . . May 30 Constable. Laban Bacot . . August 16 ... . Sheriff. Josiah B. Harris . . August 16 ... . Coroner. Richardson Bowman . . . . . . October 19 . . . Justice of Peace. William Prichard . . October 19 . . . Constable. Richard Bowman . . November 29 Judge of Probate. 1822. Laban Bacot . . January 14 . . . Assessor and Collector. James Willing . . February 7 . . . Constable. Benjamin Thomas, Sr . . . . . February 7 . . . Justice of Peace. Henry Ouin . . February 7 . . . Justice of Peace. A. M. Perryman . . February 7 . . . County Treasurer. Dorrel Young . . February 7 . . . Justice of Peace. Daniel Felder . . February 7 . . . Constable. Thomas Pleasant . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. David Cleveland . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Nathaniel Wells . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Thomas Rule . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Jesse King . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Nelson Higginbottom . . . . . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Benjamin Morgan . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. James Waddle . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Drury Chandler . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Malachi Thomas . . April 26 . Justice of Peace. Edward Bullock . . April 26 . Constable. David Cleveland . . January 19 . . . Judge of Probate. James C. Dickson . Justice of Peace. 30 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Names. Dates. Commissioned. Vincent Gamer . . . June 29 Associate Justice. Barnabas Allen . . . June 29 Associate Justice. James Y. McNabb . . . September 19 . Justice of Peace. Jesse Harper . . . September 1 9 . Justice of Peace. Peter Quin, Jr 1823. . . . January 4 ... . Judge of Probate. Laban Bacot . . . January 15... Assessor and Collector. Robert Love . . . January 22 . . Associate Justice. Gorden D. Boyd . . . March 20 County Surveyor. Wiley P. Harris . . . March 20 Justice of Peace. Thomas Hart . . . March 20 Justice of Peace. Daniel Felder . . . March 20 Justice of Peace. John Black . . . March 20 Ranger. John Wilson Justice of Peace. Laban Bacot Sheriff. Josiah B. Harris . . . August 25 ... . Coroner. James Roberts . . . September 1 7 . Justice of Peace. Richard Quin . . . September 1 7 . Justice of Peace. Leroy Tatum . . . September 1 7 . Justice of Peace. Daniel Quin . . . September 1 7 . Justice of Peace. James Hope . . . September 1 7 . 1824. . . . January 2c . . Justice of Peace. Laban Bacot Assessor and Collector. William W. Pearson . . . . . . . March 16 County Surveyor. . Henry Richardson . . . March 16 Justice of Peace. David Bullock . . . March 16 Justice of Peace. Robert Love . . . June 8 Judge of Probate. Nathaniel Wells . . . June 8 Associate Justice. Peter Quin, Jr ■ ■ June 23 Justice of Peace. Jacob Coon ■ ■ ■ June 23 Justice of Peace. Michael Prescott . . . June 23 1825. Justice of Peace. Robert Love . . . January is... Judge of Probate. William Wilson . . . January 15... Associate Justice. Peter Quin . . . January 15 . . . Ranger. Laban Bacot . . . February 5 . . . Assessor and Collector. Richard Davidson . . . March 28 Justice of Peace. Matthew McEwen . . . March 28 Justice of Peace. Thomas Rule ■ July 8 Justice of Peace. Jacob Owens . . . September 29 . Justice of Peace. James Y. McNabb . . . December 26 . Justice of Peace. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 31 1826. Names. Dates. Commissioned. Laban Bacot . . . . January 3~ • • ■ Assessor and Collector. Daniel Sistrunk Justice of Peace. Davis Barren Justice of Peace. John Felder . . . . September 27 . Justice of Peace. 1827. Laban Bacot . . . February 4 . . . Assessor and Collector. William Dickson . . . February 8 . . . Associate Justice. Leroy H. Tatum . Justice of Peace. Stephen Ellis . Justice of Peace. Daniel Bullock . . . April 9 . justice of Peace. James Chamberlain . . . . . . . April 9 . Justice of Peace. James Roberts . . . April 9 justice of Peace. Thomas Reaves . Justice of Peace. William G. Martin . . . April 9 . Justice of Peace. Peter Quin . Justice of Peace. Jacob Coon . . . April 9 justice of Peace. Jonathan Carter . . . April 9 . Justice of Peace. William Carter . . . April 9 . Justice of Peace. Peter McDonald . . . April 9 . Justice of Peace. The act of Congress providing for the formation of the Mississippi Territory into a State government was passed March 1, 1817, fixing the boundaries of said State and providing for a convention to be held by the people to frame a constitution which was to assemble in the town of Washington on the first Monday of July, 1817. In this convention Pike County was represented by David Dick- son, William J. Minton and James Y. McNabb. The act of Congress passed April 7, 1798, establishing the terri- torial government of Mississippi provided that it should not be lawful for any person or persons to import or bring into said Territory, from any port or place, without the limits of the United States, any slave or slaves, under penalty of $300 fine and the freedom of every such slave or slaves thus brought in from foreign ports. Under the laws established by the territorial government every free male person between the ages of sixteen and fifty years were subject to military duty, and every militiaman enrolled for service 32 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI on foot was required to furnish himself with a musket and bayonet, cartridge box and thirty rounds of cartridges, or rifle and tomahawk, powder horn and bullet pouch, with one pound of powder and four pounds of bullets, six flints, priming wires, brushes and knapsacks. Each horseman was required to furnish himself with a sword, one pistol, twelve rounds of cartridges, three flints, a priming wire, small portmanteau, and such other arms and accoutrements as might be directed by the commander in chief. In the constitutional convention of 1832 Pike County was repre- sented by James Y. McNabb and Laban Bacot. The constitution framed then changed the judiciary system, and gives to Mississippi the honor of being the leader in making the judiciary elective. A high court of errors and appeals, to sit twice a year, consisting of three judges, elected from three districts; a circuit court held twice a year in each county, a superior court of chancery, a probate court and board of police for each county, all elected by the people and by ballot. EARLY HOME LIFE. Home life in Pike County in its early settlement and for a genera- tion after was simple and natural. As time grew apace young people grew up, formed attachments and married, then selected a suitable tract of land and, with the help of neighbors and friends, constructed an humble pine-pole hut to begin life with. A little patch was cleared for a garden ; a few chickens that the old folks gave them, a pair of pigs, a heifer or cow and calf, and perhaps a pony, constituted the bulk of personal property. The bedstead was of a home-made pattern, framed and held together by interlacing quarter-inch cotton cords, made by hand at the old home, which constituted the bed-spring, but more often it was framed to the walls in one corner of the cabin, and made of ordinary split timber. A three-legged griddle to cook com hoe- cakes on, a saucepan, a common frying pan and a small oven to bake, sufficed for the kitchen outfit. A common wooden bench and a few three-legged stools would do to sit on until the head of the household HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 33 could manage to do better. The lands upon which they settled were public property, but the right thus secured must not be disturbed. Wash basins, water buckets, milk piggins and well buckets were made by hand in the shops of those who manufactured the reels, spinning wheels and looms, which all who could must be provided with. There were no allurements beyond the environments of these simple homes to distract the minds of the beginners of farm life, and their thoughts and energies were concentrated on the development and strengthen- ing of the resources acquired. Love in its primeval purity, strength- ened by mutual confidence, with radiant hope and faith in the Divine Ruler, shone with resplendent beauty. The young husband, with his axe and his rifle on his shoulder, his clear sounding horn swung to his side, with his ever attendant faithful dog, went about his duties with self-confidence and a buoyant heart. The young wife, with rosy cheeks, a loving smile, a happy heart, made the little home an Eden of joy and gave strength to his soul in the battle of life. They drank from the sweetest and most sparkling fountains the inspirations that cement the marriage bonds. On Sunday, hand in hand, they could walk to church together to listen to the exhortations of a pious neighbor and sing: “Jesus my all to heaven is gone, He whom I fix my hopes upon.” The little pine-pole meeting-house was good enough for them. It may, however, seem very simple to the reader of the present day, who has known only the comfort and luxuries which Wealth brings, but the reader of to-day, be he rich or poor, whose ancestors belong to America’s past history, sprang from just such people as these, living under just such conditions. The little boys that went ’possum hunting and were taught to swim and to ride a horse or ox and use the rifle and the shot gun were training for emergencies. In all ages of the world men have sprung from the simplest con- ditions of life when stirring events called them into action and reached the acme of renown. The great schools might prepare some for high s 34 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI stations and scientific purposes, but there must be those, hardy and strong, who can clutch the cold steel with a fearless hand and dare death in any form when necesssity calls. The ’possum and coon hunters, the bear trailers and trappers, the grapplers with the wolf and the tiger cat, who sprung from those hardy and brave men and women whose names adorn the pages of this work, are on the rolls, and they are there to tell to the world, along down through the ages, who it was that gave to the pages of their country’s history a golden glitter. From King’s Mountain and Valley Forge, from Trenton and the Cowpens, from Bunker Hill and Ticonderoga, from Jamestown and the Talapoosa, the blood of patriotism was transmitted with the advancing years, and in the deep wilderness of the Territory of Mississippi it was made healthy and strong by the necessary activities and rustic life of its people. The great body of the pioneers of Pike came from revolutionary sires, schooled in the science of Indian fighting and the hardships and exposures incident to camp life, the hunt for wild game, and the labor of their farms. They had inherited the characteristics of their fathers and mothers, and they were properly qualified to undertake the mission of establishing new homes in these unbroken wilds and of laying the foundation of a great State government. The young men from North and South Carolina, Georgia and else- where, offsprings of revolutionary patriots and colonial settlers, thought nothing of putting their young wives on horseback or taking it afoot with their few belongings, armed with combination flint and steel shotgun-rifles, and tramping it hundreds of miles through the wilderness to the Territory of Mississippi; and their heroic wives thought less of the dangers and hardships to be encountered. It is this sort of material from which Mississippians sprung, and it is this sort of blood that has brought lustre to her name. This book will tell you who some of them were, men and women, and where they settled in Pike County. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 35 CHAPTER II. In the foregoing chapter an outline of events leading down to the creation and political organization of Pike County has been given. In the present chapter it is proposed to speak more directly of some of the families that immigrated here and the occupations engaged in in the early settlements on the different streams. It is not proposed to undertake this in detail. The absence of records, and even tradition, connected with many of the original settlers who have passed out of memory of the oldest living men and women in the county, makes it impossible. In 1799 John Warren and his wife, Priscilla, settled on the Otopasas (now called Topisaw) below the junction of East Fork and on the west side of the stream. This property was acquired by Michael Brent in the early fifties or perhaps before 1850. He sold it to Owen Conerly, and from his widow it passed to and through other hands to William Gamer. There he constructed a hewed log cabin of yellow pine and opened a little farm. Tradition tells us that there was a small open- ing here when Warren came, indicating that the land had been culti- vated many years before, probably by Indians. The house built by him is on the place yet and in a fair state of preservation. A pecan tree, said to have been planted by him, which has been in bearing for over fifty years, is a monarch now, the oldest and largest known in Pike County, and is perhaps the first pecan tree planted in the county. Just below and south of this place John Taylor settled, probably near the same time, now owned by S. Cicero Walker The original settlement was on the crest of a high pine ridge overlooking the valley of the Otopasas. Fifty years ago it had grown up into a wilderness again, but again opened and put in cultivation. John Warren and Priscilla were the parents of Sally Warren, wife of William McCollough, who came to Pike County in 1814, at the age of fifteen. His father, Alexander McCollough, came from Ireland into Georgia. His wife was Miss Marshall from Scotland. After William McCollough married Sally Warren they settled on Topisaw and became the parents of Winston, Jasper, Olive, Sarah and Melinda McCollough. 36 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Edwin Alford Was bom in North Carolina in 1792, and after his birth his parents moved to Georgia, where he remained until 1807, when he came to the Territory. In 1818 he married Martha, a daugh- ter of Jeremiah Smith, and settled a place on the Bogue Chitto in the southern portion of the county. They raised six sons and five daugh- ters. Jeremiah Smith came from Lancaster District, South Carolina, in 1808. He moved in a cart, and settled on a place near Dillontown, Iron Bridge Scene on the Bogue Chitto River where Edwin Alford married Martha. He was the father of Eli’ Edwin and Wyatt Smith. He was one of the finest mechanics of his time. He died in 1843 at 'the age of sixty-one. When these people settled here they had to travel a distance of some twenty miles to a grist mill, located near where the town of Tangipahoa on the I. C. R. R. now stands, to get their com ground into meal — near where Camp Moore Was located during the Civil War. Daniel Sandell was the son of Henry Sandell and Catherine Nobles, who lived in Orangeburg District, South Carolina, where he was bom HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 37 in 1792. In 1814 he was enlisted in Colonel Nixon’s regiment of Mississippi infantry, which was ordered to Florida to reinforce the army engaged against the Seminole Indians He was married to Charity Elenor Corley, daughter of Jeremiah Corley, from Barnwell District, South Carolina, September 17, 1815, a short time before the creation of Pike County, and in 1816 he settled on the well-known Sandell place, west of Magnolia. He was the father of Gabriel, Walter, Rev. John Westley Sandell, Samuel Murray and Monroe, Mary Ann and Martha. Peter Felder settled the Vaughn place, near Magnolia, in 1811. A Methodist Church was established in this neighborhood, and in 1810 the first Methodist camp meeting was held here. It was after- wards known as Felder’s Church. A grist mill was erected across Sweetwater, a small stream empty- ing in the Bogue Chitto near Walker’s Bridge, on a farm settled by Daniel Quin, in 1810, and many people traveled thirty and forty miles to it to have their com ground into meal for bread. Daniel Quin was a son of Peter Quin, Sr., who came to Pike County in 1812. He married Kitty Deer. They were the parents of Rodney, William and Frank, and Emily, who married Jeremiah Coney. In 1798 John Barnes, with his young wife and little daughter, Margaret, then only a few years of age, emigrated from Georgia. They took passage in a large dugout which he constructed out of a cypress tree, laonching it on the Cumberland River and floating down the connecting waters into the Mississippi River and landed at Natchez. Bames was an accomplished young mechanic, and he and his young wife had only one child, little Margaret, then only five or six years of age. They wanted to come to the far West, to the Mississippi Terri- tory, of which he had heard so much, to settle down in life and build themselves a home. He cut down a big cypress tree, dug it out with his adz and fashioned it and launched it on the turbid waters, put all his belongings in it, and he and his young wife and little Margaret took passage for more than a thousand miles down unknown and perilous streams. With his trusty rifle, a brave heart, a loving, heroic wife, a sweet little child, he pushed off from Georgia’s shore and 38 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI paddled on down, stopping here and there to camp over night under the trees or to kill wild game to supply their needs. When he arrived at the head of Mussel Shoals, a very dangerous continuation of rapids for a long distance, he landed his dugout and was visited by an Indian, who advised him not to undertake to shoot the rapids with his wife and child in the boat, that there was a near cut by a pathway to the river below the rapids which they could take, and that he himself would accompany him and steer the boat safely through. It was already late in the evening, but Barnes wished to pass the rapids at once while he had the Indian to help him through. After the Indian had directed Mrs. Barnes how to go they pushed out to make the descent. Night had overtaken them, and when they arrived at the point where Barnes’ wife was to meet them it was late and she was not there and failed to answer to his call or the sound of his horn. The Indian then explained that he forgot to tell her the path forked, and said she must have taken the wrong direction leading out into the deep, dark wilderness, which proved to be true. Leaving the Indian in care of his boat, Barnes, with his gun, his horn and a torch, went out in search of his lost wife and child. Beating back on the trail as directed until he reached the one the Indian surmised his wife had taken, he pursued that for a long distance until at length he found her sitting beneath the trees with her little child hugged up in her arms, patiently waiting for and trusting her husband to rescue them. When they returned to their dugout they found that the Indian had stolen much of their valuables and fled. In due course of time Barnes with his little family arrived safely at Natchez, and afterward worked his way out to Beaver Creek, in Amite County, where he remained for awhile, when he moved to Pike County and settled on Union Creek near where Union Church was subsequently erected. He built a grist mill over Union Creek in 1813, and a ginning and carding machine, to prepare rolls for the spinning wheel. It is a curious fact, that 104 years after Barnes’ novel departure from Georgia his romantic adventure should be recorded by this writer, as related to him in person by the first bom son of little Margaret, at the age of ninety years, and within a few miles of where he was born. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 39 In the State of Tennessee at this early time there lived a Widow Sartin, who had a little boy named John. She married a man named Lee, and they moved from Tennessee to Amite County in 1810. Here John Sartin met little Margaret Barnes. Their associations and friendship ripened into love, and when Margaret Barnes arrived at the age of seventeen she became the wife of young John Sartin. They settled in the woods and opened a little farm on Magees Creek, a few miles south of China Grove, which was afterward known as the Woodruff place. It was here that Major Sartin, their first son, was bom, November 28, 1812. They were also the parents of William, Joseph, Alfred, John, Leander and James Sartin and Amanda, wife of Martin P. Roberts; Helen, wife of John Boone, and Emily, wife of Jackson Bearden. William Fortinberry came from Lancaster District, South Carolina, and settled in the southeastern portion of the county in 1819. He died in 1840, leaving six sons and four daughters. One of his sons, W. J. Fortinberry, was a Baptist preacher and spent his life in that section of the county in the cause of the Church. Another son, G. C. Fortinberry, was a member of the 9th Mississippi Regiment of United States Militia, under Col. Peter Quin, in 1825 and 1827. Wyatt Smith married Eusaba Fortinberry. John Ellzey came from Fairfield District, South Carolina, in 1817. He married Elizabeth Coney, daughter of Aquila Coney from Georgia, in 1823 They were the parents of Frank, James, William, and Daniel Ellzey. His second wife was Indiana Hall. John Ellzey and William Sibley assisted the contractor, Thomas Tompkins, to build the first jail erected in Holmesville. Shortly after the building was finished and received from the contractor, Tompkins, having committed some little trivial breach of the peace, was the first to be locked up in it. Thomas Ellzey was the third son of Louis Ellzey, of South Carolina, and came to Mississippi in 1817. He married Mary, a daughter of Daniel Quin, on Sweetwater, near where it empties into Bogue Chitto, at Walker’s Bridge, in 1825. He settled on Leatherwood, where he raised a large family. He contracted yellow fever in 1847 while on a business trip to Covington, La., during the prevalence of an epidemic, 40 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and died with it at the residence of Col. Jesse Thomas, on Leatherwood, before he could be conveyed home. He was a member of the board of police for many years. His father, Louis Ellzey, was a full-fledged Englishman of the noted Ellzey Cragg, a mountain point in England, and his mother was a full-blooded German. Her name was E\ e Shaffer. They met in South Carolina and married, then immigrated to Pike County and first settled on the Bogue Chitto River near what has been known as Stalling’s Ferry. Thomas Ellzey and Mary Quin were the parents of Ross A., Rankin C., Wesley, Jackson, Mary, Harriet, Caroline Sarah, Josephine, Joan, Courtney and Thomas. The Ellzeys sprung from good fighting stock and were substantial citizens in the early history of the county. They were brave, hardy, industrious men and women, accumulators of wealth and could always be depended on in times of peril and emergencies. Ross A. Ellzey, the elder of the sons of Thomas Ellzey and Mary Quin, was bom on the 20th of June, 1826, and received his education in the common neighborhood schools of the county. At the age of twenty-six he married Amanda Booker, a daughter of James and Mary Booker, of Clinton, La., and a graduate of the Silliman Institute of that place. In 1848 he was chosen as a delegate to represent Pike County in a railroad convention held in New Orleans, which was the beginning of the agitation of the question of the constitution of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad. In the fall of 1853 he was elected to the Legis- lature of Mississippi and remained a member of that body until he was succeeded by Levi Bacot in 1856. He settled the old Deer place on Magees Creek and pursued, principally, the occupation of a farmer. He became one of the charter members of the Magees Creek Lodge, F. & A. M., No. 282, in 1866. He taught school in his young days and was for some years a member of the board of school directors, with Henry Badon, William Hoover and George W. Simmons. The other children of Thomas Ellzey and Mary Quin married as follows: Rankin C. to Mary Thompson, daughter of Hugh Thompson; Wesley to Margaret Brumfield, daughter of Isaac Brumfield; Caroline to Dr. James H. Laney; Harriet to Morgan Coney; Sarah to Samuel McNulty; Josephine to Elisha C. Andrews; Joan to Simeon R. Ratliff ; HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 41 Courtney to William Badon ; Jackson to Mary Felder; Mary to Joseph O’Mara, deputy sheriff under Parham B. Williams in 1848. Thomas died early. William Simmons came from Georgia and settled on Balachitto in 1809. He married Nancy Hope, daughter of James Hope, who settled there about the same time. From them came Solomon and Cyrus Simmons. He was captain of a militia company, and in 1846 was elected to the Legislature with Ephriam Rushing. Willis Simmons came from Georgia with his wife, Jane Goslin, in 1810, and settled on Bogue Chitto below Walker’s Bridge. Their children were Mason, William (Black Bill), Willis, Richard, George, Jackson, Narcissa and Holly. “Black Bill” Simmons married Nancy Rymes, daughter of William Rymes and Nancy Hogg, and they were the parents of Calvin Simmons. Joseph Barr came from South Carolina in 1802. His wife was Eliza Mellard, daughter of Joseph Mellard, near Monticello in Laurence County. They settled on Magees Creek in the China Grove neighbor- hood. They were the parents of William A., Thaddeus H. S., James A., R. Wesley, Thomas M., and Annor, wife of Wm. B. Lignon, Jr., Caroline, wife of Wiley Elliott, and Amanda, wife of Dewitt Ellzey. Peter Felder came from Barnwell District, South Carolina, in 1811, and settled what is known as the Vaughn place near Magnolia. As previously stated, he was one of the commissioners appointed by the Governor, under acts of December 9, 1815, to select, procure and fix the permanent seat of justice of Pike County. He filled the position of one of the justices of the Orphan’s Court along with William Dickson, Peter Quin and Matthew McEwen, which had jurisdiction in probate matters. He was the father of John Felder, who was bom in Barnwell District, South Carolina, in 1793, and married Elizabeth Sandell, near Felder’s Church, October 15, 1812. They were the parents of Mary Catherine, who married Seaborn Alford, and Wyatt Westley, Elizabeth G. Gabriel Nally, Levi Darius, Robert Henry and Simeon Noble. John Felder was a leading member of the Methodist Church. In 1840 he settled a farm on Topsiaw and in company with Christian Hoover, Hardy Thompson, David Winbome, Matthew 42 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI McEwen, Samuel Whitworth, Archie McEwen and Silas Catchings, in 1843, established the Topisaw Camp Grounds. In 1846 he had a water-mill constructed over Topisaw — upright saw, grist and cotton gin, near the camp grounds, under the supervision of Luther Smith, assisted by his sons, Levi and Robert. He and his wife were deeply devoted to their religion, and to them the community owed much in the upbuilding of the Methodist denomination and maintenance of the church and camp meetings held there. Their sons and daughters were all Christian people of the same faith. Alexander McCollough emigrated from Ireland to Georgia. His wife was a Miss Marshall from Scotland. They were the parents of William McCollough, who came to Pike County in 1814 at the age of fifteen, married Sally Warren and settled on Topisaw. From them sprung the McCollough family: Winston, Benjamin, Jasper, Olive, Melinda and Sarah. Matthew and Archie McEwen came from Carolina in 1800 and settled on Topisaw. James, a son of Matthew, married Nancey Barnes, widow of John Barnes, who Was once probate judge of Pike County. Nancey was a Bearden before she married John Barnes and was the mother of Pinkney and W. Clinton Barnes. John Walker was a native of Virginia, bom in 1785. He emigrated to Georgia and married Sarah Gates, who was bom in 1790. They emigrated to the Mississippi Territory in 1814 and settled on Topisaw. They were the parents of Jeremiah, William, John E., David C., Augustus, Sarah, Elizabeth, Mary, Zebiah, Martha and Elisha Walker. John E. Walker was bom January 28, 1815, the year after his parents came from Georgia, and was the first child of the Walker family bom in Pike. His brother, William, married Ruth Harvey, daughter of Michael Harvey, who settled on Pearl River in Marion County in 1808, where Daniel Harvey was born in 1812. There was a William Walker who settled on Silver Creek in the southern portion of the county, who was a cabinet maker, not related to the Topisaw family. He came from Georgia and married Jane Duncan, a daughter of Cullen Duncan and Fanny Conerly, subse- quently wife of Elijah Tumage. The following are the names of HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI their children: Martha Ann, who first married her cousin, James Duncan, and becoming a widow married John Cothem; Sarah Jane, who remained single; Barbara, who married John Estess; Pollie died early; Annie, who married William Rushing; Levisa, who mar- ried Charlie Rainey; Margaret, who married Harper Gamer, son of Calvin Gamer and Ruhamie Ward of Laurence County, from South Carolina; Cornelius, who married Nannie Boone, daughter of Skinner Boone; Wesley, . This William Walker’s elder daughters became expert in their father’s trade, being his only help. Sarah Jane never married and gave her entire time to her father in the workshop, where they made spinning wheels, reels, looms, chairs and other articles of furniture by hand and with the use of a turning lathe run by water power, milk piggins, water buckets, chums, etc. Much of the furniture manu- factured by them has been in use seventy-five years. A small arm- chair, with a rawhide bottom, made of white hickory, bought from them for the writer in 1846 is yet in use and well preserved. Roda Walker married Nathaniel Wells, being his second wife. He was major of a regiment during the Florida War. His father, Thomas Wells, belonged to the colonial revolutionists, and was killed in the memorable battle of Kings Mountain, North Carolina, in 1780, where the English General Ferguson was defeated, killed, and his entire force captured after a most gallant and sanguinary conflict with the mountaineer forces under the gallant commands of Cols. Campbell, Shelby, Sevier, McDowell, Cleveland, Williams and Winston, which turned the tide of the revolutionary war in favor of the strug- gling Americans, of which Jefferson said: “It was the joyful enuncia- tion of that turn in the tide of success that terminated the Revolution- ary War with the seal of our independence.” And Daniel Webster said: “When to be patriotic was to endanger business and homes and wives and children and to be ready also to pay for the reputation of patriotism by the sacrifice of blood and life.” It will be seen in future pages how these eloquent words spoken by these master minds connected with a government these illustrious southern patriots fought so hard and heroically to establish, will 44 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI apply to their descendants eighty years after this glorious victory at Kings Mountain. With Rhoda Walker, Wells had two sons, Eleazor and James, and two daughters, Rhoda and Elizabeth. William Cothem married Nancey Gates, from Georgia, and settled the Tumipseed place on the east side of Topisaw, five miles north of Holmesville, in 1815. They were the parents of Elijah Cothem, who married Cathorine Dunaway, daughter of Johnathan Dunaway, and they were the parents of John, Joseph and William Cothem. One of the first grist mills ran by water power built in Pike County was constructed across Carters Creek on the plantation owned by John Cothem, which was settled by John Carter, one of the earliest settlers, from whom this creek took its name. Tumipseed, above mentioned, married Miss Brent, daughter of John Brent, sister of John A., William, Mike and Jacob. He was a large slave owner and worked them in the production of cotton. He was a man of fine intellectual qualities. His children with Miss Brent were Laura, who married Ben. Briley; Clifton, who married Miss Ada Marshal, whose father settled in Holmesville after the Civil War and was a lawyer; Harris, who became a dentist; Berkley, who mar- ried Mary Huffman. Lazarus Reeves came from South Carolina and settled on Clear Creek in 1811. This little stream rises west of Summit, running in an eastern direction, emptying into Bogue Chitto near the plantation of Laban Bacot. Lazarus Reeves was the father of John Reeves, who settled on Clear Creek in 1812, and Alfred Reeves, who settled on Topisaw, and Zachariah Reeves, Baptist preacher. The Bogue Chitto Baptist Church was constituted and located on a place subsequently owned by Alex. McMorris, on the Bogue Chitto River, on the 31st day of October, 1812, by Lazarus Reeves, Annis Dillon, Priscilla Warren, Sarah Norman, John Brent, Sr., William Denman, John Warren, Sarah Thompson, Sarah Denman and David McGraw. This church was afterwards moved to Carters Creek, and Zachariah Reeves was connected with it during his lifetime. He was a man who wielded a great influence over the followers of his HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 45 faith. He was contemporaneous with Rev. Jesse Crawford of Silver Creek and Rev. Wm. J. Fortinberry at New Zion. They were not educated men. Their learning came from the common schools of the community, such as could be afforded by the pioneer fathers and by a faithful and sincere study of the holy scriptures and the inspira- tion that sprung from the rugged experiences of their time, and they were regarded by those who adhered to their faith and followed in the footsteps of their teachings as men of power — plain, homespun leaders and teachers of God’s word, who could touch up their followers and bring them to the foot of the Cross in this interior wilderness and make them children of the Messiah. In those days their church houses were mostly built of round pine poles or hewn logs, and the people wore plain clothes. The women went to church in calico and home- spun dresses, and wore their fly bonnets, and the old grandmother's their frilled caps and specks, and the young girls thought themselves lucky to be decked off on meeting days with a few red ribbons. There was no butterfly flutter nor makeup of the rouge and the kid glove. A little cinnamon sometimes, when it could be had, constituted the main article of perfumery, and they were often glad to get that, as an attractive feature. Their splendid beauty, in these healthful pine woods regions, was a gift of nature from nature’s God. They inherited from their mothers and grandmothers all the attributes of fortitude, patience, industry and loving kindness; and they grew up as women worthy indeed to become the mothers of the young heroes who served under the Southern Cross, led by such men as commanded the Con- federate forces in the great Civil War. And it might be well for the present day generation of young men and women to profit by learning more of the early training and the chivalrous manhood and womanhood that stepped so proudly forth in the early sixties to bear the brunt of one of the most stupendous conflicts against overwhelming odds known in the annals of war. They got their early training, from an educational and religious point, in these little log cabin school houses and churches. John Reeves was the father of Jesse, William E., Elijah and Warren, and Leah, wife of William Williams; Lenora, wife of Jasper 46 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI McCollough ; Jane, wife of Pink Cole, and Mary, who lost her first husband, Ruben Williams, in the Confederate Army, subsequently wife of David Forest. At. the compilation of these notes in 1902, Wm. E. Reeves, then eighty years of age, possessed and exhibited to the writer a photographic group of the above-named four brothers and sisters, all living. Edward Gatlin settled a place on Clear Creek a short distance above its intersection with the Bogue Chitto River in 1815 and built a mill over it which was run by water power. The plantation is now occupied by John Thompson. The spot where the present residence stands is one of the most picturesque in that section of the county. Col. James Gatlin was a son of Edward and Elizabeth Gatlin, who emigrated to Pike County in 1812 from South Carolina. He married Rosalba Wells, a daughter of Nathaniel Wells, one of the colonial soldiers of the Revolution, of Kings Mountain fame, and his wife, Elizabeth, also from South Carolina. They were married at the old Wells homestead, south of Johnston Station, in 1831. Their children were: Julia; Zebulon B. Gatlin, who married Martha Hoover; Eliza- beth Gatlin, who married Dr. Germany; Mary Gatlin, who married Mr. Anderson; *John B. Gatlin, Lieut., who married Amanda H. Strickland. Ebenezer Gatlin commanded Summit Rifles, at Blood Angle, battle of Spottsylvania, Virginia, May 12, 1864, mortally wounded; Thomas Gatlin, died in Confederate war service; Nathaniel W. Gatlin; William Gatlin. The following persons settled homes along Clear Creek and Bogue Chitto between 1810 and 1818: William and David Bullock, in 1812; I. N. Simms, L. Leggett, B. Gatlin, Ezra Estiss, T. Gatlin, R. Williams, N. Williams, E. John- son, W. McNulty, Michael McNulty, in 1816; J. McNulty, in 1811; David Cleveland, Vincent Gamer, J. Andrews, W. Andrews, David McGraw and Robert Love, in 1811; A. King settled a part of the Hardy Thompson plantation in 1811; David Cleveland, on what is yet known as the Cleveland place, in 1811 ; J. Denman and R. Hamil- *See Dixie Guards. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 47 ton, in 1815; C. Ryals, 1817; Peter Quin, Sr., on section 22, in 1813; Peter Quin, Jr., in 1817. The lives of these men and their descendants were closely asso- ciated with all that section of the county between Holmesville and the northern boundary of the county on both sides of the Bogue Chitto River and along Clear Creek. B. Jones settled on Clabber Creek. It is to be regretted that the writer, though using great efforts, has failed to obtain better information regarding their families. Many of them were prominent in political affairs of the county. Michael McNulty erected a mill across Clear Creek at the same spot where Stuart’s mill now stands. He was the father of William and Sam McNulty, of whom more will be said further on in this work. Laban Bacot was bom April 23, 1776, in South Carolina, and married Mary Letman in 1797. They emigrated from South Carolina to the Mississippi Territory in 1807, coming down the Cumberland, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to Natchez and settled on Beaver Creek, in Amite County. They subsequently settled on the Tansopiho, near where ChataWa now stands. He was the son of Samuel Bacot, who was bom in 1745 and married Margaret Alston. To them Were bom Samuel, Susana, Elizabeth, Maria Louisa and Mary Lucinda. His wife, Mary, died in 1812, and he then married Margaret M. Love, April 23, 1822, and they became the parents of Lorinda, wife of Joe Tuff Martin; Robert, Levi, William, Adam Bacot and Julia; also Rachael, who died in infancy. In 1817 Mississippi was admitted as a State in the Union, and David Holmes, who had served as Governor since 1809, was elected Governor by vote of the people. Laban Bacot was elected at this time Sheriff of Pike County, succeeding David Cleveland, who had held that position since the organization of the municipal government of the county. It has often been erroneously stated that Laban Bacot was the first sheriff of Pike County. Under the territorial government David Cleveland was selected and commissioned as sheriff upon the organization of Pike County and served as such until the State was admitted into the Union, in 1817, when there was a general election held and Laban Bacot was the first elected sheriff of the county 48 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI after the State’s admission into the Union. During his incumbency he lived on a little farm seven miles north of Holmesville, on one of the small tributaries of Clear Creek. There being no public office buildings in Holmesville, he constructed an office on his farm, of peeled yellow pine poles, notched together and hewed down on the sides, which he used as the sheriff’s office, being the first one built for that purpose in the county. This little log cabin, the first sheriff’s office erected in the county, is yet standing in the yard on the planta- tion he subsequently settled on Clear Creek above its junction with Bogue Chitto, owned by his son, Levi, and is in a good state of preser- vation. Laban Bacot-was re-elected in 1821 and served continuously until 1826, when he was succeeded by T. Norman. During Bacot’s term the whipping-post law Was in vogue, and it sometimes became his duty to execute the sentence imposed, and if the judge thought the case an aggravated one he would order the sheriff to “have it well laid on.” On one occasion while court Was in session a disturbance occurred at a whisky shop (then called grocery) near-by, and the judge ordered the offender to be brought into court. He was materially intoxicated and incapable of self-locomotion, and the sheriff returned without him. The judge again ordered that he be brought into court. Bacot ordered Parish Thompson, a powerful man with a loud, coarse voice, to bring him in. Thompson shouldered the fellow, packed him into the courtroom and piled him over in front of his honor, at the same time saying, “Where will you have him, jedge?” There was a law in force at this time which read as follows: “Any person who shall break into any house in the night time with the intent to take, steal or carry away any property therein, shall be adjudged guilty of bur- glary, and upon conviction thereof shall suffer death.”. There was a little oak tree standing near the southeast comer of the public square which was used by Sheriff Bacot in the discharge of his duties as a whipping-post. This tree acquired the name of “Widow Phillips,” as a man by that name Was the first to be tied to it and receive a dressing with the official cat-’o-nine tails, for the commission of some trivial offense. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 49 “Widow Phillips” grew large and strong and got to be a giant oak, spreading its massive branches far out, affording a splendid shade in after years for those in attendance on court. It lived to be a hundred years old and then died, and in 1902 it lay prone upon the earth, cut down by the axman. Thus passed away the last relic of the whipping-post of Pike County. Jeremiah and Sire Magee settled on Collins and Magees Creeks near the junction of the two streams in 1811. About this time, or perhaps earlier, Dickey Magee built a grist mill over Collins Creek a little above the ford where the Monticello and Covington road crosses it. Portions of the foundation of this mill can yet be seen at times. It has been observed that under certain actions of the water there is a deposit of earth which hides if trom view; then again, the deposit is removed and the foundation is visible. When a small boy the writer crossed this ford and saw the water pouring in limpid beauty off the old foundation. Fifty-two years later he visited this spot and saw portions of the foundation still preserved and uncovered by the earth though under water. Some years after this mill went to decay another one was constructed some distance above it at a more eligible place with higher and narrower banks. These old mill ponds have grown up with large trees and where the upper mill stood a hill has been formed by the accumulation of alluvial thrown up by frequent high floods of water coming down from the cultivated lands and hills above. William Willis Magee, a brother of Sire and Jeremiah, was one of the first Baptist preachers coming to this country from South Caro- lina. Josiah Magee settled on Dry Creek opposite the town of Tyler- town. Josiah Martin and his wife, Elizabeth Glass, came from North Carolina and settled on Big Tonsopiho, where Joseph T. Martin (known as Joe Tuff) was bom, April 13, 1812. He always claimed to be the first boy child bom in Pike County. The fact is he was not bom in Pike County, but in Marion County, because there was no such a county as Pike when Joe Tuft was bom. Major Sartin was close after him, for he was born on Magees Creek November 28th, of the same 4 50 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI year. It was about three years after these remarkable events, 1815, before Marion County had this valuable and historical territory plucked from her great body. At any rate, be it said to his honor, Joe Tuff was bom in that portion of Marion County which became a part of Pike. There were three other brothers, sons of Josiah Martin and Elizabeth Glass: Wm. G. Martin, who married Sally Wicker; James B. Martin, who married Mary Pearson ; Jack Martin, who lived and died a bachelor; and Eliza R. Martin, who married John McNabb, leaving no issue. Joe Tuff married Lorinda Bacot, daughter of Laban Bacot, the sheriff, with whom he raised a large family of children. Joe settled down to farming, was a “hale fellow, well met,” and often a con- spicuous figure on public occasions; a good-hearted man and a pros- perous farmer and citizen. THE MC MORRIS FAMILY. It has previously been stated in this chapter that the Bogue Chitto Baptist Church was constituted and located on Bogue Chitto on a plantation owned by Alexander McMorris. There were two by this name, Alexander, Sr., and Alexander, Jr. The elder Alexander McMorris was from Scotland. His wife, Elizabeth Baxter, was also from Scotland. They emigrated to America and were married in Edgefield District, South Carolina, at the close of the Revolutionary War, where they lived until their children were nearly all grown, when they came to Mississippi and settled in Amite County. Alexander McMorris, Jr., was their son. Joseph Herrington, of Irish descent, and Anne Brown, of English parentage, were married in Sumpter District, South Carolina, where all their children were bom. They then moved to Tennessee, where both died, after which their children moved to Mississippi and also settled in Amite County. Among these children was Esther Herring- ton, who became the wife of Alexander McMorris, Jr., in 1842, and in 1843 he bought the place on Bogue Chitto, where the church was organized in 1812, and lived there until his death, in 1850. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 51 Alexander MeMorris, Jr., and Esther Herrington had two children: Richard H. McMorris,who married Mag- gie Jones, and Esther Ann MeMorris, who married Isaac Charles Dick. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Alexander MeMorris married Wesley H. Thomas, and they were the parents of Mary M. Thomas, who married William Powell ; Baxter Thomas, who married Ettie Norell, of Jackson, Miss., and WesleyA. Thomas, who married Miss Willie Smith, of Vicksburg, Miss. Baxter Thomas was the first white child bom in the town of Summit. Alexander MeMorris, Jr., had a sister named Nancy, wife of Hardy Thompson, who lived east of Bogue Chitto on the road leading to Holmesville, and was a large slave owner and cotton planter. Isaac Charles Dick, who married Esther Ann MeMorris, was a son of Jacob Dick, who was bom in Switzerland and emigrated to France. His wife Was Susanne Jonte of France. They were Hugue- nots. They and their families came over to New York, where Jacob Dick and Susanne Jonte were married, after which they moved to Louisville, Ky., where Isaac Charles Dick was bom. He afterwards went to New Orleans, and when the railroad reached Summit he drifted there and subsequently married Esther Ann MeMorris. Isaac C. Dick of the Summit Rifles. 16th Mississippi Regiment, Color Bearer. Severely wounded in desperate charge at Cold Harbor. Subsequently member Washington Artillery 52 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The following article has been copied from the New Orleans Daily Delta: “We were shown by Mr. Isaac C. Dick, of 1914 Jackson Avenue, this city, a Bible printed in the year 1568. It is printed in double column, in Latin and French — one column being the translation of the other. In connection with this volume is the royal privilege of the king, which was absolutely necessary before a literary work could be issued. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Bibles heard of in this country — being 330 years old. It has the original bind- ing save the back and corners. Mr. Dick’s grandparents became possessed of this old volume in France, it being left at their home by one of Napoleon Bona- parte’s officers on the occasion of that emperor’s march to Germany in 1806. It is in a remarkable state of preservation, and the print is very legible.” Capt. Westley Thomas, above mentioned, who married Widow McMorris, was a member of Jefferson Davis’ 1st Mississippi Regiment in the war with Mexico and participated in all the fighting done by that command in Mexico. Joseph Catching and his wife, Mary Holiday, moved from Georgia and settled on the Bogue Chitto, two miles below Holmesville in 1812. They had five children, as follows: Thomas Catching, who married Miss Clendenon, and lived in Hinds County, the parents of T . C. Catch- ing, ex-Congressman, Mrs. Mary Baird and Mrs. Nannie Torry ; Benja- min Catching, who married Miss Hickenbottom and resided in Copiah County; Silas Catching, who married Miss Ann Drake and lived in Pike County; Sally Catching married Robert Love; Seamore Catching married Sarah Smith, who came from North Carolina in 1812. They had two sons, Charles and Joseph, aged twenty and eighteen, killed in the battle of Shiloh, Tennessee. They had a son, Seamore, who married Miss Ada Marshall; Silas married Jennie Lilly, of Hazlehurst, and lived in Somerset County, Kentucky. John married Maggie Duffy, and also resided at Somerset, Ky. Sally May Catching married Robert M. Carruth, of Amite County. Florence married Frank Causey, of McComb City, and Wm. Love Catching married Miss Winnie Nall, of McComb. In 1812 John Smith settled on the Bogue Chitto four miles below Holmesville. His wife was Elizabeth Love, and they were the parents of James (Wild Jim Smith), Narcissa, Margaret and Sarah. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 53 Narcissa married Judge James B. Quin, Margaret, H. F. Bridges, and Sarah, Seamore Catching, the father of Sally May, Robert M. Carruth’s wife. Mrs. Carruth has in her possession a copy of the Ulster County Gazette, Vol. II, published at Kingston, N. Y., under date of Saturday, January 4, 1800, ruled in mourning for the death of Gen. George Washington, who died December 14, 1799, aged sixty-eight, containing the proceedings of the United States Senate in reference to the death of this illustrious citizen, the Senate’s address to the President and his reply from which the following is copied : “Among all our original associates, in the Memorial League of the Conti- nent, in 1774, which first expressed the sovereign will of a free nation in Amer- ica, he was the only one remaining in the general government. Although with a constitution more enfeebled than his, at an age when he thought it neces- sary to prepare for retirement, I feel myself alone, bereaved of my last brother; yet I derive strong consolation from the unanimous disposition which appears in all ages and classes, to mingle their sorrows with me on this common calamity to the world. “His example is now complete and it will teach wisdom and virtue to mag- istrates, citizens and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations as long as our history shall be read. If a Trajia found a Pliny, a Marcus Aure- lius’can never want biographers, eulogists or historians. “John Adams.” “United States, Dec. 22, 1799.” In memory of this event the Ulster County Gazette contains the following : ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL WASHINGTON. BY A YOUNG LADY. What means that solemn dirge that strikes my ear? What means those mournful sounds — why shines the tear? Why toll the bells the awful knell of Fate? Ah! why those sighs that do my fancy sate? Where’er I turn the general gloom appears, Those mourning badges fill my soul with fears; Hark! yonder rueful noise — 'tis done — ’tis done! — The silent tomb enshrines our Washington. Must virtues exalted yield their breath ? Must bright perfection find relief in death ? Must mortal greatness fall ? A glorious name ! 54 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI What then is riches, honor and true fame ? The august chief, the father and the friend, The generous patriot — let the muse commend! Columbia’s glory and Mount Vernon’s pride There lies enshrined with numbers at his side! There let the sigh respondent from the breast, Heave in rich numbers — let the growing reft Of tears refulgent beam with grateful love ; And the sable mourning our affliction prove. Weep, kindred mortals — weep — no more you’ll find A man so just, so pure, so firm in mind; Rejoicing angels, hail the heavenly sage; Celestial spirits the wonder of the age. Mrs. Carruth also has the beautiful silk, gold fringed Master Mason’s apron with the symbolic emblems of that ancient order, worn by her grandfather, Joseph Catching, who as well as being a pioneer of Pike was a member of Rising Brotherhood Lodge, No. 7, of Holmesville, and a certificate of membership of Joseph Catching, 15th of May, in the year of Masonry 5830 (1830) signed Thonly L. White, W. M.; Jimmerson Statham, J. W. ; Arak Wilson, Sect. Also a certificate of membership of Joseph Catching from Holmesville Lodge, No. 69, dated January 1, 1847, A. L. 5847, signed George Nicholson, W. M. ; James Kenna, S. W. ; J. B. Statham, J. W. ; Sam A. Matthews, Sect. GEORGE III. George III of England was bom on the 4th of June, 1738. On tho 27th of May, 1759, he was married to Hannah Lightfoot. He died on the 29th of January, 1820. They had a son, Buxton Lawn, whe married Mary Dawson (or Dorson), a granddaughter of the Lord Mayor of London of the same name. Buxton Lawn and Mary Daw- son were the parents of the following named children : Buxton, Robert, Henry, Mary, Betsy, Cathorine, Susan, William, Ann and Eliza. Of these, Robert, Mary, Eliza and Ann drifted to New Orleans, after coming over to New York in company with their mother, in search of the husband and father whom they missed on his return to England, and died there soon after. Robert Lawn (changed to Layton) married Susan Gilchrist, first HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 55 wife, and Margaret Newman Hewes, New Orleans, La.; Mary married Charles K. Porter, New Orleans, La.; Ann first married Mr. McKit- rick, and then Samnel James Stephens. With McKitrick she had one daughter, Mary, who was the wife of Joe Kirkland. Eliza married William B. Ligon, Sr. Ann Louisa Stephens, daughter of Ann Lawn (Widow McKitrick), was the wife of Owen Conerly, and mother of this writer. Joe Kirkland had a son named Dud, who was a Mexican War veteran, lived and died in East Feliciana Parish, La. ; also a son named Weston. Ann Lawn Stephens was the mother of Cathorine, who married John C. Huey, New Orleans, La. ; Cecelia, who was the wife of William Forshey, a sculptor and portrait painter, from Missouri, lived a while in Holmesville — had previously been a member of the Louisiana Legis- lature, and was Mayor of Brookhaven in the sixties. It is a curious circumstance how the grandchildren of the King of England strayed away from there and became identified as they have been with Louisiana and Mississippi. Ann Louisa Stephens, Mrs. Huey and Mrs. Forshey and the children of William B. Ligon, Sr., with Eliza Lawn, being the great grand children of that monarch. Samuel James Stephens, husband of Ann Lawn, was a native of Ireland, highly educated, an eminent physician and surgeon, and an attache of the staff of Napoleon Bonaparte. He possessed a miniature likeness of himself and Bonaparte taken together and set in gold, showing a strong resemblance between them and evidencing a close friendship. He was one of the volunteer exiles from France who came to Louisiana after the fall of his illustrious chief. He met and mar- ried Mrs. McKitrick and lived in Covington and New Orleans. Ann Louisa, his daughter, was well educated, spent some of her younger days with her brother-in-law, Joe Kirkland, and with her uncle and aunt, Col. William B. Ligon and wife, She taught school at China Grove, where she met young Owen Conerly and married him in 1838, in her twentieth year of age. She read and spoke French fluently. She was a woman of fine mental qualities, a great reader, historian and conversationalist, and was regarded as one of the brightest and 56 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI most intellectual women of her time who lived in Pike County. She Was a fluent writer and occasionally contributed to the local news- papers — in later years established in Holmesville. She was musical and poetical, an ardent Methodist in religion, and lived and died in the faith. There is no language this writer can command which will enable him to pay a just tribute to his beautiful and gifted mother. Around the family fireside and in the sanctity of a home, in his childhood, youth and young manhood, he imbibed the inspirations of her soul. Whatever talents he may possess, manifested in a perusal of this book, he owes to her and a father who had an intellect as clear and bright as the waters that flow from the most beautiful fountain. The Laytons, descendants of Robert (Lawn) Layton and the Hewes connected with this branch; the Porters, the Hueys, Gilchrists and the Prestons of New Orleans are all connections of George III and Hannah Lightfoot; springing from Robert Lawn, Mrs. Eliza Ligon, Mrs. Mary Porter, and Mrs. Ann Stephens. In Pike County, all the descendants of the children of Col. William B. Ligon and Eliza Lawn and those of Owen Conerly, Jr., and Ann Louisa Stephens, are direct descendants; also the children of Mrs. Cecelia R. Forshey, widow of Wm. Forshey, now of Texas. She had only two children, Cecelia and Florence, the latter being the wife of John W. Coffee. Reddick Taylor Sparkman came from Bunkham County, North Carolina. His wife was Nancy Woodward Pearson, of Edgefield District, South Carolina. They were among the early settlers of Holmesville. Reddick Sparkman was a first-class mechanic and con- tractor and built many of the first fine residences of Holmesville. He was one of the builders and owners of the Holmesville Hotel, which subsequently fell into the hands of his son-in-law, William R. Johnson, who married his daughter Martha, the widow of — — - Rich- mond. One of the residences built by him is still standing and is the home of Dr. Lucius M. Quin. In company with Thomas Arthur he constructed a water-mill over a small bayou below town through which the water was turned from the Bogue Chitto by the construe- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 57 tion of a rock dam above. The machinery was run by means of a large undershot Wheel. It was an upright saw and grist mill. He was major in the militia of the county and an active politician, being a democrat when the Whig party existed. He served as sheriff for several terms, the exact dates being given elsewhere in official lists. Reddick Sparkman and Nancy Woodward Pearson, his wife, were the parents of the following children: Martha E., whose first husband was Mr. Richmond, the father of Dilla and Reddick Richmond; her second husband Was William R. Johnson, the hotel keeper, and her third husband R. Y. Statham, who first married her sister Ann Maria and was left a widower. Cynthia Adaline, who married James A. Ferguson. Victoria, the wife of Frank M. Quin. Alvira, the wife of Capt. John Holmes. The names of their sons are Thomas Wiley, William L. and Achilles P. Sparkman. Thomas Wiley died in his youth. William L. was killed at the time of the breaking of Lee’s lines at Petersburg, Va. He belonged to the Quitman Guards and was on the skirmish line when they (Harris’ Mississippi Brigade) were ordered to assemble in Fort Gregg and hold it at all hazards. He fell before reaching the fort. Achilles P. Sparkman was severely wounded in the abdomen, pene- trating the bladder, in the battle of Cross Keys, Va., during the cele- brated Valley Campaign, when Stonewall Jackson and R. S. Ewell joined forces to drive N. P. Banks out of Winchester, which disabled him for life. Mention of him will be found in future pages of this work. He married Mary E. Vaught, the daughter of Maj. W. W. Vaught, who was a quartermaster in the Confederate Army. 58 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER III. CHINA GROVE AND MAGEES CREEK. China Grove Was first settled and owned by Ralph Stovall, in 1815. He settled on land about one-quarter of a mile from where the China Grove schoolhouse and church have stood since established. At the foot of a steep elevation there is a splendid freestone, cold Water spring, east of the church, that formed an ever-flowing branch which bubbled on down westward and emptied into Magees Creek. This spring and branch afforded ample water for domestic purposes and for stock. At this period of the first settlement of the community under the Stovall regime, the church erected here belonged to the Baptist denomination. There was a grove of China trees set out in the grounds around the schoolhouse, which was a little log building (the original church house), and the church yard, which gave it the name of China Grove. Ralph Stovall employed John Barnes, the grandfather of Major Sartin, and constructed a set of mills over Magees Creek, about a mile south or southwest direction from the church, and his residence, run by water power. These mills consisted of an upright saw, a cotton gin and press, a rice pestle mill and fan, for cleaning, and a grist mill. It Was built across the stream at the foot of a bluff, which afforded a good embank- ment on the east side. Drury and Henry Stovall, brothers of Ralph, settled a few miles north of China Grove at this same period. Richard Ratliff in 1817, Benjamin Youngblood in 1816, Ben Jones in 1818 and Joseph Thornhill in 1812. In 1822 Owen Conerly and his brother, Rev. and Dr. Luke Conerly, emigrated from North Carolina, Duplin County. They were sons of Cullen Conerly and Letticia. They married sisters. Owen married Mary and Luke married Rebecca, daughters of William Wilkinson and Elizabeth. The latter left no issue. Owen and Mary were married January 14, 1808, in the town of Fayetteville, N. C., county of Cum- berland. When they came to Mississippi, Owen Conerly purchased all of Ralph Stovall’s property at China Grove. Rev. and Dr. Luke Conerly settled near by in Marion County, on the headwaters of the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 59 Pushepatapa, in the vicinity of Waterholes Church. After this the church house property which had been used by the Baptists, being included in the act of sale, was turned into a Methodist Church. The children of Owen Conerly and Mary Wilkinson were Cullen, William W., John R., Eliza, Owen, Emily, Luke (died early), Rebecca (died early), Cathorine (died early), Mary Jane and James, Melissa and Susan (died early). Some of the early settlers of Magees Creek, more or less identified with China Grove, were Parish Thompson, James Craft, Zachariah McGraw, Owen Elliott, John Merchant, school teacher and preacher; James Reed, James May, William Reed, Noah Day, chairmaker; Jacob Smith, Joseph May, William Boon, Stephen Ellis and Joseph Newsom. In 1813 Sartin’s Church was established by John Sartin, Joseph Newsom, James Reed, John May, Joseph May, Owen Elliott and Stephen Ellis. Stephen Ellis was a school teacher and minister of the gospel, and was one of the prime movers for the establishment of a church here, as well as being a pillar of strength to pioneer Methodism in this sec- tion. The house constructed here was built of peeled pine logs and was used as a house of worship, a day school and a Sunday-school, with Stephen Ellis as the minister, teacher and superintendent. This man took such a conspicuous part in the spiritual, intellectual and social upbuilding of Magees Creek that he and his brother, Ezekiel Parke Ellis, afterward district judge of the Florida Parishes, La., deserve more than a passing notice in these reminiscences. They were the sons of John Ellis, bom in Virginia, and connected with the Tucker and Randolph families, whose father was a man of great force of character, a planter and a Christian. Their mother was Sarah Johnson, bom in Virginia also, and connected with the Kershaw and Lowry families of that State. John and Sarah Ellis moved to Georgia and thence to Pike County, Mississippi, and afterwards to Louisiana, in the territorial period. The Ellis families of Copiah and adjoining counties are of the same stock. George, John, Reuben, Stephen and William Ellis were names of members of this branch. 60 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI William Millsaps, of Browns Wells; T. J. Millsaps, of Hazlehurst; Mrs. Sally Wadsworth, widow of Rev. Wm. Wadsworth, and Dr. George E. Ellis, of Utica, Miss., are among those recalled as offshoots of the Mississippi branch of the family. When tidings of the massacre at Fort Mims reached South Missis- sippi Stephen Ellis, still in his teens, joined a company of mounted riflemen, raised in Pike, Marion and adjoining counties, and with this volunteer command served under General Coffee in the little army of Gen. Andrew Jackson, then operating in Alabama and Georgia against the hostile Indians and their British allies. He saw hard service under Coffee, who was Jackson’s great cavalry chief, in that fearful wilderness campaign. He participated in the sanguinary battle of the Horse Shoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River, where defeat broke the power and spirit of the Creek Indians for all time, and he took part in other minor engagements, served faithfully until the close of the war and was honorably discharged. He was a fine reconteur and delighted in entertaining his hearers of recollections of Jackson and Coffee, Houston and Davy Crockett, and of the pompous bearing and self-importance of the Choctaw chief, General Pushmataha, one of Jackson’s brigadiers. Stephen Ellis married Mary Magee, sister of John, Hezekiah and William Magee. He moved from Pike County to near Franklinton, in Washington Parish, Louisiana; was a successful planter and man of considerable means. He Was a man of deep religious convictions, a preacher of force and earnestness, logical and zealous, and his minis- try resulted in lasting good. He was a great reader, strong thinker and writer. He delighted to teach the young and spent years of his life thus. He was for years superintendent of education and held other positions of trust. He possessed engaging manners, fine social qualities. He was handsome and happy hearted, content and true in friendship. His only living son is Stephen R. Ellis, of Acadia Parish, Louisiana. His daughters living are Mrs. Melissa Wiggins, of Sharon, Miss., widow of Rev. David M. Wiggins; Mary, widow of Rev. Benj. Impson; Gabriella, widow of Hugh Bateman, and Mrs. Ellen Babington, wife of Robert Babington, of Franklinton, La. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 61 His descendants include the family names of Ellis, Burris, Wiggins, Simms, Impson, Bateman, Babington, Hartwell, Sykes, Lampton, Bickham, Maggee and others. One daughter, Sara Ellis, married Judge James M. Burris, another Rev. L. A. Simms, and another Jason Bateman. He died at his home near Franklinton about 1869 in the seventy-ninth year of his age, the triumphant death of a Christian, carrying along with him in the eternal hereafter the sweetest recollec- tion of those who survived him. There are many people yet living in Pike County and elsewhere who remember this good man, who were children then. His beautiful character, his love of children, his zeal in religion and the uplifting and upbuilding of the Methodist Church in Pike County and in Wash- ington Parish are indelibly stamped upon their memories. Tradi- tions of him have gently and sweetly floated down the stream of time — among the descendants of those who clustered about him, from the head waters of Magees Creek to where the earth has been made holy and sacred as his last resting place in Washington Parish, Louisiana. Ezekiel Parke Ellis lived in Pike County on Magees Creek and taught school also in the early history of the county. He was twelve years younger than his brother Stephen, and therefore figured later on. He married the youngest daughter of Col. Thomas Cargill Warner, who served under Gen. Andrew Jackson at New Orleans in 1814 and 1815, and was judge of the probate court of Washington Parish, Louisiana, for many years. Ezekiel Ellis became a lawyer and was judge of his district for many years, dying at Amite City in 1884 at the age of seventy-nine years. He, like his illustrious brother, was a man of splendid intellect, moral influence and force of character and transmitted his splendid virtues to his sons and daughters. His son, E. John Ellis, was a lawyer and brilliant orator, a man of great personal magnetism, a member of Congress from the Second Louisiana District from 1875 to 1885, dying in Washington City, D. C., in 1889. Stephen D. Ellis, a practicing lawyer at Amite City and Surveyor of the Customs of the Port of New Orleans under President Cleveland, and Thomas Cargill 62 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Warner Ellis, senior judge of the civil district court of New Orleans, are living. The latter was closely associated with Gov. John McEnery during the celebrated dual government in Louisiana, of Wm. Pitt Kellogg and John McEnery, and took an active part in the overthrow of the disgraceful carpet-bag regime in that State in the reconstruc- tion period. He has always been a man of fine intellect, clear views, legal acumen, an elegant and forceful writer, a true, noble-hearted, lasting friend, and while filling the ardent and responsible position of senior judge of the civil district court of New Orleans has also filled the chair of law lecturer at the Tulane Institute in that city. One daughter of Ezekiel Ellis is the widow of Rev. John A. Ellis, of the Mississippi Conference, who was chaplain of the 29th Tennessee Regi- ment of the Confederate States Army. The above named sons all served honorably through the Civil War, in the Army of Tennessee. It is the splendid qualities possessed by such men as Stephen and Ezekiel Ellis and transmitted by them to their descendants that has thrown around the early history of Pike County a halo of romance, and gives to the writer of this epoch an inspiration and a labor of love. During this early period of China Grove there were few postoffices, mostly located at the county seats of justice. There was none at China Grove until 1836, when the first postoffice was located through the efforts of Col. William B. Ligon at his plantation on Magees Creek, a few miles south of China Grove, and he made postmaster. It was given the name of China Grove postoffice through him. It Was subse- quently moved to Raiford’s store, three miles nearer to the church, Ezekiel Park Ellis HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 63 and afterwards, in the fifties, to Packwood’s store, about three - quarters of a mile south of the church. China Grove is about equi- distant from Holmesville and Columbia, and the residence of Owen Conerly being located at the crossing of the Monticello and Covington road and the Holmesville-Columbia road, made it a central and con- venient stopping place for travelers. Owen Conerly and Mary Wilkin- son raised five sons: John R. (Jackie), Cullen, William, Owen and James, and three daughters: Eliza, Emily and Mary Jane, and they all became settlers on Magees Creek or near it. Owen Conerly, Sr., kept his mill in operation attended by his son, Owen, Jr., until his death, about 1848, after which the property was sold at administra- tor’s sale and fell in the hands of Needham B. Raiford, the Methodist minister, who at that time filled the pulpit at China Grove. Owen Conerly, Sr., and his brother, Luke, were among the organizers and principal supporters of the Methodist Church at this place up to the death of the former and the removal of the latter to Western Louisiana, in 1848. After the sale of his father’s China Grove property and the mill, Owen Conerly, Jr., having purchased a place higher up on Magees Creek, settled by John Gordon in 1817, erected a saw, grist mill and cotton gin. He sold a portion of this property to Thomas J. Con- nally, a blacksmith, who named these places “ ’Possum Trot,” from which the ’Possum Trot road leading from there to Tylertown derived its name. In 1812 Peter Sandifer came from South Carolina on pack horses and first settled at “Thick Woods” near Baton Rouge, La., and from there he came to Magees Creek and settled a few miles below China Grove on the west side of the creek below Conerly’s mills, through which lands the ’Possum Trot road runs. This was in 1820. During that year the noted Pacific-Atlantic hurricane, commencing on the Pacific Ocean, passed through the country to the Atlantic somewhere in North Carolina. It made a swipe through Pike County, striking in from Amite County along a little stream which derived its name, Hurricane Creek, from that circumstance. It struck in and swept over the old McCay settlement near Muddy Springs, where the Spinks 64 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Peter Sandifer in Bear Fight Scene on Magee’s Creek, 1820. brothers live, following a course a little south of Holmesville and through below China Grove where Peter Sandifer had settled. It was about one-half mile wide and did great damage outside of its central line by the side currents, destroying timber and other things as it passed. It wiped Sandifer’s improvements off the face of the earth. Neigh- bors were far apart in those days, but it was customary to help each other in all cases of emergency, so the Magees and Thornhills, lower down on the creek, and others were summoned to his aid. On account of the abundance of bear and panthers, wolves and wild cats, it was HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 65 unsafe to leave women and children unprotected. In this instance, as well as others, they took their wives and children, their guns and dogs, along with them. When they reached Sandifer’s the men went to work to put up a new house, some cutting blocks and some pine poles and peeling them, and some riving boards, and the women to making preparations for their meals. There was a spring some dis- tance away which afforded water, and the children were sent there for water. When they reached the spring a large black bear had posses- sion of it. The children were greatly frightened upon meeting the bear so suddenly and their screams brought out the entire fighting force with their guns, knives and dogs. The bear, however, was undismayed and stood his ground against the big pack of trained dogs, and a genuine battle ensued. It Was difficult to shoot the bear without endangering the lives of the valuable dogs engaged in the conflict, so the men let the fight go on until finally the bear picked up one of the most valuable of the dogs and proceeded to caress him vigorously while folded in his massive arms. The dog screamed for dear life, and this was too much for the owner and he and others rushed in with their big knives and the battle became one of exciting interest until bruin succumbed at last from loss of blood. This was a noted bear fight, but one among many of such incidents that hap- pened in that section of the county. Magees Creek had a wide, flat bottom, which Was in those days covered with a very thick under- growth and wild cane, affording suitable hiding places for these wild animals. In this neighborhood Daniel Burkhalter and his wife, Mary Palmore, had settled on Varnal, which empties into Magees Creek just above Sandifer’s. Their settlement was on the hill near the ford where the Holmesville and Columbia road crosses. They owned a negro slave woman who had some children. One was a child just sitting alone, and was left in the yard with the larger child to mind it, while the grown people were out at work. A large, fat coon came up in the yard and caught the little child by the cheek and held on to it. The screams of the children brought the mother to the house to learn the cause and the coon refused to let go. Then the master came and had to choke the coon to death to make it let go the child’s cheek. 5 66 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The wild animals and birds afforded great sport to the early settlers as well as meat in abundance for their families. Daniel Burkhalter and Mary Palmore were the parents of Henry, William, John and James Burkhalter, and Eliza, who married Joseph Luter; Cynthia, who married Mike Jones; Mary, who married William Kaigler; Sarah Ann, who married Frank Leland; Louisa, who mar- ried Willis Magee, and subseqaently Elbert Magee. Indian Creek is one of the head streams of Magees Creek, and got its name from being the camping-grounds of the Choctaw Indians. It was first settled by William Boon and his sons later on and by the father of Wiley Elliott, who married Caroline Barr. William Boon had four sons: John, Richard, Frederick and Skinner Boon. John married Helen M. Sartin. Joseph Thornhill, who settled in this community in 1812, married Elizabeth Fitzpatrick in South Carolina. The following are the names of their children: Liddy, who married Claiborne Rushing, of lower Magees Creek; Polly, who married Jack Reddy, upper Magees Creek; Evan J., Lucella, John, Hiram, Joseph Patrick and William Thornhill, who was the father of Dr. Jo. M. Thornhill. Elisha Holmes, Sr., came from Georgia with his wife, Sally Stovall, a sister of Drury, Ralph and Henry Stovall. They settled on Collins Creek in the early part of 1800, contemporaneously with the Magees. They were the original ancestors of the extensive Holmes family in Pike County. They were the parents of the following children: Cole- man, who married Polly Ann Foil, sister of William Foil, from Georgia ; Josiah, who married Agnes Samrall; Benjamin, who married Mary Sumrall; William, who married Jane Foil, sister of Ann; Jesse, who married Nancy Sumrall; James, who married Nancy Shirley; Cynthia, who married David Brumfield; Betsey, who married Isaac Brumfield; Jennie, who married Willis Brumfield; Elisha, who married Mary Roberts, daughter of David Roberts, from Georgia, and Berry, who never married. Elisha Holmes, Jr., settled on Vamal Creek and was the father of Thomas H. Holmes, who married Telitha Duncan, daughter of James Duncan and Winnie Carmon. His daughters were Polly, Ellen, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 67 Emily, Harriet and Sarah, who married George Gartman, and Eliza- beth (Betsey), who married Dave Gartman.* Benjamin Holmes, the husband of Mary Sumrall, settled on the east side of Magees Creek some two miles north of China Grove. He was a farmer and bell manufacturer. He made them by hand in his shop and supplied the people with bells. He raised a large family of boys and girls and was the father of Dave and Capt. John Holmes, the last captain of the Quitman Guards, and Benny Holmes of the same company; James and Needham and Betsey, Mary Ann and Emily. All the Holmes whose names may be found in the rolls of the several military companies of Pike and incorporated in this book sprung from Elisha Holmes, Sr., and Sally Stovall, those glorious old Georgia ancestors, like the rest of them, who first planted themselves in the wilds of the Mississippi Territory, gave to the Confederacy its heroes and its heroines. Darbun Creek, one of the head tributaries of Magees Creek, got its name from Colonel McGowan, an eccentric bachelor, who settled there with his brother, Elijah McGowan, in 1815, along with Drury and Henry Stovall, brothers of Ralph Stovall, the founder of the China Grove settlement, Richard Ratliff and Harrison Bracey. They were all slave owners and progressive and- successful cotton planters. Drury Stovall was bom in Georgia in 1770, and his wife, Lucey Wright, was bom in the same State in 1780. They were married in *Isaac Duncan, a son of James Duncan and Winnie Carmon, was murdered by some negroes while plowing in his field. He had previously had a difficulty with negroes named Love and Pink Conerly. Subsequently Love was killed in his cabin by some one on the outside at night, his slayer shooting him through a crevice of the cabin. Isaac Duncan was supposed to be the one who did it, but there was no proof of it, and the grand jury failed to find any against him. This led to the murder of Duncan by negroes who slipped up to his fence and hid themselves and then shot him down at his plow. After disabling him and having him cut off from his own gun, they rushed in on him and, though begging for his life, they beat his brains out and left him. Ike Duncan assured this writer that he was innocent of the killing of Love and he has been informed by others in a position to know that he was not guilty of the crime. Ike Duncan was a mason and master of his lodge, and he was buried by that order, and had one of the largest funerals ever known in eastern Pike County. His murderers escaped punishment. 68 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 1803. From them came Charles Green, John Lewis, Thomas Pecer, William J. and Felix Crawford Stovall. Charles Green Stovall remained in Georgia and the other brothers settled in the Darbun neighborhood and became the direct ancestors of the Stovall Con- federate soldiers. Harrison Bracey came from South Carolina in 1815 and married Elizabeth McGowan, a sister of Col. James and Elijah McGowan. They were the parents of Sarah, who married William Mellerd; Mary, who married Hugh Craft; Cynthia, who married Needham L. Ball; Rebecca, who married Calvin Ratliff, subsequently wife of Jackson Holmes; Margaret, who married Sherod Gray, and Lucy, who married Mike Pearson, and Washington and Harrison Bracey, Jr. The latter married Louisa Ball, daughter of Jesse Ball, Sr. Harrison Bracey, Sr., was a nephew of President William Henry Harrison on the mother’s side. Richard Ratliff settled on Darbun in 1817. He married Mary Stovall (called Polly), daughter of Drury Stovall and Lucy Wright, from Georgia. Richard Ratliff and Mary Stovall were the parents of Franklin, Warren, Calvin, Green, Robert (died young) and Simeon R. Ratliff. Richard Ratliff Was a large slave owner and acquired con- siderable means as cotton planter and by general farming. Simeon R. Ratliff, one of the survivors of the Quitman Guard, is the only one of these sons living. He married Joan Ellzey, one of Pike County’s most beautiful girls, at the close of the Civil War. Joel Bullock came from North Carolina and settled in Marion County in 1818. His wife was Rhoda Davies, whom he married before coming to Mississippi. He was related to William and David Bullock, who settled on Clear Creek. They were the parents of Hugh, Quinney, Davies, Thomas, William, Lemuel and Samuel (twins), Richard, Simeon, Joseph, Rhoda, Delia, Eptha and Louisa, who married Mr. Ginn. Lemuel T. Bullock, who resided on Vamal, married Joan, a daughter of Jerry Smith. Jake Smith and his wife came from Germany, first to South Caro- lina or Georgia, and then to Mississippi, and settled on the west side HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 69 of Magees Creek, a few miles north of TylertoWn, where they lived and died and are buried. Five children were bom to them: Daniel, Jacob, John, William and Salena. Daniel married a Miss Magee. William married Angeline, daughter ofJohnMagee. John married Miss Morgan. Jacob Jr., married , and Salena married Hugh Ginn. Sarah, a daughter of Jacob Smith, Jr., married Leander Sartin. Benjamin Jones came from South Carolina in 1811, and acquired property on Magees Creek in 1818. He was a gunsmith, and married Polly Harvey, daughter of Michael Harvey. They were the parents of Mike Jones, who married Cynthia Burkhalter, daughter of Daniel Burkhalter and Mary Palmore. Joel Bullock and Rhoda Davies were married in North Carolina, emigrated to Mississippi and settled in Marion County. Hosey Davies, a relative, and Newton Cowart, also came about the same time, also Stephen and John Regan. These people, with Luke Conerly, formed a group or settlement around Waterholes Church, just outside the line formed by the creation of Pike County. Huey Bullock married Caroline Smith; Quinney married Liddy Graves; Richard, Miss Magee; Lemuel, Joan Smith; daughter of Gen- tleman Jake Smith; Simeon, Nancey L. Williamson ; Joseph, Nancy Ann Davis. William and Davis Bullock, who settled on Clear Creek in 181 2, were a branch of this family. Governor Bullock, of Georgia, brother of Capt. Theodore Roose- velt’s wife, mother of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, belonged to the same family. Another branch settled in Virginia. They were all Irish stock from England, and came to America prior to the Revolutionary War. There was a branch of the Davis (Davies) family who settled in Laurence County. These people were all known for their high integrity, honest purposes — sub- stantial, law-abiding citizens, adhering to the Baptist faith in religion. Thomas Bullock had two sons: William and John Thomas. John Thomas was a natural-bom ventriloquist, which his schoolmates and play fellows learned of him in childhood, playing hide-and-seek. He 70 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Was wild and daring even in his early years, and during the Civil War, by a ruse, he, with twelve young boys, captured 300 Yankee raiders in Laurence County while out on one of their expeditions from Natchez. He had thirteen Confederate flags, made by the women out of such stuff as they could hastily put together to represent the Confederate battle flag, and placed them in position so as to indicate the presence of so many regiments, and by a ruse drew them inside his lines, and when the proper time arrived the color-bearers exhibited their flags and the enemy discovered that they were surrounded without any hope of escape. Bullock rode out to meet them and asked what they proposed to do, surrender or be slaughtered? “It is a question for you to determine instantly or I will fire on you with my entire com- mand.” The officer in charge of the raiders saw the thirteen battle flags waving defiantly from the woods and he yielded at once. Bul- lock ordered them to line up and stack their arms, waved for a courier from his battle line, to whom he gave instructions to have General Bullock’s ordnance officer to take care of these guns and to send a guard of twelve men to him at once, and with these he escorted the raiders into Confederate headquarters, where they learned to their mortification the trick played on them. His adventurous spirit knew no bounds, and at the close of the Civil War he joined the Texas Rangers and served with them for years and eventually died in the service of the United States Government as a detective. It is related of him that he got to be such an expert rider and marksman that he could lean down beside his horse’s neck, circle at full speed around a tree and girdle it, firing underneath his horse’s neck. The writer was a childhood schoolmate with him and per- sonally knew of his ventriloquism and reckless daring. Michael Harvey came from Georgia. His wife was Mary Clowers. They first settled on Pearl River, in 1808, below Columbia, the same year that his son, Harris Harvey, was bom. They afterwards settled near China Grove. Their sons were: Harris, Daniel, Evan, Thomas, Doc, Mike, Pearl, Sr., Jesse and Jack. There was a Pearl Harvey, Jr., son of Harris, who was a member of the Quitman Guards, 16th Missis- sippi Regiment, who died with the measles at Corinth in 1861. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 71 The Harveys constitute a large family of descendants. Harris Harvey married Liddy Smith, daughter of Jerre Smith. Dan married Melovie, a sister of Liddy. Each of these brothers raised large families of sons and daughters identified with Magees Creek and its vicinity. Evan Harvey owned property near where McComb City was after- wards located, becoming one of the original pioneers and founders of East McComb. Ruth, a daughter of Michael Harvey, married William Walker, a son of John Walker and Mary Gates, who emigrated to Mississippi in 1814. It is claimed that Michael Harvey dug the first well in Pike County, located on the plantation of Irvin R. Quin, near McComb City. The descendants of these people will be spoken of in future pages of this work, with the same generation of others con- stituting the citizenship of Pike County in this interesting period. William Ravencraft settled in the Territory in the early part of the century on a little stream forming one of the head tributaries of Magees Creek, which took the name of Ravencraft Creek. Like all other pioneer settlers who built grist mills at that period, he brought his millstones with him fixed on an axle like a cart and drawn by an ox or horse. All the millstones we have any record of brought to the Territory from South Carolina, of which water-mills were con- structed in Pike, were transported this way. South Carolina and Georgia in those early days were fruitful of ingenious and skilled mechanics. William Ravencraft Was one of this number. He was a fine cabinet-maker, made wagons, chairs, reels, spinning wheels, looms, shuttles, slays and fancy white hickory hamper baskets, some of which are in use to this day. There was a man here then from Copen- hagen, Denmark, named Henry Mundalow, who made it a business to peddle the products of Ravencraft’s shop and those of Wiley Rush- ing, living lower down on Magees Creek. Much of the furniture made by these skilled pioneers was transmitted to their descendants and are in use the present day, though worn by frequent scouring with sand to keep them white. The family in Pike without its spinning wheel, reel and loom, prior to the Civil War, was not considered up-to-date. The long distance to markets, the necessity of self- reliance and living on home products, gave the people, men, women 72 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and girls a schooling which, in after years, demanded of them the exer- cise of those heroic virtues that have made them famous throughout the world for sublime fortitude and unparalleled patriotism. William Ravencraft and Wiley Rushings on Magees Creek and the Walkers down on Silver Creek and the Bogue Chitto; John Warren, Jesse Day and John Stogner, Simpson Laurence and others, though poor in purse, are recalled as the mediums, the founders, the grandfathers of these splendid characteristics of the men and women of Pike County in the days and years that tried their souls. In his early childhood the writer visited many of these places of industry along on Magees Creek, and Was familiar with their location over a half century ago. The mill that John Warren built for Ralph Stovall in 1817 below China Grove was the home of his infant years. Visiting this spot sixty years later he finds the foundations, and where his childhood feet toddled a veritable wilderness; and the stone that makes the name of William Ravencraft live in history imbedded in the little stream over which it clattered then.* William Ravencraft’s property des- cended to his son Joe, who inherited the mechanical genius of his father and kept up the business assisted by his son George during his lifetime. In the meantime the waters of Ravencraft Creek began to fail and the little grist mill being very small and running so slowly, it took a whole night to grind a hopper full (about a bushel) of com. Thomas J. Connally, the blacksmith, afterward known as “Talla- bolv,” who married Sally McNabb and was living at “ ’Possum Trot,” told the story on Ravencraft’s mill in his shop one day: That being belated one night on business in that section on account of the absence of roads and darkness he got turned round and didn’t know which route to pursue. After awhile he heard a dog baying and concluded to go to it, consoling himself that he would probably get a big fat “ ’possum” for dinner for Sally and the children. It was only at intervals the dog would bay, boo, Woo! boo woo! Coming nearer he heard a clattering noise and the splashing of water, and now and then, boo woo! His heart leaped with joy over the prospect of that *Since recovered by Elisha Thornhill on Love’s Creek, residing on the old Forest homestead. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 73 fat ’possum. He knew Sally and the children would be fed. He could well afford to lay in the woods all night and sleep soundly too with the assurance that Sally would be provided for. When he reached the baying dog he was struck with astonishment. It was Ravencraft’s mill doing its nightly work grinding com into meal, and the dog in the box eating it as it came out of the chute. He would lick it up and then raise his head and eyes heavenward and boo woo for some more meal. Said he, “I wound my way out of the wilder- ness that night a wiser but sad and disappointed man. No ’possum for Sally.” The sons of Owen Conerly, Sr., settled around him in the vicinity of China Grove, except Cullen, who married Le\ isa Lewis. He bought the Thornhill place in the fork of Magees Creek and Dry Creek. He erected a set of mills, saw, gin and grist, over Dry Creek above its junction with Magees Creek, bought out a store from Garland Hart, and established a postoffice which was called Conerly’s post- office. Owen Conerly, Jr., who after the death of his father in 1848, bought the Gordon place two miles north of China Grove, and in 1852 and 1853 built a mill over Magees Creek there, sold it to his brother James; then it passed to Joseph Luter, and is now owned by Mr. Rushing. William and John R. (Jackie) emigrated to Western Louisiana, the former subsequently returning to Pike. Maj. Owen Conerly, a nephew of Owen, Sr., was a son of John Conerly in North Carolina. He married Susan Tynes and settled near the Marion and Pike County line, east of China Grove. He was Owen Conerly The Author’s Father 74 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI a wheelwright, carriage maker and farmer, and was noted for keeping a large flock of goats. He raised a large family of children, sons and daughters who have always been identified with that section of Pike. One of the brothers of Maj. 0. William Conerly settled on Pearl River. The children of Owen Conerly, Sr., married as follows: Cullen married Levisa Lewis, a daughter of Martin Lewis, of Marion County. Owen, Jr., married Ann Louisa Stephens, of New Orleans, a daugh- ter of Samuel James Stephens, an eminent Irish linguist and sur- geon, an attache of the staff of Napoleon Bonaparte, and Ann Lawn, daughter of Buxton Lawn and Mary Dawson, or Dorson, of London, England. She was a school teacher, and came out in this region to Joe Kirkland’s, who had married an elder sister, and settled on Kirklands Creek. She was a niece of Col. William B. Ligon’s wife, Eliza Lawn. John R. Conerly married Eliza- beth Tines. William married Caroline Stams, with whom he raised James, Jr., and Mark. Two other sons, John and William, who died young. He subsequently married Margaret Connally, daughter of Price Connally, from Georgia, sister to “Tallyboly” and to William Tyler’s wife and to George, Crosby, Jack and Rebecca. They had one daughter, Lulu. James Conerly married Mary Lamkin, daughter of Sampson L. Lamkin, the surveyor. Eliza married Jesse Ball, giving him three sons and a daughter — William, Newton and Needham and Rebecca. Lived on Magees Creek. Emily married Daniel Ball, Marion County. Mary Jane first married Jabez Lewis, brother to Cullen’s wife, and raised HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 75 one child, Mira, who married Monroe Smith. She afterward, as widow by death, married Benjamin Lampton, son of William Lampton, a brick mason from Kentucky, who made his beginning on a little farm north of Tylertown, formerly Conerly’s postoffice. Gilbert Grubbs came from Georgia. He married Elizabeth Sandi- fer. She was a daughter of Peter Sandifer, Sr., who settled on Magees Creek in 1820, the year of the great Pacific-Atlantic hurricane, and a sister of William, Jackson, Peter, Jr., and Robert. Gilbert settled on Union Creek in the same period with John Warren. He was the father of Benjamin Grubbs, Peter and Gilbert, Jr. Benjamin was the father of Henry Grubbs. His wife was Ellen Gartman, a daughter of Bartholemew Gartman, from Germany. Bartholemew Gartman ’s wife was a daughter of Daniel O’Quin, Nellie, from North Carolina. Her brothers were Daniel, Ezekiel and Jehu O’Quin. Bartholemew Gartman and Nellie O’Quin were the parents of George, David, Josiah, John and Perry Gartman and Cynthia, who married Joe Deer; Katie, who married Charles Carter in Louisiana; Mary, who married Elias Smith; Caroline, who married William Grubbs, and Ellen, who mar- ried Benjamin Grubbs. George Gartman married Sarah Holmes, daughter of Elisha Holmes, Jr. Henry Grubbs married Lenoir Angeline Ellzey, daughter of Louis Ellzey and Mary Ann Holmes. Henry Grubbs owns the plantation on Magees Creek settled by a man named Toney about 1798, who sold it to Robert Sandifer, who built the hewed-log house on it now occupied by its present owner. It passed into the hands of his brother John, who sold it to Sampson L. Lamkin, a son of William Lamkin. John Snead married Mary Gooch in Georgia. They were the parents of Keziah Snead, who was the wife of William Lamkin, the father of Sampson L. Lamkin the surveyor, and John T. Lamkin, the eminent lawyer of Pike County. The tombstones marking the graves of William Lamkin and Mary Gooch Snead can be seen on this place carefully preserved by Henry Grubbs and his wife. 76 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Dr. McAlpin married Cathorine Wilkinson in North Carolina. She was a sister of Mary and Rebecca, wives of Owen, Sr., and Luke Conerly. With Dr. McAlpin she had two sons, Patrick and Mark. Dr. McAlpin dying early, these two boys were raised and educated by Luke Conerly. Cathorine afterwards married Calvin Magee, a Baptist minister, who emigrated to Sabine Parish, Louisiana. Patrick became a school teacher and taught in the little old log schoolhouse at China Grove. It was here that this writer sat upon his knees and learned to know what A and B were, at the point of his little ivory handled penknife. Fanny Conerly, a sister to Owen, Sr., and Luke, married Cullen Duncan, and becoming a widow she married Elijah Tumage. She was the mother of James Duncan. Polly Conerly, another sister, married Guy, the father of William Guy, ancestors of the Guys in Amite and Pike Counties. Chelly married a Blunt in Covington County, and another sister married Isaac Newton in Laurence, and they are the ancestors of the Blunts and Newtons in that section of South Mississippi. Quinney Lewis Was a brother of Martin Lewis and Judge Lemuel (Lammy) Lewis, of Marion County. He and his wife, Patsey (Uncle Quinney and Aunt Patty), were contemporaneous with the Conerlys. They were, like them, devout Methodists. Their home was on Magees Creek some four or five miles below China Grove. They were great pillars of the Church here along with the Woodruffs, the Youngbloods, the Conerlys and the Sartins. Quinney Lewis and his devoted wife furnished two able ministers to the Mississippi Conference, Henry P. and Wfflliam Bryant Lewis, and a number of their descendants belong to the ministry. They were the parents of Barney Lewis, one of the pioneer newspaper men of Pike County, located at Holmesville with Robert Ligon. Barney Lewis married Keziah, daughter of Sampson L. Lamkin and Narcissa Sessions. In 1836 Col. Wm. B. Ligon obtained a large tract of land from the Government about five miles south of China Grove and settled there. Colonel Ligon had lived in Covington and owned a line of schooners working through the lakes and plying between Covington, New Orleans and Pensacola. He had taken an active part with Gen. Andrew HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 77 Jackson in 1814 and 1815. He had participated with the American colonists of Texas in their struggle for independence from Mexico, and was wounded in one of the battles. He Was a man of consider- able means when he settled here, and engaged in merchandise, farming and keeping the postoffice, which he had named China Grove. He was a native of Virginia, emigrated to South Carolina, thence to New Orleans, and married Eliza Lawn, daughter of Buxton Lawn, of London, England, and Mary Dawson, or Dorson. He had a brother who lived at Rienza in Tishomingo County. The names of his children are Robert, William B., Jr., John, Buxton, Lemuel T. and Charles A., and his daughters were Mary, Elizabeth Ann, Susan and Martha. Robert married Angeline Bearden; William B., Jr., married Annor Barr and Mary Stovall, second wife; John, Sally J. Moseby, of Jack- son, Hinds County; Buxton, Miss Barrett, of Hinds County; Lemuel Thomas, Mellie Muse, of Louisiana; Charles died a bachelor; Eliza- beth Ann married Lemuel Jackson Quin — their children are as fol- lows: Irvin Alonzo, who married Lizzie Luter; Martha Eliza, died early; Mary Arvazena, wife of Elisha C. Andrews; Lucy Marcella, wife of William Huey; Alice Cornelia, first husband Sam Stuart, second husband Dr. Cole; Laura Virginia, died young; George Nichol- son Quin, who married Sarah Brumfield; John Ligon Quin, who mar- ried Ida, daughter of Giles Lewis; Lemuel Gracey Quin, who married Alice, daughter of Giles Lewis; Nancey Bridges, wife of Luther Bums; Josephus Murray Quin, who married Minnie Shontell; Sarah Eliza- beth, wife of David Bums; Susan, John Shilling and Martha, Dave Ford. On account of the part taken by him in the independence of Texas, Colonel Ligon was allotted a large tract of land in Texas by the Repub- lic, but he never thought enough of it to prove and claim it. Land at that time being so cheap in Texas it was not considered worth the expense and trouble to acquire the deed. While engaged in the schooner trade between Covington and Pensacola he owned a negro slave who was one of his trusty sailors, but who was subject to trance spells which sometimes lasted for several days. On one trip he employed two new sailors as helpers on the schooner run by the negro, and they HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI being ignorant of the nature of these spells thought him dead and threw him overboard, to the great sorrow of his master. He was a Methodist and pillar in the Church, but not demonstrative in religion. He was a man of high character, honorable purposes, a soldier of worth, and as such and a citizen of Pike County has left an untarnished record to be proudly remembered by his descendants. In these early years of the settlement of Magees Creek we have no record of any doctors except those of the Thomsonian practice. Owen and Luke Conerly and their wives, “Aunt Polly” and “Aunt Becca,” as they were called, were usually relied on in all extreme cases except surgery. Dr. Wiley P. Harris was at Holmesville, fifteen and twenty miles distant. Later on Dr. McQueen came from Washington Parish, and eventually Drs. Booth, May and Payne. Composition tea and lobelia was a favorite prescription for fevers, measles, etc., and a great medicine made by the settlers was called “Black Medicine,” concocted from the star grass roots, and given as a spring tonic. John Sartin, Jr., son of John Sartin, Sr., and Margaret Barnes, married Seleta Craft, daughter of John Craft, from Tennessee, and lived on what is known as the old Salty place, originally settled by Owen Elliott, on Canada Branch, one of the head tributaries of Magees Creek. He established a tannery on Tilton Creek in Marion County, which was used in the interest of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Their son, William Sartin, served in Pierce’s cavalry company from Marion under Colonel Peyton and General Woods. John Craft, Sr., had two brothers, James and Major. James mar- ried Ebiline Thompson, a sister of Parham, Sr., and Parish, Sr. Major Craft married Nancey Hamilton, sister to John Craft’s wife, and Mrs. Bearden. Major Craft was the father of Dr. Sidney M. Craft, who lived in Hinds County, near or at Jackson. James had two sons, Hugh and Jack, and five daughters. James M. Buckley married “Nug,” the mother of Gov. A. H. Longino’s wife. Hugh Craft killed Quince Cooper, who was pursuing him with a drawn knife around a house, and Hugh shot him to death with a Colt’s repeater. It was clearly a justifiable homicide, and nothing was done about it. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 79 Melie Manning and Nancey Deer were married in South Carolina and came to Pike in 1839 and settled on Ravencraft Creek. Their son John married Elizabeth Sandifer, and they were the parents of Joseph M., John W., Moses Moak and Westly J. Manning. Joseph Parker and his wife, Mila Deer, came from Barnwell Dis- trict, South Carolina, and settled on Vamal. Their children were William, Sarah and Nancey. Jeremiah Bearden came from Tennessee and married Rachael Hamilton. He was one of the original settlers of Holmesville, and, in company with Reddick Sparkman, built the first hotel there. It was subsequently known as the Johnson Hotel, kept by William Johnson, who married widow Richmond, a daughter of Reddick Sparkman. The children of Jeremiah Bearden and Rachael Hamilton were Jack, and Nancey who married John Barnes, father of Pink and Clinton C. Barnes, and afterward married Matthew McEwen; Delilah, wife of Judge H. M. Quin, and Angeline, wife of Robert Ligon. These girls were twins. Jeremiah Bearden subsequently settled on Topi- saw and died there. His wife lived to be very old and died in 1870. George Ratlift, a slave of Richard Ratlift, purchased his freedom from the Ratliff estate. He was a fine mechanic and hired his time from his master. He was a mulatto, a good man and was well thought of by the whites. He married a slave woman of his own race and was honored with a splendid dinner given by the white people of Magees Creek. Pie settled a farm on Darbun and was the founder of George- town, located on the head of Darbun in the northeast comer of the county. Other noted slaves on Magees Creek were Austin Bracey, Daniel and Griffin Ratliff, Prime Ball, Mose Conerly, Rans Lewis, Harry and Ike Conerly. The latter was a preacher, a teamster, and managed the log-cart for his master’s mill. He sang his songs and preached to his oxen and prayed for them and his people. To him life as a slave was sweeter and happier than it was when emancipation endowed him with citizenship, and forced upon him the responsibility of providing for himself and family. And old Aunt Becca, his master’s cook. The writer remembers when in his tender childhood he went to grandpa’s 80 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and Aunt “Becca” took him upon her knees in the kitchen and caressed him and gave him the best there was in the pot and fed him with the little “niggers” under the massive shade trees with buttermilk and potlicker and bread. Harriet Beecher Stowe and other Northern writers have given to the world the darkest picture of an institution for which the Southern people were not responsible, but brought to them by the slave specu- lators of the New England States. Charles Smith and his wife, Nelly Hickenbottom, came from South Carolina in 1811 and settled on Magees Creek, west side, below China Grove, near Peter Sandifer. Their children were Elias, who married Mary Gartman; Zachariah, Pharo, Joseph and Charles. Bill Finny settled on Kirklands Creek in the neighborhood of the Magees. According to tradition nearly all new settlements have had their Bill Finny. Whether this is a myth or whether the story of Pike’s Bill Finny went abroad is not known. It is a fact, however, according to tradition from the original settlers of Magees Creek, that there was a William Finny who settled on Kirklands Creek. It is related of this man that he had an aversion to work and failed to produce com to bread his family, and his neighbors got tired of pro- viding it for him, and held a meeting to determine what should be done with him without violating the statutes. It wouldn’t 'do to hang him or shoot him or knock him on the head with a pine knot. After long parleying it was determined to bury him alive. There was no law “agin” that. So they made a box and put it in a cart and went after Bill. They found him stretched out on the gallery as usual. They informed him of the decision of the court and he offered no objection nor made any resistance, and they picked him up and laid him in the box in the cart and proceeded to a distant burying ground. On the way they met a neighbor who enquired what was the matter. “Nothing, we are only going to bury Bill Finny.” “What! Is Bill dead?” “No; we are going to bury him alive.” “For what?” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 81 "Because he has no corn to make bread for his family, wont raise any and we are tired of furnishing it.” "Don’t do that, men; I’ll let him have some com.” Bill lazily turned his eyes in the direction of his sympathetic friend and asked: "Is it shelled?” “No, it is not ; you will have to shell it.” "Then drive on the cart,” said Bill. And they drove it on and dumped him out in the graveyard and left him there. John Stalling settled near the confluence of Kirklands and Magees Creeks. He came from South Carolina. His wife was Nancey Dillon. When he settled there no salt could be had nearer than Natchez, a distance of a hundred miles. He walked to Natchez by such paths as he could find, did little jobs of work to pay for it and packed it home on his shoulder. They had one daughter, who married John Williams. Their son, James Stalling, married Sally Pearson, and they were the parents of Winnie, who married Eli Brock; Jane, who mar- ried Calvin Simmons; Eliza, who married James Simmons; Margaret, who married E. C. Holmes; Nancy, who married W. J. Holmes. Their other sons were John, Jeff and Willie. Jacob Owen was bom in South Carolina in 1780 and his wife, Mary Googe, in 1784. They settled on Dry Creek between 1800 and 1805. They moved from South Carolina on horseback. He built a small grist mill on Dry Creek, but on account of scarcity of water he afterwards went lower down and built another mill, which subse- quently fell into the hands of Boardman and Tyler. Tylertown was first known as the Magee Settlement. Cullen Conerly went there in 1850 and became the owmer of the quarter section lying due north of the Thornhill tract, and bought out the Garland Hart store and established a postoffice which was called Conerly’s postoffice, and the place bore that name for many years. He erected a mill about a half mile below the Owens or Tyler mill and farmed on his plantation. This he sold to Ephriam Rushing, and his mercantile interest was sold to Benjamin Lampton, who -had mar- 82 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ried his sister, Mary J. Conerly, the widow of Jabez Lewis, and here Benjamin Lampton laid the foundation of the mercantile business of Tylertown, and which, through the business tact of his sons, has grown to such large proportions and become famous in Pike County and in Laurence and Marion. George Smith’s Water Mill and Dam over Kirklands Creek, Southeast Pike County Mr. Smith is standing on the framework of the dam, and members of his family- are in the mill building. Mr. Smith is a Confederate Veteran of Co. E, 16th Miss., Harris’ Brigade, A. N. V. Clarkston Dillon settled on Bogue Chitto. Clara Dillon married George Smith, Sr. She and Willis, Theopholis and Laurence were children of Richard Dillon. Tylertown has always been considered a part of Magees Creek, though the village as now located is on Dry Creek, which empties into Magees Creek a short distance below. Its first settlement dates back to the emigration of the Magees and Thornhills. William Thorn- hill and his wife, Liddy Breland, came from South Carolina and settled HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 83 here. They had a son, Elisha, who was bom in South Carolina in 1799. His wife was Mary Carr. Their children were William B., Hillary B., Elizabeth, Isham, John M., Brian, Mary Ann, James W., Millie Ann and Susan Ann. Tylertown is located on a tract of land originally acquired by J. Thornhill September 20, 1816. By custom the place got to be called Tyler- town, and the postoffice was changed to that name in honor of W. G. Tyler. William G. Tyler came from Boston, Mass., and was an artillery soldier under Gen. Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and 1815 against the hostile Creeks and their British allies, and participated in the battle of New Orleans (Chalmette) in 1815, which settled the fate of the English arms in America. He was a can- noneer and delighted in artillery practice. He was a splendid blacksmith, and moulded the small mortars used to fire salutes on public occasions. His wife was Mary Connally, daughter of Price Connally, a blacksmith from Georgia, and Mary Corker, whom he married in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. They raised five children, William Thaddeus Tyler, who married Mollie Quin, daughter of Judge James B. Quin and Narcissa Smith; Lizzie, who married Newton Ball; Safrona, who mar- ried Mark R. Conerly; Fanny, who married Frank McLain; Sarah, who married John Alford. Cullen Conerly and his wife, Levisa Lewis, were the parents of Owen, Jr., No. 2, who married Teletha Warner. Owen was color- bearer of the 33d Mississippi Regiment of Featherstone’s Brigade, and was killed in the desperate assault on the enemies’ works at the battle of Franklin, Tenn. John M., William M., Mary Ann (Polly), Rebecca, Eliza, Cathorine and Martha. John M. Conerly’s first wife was Jane Lampton, daughter of William Lampton, of Kentucky, and sister to Benjamin, James and Frank. William M. Conerly married Sarah, daughter of Harris Harvey. Polly married John Colquhoun; Rebecca Wm. G. Tyler T ylertown 84 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI married Loftlin Colquhoun; Cathorine (Kitty), W. H. H. Brumfield, and Martha, Needham Holmes. Chauncey Collins was from Salisberry, Conn.; bom in 1810, he came to Mississippi in 1840 and married Amelia, daughter of Elias Woodruff and Ailsey Collins, of Columbia, Marion County, in 1842. He settled on a little stream emptying into Magees Creek southeast of Tylertown and a little below the junction of Dry Cieek with that stream. It acquired the name of Collins Creek f; om him. Here he established a tannery and shoe shop, and lived the rest of his life. He had been a clock merchant for some years. He kept his hides in* tan vats for two years and made the most lasting shoe to be had. Everybody almost in the country patronized him when they could obtain his goods He was a highly intelligent man, a fine historian and conversationalist. His Wife had two brothers — William, who went to Florida, and Seth Woodruff, who went to DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. His children were Caroline Victoria, who married Daniel Tate; Julia E., who married J. A. Morris; Frederick W., Warren N., Seth W., George H., Chauncey and Wesley. Elias Woodruff was from Newark, N. J., whose father, Seth Wood- ruff, was one of three brothers who came from England to New Jersey. Seth Woodruff removed to New Albany, Ind. He was a Baptist preacher and probate judge, and baptized the first person ever bap- tised in the Ohio River up to that time and at that point. The Woodruffs of New York State and New Jersey are descendants of the above-mentioned three brothers. Elias Woodruff wandered from New Jersey and came to the newly constituted Mississippi Territory. For many years he was considered by his people as a lost member of the family, as they could not hear from him. At length means were provided and a brother was sent to search for him. After long months of overland travel, without a single clue, except that Elias had gone to the Mississippi Territory, working his way through the deep forests, by ways and paths, his brother found him in Pike on his little pine-woods farm where he had settled below China Grove, on Magees Creek, with his wife, Ailsey Collins, and one little daughter, Mary. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 85 After long persuasion, he induced them to return with him to Newark, N. J., where little Mary died, after which, becoming dissatis- fied they returned to their old home in Pike and raised a large family of sons and daughters, among them Amelia, the wife of Chauncey Collins, and Lucetta (who married W. G. Evans, Sr.), the mother of Hon. W. G. Evans, of Gulfport, ex-State Senator. Lucetta died while this son was an infant, and like many other Southern children in the past, owed much of the care given him to a good old black mammy; and W. G. Evans has worked his way up to a high and honorable posi- tion among his fellowmen. Ailsey Collins, his maternal grandmother, the Wife of Elias Woodruff, was a pious, good woman, a member. of the Methodist Church at China Grove in the days when the magnifi- cent eloquence and influence of Stephen Ellis united the early settlers of that section of Magees Creek, in the establishment of a church that has been kept up for eighty years, and the influence of which has been sown broadcast over the land. Elias Woodruff was a soldier in Jackson’s army, serving in the battle of Chalmette, New Orleans, La., in 1815, and his widow drew a pension from the government up to the time of her death. Mrs. Mary Woodruff, surviving widow of Seth Woodruff, of Louisi- ana, is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her maiden name Was Mary S. Ritch and she is a lineal descendant of John Ford, one of the signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Her brother, Thomas L. Ritch, of Charlotte, N. C., served during the civil war on the staff of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, the famous Confederate cavalry general of the Army of Northern Virginia, under Gen. R. E. Lee. Western Williams, son of Moses Williams and Eliza Woodruff Williams, of Mansfield, La., was a Confederate soldier and was in the siege of Vicksburg. After the war he emigrated to Texas and mar- ried Miss Maggie Houston, daughter of General Sam Houston, of Texas. Their daughter, Miss Madge Williams, the granddaughter of Sam Houston, by popular selection, christened the United States battle-ship Texas, when it was placed in commission some years ago. Nelson Payne ran away from his parents in Tennessee and followed General Carroll’s command in their long march to New Orleans, and 86 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI was with them in the battle of Chalmette. He was too young to be enlisted, but remained with the command until its return through Pike County, where he stopped and made it his home. He subsequently married a daughter of Benjamin Morgan, with whom he had the fol- lowing children: Wm. Mac, Thomas W., Nelson R., Wm. Lafayette, Ann and S. C. Payne, who married John Kirby, who was the father of John H. Kirby, now known as the saw-mill king of Texas; also Mary A. C., the wife of Jack Craft. Nelson Payne, being left a widower, he subsequently married Jemima Owens, with whom he had the following children: Albert G. C., Louis J. and J. B. Payne and L. C., who married Ben Morgan; Morgana, who married Westley Sartin; Laura J., who married Marion Branton; Alice, who married Jesse Harvey, and R. E., who married Tom Harvey. Price Connally and Mary Corker were the parents of Thomas J. Connally (Tallyboly), who married Sally McNabb; George, Crosby, Jackson and Rebecca. Wiley Martin married Laura Quin, daughter of William Quin, who was murdered while asleep in camp on a trip to Covington with William Catching, in Washington Parish, by a negro who was hung for the crime in Franklinton, La., in the early fifties. Matthew Brown married Mary, daughter of William Sandifer. John Laurence, who lived on Union Creek, married Polly Bardwell. In 1846 Owen Conerly, son of Owen Conerly, Sr., of China Grove, raised a military company of the young men of Magees Creek and sur- rounding communities for service in the Mexican War, then being prosecuted by the United States Government. He was chosen its captain and tendered its services to the Government, but before the company could reach the army the war closed and the volunteers disbanded. Their names have not been preserved as they should have been. Simeon Bullock for one is known to have been a member of this company. J. Daniel O’Brien was a native of Ireland and came to Canada with his parents when a boy. He served in the Mexican War with Vir- ginia troops and afterwards went to North Carolina and married Mary HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 87 Conklinton, and then emigrated to Pike County and settled on Magees Creek below Tylertown in the early fifties. Sally Dillon married Wm. Thomas O’Brien, Katie Rushing married James S. O’Brien, and after her death he married her sister, Eveline Dillon. Armistead Hall and his wife, Rachael O’Quin, came from South Carolina in 1816 and located in the Jake Owens’ neighborhood on Dry Creek. Their children were Ezekiel Hall, who married Bertha Sandifer; John, who married Martha Prewett ; Armistead, Nancy B., Thomas David Forest’s first wife; Gracia, who married Abraham Lazar; Jane and Harriet, twins, who married James Thornhill and Leroy Breland respectively; William Hall, brother to Ezekiel Hall, married a daughter of Jake Owens; Patsey Hall married David O’Quin, and Barsheba, Daniel O’Quin. Richard Dillon was bom in Ireland and came to South Carolina prior to the Revolutionary War and joined the colonists in the War with Great Britain. He was captured and made a prisoner of war, taken back to England and compelled to work in a copper shop until the close of the war when he was liberated and returned to South Carolina, and with his wife came to Mississippi and settled on Bogue Chitto, at what is known as Dillon’s Bridge, or Dillontown. They were the parents of Clarkson, Laurence, Willie and Theopolis. George Smith, Sr., and his wife, Clara Dillon, settled near Dillon’s Bridge on the Bogue Chitto in 1817. Their son, Dort Smith, married Lucretia Dykes, whose father came from Georgia and settled on the Tangipahoa. George Smith, Sr., had a negro slave woman named Rebecca, who recently died at the age of ninety-five. She was a mother at fifteen and nursed Dort Smith at his infancy. A ferry- boat was used at Dillontown for many years. In 1873 the citizens in the community built a bridge, and they rebuilt it after it was washed down by a flood in the riuer. G. L. Barnes, a great grandson of John Barnes, who came from Georgia in 1798, lives near this place. His father and his grandfather were named William. Jasper Smith, son of George Smith, Sr., and Clara Dillon, married Mary Holmes, daughter of William Holmes. 88 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Dr. N. C. Smith married Daniel Smith’s daaghter, Melissa. Densmore Smith married Nancy and Eliza Smith respectively, and Pemissa, Jeremiah Smith. Dort Smith built his mill over Magees Creek in i860. Jeremiah Smith, brother of George, moved from South Carolina before the others came, bringing his little belongings in a cart. Richard Dillon married Henry Magees’ widow, daughter of Eph- riam Rushing. Henry and Fleet Magee were brothers. Richard Magee, a faithful negro slave of Henry Magees’, was bom on Pushepatapa eighty-nine years ago, and was li\ing when these notes were taken in 1902. William G. Tyler owned a faithful negro slave named Dick who was noted for his great strength and obedience to his master. Dick was a powerful man and worked at the mill and cut logs. He could cut more logs in a day than any two negroes in the country. It is related of him that some years after emancipation, and he became separated from his master by force of circumstances, he was discharged by an employer because he made $15.00 in one week cutting stock logs with an axe at 10 cents a log. It was too much money for a negro to earn in six days cutting stock logs, was the reason given for his discharge. Needham Raiford came from North Carolina. His first wife belonged to the Penn family of Louisiana. He was a Methodist minister and filled the pulpit during his lifetime at China Grove. He acquired considerable wealth as a cotton planter, in land, slaves and stock, and employed Joseph Barr, who was an experienced farmer and manager. His plantation is located a short distance south of China Grove Church. He became the owner of the entire landed estate of Owen Conerly, Sr., about 1850, at administrator’s sale, including the plantation and Ralph Stovall mill property. He was fond of hunting, and on one of his trips to North Carolina he procured some long-eared blue speckled deer hounds. They were slow trailers, but whenever they got a smell at a deer’s track it was almost certain to become somebody’s venison. They stuck to their game for days, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 89 and even weeks. On one occasion they started a deer on Magees Creek, chased it up the Darbun, around by the Waterholes Church in Marion and back, and then out on Pearl River in the neighborhood of the Lenoir’s, above Columbia, then back to its former lair on Magees Creek and was captured. In his young boyhood the writer helped to capture several of these animals after they had been chased for days by Raiford’s hounds, run into creeks by fresh dogs entering the chase. N. B. Raiford’s first wife brought him no issue, and during the early sixties, having been left a widower, he married Miss Emma Summers, of Smith County. With her a son was bom. The father died, and then the child, and the mother became possessed of the bulk of the estate. She afterwards became the wife of A. S. Bishop. She was a lady of the sweetest and most charming manners; a lovely hostess at the splendid plantation mansion on Magees Creek. She belonged to that class of young women in the early sixties possessing those virtues which commanded the chivalrous attentions of Missis- sippi’s best young men. Owen Conerly’s mill on the Gordon place was erected in 1852-53. Jeremiah Fields, Thomas and James Barnett, John Colquhoun and Lane Wreatherford were the millwrights employed. This mill was sold to his brother James and his farm was traded to James A. Fer- guson for mercantile and town property in Holmesville. While own- ing this mill one of his little boys, Robert, six years old, was killed by a stock log rolling over him and crushing him to death while out in the woods with the negro driver of the log-cart (Harry). The log was tying on the side of a steep hill, supported by a small hickory grub, and it was supposed the little fellow got on the log, and rocking, gave it a start. The children raised by Owen Conerly and Ann Louisa Stephens were Chauncey Porter (Dr.), Luke W., Mary Ann, Buxton R., Owen F., Thomas B., Samuel L. and Edward S. Conerly. There were others that died early, Lula and Cecelia. When Ralph Stovall owned the mill he built over Magees Creek below China Grove he hauled lumber to Covington, La., a distance of sixty-five miles, on wagons to supply customers there. 90 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Schools have been maintained at China Grove and at Sartins almost continuously since the settlement of that section. Among the teachers who served in the community were Joseph Smith, Pat. rick McAlpin, Charles and Joseph Bancroft. These were pay schools supported by parents of the children. There was no public school system in the State. All the schools were supported by tuition fees given the teachers. There was a public school fund which the law provided should be distributed in proportion to attendance of each child, which was paid to the parents of the pupils, but so small as to count but little. THE LAMPTONS. In 1740, Samuel and William Lampton came to Virginia from England. They were there when the revolution began and were ardent colonial patriots. In the meantime the Earl of Durham died, and their younger brother remained in England. Samuel Lampton, who died in Virginia, should have succeeded to the earldom. William Lampton moved to Kentucky. One of his descendants, William Lampton, came to Mississippi and settled in Marion County near China Grove. He was the father of Benjamin Lampton, James and Frank Lampton, and the first wife of John M. Conerly, Elizabeth, Sarah and Lucy. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), President Jef- ferson Davis, Henry Watterson, of the Courier- Journal, and other distinguished men can trace their lineage back to Samuel Lampton, who ought to have been Earl of Durham. It is said there was an estate of over $75,000,000 due the heirs of the Earl after his death. Benjamin Lampton and his wife, Mary Jane Conerly, were the parents of Walter M., Lucius L., Thadeus B., Iddo W., Edward, Mollie and Cora. Benjamin Youngblood, in company with Maj. Benjamin Bickham and John Brumfield, came from South Carolina in 1811. The latter went to Washington Parish. He and wife were detained in Marion County by the birth of his son, Joe, and remained there until their death at the age, respectively, of ninety years. Quinney Lewis and his wife, Martha, came from North Carolina about 1820 and settled on the east side of Pearl River, fifteen miles HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 91 south of Columbia. They remained here for some twenty-three years and associated themselves with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and were devout Christians. In 1843 they moved to Pike County and settled on Magees Creek five miles south of China Grove, and pursued the occupation of farming for twelve or fourteen years and then moved to Holmesville. They were known as Uncle Quinney and Aunty Patty. He was bom May 28, 1794, and died on his place near Holmesville in 1881. She was bom in 1800 and died in 1875. They raised six sons, viz.: Barney, the founder and editor of the Holmesville Southron; Martin, Lemuel, Henry P., William Bryant and James W. Lewis. Their daughters were Celia Ann, who married Warren Alford ; Mary Jane, who married Chestine Allen; Abigail married Ralph Regan in 1845; Elizabeth married Hyram Ware, first husband, killed during the Civil War, and John D. Warner, second husband. Quinney Lewis, with such help as he could get, constructed the old Pine Grove Church, west of Magees Creek, about 1844. He and his wife were ardent workers in the cause of Christianity during their entire lifetime, after their conversion while residing in Marion County. There was not a married couple in Pike County who were manifestly more devoted to each other and to their religion than they were. They took life easy, were always happy and could always find time to go to church, to Sunday-school and to prayer-meeting, and their doors were open for the entertainment of friends on all occasions. About 1856 two of their sons, Henry P. and William Bryant, were converted to religion and became associated with the Methodist Church. Great spiritual revivals were held at Pine Grove and at China Grove, and it was at the latter place that William Bryant delivered his first exhortation when not more than sixteen years of age, and after this the two brothers became permanently associated with the Mississippi Conference'. WHEN THE STARS FELL. In 1833 a great meteoric display occurred. There are a few people living in Pike County yet, white and black, who have a vivid recollec- 92 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI tion of this wonderful phenomena. It was on a dark night, and the shower was so great and brilliant as apparently to set the whole heavens ablaze. The ignorant and superstitious were frightened and thought it portended the destruction of the earth, and they resorted to prayer. The event has been handed down and spoken of by those who were living then as “When the stars fell,” and many old negroes of the present day date their birth back to that period. In 1849 and 1850 a temperance organization, known as the Sons of Temperance, was organized and maintained at Holmesville and at China Grove. This organization excluded women as members. In 1859 and i860 another temperance organization, known as the Social Circle, sprung into life, taking in boys and girls from fifteen up and men and women. Martin Lewis, a brother of Quinney Lewis, came from North Caro- lina in 1820. His wife’s name was Nancy. They first settled on Ten Mile Creek near Waterholes Church, in Marion County, near the dividing, line of Pike. He afterwards moved to Stovall Springs, above Columbia, where he died in 1857. He and his wife had several sons; Samuel, Josiah, Henry, Barney, Jabes and Silas. Josiah married a Miss Smith; Henry’s wife was Eliza Faulk. Joseph May came from South Carolina in the latter part of 1700. He was the father of Joseph May, Jr., who married Clarisa Daughtery from Tennessee, and they settled on the head of Magees Creek on the old homestead yet known as the Jo May place. Their children were Joda, who married Annie Maxwell, of Laurence County; Obed, who married Mary Lenoir, a daughter of Hope Lenoir, of Marion County; Dr. William M. May, whose first wife was Mary Wilson, of New Orleans, La., and second wife Margaret Badon; Jared B. May, bachelor, Co. E., 16th Miss. Regt., A. N. V.; Robert, who married Narcissa Cooper, daughter of Fleet Cooper, of Laurence County; Satina, who married Robert Bacot; Madaline, who first married Wm. G. Ellzey (Dutch Bill), and being left a widow, married Henry Badon after the Civil War; E. D. May married Rachel Ginn. James Andrews, who came from Georgia, married Miss McGraw in Pike County. Their children were Thompson, William, Burrell HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 93 and Felix and Minerva, who married Gamer Gates and lived in Holmes County. James Andrews’ second wife was Rachel Gullage, and they were the parents of Jack Andrews. Thompson Andrews married Lizzie Pearson ; Burrell married Mary Walker, daughter of John Walker. They were the parents of Elisha C., Thomas J., Wm. Pinkney, John Warren, Zebulon P., James Berkley, Sarah Jane, Rhoda Elizabeth and Charlie Lee. James Andrews settled on Bogue Chitto in early 1800 . Thompson Andrews and Lizzie Pearson were the parents of Mar- tha, who married Thomas Brent; James, Mac and Felix. Felix Andrews, Sr., married Widow Thigpen, of Holmes County, and were the parents of Warren and Wilkes Andrews. GREAT LAND EXCITEMENT. In the early fifties a great excitement Was started in Pike County by John King. An order had been issued by the Interior Department under statutory provisions authorizing the entry of lands at twelve and one-half cents an acre, giving to all free persons of lawful age the right to purchase 160 acres and as many more acres as he might wish at $1.25 an acre. A large number of people had squatted on lands under the territor- ial government and under the early State government, and had failed to secure patents. John King suddenly pounced on a few farms and began the work of ousting or trying co remove the original settlers. This procedure not only obtained in Pike, but throughout the State, and the people became aroused. The example of John King Was fol- lowed by others, and no man who had failed to apply for a patent on the lands he had settled was safe, or did not feel so, even from his near neighbors. The very fact that anyone of lawful age should secure 160 acres under the “bit law” and thousands of acres more at $1.25, brought about the condition of peril for the homes they had spent so many years in building and placed them at the mercy of land grabbers, who were rushing to the State land office for speculative purposes. The land office Was located at Washington, near Natchez, in Adams 94 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI County, to which the people flocked from all parts of the State to enter land and to try to save their homes from the clutches of the speculators and grabbers, who had no regard for squatter sovereignty or rights of first settlement. There never was such an excitement known in the history of the land office. Accommodations could not be had for the large numbers in Natchez and Washington and the vicinities, and the people camped out until they could get a turn at the register. It was a long, slow, tedious siege. Mr. Wm. White- hurst, the receiver, was severely taxed in labor as well as patience. An incident occurred at the land office during this eventful period which has been transmitted as relating to Pike County. Rev. J. H. Harris, a Methodist minister, who was well known in Pike County, was one of the seekers for real estate from some other portion of the State, and so was Michael Jones, from the head of Vamal Creek in Pike County. Jones got in the line of "take your turn” ahead of Harris, and when his turn came he occupied the attention of the receiver in trying to properly locate his claims to such a length as to wear the patience of those behind, and particularly Harris, who was extermely anxious to get in. Harris composed the following lines and pinned them over the door for the amusement of all the others in line: Accursed the owl that ate the fowl, And left the bones for Michael Jones; No mortal man hath seen the like Of such a monster, here from Pike. CHAPTER IV. John Hart came from England and settled at Newborn in North Carolina. His wife was a Miss Bryant. They raised a son named John Bryant Hart and a daughter named Sally. From Newborn John Bryant Hart went to South Carolina, joined the Colonial Army and engaged in the Revolutionary War against Great Britain with South Carolina troops. He married a Miss Gill and came to Missis- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 95 sippi Territory in 1800 and settled on the Bogue Chitto River about a mile from Bogue Chitto station. He and his wife raised four sons, James, John, Joseph and Isaiah, who preceded him and settled in the same locality on the Bogue Chitto. Joseph Hart belonged to Andrew Jackson’s command in the Florida War against che Seminole Indians. In May, 1861, at the age of seventy years, he joined the Bogue Chitto Guards under command of Capt. R. S. Carter, and was elected second lieutenant and served with distinction through the war. John Hart married Martha Meredith from Fairfield District, South Carolina. Her father was killed while moving to Mississippi by an Indian at the Chattahoochie River, who threw a chunk at another man, striking him and killing him, which resulted in an Indian killing. The Harts were descendants of Pocahontas stock. John Hart and Martha Meredith were the parents of Dr. R. T. Hart, who married Selena, daughter of Peter A. Quin and Tamentha Gray. Sherod Gray came from Richmond, Va., about 1820 and married Mary Hamilton, sister of Dr. Hans Hamilton, who was bom and raised near Holmesville, where he taught school. He procured land near where Walkers Bridge now stands across Bogue Chitto and built a mill over Loves Creek. He employed a man named Beasley to build his residence, a fine two-story building, on a plan almost identical to those of N. B. Raiford, Owen and Luke Conerly, Christian Hoover, Richard Quin, Gilbert Gibson, Wright B. Leggett, James B. Quin, Henry Quin and others along the Bogue Chitto. They were large two-story buildings with shed roofs on either side dropping below the upper story, sash and blind windows, with rooms on front and back, giving half-front and half-back gallery, usually brick chimney at each end and fireplaces down and upstairs. The upstairs were some- times divided into one large and two small rooms and sometimes a wing was extended from one end of the residence for a dining-room, the kitchen being set back away from it. Some of these old residences are standing yet, notably those of N. B. Raiford, on Magees Creek, and Christian Hoover, east of Bogue Chitto; a number of them were destroyed by fire. The old home of Christian Hoover has one of the finest front-yard gates perhaps ever constructed in Pike County. 96 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Such houses as these were not constructed by the first settlers. The first were usually made of peeled pine poles, notched in at the comers, for immediate use, then added to. The next grade being double penned, hewed log houses, open entry, front gallery and back and shed rooms. The floors were first made of split punchings or boards, and the roofs were covered with boards weighted down with poles cleated to make them secure. The children of Sherod Gray and Mary Hamilton were as follows: Margiman, who married Rachel Andrews; Thaddeus, who married Selena Burris; Cicero, who married Isopline Butler; Lemuel, who married Ellen Guinn; Sherod, who married Margaret Bracey; Isaiah, who married Sally Gardner; Cathorine, who married John H. Magee; Eviline, who married Ray Harvey and Ben Crawford, second hus- band; Sophia, who married Reel Thompson and John Hucabee; Selena, who married Hatton Weathersby; Margaret, who married William Jones; Tamentha, who married Peter A. Quin. Near Sherod Gray’s plantation, or on a part of it, Was a muck swamp which was a noted resort for dangerous wild animals, such as wild cats, panthers and bear. In the fifties the Gray boys killed a large Bengal tiger in this swamp. While a boy visiting there at this time the writer saw the hide of this animal stretched and tacked on the wall of a building, and it was here that he was afflicted with one of the most violent attacks of the “buck-ague” a mortal ever had, while on a deer drive with Cicero and Sherod Gray and John Colqu- houn. They had fixed it so as to drive the deer to his stand. After awhile the dogs started yelping faintly, but louder grew. “And faintly farther distant borne, Was heard the clanging hoof and horn.” The cold chills flashed through the youngster’s physical organism. He shuddered. There was a sense of congestion approaching, a smothering and gasping for breath. Presently the deer was seen standing in the open road, within thirty feet of him, mildly looking at him. He became struck with a semi-blindness. He reeled, stag- gered, threw his gun down and it fired somewhere in the direction of HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 97 where this innocent little animal stood looking at him. It Was the trying ordeal of his life. He must have drawn blood, but there was no actual proof of it. It is true the dogs set up a more animated yelp, but that was all. The horn sounded a recall, and — “Back limped, with slow and crippled pace, The sturdy leaders of the chase.” The boys came in to find the would-be hero of the occasion crest- fallen and sick. Silver Creek Church (Baptist) was constituted on Silver Creek, near Louisiana line, in 1814, by Thomas Batson, William lies, William Busby, Silas Bullock, Joshua Stockstill, Loflin Fairchild, William Bond, Henry Bond, John Thompson, Frederick Craft, David Hines, Walter Jacobs and Willis Simmons. Rev. Nathan Morris was called to supply this church as minister July 15, 1816, and was succeeded by Jesse Crawford in 1835. Still Creek, a small stream forming one of the head tributaries of Tangipahoa, was first settled by William Bagley Like many other sections in Pike at that time it was a wild, outlandish country, a wilderness of wild cane, full of bear, wolves and other dangerous ani- mals. The bear were so bad at times that they would come into the yards at night and attack the hogs in the lots and pens, where they could get at them easier than chasing them through the cane. The men never went out day or night without their guns and knives and dogs. Bagley owned a whisky still and learned the bear’s fondness for sweetened whisky, which enabled him to trap many of them. He made peach brandy and com juice, as the settlers called it. It is related that there was an old lady in the neighborhood whose people had emigrated and brought her from a wheat-growing country and she had a dislike to combread. She used to say that she never did like com in any shape or fashion until Bill Bagley got to making that com juice; she could manage to worry down a little of it then. Still Creek thus got its name. William Bagley settled the Powell place, between Still Creek and the Tangipahoa. Bagley acquired considerable wealth here raising 7 98 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI hogs, cattle and horses, and making com juice. He sold out his interests in Pike years after his coming and went to Covington, La., to engage in other business, and there died of yellow fever. John Kaigler came from South Carolina prior to 1810 and settled on that tract of land east of Holmesville, lying between Bogue Chitto and Otopasas, erecting his residence on the latter stream above its junction with Bogue Chitto near to where the bridge now stands. His wife was Rebecca Wells. She rode horseback part of the time, and he walked, carrying his noted double-barreled shotgun -rifle. They brought all their belongings with them, and had a rough, adven- turous trip. At this place is where Andrew Kaigler Was bom in 181 1, according to the best obtainable evidence which was transmitted from father to son and other members of the family. If this be true it “knocks the honors” off of Joe Tuff Martin’s and Wild Bill Smith’s claims that they were the first boy children bom in Pike County. There were many disputes between them as to which was entitled to the honor on occasions in Holmesville when they would meet around the festive board. John Kaigler was a hard-working man and careful manager, and the beautiful South Carolina girl who elected to share his perils in the long wilderness tramp from South Carolina to Mississippi was a strong support in laying the foundation and building up their home and fortune. John Brent, Sr., and William Cothem, Sr., were contemporaneous with John Kaigler and his wife. Andrew Kaigler married Mary Levisa Noland, bom and raised near Woodville in Wilkinson County, where his father had moved, leaving Adam, a trusty negro slave, in charge of his Topisaw planta- tion. Andrew subsequently returned to the original home, where he remained in after life. Their sons were George, Frank, Phillip and Willie, and their daughters Jane and Julia. A sister of Andrew Kaigler, Rebecca, married John A. Brent, son of John Brent, with whom she had two children, William E. and Fanny Brent, wife of Col. Preston Brent. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 99 William Cothem settled the Tumipseed place on Topisaw prior to 1815. His wife was Nancy Gates, and they were the parents of Elijah Cothem, whose wife was Cathorine Dunaway, daughter of Jonathan Dunaway, and they were the parents of John, Joseph and William Cothem. Carters Creek derived its name from John Carter, who settled John Cothem’s place and built a mill over that stream above its junction with the Topisaw. John Brent, Sr., Hezekiah Williams, Thomas Guinea and one of the Newman family were early settlers along on the Topisaw. Isaac Saddler came to the Mississippi Territory with the Walker family in 1814 and settled on a tract of land which afterward became a part of the Hoover plantation. Judge Christian Hoover settled his place in 1823. His wife was Mary Newland Nails, and he lived on this place until his death. He served as probate judge of Pike County for several years, and was a Representative and Senator in the General Assembly. He acquired considerable wealth as a cotton planter and owned over a hundred negroes. His sons were William, Thomas and Christian. W T illiam was a minister and Chaplain of the 33d Mississippi Regiment, C. S. A. He married Martha S. J. Thompson, near Greensburg, La. Thomas was a lawyer and died young. Christian became a doctor and mar- ried Miss Barnes, of Marion County. One of Judge Hoover’s daughters, Mary, married Benjamin C. Hartwell, from the State of Maine, who came to Jackson in 1836 and settled in Pike County in 1850. Julia Hoover married Dudley May, from Kentucky, disabled at the battle of Shiloh. Eliza (Dump) Hoover married George K. Spencer, of Columbus, Ga. Nancy Hoover married George Wells, of Amite County. They were the parents of Nannie Wells, left an orphan. Sarah Hoover married Thaddeus C. S. Barr. Henry Bond and his wife, Miss Muse, came from Georgia and settled on the Balachitto, on what is known as the William Allen place. Their children, Preston, married Annie Muse; Thomas, a Baptist preacher, Rebecca Felder; Henry, Samentha Dickerson; Rebecca, Louis Bal- 100 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI lard; Liddie, Willis Mullins; Betsy, Jesse Barron; Milton Napoleon married Mary C. Wilson and settled in Amite County. Gabriel Allen was one of the first settlers near Holmesville. He was the father of Felix Allen and was from Tennessee. Felix Allen was the father of Chestine Allen, who married Jane Lewis, daughter of Quinnie Lewis, and Cathorine, the wife of Westley Kline, the grocery keeper of Holmesville, with his first wife, Cath- orine Williams, who died in Tennessee, he came to Mississippi in 1814 and settled on Bogue Chitto below Silver Creek Church. He had twin daughters, Cathorine and Olivia, bom in Tennessee with his first wife. In 1828 he married Olivia M. McGehee, of Amite County. Wm. M. Allen married Julia McGehee. His second wife was Louisa J. Bickham, daughter of Thomas Carroll Bickham, of Wash- ington Parish. Mrs. Nancy Bridges, who was the mother of Frank and Linus Bridges, and lived on Leatherwood, was a daughter of Peter Quin, Sr., who came to Pike (then Marion) in 1812, and settled on Topisaw, and sister to Daniel, Peter, Jr., Henry, Richard and Rev. and Dr. Hugh Quin. Col. Peter Quin, Jr., came to Pike in 1815 and settled at Holmes- ville. He married Martha Cathorine Moore in North Carolina. Her mother was a Miss Murray, sister of the author of Murray’s Grammar. Their children were Hugh Murray, Peter C., Irvin Moore, Josephus R., Lemuel J., Selena, wife of Dr. George Nicholson; Cynthia, wife of Dr. Leland; Courtney, wife of Dr. Jesse Wallace, and Dewitt Clinton. Daniel Quin, son of Peter, Sr., married Kitty Deer, and they were the parents of Rodney, William, Frank and Emily, wife of Jere- miah Coney. Henry Quin married Elizabeth Graham, and their children were Peter G. Quin, Arthur and Henry G. and Minerva, wife of General Cain; Amanda, wife of James Gamer, Amite County; Mary, wife of Thomas Gamer, Amite County; Elizabeth Hugh, wife of Dr. Vincent Jones Wroten. The following are the children of Dr. Wroten and Elizabeth Hugh Quin: Margaret Elizabeth; William Monroe, who married Eleanor HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 101 Lombard, adopted daughter of Robert Lea, of St. Helena Parish, Louisiana; Dewitt Henry, who married Eliza Sprich; Kate Minerva, wife of Charles E. Davis, of St. Helena Parish, Louisiana; Mary Eloise. Dr. Vincent J. Wroten was a son of Wiley H. Wroten and Margaret Jones, early pioneers from South Carolina, who settled on Topisaw, where he was bom the 2d of May, 1818. He was educated in the common schools of the country, and in his early manhood read medi- cine. He was graduated from the Kentucky Medical College and held a high rank among the members of his profession. He was married to Elizabeth Hugh Quin in 1844, after which he settled on a farm on the Big Tangipahoa River, in the western portion of Pike County, and pursued the practice of medicine in connection with his agri- cultural interests. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He was an ardent temperance leader in the latter forties and early fifties, when the Sons of Temperance sprung into existence and the Social Circle temperance organization was estab- lished. He settled in Magnolia in 1872 and represented Pike County in the Legislature that year and in 1873, and was regarded as one of its ablest members. Dr. Wroten was a natural-bom gentleman in the true acceptation of the term; polished by education and Christi- anity. He was a peacemaker among men and was sought in counsel by those in trouble. He loved the Church and its fellowship. He sprung from the throng of true nobility that swelled the ever-filling ranks of the new Territory and State of Mississippi in its pioneer days. He left the imprint of his sublime nature behind him and transmitted it to his descendants. He knew no word that would crush another’s heart. He was so refined and gentle, so sympathetic, that his great heart melted in the presence of distress or suffering, and the angel of mercy gave to him the sublime attribute of peaceful pleasure in giving relief and comfort to the helpless and distressed. And he has left to his family and friends a name and reputation without blemish. His son, Dr. William Monroe Wroten, was a member of Stockdale’s cavalry, under General Bedford Forest of the Confederate Army, and his name appears on the roll of that company. He succeeded his 102 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI distinguished father in the practice of medicine at Magnolia, where he still resides, and acknowledged to be one of the leading physicians of the county. Richard Quin, also son of Peter, Sr., married Mary Graham, sister to Henry Quin’s wife, and they were the parents of James B. Quin, Peter A., William Monroe, Hillary and Richie. Col. Peter Quin was a man of broad views, strong character and moral influence. In 1819 he presided as superior justice of the Orphans (probate) Court. He was one of the trustees of the town of Holmesville, under an incorporating act of 1820, and when the Orphans Court system was abolished in 1822 Peter Quin was elected probate judge, being succeeded by Robert Love in 1824. During his incum- bency as superior justice a circumstance known as the Sibley Incident occurred, which has been handed down as part of the judicial pro- ceedings had in the pioneer establishment of law and justice in the new county. Westley Kline, a son-in-law of Felix Allen, kept a small whisky shop in Holmesville, the first we have any record of in the county. The building was constructed of pine poles, peeled and notched up at the comers. The floor was made of split punching. The roof was also made of poles notched together so as to give it the proper incline. This was covered by long clapboards and weighted down with poles cleated so as to hold them fast. This was the customary way of build- ing houses in the absence of saw mills and nails. The door and window hinges were made of seasoned oak or hickory, and the locks were wooden slide bolts that worked in sockets fastened. to the inside of the door and a wire key shaped to suit. Jesse King was a justice of the peace. On one occasion there was a large gathering in Holmes- ville, and Kline’s establishment was a popular resort. When night came on Kline was compelled to close, as the law required him to keep an orderly house, and a row had taken place in which Wm. Sibley was concerned. He had left his coat and hat in the grocery, but he succumbed to force of circumstances and took a long snooze under the shadows of the “Widow Phillips,” the noted whipping-post (oak tree), that stood on the public square. When he woke up he thought HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 103 of his hat and coat being locked up in Kline’s grocery. He climbed to the roof, removed the boards and brought them out, placing the boards in position as he found them. Kline knew he had left them there and wondered how he got them out. Sibley acknowledged how he had taken them out and he was reported on his own confession to Justice King and tried for burglary under the statute already given, convicted and sentenced by King to be hung on a certain day. Sibley complained at the severity of the sentence, as he had taken nothing but his own hat and coat. The justice of the peace was inflexible. He had sworn to support the constitution and enforce the laws of the land. Sibley had violated a law which provided against the breaking and entering in the night time the house of another, which also for- bid the taking and carrying away anything whatever. Sibley had taken and carried away his own hat and coat. He had violated the law and must hang on the day ordered by the court. He begged to be allowed an opportunity to fix up his business affairs in order to be ready to meet his doom. He was paroled on his own recogni- zance with the distinct promise that he would return for the execu- tion of the sentence. He was pursuaded and went to work and got up a petition signed by nearly all the men in the county and by the justice himself to the Governor for pardon. This was a great task, as the people were scattered over a large territory and took up so much of the valuable time of the petitioner that it would be a close run for him to reach the Governor at Washington in Adams County and return, in case his pardon was refused, in time to comply with his word of honor with the honorable court that had passed the sen- tence of death upon him. One cold, drizzling morning Sibley rode into Holmesville and hailed at the gate of Judge Peter Quin. “Hello, Billy, come in,” said Quin, “come into the fire; what are you doing scouting around such a morning as this?” “Going to Washington to see the Governor to try to get my pardon, and come in to get you to sign my petition.” “Petition for what?” asked Quin. “Well, you know King had me tried for burglary for going into 104 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Kline’s grocery through the roof that night, and taking out my hat and coat which I had left in there when he shut up and Went away ; and he sentenced me to be hung according to law on a certain day, and I haven’t got much time to lose now and get back on time, and I want you to sign it.” "Let me see it,” said Quin. Peter Quin took good time and read all the names, and then called Patsey, his wife, and told her to have some breakfast fixed for him and Billy. "You mustn’t go without your breakfast, Billy.” After examining the petition thoroughly he looked at Billy and crumpled the document up in his hands and threw it in the fire, to the bewonderment of the man whose life was in the scales suspended by the thread of Justice King’s decree and who had ridden hundreds of miles to procure the signatures to this petition. It was a cold, heartless act. A personal friend, and yet he would thus doom him by the wanton destruction of his only hope for life. With all his sense of honor, Billy was a fighter; Peter Quin was too, but he was a bom commander — could control himself and others also. Billy Sibley got furious; he rose from his chair with tiger eyes gleaming at Peter Quin, and invited him out of his yard for settlement. Quin called Patsey and told her to hurry up breakfast, that Billy was in a hurry. “Don’t go till you get your breakfast; come, be seated and get quiet, and wait till after breakfast.” Billy yielded finally, but with a sad and desolate heart. It was a crucial moment. The gallows was being constructed already ; men were practicing the formation of the hangman’s knot with the rope that was to break his neck. The yellow clay that lay in piles on either side of the chasm that was to be the receptacle of his last remains floated before his vision. His appetite waned and breakfast was a “forceful conclusion.” When breakfast was over Peter Quin sat himself in front of Billy Sibley, and said: "Billy, King may know something about the Bible, as I believe he is a member of your church and one of its deacons, but he don’t know much about law. I have a right to set aside his decree, which he had no legal right to enter in his court. Go home and attend to HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 105 your business and to your family affairs, and if King attempts to inter- fere with you, send him to me.” And this was Sibley’s pardon and a circumstance he delighted to relate in after years. He was a man of the highest integrity and honor. His word was his bond, and he would hare returned to King’s court and suffered himself to be swung from the gallows rather than violate his promise, but for the circum- stance above related. John Brumfield and his wife, Margaret Kelly, came from York District, South Carolina, and settled in Washington Parish, Louisiana, in 1813. Their children were Jesse, Willis, David, James, Charles, Isaac, Nathaniel, Alexander and Lucy. Jesse Brumfield married Hannah Youngblood, of Washington Parish, and first settled on Union Creek in Pike County, which place was subsequently owned by Harris Harvey. The names of their children are Benjamin, Henry S., Mary L., Jesse A., Joseph W., James Monroe, Susan Lucinda (Lucy), John R. and Leah E. Jesse Brumfield afterwards settled a plantation on or near Bogue Chitto, south of Holmesville, formerly settled by William Love in 1809. He was elected sheriff in 1843 and served four years. In 1848 he was elected to the Legislature and served one term. He was for many years a member of the board of supervisors. David Brumfield married Cynthia Holmes, daughter of Elisha Holmes, Sr., from Georgia ; Isaac Brumfield married Elizabeth Holmes, her sister, and they were the parents of Nathaniel, Jr., Jesse K., Har- rison and Lucy Jane, who married Green B. May; Sarah Margaret was the wife of Wesley J. Ellzey; Mary married Edwin May; Ange- line, Jabe Conerly. William Leggett and his wife, Jemima Goff, came from Georgia and settled on Bogue Chitto near the Louisiana-Mississippi line, about 1807. Their children were Benjamin Wright and William Pinkney. Benjamin Wright Leggett married Elizabeth Kennedy McGehee, daughter of William McGehee, of Amite County. Their children were John G., Jane Olivia and Virginia Ann. B. W. Leggett settled on a place formerly settled by a man named White, on Loves Creek. His son, John G. Leggett, married Mary 106 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Simmons; Jane Olivia, Daniel M. Pound; Virginia Ann, David C. Walker. Daniel Walker Pound and his wife, Julia Ann Clayton, emigrated from Tennessee about 1830 and stopped on the Homochitto and sub- sequently came into Pike and settled on Hominy Creek in the north- western portion of the county, and afterward moved near Magnolia. Besides their son, D. M. Pound, they had two daughters, Virginia Ann, who married a German named J. F. Shoup, and Rachael F., who mar- ried Joseph M. Lewis. Thomas W. Pound, son of Daniel W., with his first wife in Tennes- see, married Lucinda Hall, of Amite County ; Eliza Jane was a daugh ter by his second wife. Daniel W. Pound was surveyor of Pike County for eighteen years, and succeeded George Cato, who succeeded Sampson L. Lamkin. He was supervisor for a number of years, taught school in his young manhood, and was a lifelong member of the Baptist Church. John Black and William Cage were among the first lawyers to locate in Holmesville. The former was elected United States Senator. Harmon Runnels represented the two counties of Marion and Hancock in the General Assembly of the Territory; in 1814, previous to the erection of Pike County and after the creation of Laurence County, the three counties were represented by John Bond, Jr., in 1816, and after the creation of Pike he was succeeded by Elbert Burton as the Representative of the district. In 1810 the first Methodist camp-meeting was held near Magnolia, under the supervision of the Felders and Sandells, and in their neigh- borhood. At the October election in 1819 Vincent Gamer, David Cleveland and William Dickson were elected to represent Pike County in the Legislature. Charles Stovall represented the counties of Marion, Laurence, Pike and Hancock in the Senate from 1817 to 1821. In 1820 John P. Hamilton was Judge of the Superior Court of Pike. Anthony Perryman was the first man to establish a mercantile business in Holmesville after it was made the seat of justice. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 107 In 1822 Pike County was represented in the Legislature by Wiley P. Harris, William Dickson and James Y. McNabb, with David Dick- son as Senator for Pike and Marion. At this time Walter Leake, who succeeded George Poindexter, was Governor and the seat of govern- ment was located at Columbia, in Marion County, where Governor Leake was inaugurated. This same year the capital of the State was fixed at Jackson, located near Pearl River in Hinds County, being nearer the center of the State. In 1823 Richard Davis and David Cleveland were Representatives, and the following December Davis Was dropped and William Dickson and Wiley P. Harris were elected. In 1825 Harris was Senator for Pike and Marion and remained until 1830. In 1823 James Y. McNabb was elected clerk in place of J. C. Dixon, and remained until 1833, when he was succeeded by George McNabb, who served as clerk until 1839. In 1826 the Salem Baptist Church was constituted, near the spot where the town of Magnolia is located. The founders of this church were Rev. Charles Felder, Rev. Asa Mercer and Rev. Shadrack Coker. The organization of this church under its original name was kept up until 1873, when its name was changed to Magnolia Baptist Church. In 1824 Nathaniel Wells, Col. Peter Quin and David Cleveland were Representatives, and in 1826 Cleveland, with William Dickson and Vincent Gamer, were elected. This year David Holmes was re-elected Governor, but was succeeded by Gerard C. Brandon in 1827, who served until 1833. In 1827 R. T. Sparkman was elected sheriff and served until 1838. A complete list of the men who have represented Pike County in the Senate and House of Representatives of the State Legislature since 1817: pike’s LEGISLATORS. SENATORS. 1817 David Dickson 1818 David Dickson 1819 David Dickson 1820 David Dickson 1821 David Dickson 1822 William Spencer 1823 William Spencer 1824 William Spencer 108 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI SENATORS — CONTINUED. 1825 Wiley P. Harris 1826 Wiley P. Harris 1827 Wiley P. Harris 1828 Wiley P. Harris 1829 Wiley P. Harris 1830 Wiley P. Harris 1831 William C. Gage 1832 William C. Gage 1833 Franklin Love 1834 David Cleveland. r83S Jesse Harper 1836 James Y. McNabb 1837 James Y. McNabb 1838 Cornelius Trawick 1839 Cornelius Trawick 1840 Franklin Love 1841 Franklin Love 1842 Christian Hoover 1843 James B. Quin 1844 James B. Quin 1845 James B. Quin 1846 George Nicholson 1847 George Nicholson 1848 Davis E. McCoy 1849 Davis E. McCoy 1850 Davis E. McCoy 1851 Davis E. McCoy 1852 J. M. Nelson 1853 J. M. Nelson 1854 J. M. Nelson 1855 J. M. Nelson 1856 Franklin Love 1857 Franklin Love 1858 Franklin Love 1859 J. B. Chrisman 1860 J. B. Chrisman 1861 J. B. Chrisman 1862 J. B. Chrisman 1863 J. B. Chrisman 1864 P. C. Quin 1865 W. F. Cain 1866 W. F. Cain 1867 W. F. Cain 1 868 W. F. Cain 1869 W. F. Cain 1870 John Gartman 1871 John Gartman 1872 Hiram Cassedy, Jr. 1873 Hiram Cassedy, Jr. 1874 J. F. Sessions 1875 J- F. Sessions 1876 R. H. Thompson 1877 R. H. Thompson 1878 R. H. Thompson 1879 R. H. Thompson 1880 A. H. Longino 1881 A. H. Longino 1882 A. H. Longino 1883 A. H. Longino 1884 S. E. Packwood 1885 S. E. Packwood 1886 S. E. Packwood 1887 S. E. Packwood 1888 Thos. B. Ford 1889 Thos. B. Ford 1890 T. B. Ford 1891 T. B. Ford 1892 J. H. McGehee 1893 J. H. McGehee 1894 J. H. McGehee 1895 J. H. McGehee 1896 W. B. Mixon 1897 W. B. Mixon 1898 W. B. Mixon 1899 W. B. Mixon 1900 J. H. McGehee 1901 J. H. McGehee 1902 J. H. McGehee 1904 Clem V. Ratcliff 1905 Clem V. Ratcliff 1906 Clem V. Ratcliff HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 109 REPRESENTATIVES 1817 Elbert Burton . 1818 Elbert Burton 1819 Vincent Gamer David Cleveland 1820 Vincent Gamer David Cleveland 1821 William Dickson James Robinson 1822 Wiley P. Harris 1823 R. Davidson 1824 R. Davidson 1825 Peter Quin N. Wells 1826 Peter Quin N. Wells 1827 Peter Quin 1828 Peter Quin 1829 R. Davidson 1830 S. Sharp A. Cunningham 1831 Franklin Love John Given 1832 Franklin Love John Given 1833 Jesse Harper W. G. Martin 1834 Jesse Harper W. G. Martin 1835 Franklin Love W. G. Martin 1836 Franklin Love A. Cunningham 1837 Hardy Carter A. Cunningham 1838 W. A. Stone Thomas Denman 1839 W. A. Stone Thomas Denman 1840 Jesse Harper James Cunningham 1841 B. W. Leggett J. A. Bradford 1842 Hiram Terrell J. A. Bradford 1843 Hiram Terrell J. A. Bradford 1844 E. Millsaps 1843 E. Millsaps 1846 B. W. Leggett E. Rushing William Simmons 1847 B. W. Leggett E. Rushing William Simmons 1848 Jesse Brumfield 1849 Jesse Brumfield 1850 S. A. Matthews 1851 S. A. Matthews 1852 J. G. H. Sasser 1853 J. G. H. Sasser 1854 R. A. Ellzey 1835 R. A. Ellzey 1856 Levi Bacot 1857 Levi Bacot 1858 D. C. Quin 1859 H. E. Weathersby 1860 H. E. Weathersby 1861 H. E. Weathersby J. O. Magee 1862 J. O. Magee 1863 J. R. G. McGehee 1864 J. R. G. McGehee 1865 J. W. Huffman 1866 J. W. Huffman 1867 J. W. Huffman 1868 J. W. Huffman 1869 J. W. Huffman 1870 W. H. Roane 1871 W. H. Roane 1872 V. J. Wroten 1873 V. J. Wroten 1874 S. E. Packwood 1873 S. E. Packwood 1876 James M. Causey 1877 James M. Causey 1878 James M. Causey 1879 James M. Causey 1880 James C. Lamkin 110 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 REPRESENTATIVES CONTINUED. James C. Lamkin W. F. Simmons W. F. Simmons James C. Lamkin George M. Go van James C. Lamkin George M. Go van T. F. Causey James A. Bates T. F. Causey James A. Bates J. H. Crawford S. M. Simmons J. H. Crawford S. M. Simmons J. G. Leggett Theo.' McKnight J. G. Leggett Theo. McKnight S. E. Packwood James M. Tate S. E. Packwood James M. Tate S. E. Packwood James M. Tate 1895 S. E. Packwood James M. Tate 1896 W. W. Pope J. B. Webb 1897 W- W. Pope J. B. Webb 1898 W. W. Pope J. B. Webb 1899 W. W. Pope J. B. Webb 1900 P. E. Quin J. M. Tate 1901 P. E. Quin J. M. Tate 1902 P. E. Quin John A. Walker 1903 P. E. Quin John A. Walker 1904 W. B. Mixon W. W. Pope 1905 W. B. Mixon W. W. Pope 1906 W. B. Mixon W. W. Pope The members of the Constitutional Convention of 1890 were S. E. Pack- wood and Frank A. McLain. E. McNair was Judge of the Circuit Court of Pike County from 1853 to 1866. Charles Bancroft held over as probate clerk until 1867 and Was succeeded by William M. Conerly. Sampson L. Lamkin succeeded S. A. Matthews as circuit clerk in 1861, and served until 1870, when he was succeeded by Fred W. Collins, appointed by Governor Alcorn. Fred W. Collins was elected to the same office in 1871, re-elected in 1873 and held until January, 1876, when he was succeeded by Dr. A. P. Sparkman by election in the fall of 1875. Robert H. Felder succeeded Louis C. Bickham as sheriff, and held until after the close of the war in 1865. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 111 Levi D. Felder was appointed in his stead under the provisional government of Governor Sharkey. Robert H. Felder filled the term as deputy sheriff, as he could not take the “iron-clad” oath required under the reconstruction acts of Congress. Levi D. Felder held the office until Charles B. Young was appointed by Governor Ames. Young disappeared. Ansell H. Prewitt was appointed by Governor Alcorn. Prewett was assassinated on the cars while conveying the famous prisoner, Jas. W. Head, to Jackson. Head was charged with the killing of Abraham Hiller, of Magnolia. His confederates, said to be a portion of the noted Quantrell partisans of the Trans-Mississippi Department, stopped the train near Bogue Chitto station, killed Sheriff Prewett and wounded his son Elisha and Deputy W. L. Coney, and all made their escape. In 1838 W. H. Gibson succeeded R. T. Sparkman as sheriff, served until 1840, when he was succeeded by Lemuel J. Quin. In 1843 Jesse Brumfield succeeded Quin and served until 1846, when Parham B. Williams was elected, followed by Robert Bacot in 1850, and in 1861 Louis C. Bickham was elected. William A. Stone, so long a resident of Pike, acting a conspicuous part in her early history, was bom in the District of Maine March 12, 1804, in the town of Livermore, Oxford County, where his father, Col. Jesse Stone, resided. He was a graduate of Bendoin College of the class of 1825. At this time forty-four entered the Freshman Class, among them Longfellow, Abbott, Bradbury and Sawtelle, who became distinguished men. Wm. A. Stone studied law under Peleg Sprague, for many years District United States Judge. He was admitted to the bar in 1828 and settled in the town of Prospect, but shortly removed to Mississippi and settled in Pike, and was one of the conferees of Buckner Harris, Judge Hagan and Dillingham. He served in the Legislature, and in 1839 he sold his interests in Holmes- ville to John T. Lamkin, a young lawyer who had emigrated from Georgia . While in Pike County he was appointed by Governor McNutt to fill the unexpired term of Judge Walker, who had resigned. 112 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Robert Love served as probate judge until 1836. Judge Hoover served until 1840, was succeeded by William Coney, but re-elected in 1842, and served until 1848, when James B. Quin was elected, followed by J. W. McEwen in 1849, and he succeeded in 1852 by Dr. George Nicholson. In 1859 Nicholson was succeeded by Hugh Murray Quin. T. B. Paddleford was probate clerk in 1839, served until 1845, when Leonard Magee was elected. Magee resigned after serving one year, and was succeeded by H. M. Quin, who served until 1853, when Samuel A. Matthews was elected. In 1855 Matthews was elected circuit clerk and served until 1861; Wiley A. Young, probate clerk in 1855, and re-elected in 1857 and 1859, and was succeeded by Charles Bancroft in 1861, who served until 1866. The first Masonic lodge established in Pike County was Rising Virtue Lodge, No. 7, and was located near Holmesville. In 1846 it was succeeded by and merged into the Holmesville Lodge, No. 69, with George Nicholson, Master. In the course of time the town of Holmesville had acquired a population of about four hundred souls, and good schools were main- tained here as well as other sections of the county. Samuel T. Gard, Professor Vincent, Mrs. A. L. Conerly, Joseph Smith, Thomas R. Stockdale, S. McNeil Bain, Charles Bancroft, Mrs. Cecelia R. Forshey, Mary Graves, Ann Strickland, John D. Warner, all figured as teachers here. As the settlement of the county increased and the agricultural interests became enlarged, there was an impetus given to all classes of industry and the professions, excepting the manufacture of mer- cantile goods. The resources of the people were agricultural. The increase in the production of cotton induced an increase of slave laborers, purchased from traders coming from Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, and as the farmers became able many of them invested largely of their farm earnings in negroes. The markets for their cot- ton were Covington, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Natchez, trans- ported to each of these places, except New Orleans, by ox- wagons, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 113 under the care of trusty negro drivers. Looms, spinning-wheels, cards and reels were kept in motion on the farms and plantations in order to provide the coarser fabrics for family use and clothing for the slaves. It must not be understood that all the citizens of Pike County were slave owners. Perhaps a large majority of them were not. The institution, under careful management and control, pro- duced wealth, and through its distribution an elevating and prosperous condition was manifested. The self-sustaining characteristics of the population engendered a feeling of independence and patriotism. The laws provided that all voters should be enrolled in militia companies and attend the muster drills, which were usually held in Holmesville or near there. Fourth of July celebrations were kept up in different sections of the county. Horse races, foot races and wrestling matches and other athletic sports were encouraged. At the schools these and townball constituted sources of amusement, and the large number of water courses in the county enabled the boys and many of the girls to learn to swim. The shotgun and the rifle were early placed in the hands of the boys, to become expert in their use. Their fathers and their grandfathers had to rely on them for defense of their families against wild animals that infested the country, and hostile Indians. Horseback riding prevailed altogether until at least three decades from the early settlement of the comity. Buggies and carriages at $250 and $500 could only be afforded by men of large means. Those who owned them in Pike County prior to 1850 could be numbered on the fingers of the hand. Judge Christian Hoover is said to have been the first man in Pike Comity to own a buggy, a veritable curiosity in the sight of the masses. Later on they came out with finer turn- outs — closed carriages and handsome spans, but these were few and far between. The great body of cotton planters, though able, stuck to the noble horse and saddle. The girls were all taught to ride horseback, and this is the way they went to church, the celebrations and to the fandangoes. The roads would be lined up with long columns of pairs on horseback. At the Fourth of July celebrations great dinners were provided, with the finest barbecued meats and all the good things the county 114 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI could afford. Everybody contributed. Holmesville was noted for these splendid occasions. Orators were provided, from whose lips gems of beautiful thoughts flashed and electrified the masses and made brighter the dreams of aspiring youth. The grounds were smoothed off, or platforms erected, music provided, and the resplendent beauty of our country girls mingled in the mazes of the dance with the gallant and chivalric young men. The banks of old Bogue Chitto were decked with gayest attire. On what was once the island at the foot of the bridge in the beech grove was a favorite place for these events. The dawn was broke by the thunder of an improvised cannon, which was kept up through the day. Old Glory waved proudly from a staff a hundred feet high. The music of the fife and drum and the parading of volunteer companies, under officers with attractive uniforms and brass buttons, stirred their patriotic ardor. At Tylertown, when the people of that section overflowed with love for their country, they got up a Fourth of July barbecue there. Cullen Conerly, as orator of the day, instilled their minds with the sentiments of ’76, and William G. Tyler, one of Jackson’s old artillery boys of Chalmette fame, made the indelible impress with the boom of his own manufactured mortars, over there across Magees Creek, where Mike Roark taught school, and limbered up obstreperous youths with hickory poles. From Pike to Pinder Ridge, in Washington Parish, Flem Berkhalter with his noted violin, chased the midnight demons away and lit the halls where smiles and beauty beamed, with an inspiration that in memory floats adown the channel of time like an enchanting dream. Holmesville got to be a great resort, and through the summer months was often crowded with people seeking rest and relief from the unhealthful atmosphere of New Orleans and the dangers of cholera and yellow fever which often prevailed there. Its healthfulness, picturesque scenery, pure water, facilities for outdoor sports and quiet pleasures, made it a desirable place for a summer vacation. It was a trip across Lake Ponchartrain and a carriage ride for sixty-five miles from Covington, but it was a mecca of country hog and hominy, pure milk and butter, solid clabber and cream, fat ’possum and sweet HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 115 potatoes, eggs and chicken pie. The beautiful river with its crystal waters flowing past its doors afforded recreation in boating, bathing and fishing. How many angelic forms have been mirrored in its classic waters? Campbell, with his multiplied inspiring genius has not given mankind a touch of the picture Bogue Chitto offered then to the master poets and painters of the world. Its verdant banks, its cool retreats, its climbing vines, the perfume of its wild flowers, the trilling notes of woodland songsters, the thrill of the soul that beauty and loveliness bring. In the forties Robert Ligon got possession of the Bearden-Sparkman Hotel. He had married Bearden’s beautiful daughter, Angeline, a young woman of most pleasing manners, and being a man of fine address and social qualities, his house was crowded with guests. Barney Louis came in afterward, and in company with Robert Ligon, began the publication of the Southron, a newspaper very much needed, which acquired a large circulation and became a medium of great interest to the people. Later on, in 1853, this paper fell into the hands of Henry S. Bonney, who clung to its helm all through this eventful decade. A few of the abler classes of citizens began to bring in pianos. The violin, the guitar, banjo and flute had come in with the march of the fife and drum and quills. In the moonlight nights around the hotel would cluster old and young to listen to the strains of music and soft sweet voices of charming girls and women. All over the county beautiful plantation homes were coming to the front. Up and down the Bogue Chitto, from Judge Hoover’s, on either side, to Dillontown; out on the Tangipahoa, the Topisaw, Sweetwater, Silver Creek, Magees Creek and the Bahala, the charm of rural life was exem- plified with an industrious hum and prosperous conditions Peace and plenty, happiness and contentment, prevailed everywhere. Early in the forties John D. Jacobowsky came in from Prussia, settled in Holmesville and opened a mercantile business, being asso- ciated with Joseph Hart, who married his sister, Susan, and later on with Jake Hart, his nephew, who married Pauline Hilbom, sister to Ben. Hilbom. 116 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Pincus Morris, Mike, Mary, Sarah, Hannah, and Bertha Were children of Joe Hart and Susan Jacobowsky. Hyman, Meyer, Isaac and Simon Lichenstein were residents of Holmesville and occupied a store on the corner opposite that of Jacobowsky and Hart, the latter being on the same block and con- nected with the hotel building. Across the street from Jacobowsky and Hart was the store of Dr. George Nicholson, who owned that block, upon which his residence stood, since occupied by Robert Bridges. From the little log hut occupied by Kline as a grocery the Cali- fornia House sprung into life, which was constructed into a- first-class barroom, owned by Lemuel J. Quin. Parham B. Williams, who married Miss Brent, a sister of John A. Brent, and who was elected sheriff in 1848, lived in a pretty two-story house in the upper part of town called Sandy Hook. Across the street from him was the residence of Mr. McCarley, who married a sister to Williams’ wife, the mother of John and George McCarley. On the place settled by Thomas Ellzey in Holmesville, afterwards owned by Dr. James M. Nelson, and latterly by Twist, opposite the old Peter Quin place, a well was dug thirty feet below the surface and a large cypress log was reached. It was discovered that on this log a fire had been built, which was indicated by the charred remains on top of it and the fragments of wood used in building the fire. The log was cut through and the well completed. This circumstance indi- cated that ages ago the charming hammock upon which the town of Holmesville was built was once a cypress swamp or lagoon. Below town at a point where a slough made out on the western side of the river, a rock dam was constructed to raise the height of the water in this slough. Just above the junction with its river below a mill was built over it by Sparkman and Arthur, which was run by a large undershot wheel. Rev. Bryant Louis became the owner of this mill. He subsequently took Owen Conerly as a partner, who afterwards became sole owner, and constructed a framed dam across the main river opposite the mill in 1857 or 1858, the foundation of which is there yet. This writer, as a boy, pulled the trigger of the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 117 battering ram that sent the piling of that dam down through the gravel, an inch a lick. It was a long, tedious job, but it was a lasting one. This mill was purchased by William Guy, and subsequently went to decay, but the frame foundation across the river is still preserved. William Zeigler, who married Miss McClendon, sister of Stephen McClendon, was one of the older settlers of Pike and lived in Holmes- ville on the block north of the home of Dr. George Nicholson. Due east of Zeigler was the home of the Lichensteins ; on the same block was the home of R. H. Miskell (Captain Dick), the postmaster. E. H. Pezant kept a grocery store in a building adjoining the Cali- fornia House ; then came John T. Lamkin’s law office and Dr. Wallace’s drug deparment. South of the Lichensteins was the home of the Widow Sparkman, wife of Reddick, the hotel builder. East of her was Josh Bishop and his father, who owned Nancy, a faithful negro Woman, who was his housekeeper and who after the death of the old man and Josh kept the home and raised and educated Josh Bishop’s only two children, “Sis” and her brother John. She earned a support for herself and these two helpless orphans by taking in washing. She was well respected, and sent Sissie and her brother to Sunday-school and church and the very best social gatherings. She was childless herself and devoted her life to the support and education of these two white children of her young master Her grave and her last resting place may be forgotten, but in after time if these lines should chance to fall beneath the eyes of the descendants of Johnnie and Sissie Bishop, a responsive voice will echo back to the little cabin in Holmesville where lived and died this good-hearted black mammy. “God bless Nancy Bishop.” Mrs. Elizabeth Bickham, widow of Thomas Bickham, of Washing- ton Parish, lived in the southern part of town. She was the mother of Dr. Benjamin Bickham, of Hinds County, and of Louis C. Bickham, who was elected sheriff in 1859, former deputy under Robert Bacot; also Benton and Alexander Mouton Bickham and Mary, who married Dr. Hillory Quin; Sarah, who married Dr. Germany, and Hannah, 118 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI who married Richie Quin. Louis Bickham, the sheriff, married Mar- garet Lindsey, daughter of B. B. Lindsey, a millwright. William Monroe Quin, who owned a large cotton plantation about eight miles west of town, once known as Quin Station, owned a resi- dence and lived across the street from Mrs. Bickham, now owned and occupied by Dr. Lucius M. Quin. This residence was built by Red- dick Sparkman. Next to him, on same block, was the home of Jacobowsky and Hart, afterward Wm. A. Barr. East of this, on Carroll Srteet, was the old home of Tom Guinea, then James A. Fer- guson and Owen Conerly. At the foot of the ridge, on the west and south of the old Liberty road, was the residence of John S. Lamkin, lawyer, who married Bella Tunison, of Monticello. On the other side was the Baptist Church, and further north the residence of S. A. Matthews, a native of Ohio, who married Caroline, daughter of William Ellzey. Next to him, and facing the courthouse square, was the home of John T. Lamkin, the lawyer from Georgia, who bought it from Wm. A. Stone in 1839. His wife was Thurza A. Kilgore. Crossing Leatherwood while on his way to Holmesville he met with an accident and lost all the money he had, $100 in gold, in the creek, which was never recovered. At his time the movement for volunteer reinforce- ments for the army in Mexico was commenced, and he was one of the number. At the foot of Main Street, near the river, two men from Virginia, Horatio and Asa Wingo, club-footed twins, lived, built a hotel, bar- room and tenpin alley. Horatio married Miss Brent and Asa Mrs. Guinea. They were rough men and great fighters, and they were always in it side by side together. Their deformed feet necessitating perfectly round shoes, and their weight thrown on the ankles made it difficult to stand still, and in walking they had to be supported by sticks, good-sized hickory clubs, which they used in their personal encounters. The Finches came to Pike County from Georgia in the early fifties. There were four brothers of them, James A., John, William and Milus. They settled on Vamal at the old Burkhalter place, where the Holmes- ville and Columbia road crosses. William and Milus joined the Quit- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 119 man Guards and both of them died in the Confederate service. James and John subsequently settled at Holmesville. John Finch was the father of James, Jr., Joseph and Thomas. Being left a widower, he married Sally Sandifer, daughter of Jackson Sandifer of Magees Creek, and sister of Joe and Wallace. A peculiar circumstance happened shortly after the Civil War which caused young James Finch to be sent to the penitentiary on a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon with intent to kill, of which he was not guilty. He got into an altercation with an ex-slave named Prime Ball during which Ball was stabbed in the jaw with a pocket-knife. After serving awhile in the State peni- tentiary Finch made his escape and came home, but eluded arrest. There was a man named Doan, who had come in from Arkansas and married Widow Ballew, formerly Miss Brent. Doan was oresent at the altercation between Finch and the negro. Ball ana while Finch was eluding arrest he was taken sick and on his death-bed confessed under oath, in the presence of legal officers, that he himself had stabbed Ball in the jaw, reaching over Finch’s shoulder during the altercation. He was a friend to Finch and promised when the trial came that he would clear Finch of the charge, but failed to do so With Doan’s confession and a petition signed by all the prominent men of the county, Finch walked into the Governor’s office at Jackson and stated his case. The Governor requested him to call again at 4 p. m., which he did, received his pardon and returned home. The knife-blade rim into Prime Ball’s jaw was broken off in it and remained in the jaw for two years, causing an enlargement of the jaw and a running sore, which demanded the skill of a surgeon when the blade was discovered. It must be remembered by the reader that this period of which I write Holmesville "was the only town in the county. No other had been thought of. The circuit courts were held in the spring and fall every six months, and lasted two weeks, for the trial of civil and crimi- nal cases. The petit jurors, the grand jurors and the witnesses, liti- gants, curiosity seekers, sportsmen and lawyers from adjoining coun- ties brought great crowds of people to the courthouse. The hotels 120 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and boarding houses were unable to accommodate the crowds, and hundreds returned home at night or scattered out among friends in the vicinity. Wm. R. Johnson had married Martha Sparkman, widow of Mr. Richmond, who succeeded Robert Ligon in the hotel, and these occa- sions were a boom for it — the California House, where Bob Wade did the mixing, the Wingo Hotel, bar and tenpin alley. Court times were lively occasions for Holmesville, and the term never ended without a general entertainment, of a delighted public, with wrestling, foot racing and fist fights. Without these, court weeks were not considered first-class occasions. Carroll Newman served as bailiff for many years, and his voice could be heard a mile. The juror who failed to answer his call was docketed five dollars. During the fifties, when Judge McNair held the bench, the Holmes- ville bar was composed of John T. Lamkin, Oscar J. E. Stuart, Hugh Murray Quin, William J. Bain, John S. Lamkin, Thomas Hoover, H. E. Weathersby and Thomas R. Stockdale; and the visiting lawyers were David W. Hurst, Hyram Cassidy, H. F. Johnson, District Attorney McMillan and Judge Vannison of Monticello and Bentonville Taylor of Covington. Thomas R. Stockdale entered the practice after two years’ teaching of school in Holmesville. He was a native of Philadelphia, Pa., and a graduate of a Pennsylvania college. At this time John T. Lamkin was the great criminal lawyer of South Mississippi. He knew every man in the county and was a friend to them all. Pike County jurors were usually men of moral excellence — crime was inexcusable. The killing of a human being must not be tolerated under any circumstances. This was the fiat of the people. The law of God said “Thou shalt not kill,” “He who sheds man’s blood by man his blood shall be shed.” This was a principle that lived in Pike County; criminals knew it and they knew it would require a Napoleon to save them. Lamkin was a man of superior moral and magnetic influence, fine physical build, large, protruding eyes, eloquent, argumentative, forceful, convincing. He knew his jurors and he knew the power he must bring to bear upon them. When he failed to acquit one charged with murder or HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 12 1 manslaughter the hangman’s noose and the walls of the penitentiary were the visions that floated before the eyes of the culprits. In 1854 Frank Carr was charged with the murder of his father, who lived on the head of Leatherwood. There was an old-fashioned muzzle-loading squirrel rifle in the rack over the door of the house. Old man Carr had been away from home and came back at night intoxicated, and began abusing and whipping his wife, Frank’s mother; Frank interceded. The old man reached for the rifle. No one knew it was loaded. F rank seized the gun and in the scuffle for the possession of it the piece fired and killed Frank’s father. These are about the facts. Every effort was made in a legal way to save his life. He was condemned by a jury and was hung on a gallows erec- ted at the one-mile post on the old Liberty road west of Holmesville in the presence of a large gathering of people from the surrounding country, in 1856, while Robert Bacot was sheriff. The writer, then a fifteen-year-old boy, witnessed the execution. He did not then, nor does he now, believe that Frank Carr was criminal in the unfortunate killing of his father. At the same time Bill Catchings, a negro, was hung on the same gallows with Carr for the murder of his master, Silas M. Catchings. During Robert Bacot’s term a man named Robertson was hung at the jail on the public square for the murder of "Calico” Williams. Williams’ wife was indicted and convicted with Robertson and given a life sentence in the penitentiary. At the hanging of Robertson he pleaded so hard that his life be spared the sheriff submitted it to a vote of the people present, but the majority with members of the police jury said that the law must be enforced. The sheriff then declined to spring the trap, and turned it over to his deputy, Louis C. Bickham, to perform the duty as ordered by the court. In 1850 Dudley W. Packwood came to Pike County and settled at China Grove, on the old Ralph Stovall property, subsequently the home of Owen Conerly, Sr. He was bom in New London, Conn., in 1792, and came to New Orleans in 1810, and was in Jackson’s army at the battle of New Orleans. He subsequently removed to Coving- 122 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ton, La., and lived in Alabama, where his two sons, Samuel E. and Joseph H., were bom. Dudley W. Packwood’s father, Joseph Packwood, was a sea cap- tain during the Revolutionary War and served in the interest of the colonies against Great Britain. In a naval engagement he lost one of his eyes. His wife was Demise Wright. Dudley W. Packwood’s wife was Cathorine Elliott, bom in 1803, eastern shore of Maryland, and daughter of Samuel Elliott. She sprung from the Waggaman family, mother’s side, of the eastern shore. She and her husband were married in Covington, La., in 1817. Her parents died when she was very young. Dudley W. Packwood was a farmer and lived at China Grove until his death, aged seventy-six. His wife died in 1872. Their elder son, Joseph H. Packwood, was a farmer and merchant and spent his life from 1850 to his death in 1900 at China Grove. He married Mary, daughter of Joseph Youngblood and Eliza Bickham. Samuel E. Packwood graduated at Centenary College in 1857, graduated at law in New Orleans in 1858, and began the practive in St. Francisville, La., and was living there at the outbreak of the Civil War. As he was not a member of any of the companies that went out from Pike County it would be proper to state here that he was a member of the 13th Mississippi of Barksdale’s Brigade, Army Northern Virginia, which served with great distinction in the numerous con- flicts in Virginia, and participated in the battle of Gettysburg, Pa. At the close of the war he resumed the practice of law in Holmes- ville, and after removal of the seat of justice to Magnolia made that place his home. He was a member of the State House of Representa- tives, 1874-1876, 1892-1894, and of the Senate 1884 and 1886. Ballard and William Raiford, nephews of N. B. Raiford, also came to Magees Creek about 1850 and engaged in merchandising at China Grove. Ballard Raiford married Nancy, daughter of Henry B. Lewis, who lived in the Darbun neighborhood. William Raiford went to Amite County, married there and became identified with that county. Dr. Booth, a young Englishman, came in about this time, married Sarah Magee and settled on Magees Creek in the Jesse Ball neighbor- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 123 hood, and he and Dr. William May became the physicians of upper Magees Creek. Dr. James M. Nelson, from Tennessee, was one of the conferees of Drs. Jesse Wallace and Hillory Quin and Nicholson at Holmesville. In 1850 a cold wave passed over the country destroying the crops in the month of May. The previous year, 1849, was the great destruc- tive flood year. In 1855 a great drouth occurred, and the following year was the first time in the history of the county up to then that grain had to be imported for farm use. Christian Fisher operated a shoe shop at the foot of Main Street in Holmesville and employed a force of Dutch shoemakers. Henry Lotterhos kept a bakery and sold ginger cakes and beer. Afterwards moved to Summit. William C. Alford operated a wagon shop on Main Street; George Brumfield a saddler’s shop. Henry Frances was a carriage maker and had his shop near the foot of the old bridge, and Tom Donahoe was one of his workmen. Joe Page was a carpenter, and lived at the foot of the hill near the Masonic lodge. He married the widow of Henry Francis, who was a sister of the wife of H. S. Bonney. In 1849 and 1850 a tempreance organization, known as the Sons of Temperance, was kept in a flourishing condition at China Grove. In 1856 Sincerity Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, No. 214, was organized, with the following members: James H. Laney, Samuel F. Gard, John G. Leggett, Oscar J. E. Stewart, Owen Conerly, Cullen Conerly, William C. Alford, Benjamin Wright Leggett, Barney Lewis, William Hinson, Felix S. Campbell and P. Ballard Raiford; James H. Laney, Master; Samuel F. Gard, Senior Warden; John G. Leggett, Junior Warden. Shortly after its organization under the charter, John T. Lamkin, John S. Lamkin, William A. Barr and William McCusker became members. 124 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI THE NEW ORLEANS, JACKSON & GREAT NORTHERN RAILROAD. In 1848 a railroad convention was held in the city of New Orleans, La., to consider the construction of a steam railway to penetrate Mississippi and to connect with other systems then in operation. William Ellzey and Ross A. Ellzey were sent as delegates from Pike County to the convention. The question had been agitated for a number of years, but no definite route had been determined upon. There were three parties in the convention, favoring different routes. That party, led by Tom Marshall, then president of the Jackson & Vicksburg Railroad, was in favor of the route that the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley road now runs. One party was in favor of crossing the Lake Ponchartrain at Madisonville and from thence to Jackson, pursuing a course which would bring it to the town of Holmesville, which would offer a loca- tion and facilities for one of the finest cities in the State. After two weeks of discussion it was finally agreed to pursue a route passing the western shore of Ponchartrain and crossing the Pass Manchac. James Robb was one of the zealous advocates of this great enter- prise. The articles of the charter of the company were formed in accord- ance with the provisions of a general law of the State of Louisiana, approved March 11, 1850. This law was framed in conformity with the 123d article of the constitution of 1844, which limited the duration of corporations to twenty-five years. A convention of the State assembled in 1852 to frame a new con- stitution, abolished this restriction and delegated to the Legislature the power of granting special charters. An act was passed and approved April 22, 1853, fixing the capital at eight millions of dollars, with exemption from taxation, and giving perpetual existence, besides other important and liberal privileges. James Robb, L. Matthews, Wm. H. Garland, Peter Conway, Jr., Judah P. Benjamin, H. C. Carmack, George Clarke, Isaac T . Preston, J. P. Harrison, Wm. S. Campbell, Glendy Burke, R. W. Montgomery, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 125 H. S. Buckner, A. D. Kelly and E. W. Moise were appointed com- missioners for the purpose of receiving subscriptions to the stock of the corporation. James Robb was elected president of the company. The subscription books were opened in New Orleans in April, 1851, and $300,000 conditionally subscribed. Subscriptions to the amount of $3,250,000 were received on the line of the railroad. Louisiana took shares to the amount of $1,600,000, which added to the previous subscriptions increased the total stock to $4,850,000. A corps of engineers was organized under the direction of Col. W. S. Campbell, in June, 1851, and commenced an examination and survey of the country between New Orleans and the State line, near Osyka, which, on account of the Ponchartrain swamps and unbroken forest, consumed nearly a year. In 1852 James Clarke entered on his duties as chief engineer of the southern division. A law granting privileges to the company in Mississippi was passed soon after the organization of the company. The first eleven miles of the road were put under contract in Sep- tember, 1852, and twenty-five and a half miles to the south Pass Manchac in October. Early in December the road to the State line was let, making in all eighty-seven and one-third miles under contract and in process of construction. The route in Louisiana begins at Claiborne Street, following the center of Calliope to Canal Avenue, then deflects to the west by a curve of 11,460 feet radius, and continues straight to the estate of Minor Kenner; crosses Bayou La Branch about a half-mile from Lake Ponchartrain, and continuing nearly parallel with its western shore to the thirtieth mile, crosses South Pass Manchac at the foot of Lake Maurepas, on the thirty-seventh mile, reaching the pine woods at forty-six miles from New Orleans, and enters Mississippi at a place which belonged to a Mr. Stephenson and John H. Moore at the time of completion to that point in 1854. 126 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Jesse Redmond, who settled in this county in 1812, was the origi- nal owner and settler on the land upon which the town of Osyka was built. He was engaged in the battle of New Orleans in 1815. Louis H. Varnado kept the first hotel; William H. Jones the first school; James Lea the first store; Jacob Ott the first steam sawmill, all in 1854. Isham E. Varnado furnished nearly all the shingles to build the town. The churches Were built in the following order: Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic and Baptist. Oyska was the terminus of the road for about two years. It built up rapidly, many stores were added to the town and it became the focus of a large country trade which had previously been centered at Holmesville or was going to Covington, Baton Rouge and Natchez. During 1854 and 1855 the work on the railroad progressed slowly. The financial affairs of England and this country were of such a nature that the company was not able to convert the securities into cash at anything short of an unwarrantable sacrifice, and apart from their securities they had little or nothing with which to carry on the work. Five miles of track was laid and crossties for ten miles more were furnished. The iron for the road was purchased in England and had to be transported across the Atlantic on sailing vessels. By April, 1857, the road was completed through Pike County, and depots established at Magnolia and Summit. Oscar J. E. Stewart owned a negro blacksmith named Ned, who was the inventor of a double-geared turning-plow and cotton scraper, formed so as to off bar and scrape both sides of the cotton row at once. Stewart applied in Ned’s name, or for him, to the patent office depart- ment for a patent. The department refused to grant the patent in Ned’s name on the ground that he was a slave and not recognized as a man or citizen, to whom patents should issue. It will be seen later on what a different construction the government authorities placed upon the constitution in reference to the relations of the negro with that sacred instrument. During the fifties sectional and political feeling ran high. It is not intended in this work to enter into a discussion of the vexed problems and political upheavals that excited the entire coun- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 127 try from 1850 to 1861, but to show by a recital of facts the part Pike County took in events of that period. In 1853-54 the building for the Holmesville Lodge, F. & A. M., No. 69, was contracted for by John Arthur. John Laurence and John Davidson were employed on the building. The lumber was contracted for with Owen Conerly at the new mill he had constructed on Magees Creek, fifteen miles distant. It was a time contract, stipulating that the lumber should be delivered by a certain time, and had to be hauled on ox-wagons. Owen Conerly had a proviso agreed upon and inserted in the contract, that his mill, being a water-mill, in case of long drouth and water became scarce, and he was thus disabled from coming strictly to time, he was to have further indulgence. This condition happened, and Arthur sued him for damages in the circuit court. Conerly managed and pled his own side of the case and won it before the jury. This Masonic building was a two-story house and was erected north of the residence of John T. Lamkin, next to the Methodist Church, in Sandy Hook. The lower story was divided into two rooms, which were used for school purposes. It was here that Thomas R. Stockdale, in 1856-7 and 1857-58, maintained one of the finest schools ever had in Holmesville, assisted by two excellent young ladies, Miss Mary Graves, who afterwards became the wife of Dr. John Huff- man, a dentist, and Miss Ann Strickland. It was a mixed school of young men, boys and girls. They were about equally divided in numbers, and the classes were graded and mixed in recitations, but separate in rooms, and the girls were taught the higher branches the same as the boys, and in classes with them. In closing the school term in 1858, Prof. Stockdale gave one of the grandest school examina- tions and exhibitions ever held in the town or county. It was held in the Methodist Church. After the close of this school Stockdale took up the study of law and soon graduated. S. McNeil Bain and wife; William J. Bain, a young lawyer, and Miss Orrie Gillis, from Illinois, then came to Holmesville, and the school was taken by McNeil Bain and Orrie Gillis, and taught by them the next two years. 128 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI At one of the meetings of Holmesville Lodge James Finch, who was a member, had a dog to follow him, which got into the ante-room and went to sleep. The lodge closed and left the dog locked up in the building. The building was not otherwise in use, and when the lodge met again the next moon there they found Finch’s lost dog, still alive. Josephus R. Quin constructed a handsome residence opposite the Methodist Church. His wife was Miss Murphy, of Kentucky, sister of Captain Murphy, of the Summit Rifles. They had two little girls, Mollie and Katy. Their residence was subsequently occupied by Dr. Coates and then by William A. Barr. Henry S. Bonney, the editor and proprietor of the Independent, consrtucted a residence and lived at the foot of the ridge on the south- ern border of the town. Dr. James M. Nelson, on the corner opposite the southwest comer of the public square. William Guy married Telitha Tumage, widow of Rev. Bryant Lewis, and lived in the two-story residence opposite J. D. Jacobowsky. Col. James Roberts, from Washington Parish, constructed a residence in Sandy Hook near that of Sheriff Parham P. Williams and Benjamin C. Hartwell, son-in-law of Judge Christian Hoover, between him and the Methodist Church. William Ellzey, who lived some five miles south of Holmesville, was a brother of Thomas Ellzey, of South Carolina. He married Esther Sibley, of Amite County. He was a large cotton planter and slave owner. He had a son William (known as Dutch Bill) who mar- ried a daughter of Joseph B. May, on Magees Creek, afterwards wife of Henry Badon, Jr. Another son, Dewitt, married Amanda Barr. His daughter, Caroline, married S. A. Matthews, and Nancy married Dr. D. H. Quin, second wife. His daughter Angeline married John Keegan, of Monticello. William Ellzey emigrated to Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, in the latter part of the fifties, where he and his wife and an unmarried daughter, Emma, spent the remainder of their lives. While William Ellzey was a member of the railroad convention in New Orleans in 1848 he was one of the advocates of crossing the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 129 Ponchartrain at Madisonville and pursuing as nearly as practicable the old military route followed by General Carroll from Jackson, by way of Covington, keeping west of the Bogue Chitto to Holmesville. William Coney and his wife, Rachel, came from Georgia early in 1800 during the territorial government. Their sons were Jeremiah, Jackson, William and Louis. Jeremiah Coney’s wife was Emily Quin, and they were the parents of Franklin, William, Van C., Luke J., Joel R., Mary E., Sarah K., Caroline A., Jane and Jerzine. Jackson Coney married Emiline Morgan, and their children were Jasper, Loraine, Charles J., Rachel and Josephine and Wm. L. Coney. William Coney’s wife was Eliza Morgan, and they were the parents of Morgan, Green, Dariel, Ann, Eva and Rosa. Louis Coney’s wife was Isabell Kaigler, and they had four sons, Aquila, William and John (twins) and Louis. John and William, the twins, were so nearly alike that it was difficult at t'mes to tell which was John and which was William. The latter had a small dimple in one cheek, by which means alone persons could distinguish them. A man of great prominence in eastern Pike and western Marion in a manner identified with both counties was Judge Lemuel Lewis. He was a son of Benjamin Lewis and Celia , and was bom in Rebecca County, North Carolina, in 1804, and married Mary Williams, a daughter of Giles and Sallie Williams, in 1824, and settled in Marion County in 1831. They were the parents of twelve children, as follows: Cecelia, who married Joseph Smith, the school teacher; Sarah, who married Patrick W. R. McAlpin, school teacher; Martha, who mar- ried A. J. Brumfield; Giles W., who married Rebecca Yarborough; Cathorine, who married Thomas Bickham; Susan, who married Jabez Yarborough; Margaret, who married Benjamin Graves; Alexander; Benjamin, who married Margaret Sumrall; John, who married Mary J. Sumrall; Rosa, who married E. Pigot; Joseph, who married Ellen Bass; Malinda, who married Ella Pigot. Judge Lewis was a most exemplary man and citizen. He was strictly upright and honest, religious and devoted to the cause of religion and justice; and all of his children were Christian people. 130 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI He was a guiding star in all that constituted the best citizenship in the settlement and upbuilding of a new country. To him the people looked for advice and counsel. He was a strong pillar of the Methodist Church, and he and his children (most of whom were citizens of Pike) were so nearly identified with Pike County that he was always claimed as one of her own. Judge Lemuel Lewis was Judge of the county court of Marion for twenty-three years, and filled the position with eminent satisfaction to his people. Being a widower, in 1865 he married Mary Winbome, a daughter of David Winbome, on Topisaw, and moved to that place in 1867, where he afterwards lived and died. The writer knew him from his earliest recollection, and can give testimony to his pure and unblemished character, in addition to which it is related of him by others that he was one of the best men that ever lived. But he lived in a community of western Marion and eastern Pike, composed largely of men of noble attributes of character, among them Stephen Regan, Hosey Davies, Dr. Cowart, Luke Conerly, Owen Conerly, Sr., Needham Raiford, William B. Ligon, Quinney Lewis — all pioneers and Christian people. In 1854 there was a cotton-picking race on Magees Creek between John Holmes, son of Benjamin Holmes, and Pearl Harvey, son of Harris Harvey, that excited great interest in the community. The picking took place on Benjamin Holmes’ place, by draw, and John Holmes came out the winner with 500 pounds of seed cotton in one day’s work. This was a feat that few if anyone had eve performed befo e. In 1854 George Stuart emigrated from Scotland, marri d Mary V. Magee, daughter of Judge T. A. Magee, of Franklin County. He procured the property on Clear Creek and the mill buil by Michael McNulty in 1846. After the railroad reached Magnolia W. W. Vaught settled in the pine woods east of the town and erected a steam circular sawmill, one of the first of the kind put in operation in the county. Previous to this time all the sawmills in the county were run by water power and were upright mills. The machinery of the Vaught mill was HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 131 brought up from New Orleans on the cars to Osyka in 1855, and was hauled from there to its location east of Magnolia on the old Holmesville road. David Ulmer was connected with this mill. Abraham Hillier was from Alsace, Germany, and married Caroline Openheimer of the same country in Jackson, Miss., and came to Pike County in 1855, and settled in Magnolia, where he engaged in the busi- ness of merchandising, and whose children became permanently identified with town. Their children are Jonas, Ellie, Annie and Albert. Marmaduke Mitchell married Mary Bradley Tupple, of Tennessee, born and raised in North Carolina. He emigrated to the Territory of Mississippi and first settled near Camden, and came to Pike County in in i860. He was the father of Algenon Mitchell, who married Eliza- beth Tilman, sister to Mary and Lucy Tilman. He was the father of Algenon, a member of the Summit Rifles, who had been detailed with a force of marines and was killed at Balls Bluff on the James River in Virginia, in a skirmish with the enemy, three or four days after the surrender of Lee at Appomattox. Algenon Mitchell, Sr., built a steam sawmill about one mile west of Summit and subsequently took J. J. White as a partner. John Tilman married Rachel Martin and moved from South Caro- lina to Tennessee. Rachel Martin was the daughter of Matthew Marshall Martin, of South Carolina, one of the brothers engaged in the Revolutionary War. In 1858 two balloonists, a man and a woman, ascended in a balloon in New Orleans with the intention of sailing to Jackson, Miss. They went up late in the afternoon, sailed over Lake Ponchartrain, pro- gressing finely until they passed the dividing line of Washington Parish and Pike County, near the home of Dr. McQueen. The balloon came down nearer to the earth than they supposed and became entangled in the top of a tree, some fifty feet above the ground. In this deplor- able condition the occupants had to remain until daylight, when the man arranged some lines and let himself down, then went to the house of McQueen, who got the assistance of Chauncey Collins and secured 132 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI the safe release of the woman from her perilous situation, and saved the balloon. The circumstance created a great sensation in this sec- tion of the county. There were many who had never heard of a balloon. It was announced by the balloonists that a lecture would be given at Conerly’s postoffice (Tylertown), and an exhibition showing the philosophy of air navigation for which a small fee would be charged to enable them to pursue their journey overland to Jackson. This brought out nearly all the people for miles around, who were well entertained by the woman’s lecture and the ascension of large paper balloons inflated with hot air. The same was done at Holmesville, and the peculiar accident of the aerial navigators proved a source of profit. Some very large paper balloons were sent up at Holmesville and floated off in a southern direction. Ghost stories were numerous then. Mysterious manifestations were frequently spoken of. The old Cleveland house on the Bogue Chitto was a noted abandoned residence where no family could live on account of the restless and ever-demonsratable antics of its unseen occupants. The fame of this old house had spread far and wide, not only among the naturally superstitious negroes, but among the whites as well; and these paper balloons cut a dash that overturned the equilibrium of human reason for a few days in some neighborhoods, until an inquest could be held to establish the fact that they were really earthly. It was a dark night, and one of these balloons floated off and dropped in the pathway of Wm. M. Conerly, who had witnessed the exhibition and who lived two miles below town. On his return home he encoun- tered the ghost standing erect in his path, which led through a dark, thick skirt of timber. At first he said he was shocked at the sudden appearance of the apparition. All the hobgoblin stories he had ever heard of flashed upon his memory. He stood in speechless amaze- ment and looked at it for a moment, then thought of the big paper balloons which he had seen sent up and floated off in this direction. One of the great secrets conducive to the successful management of the negro race in slavery times was the cultivation of a cheerful and happy disposition, and in their leisure hours the enjoyment of HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 133 music and the dance. Those who had a talent for instrumental music were provided with the violin, the banjo, the tambourine or other instruments. Many of them arranged cane quills with all the notes accompanied with stringed instruments and the tambourine, and they learned from their young masters and mistresses all the negro dialect songs of the period — “Old Kentucky Home,” “Nelly Gray,” “ ’Way Down on the Suwanee River,” “Jump, Jim Crow,” “Old Folks at Home” and “Hog Eye.” They never had any thoughts or cares for the future. Their masters provided everything. They lived in good comfortable cabins with as many rooms as necessary for the health and comfort of the families, with yards for their own chickens, and garden patches, usually cultivated by the wife and mother of the family. On the small farms the master and mistress attended the sick in person, and where a doctor was necessary he was provided with the same prompt- ness as for the members of the w r hite family. On the larger planta- tions comfortable hospital buildings were kept in constant readiness under the care of a salaried physician. As a slave the great mass of negroes in the South were a contented and happy people. Discipline and work were necessary for his support and well being. He did not have to worry over the question of how he was to get his rations or to feed his wife and children. To do the will of his master as directed was the routine of his life; and he could lie down and sleep without any thought for to-morrow. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Come day, go day, with a full stomach, gave him content- ment. He was allowed the enjoyment of holiday seasons, a half- holiday on Saturday, to go to town or to the stores to do his little trading, have his fandangoes, or go to meeting on Sunday in the country where the white folks worshipped, or have a minister to preach to them separately. MUST TAKE A DUCKING. In nearly all the large schools in Pike County it got to be customary for all male students who entered after the first week’s organization to be subjected to different kinds of hazing, and when the school was 134 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI located near a stream they must be ducked. Not only the boys were to be ducked, but on occasions of public holiday, if the teacher refused to give the students the privilege the same penalty was put upon him, and they never allowed the schools to proceed after the holiday until this work was accomplished, or a compromise agreed upon. It was an annual species of fun practiced in the schools of Michael Roark. He never would grant the vacation on the 4th of July, and he always got his “ducking,” because he would face the music and try to outwit the boys and have school on the 4th or any other holiday. Roark was an Irishman, and while he was one of the strictest disciplinarians as a teacher he was a jolly-natured man, and he put himself in the position to be acted upon. This was also a noted practice with the Holmesville schools. As a rule the teachers would yield to the wishes of the students, but occasionally one would come along who would refuse the application of the school for the accustomed event. In 1855-56 Edward Carruth taught school in Holmesville. He had a large school and a number of young men ; among them were Frank and Tom Roberts, Plummer Johnson, Benton Bickham, Walter Bridges, and a good platoon of lesser lights. Inquiries were quietly made several days previous whether Mr. Carruth was going to give us 4th of July. No answer could be obtained until the close of the day’s school on the 3d, when one of the scholars arose from his seat and asked him if he was going to give us 4th of July. Carruth spite- fully answered “no,” and ordered him to take his seat. This was regarded as a challenge to battle, and the boys accepted it. The following morning the school house was barricaded and no one allowed to enter it. At the usual hour Carruth came walking up and was met face to face by the entire school of youngsters. A note was handed him which read: “Sir: Unless you consent to give the usual 4th of July holiday you will not be permitted to open school again this week.” Signed, “The Whole School.” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 135 Carruth turned pale, gritted his teeth and compressed his lips, stepped back with one foot and ran his hand under the breast of his coat, as if to say, like Rhoderic Dhu: “Come one, come all, this rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I.” “Gentlemen, stand back; I am armed!” “Shoot and be d-d-ducked,” some one said. “You'll be d-d-ducked in that river!” The boys moved up, Carruth commenced backing, the boys crowded on. “Duck him! Duck him!” They chorused it. The teacher wheeled about face — a good run better than a bad stand! and made for his boarding-house, closely pursued by the boys, yelling like tigers. The whole town turned out. It was a gala day for the boys. Car- ruth was imprisoned in his room. They couldn’t enter his premises, but they guarded them day and night, and the schoolhouse too. They kept it up all the week and would have prolonged the siege indefinitely had not the patrons interceded and persuaded the young men and boys to let the school open again the following week. The larger boys were expelled from school by the teacher and the younger chaps given a severe lecture, and more especially the “kid” that had the audacity to hand him that note — the one who records this incident. But it was the turning point for the usefulness of Carruth’s school. From that day until the close of the term it waned. He was disliked by his scholars and his influence with them was gone forever. 136 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER V. Levi Bacot was elected a member of the State Legislature for the sessions of 1856 and 1857. His father, Laban Bacot, one of the early pioneers and sheriff of Pike County after Mississippi had been con- stituted a State, was a member of the constitutional convention in 1832, noted for taking the advance step in making the judiciary elective. About this time Levi Bacot was married, in the town of Holmes- ville, to Miss Ann Roberts, daughter of Col. James Roberts, of Wash- ington Parish, Louisiana. At this time Robert Bacot was sheriff of the county. In 1857 the railroad track was laid to Summit, a depot established there and Lemuel J. Quin employed as agent. George T. Gracey ran the first engine into Summit, and succeeded Lemuel J. Quin as agent. A flag-station was located at Chatawa between Osyka and Mag- nolia, and another one on the plantation of William Monroe Quin, between Magnolia and Summit, and called Quin Station. The Sincerity Lodge of Pree and Accepted Masons, No. 214 organized at Holmesville by dispensation from the Grand Lodge was removed to Magnolia, about two years after its organization in 1856. Much of the large trade which has been concentrated at Osyka was turned to Magnolia, and after the establishment of depot facili- ties at Summit the trade was cut up between these towns. The construction of the railroad through the county, nine miles distant from the seat of justice, and scattering of an immense trade that once centered there to these new railroad towns springing up, foretold the decline and partial extinction of the once beautiful and romantic town of Holmesville. If the visions that sprung into the fertile imaginations of William and Ross A. Ellzey, at the railroad convention in New Orleans in 1848, could have been realized by the adoption of the route they advocated, not a town or city in the State could have surpassed it in beauty, loveliness and desirability for a home; its unequalled water facilities for the promotion of all kinds of industries, and its unsurpassed healthfulness. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 137 The little town struggled hard for existence against its young and growing rivals. J. D. Jacobowsky and Jacob Hart and the Lichensteins removed to Summit. William A. Barr and John Holmes set up in the comer occupied by Jacobowsky & Hart. Conerly & Felder and Dr. George Nicholson kept going, and the seat of justice still maintained there. Holmesville was spared the mortification of a premature death and ultimate extinction from the map of towns. In 1859 a military company was organized in Holmesville by Pres- ton Brent, recently a graduate of Drennon Springs Military Institute of the State of Kentucky, with twenty or thirty members from the town and vicinity. Their uniforms were of the United States regu- lation blue, with brass buttons, and caps with the old style artillery cockade plume. They were provided with fife and drums, and the old style Harpers Ferry muskets, and had their monthly drills. Preston Brent was elected captain and devoted himself to the task of bringing the young men up to the proficiency taught in the schools, and was patient, kind and earnest in his endeavors and gradually added strength to the ranks. The name chosen for this organization was Quitman Guards, in honor of Gen. John A. Quitman, who had become conspicuous in the military history of the country and added ustre to its fame. Some time in the early part of i860 Miss Rachel E. Coney, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Jackson Coney and Emiline Morgan, conceived the idea of presenting a handsome banner to Captain Brent’s company, and, assisted by Miss Nannie Ellzey, daughter of William Ellzey, began the work of enlisting the ladies of Pike County in the effort to accomplish this object, and an association was organized in Holmesville, known as the Quitman Guards Banner Association, composed of the following ladies: Madams John T. Lamkin, Samuel A. Matthews, Dr. Jesse Wallace, John S. Lamkin, Henry S. Bonney, J. Cy. Williams, Dr. George Nicholson, Hugh Murray Quin, Louis C. Bickham, Wm. Guy, Dr. D. H. Quin, H. F. Bridges, Richie Quin, Christian Hoover, Hardy Thompson, Benjamin C. Hartwell, Mrs. Eliza Bickham, Mmes. Owen Conerly, William A. Barr, John A. Brent, 138 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Preston Brent, Jackson Coney, Widow Tumipseed, Mmes. Andrew Ivaigler, James A. Ferguson, Wm. Johnson, Wm. Monroe Quin, William Ellzey, Jeremiah Coney, Cullen Conerly, R. Y. Statham, James Conerly, Wm. M. Conerly, Joseph Page, Parham B. Williams, Mrs. Elizabeth Ware, and the following young ladies: Misses Ra- chel E. Coney, Nannie Ellzey, Fanny Wicker, Emma Ellzey, Laura Tumip- seed, Fanny A Lamkin, Elizabeth and Mrs. Joe Miller, nee Rachel E. Coney, Who presented the Banner to the Quitman Guards, of Pike County, in i860, on the part of the ladies of the county, and was received on the part of the company by Hugh Eugene Weathersby July 4th, i860. Frances Lamkin, Mary A. Con- erly, Mrs. Jennie McClendon, Lucy Brumfield, Victoria Wil- liams, Louvenia Williams, Sarah K. Coney, Mary E. Hartwell, Eliza Hoover, Nannie Wells, Julia Hoover, Mollie Quin, Alice Quin, Alvira Sparkman, Bettie Miskell, Eliza Thompson, Elizabeth Thompson, Cathorine Conerly, Eliza Conerly, Mollie Magee, Mary E. Vaught, Julia Bacot, Maggie Martin, Martha Jane Sibley, Julia Kaigler, Louisa, Mary and Levisa Newman, Eliza and Ellen Guy, and the following chosen as flower Mrs. W. J. Lamkin HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 139 girls: Misses C. Augusta Lamkin, Julia Wallace, Ida Wallace, Ida Matthews, Sissie Johnson, Sissie Bishop, Nannie Quin, Alice Bickham, Mollie Bickham, Flora Bonney, Rachel McClendon and Mollie Barr. The 4th of July, i860, an occasion always celebrated by the people with barbecues, public speeches and other patriotic demonstrations, was the occasion selected to make the presentation of the banner to the Quitman Guards. Colonel Eshelman, of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, was delegated to superintend the making of the banner. The flag was made of heavy white silk, double fold, with gold fringe borders and a representation of a large American eagle interwoven in the center presenting the coat of arms of the United States. On one side it bore the inscription: “PRESENTED TO THE QUITMAN GUARDS BY THE LADIES OF PIKE COUNTY’’ On the everse side: “OUR COUNTRY AND OUR HOMES” The price paid for it was $250, which amount was contributed in small sums ranging from 50 cents to $5. It was received at Holmesville by Samuel A. Matthews, a resident of the town who had been selected as its custodian. A public meeting was held in the Baptist Church by the ladies for the purpose of selecting one of their number, with two assistants, to present the banner to the Quitman Guards on the 4th of July, i860, the day of the celebration of American Independence. Two names were presented for the honor: Miss Rachel E. Coney and Miss Mary Ann Conerly, but the latter, on account of the recent death of her father, Owen Conerly, declined; and Miss Coney was selected, and she appointed as maids of honor Misses Emma Ellzey and Fanny Wicker. All the necessary preparations having been made, when the day arrived this event and the great barbecue, and an oration to be deliv- 140 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ered by Hugh Eugene Weathersby, a brilliant young lawyer and Representative of the State Legislature, brought to the town of Holmesville one of the largest gatherings of people that ever assem- bled there. A platform was erected on the public square in front of the resi- dence of Dr. George Nicholson, near the courthouse, by Samuel A. Matthews and Chauncey P. Conerly, as committee appointed by the Quitman Guards. Benton Bickham, one of the handsomest young men of the town and of the Quitman Guards, was selected as the standard bearer of the company. Thomas R. Stockdale was selected as attendant to the young ladies in the ceremony of introduction. When the time arrived Benton Bickham, meeting the girls at the residence of Mr. Matthews, and bearing the banner, escorted them to the platform. The Quitman Guards, clothed in their full uniform, with their burnished muskets, were drawn up in line in front and facing the plat- form when the ceremonies of the presentation were commenced, by the following address, delivered by Miss Fanny Wicker, who was introduced by Thomas R. Stockdale: “Ladies and Gentlemen: We have assembled here to-day to evince in some degree the high esteem in which we hold and the great admiration with which we regard those who are willing to undergo the severe labor of military discipline for their country’s good — those who, in the hour of peril, are the maintainers of her rights, the protectors of our firesides and our homes. “To you, gentlemen of the Quitman Guards, the ladies of Pike County this day address themselves, with a token of their appreciation of your gener- ous chivalry, in thus taking upon yourselves the armor of your country: for it is a badge of honor which they are proud to recognize. They have selected this, the most glorious day in all the calendar of time, that its sacred memories may throw around the scene a deeper and more lively interest. For, upon this day, every patriot’s heart must swell with emotions of thanksgiving for the inestimable blessings which American independence has showered upon this, the happiest of all lands. The ladies of Pike County have deemed this national emblem, around which clusters the memory of so many glorious deeds, the most appropriate expression of their confidence in the valor of our citizen sol- diery “Permit me now to introduce Miss Coney, who in their behalf, bears this flag.” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 141 MISS RACHEL E. CONEY’S ADDRESS. “Soldiers of the Quitman Guards: In behalf of the ladies of Pike County, we are happy to greet you in the noblest attitude that freemen can occupy — soldiers of their native land. For love of country, that of great instinct of the soul, that pervades every clime and nation, and which prompts alike ‘the shud- dering tenant of the frozen zone’ and the swarthy inhabitant of the tropics, to deem his own the pride of every land, is a principle which, indeed, ennobles humanity. But without that noble spirit which prompts him to step between danger and his country — a patriotism of an ignoble cast — and the difference between him and a soldier is the difference between a slave and a freeman. There is no nobler principle of the soul than patriotism, so full and free that it embraces one’s whole country — but when we search for its origin, one finds that its vitality emanates from a single spot, the dearest in his native land — the spot to which the warrior’s heart ever turns, whether marching on the plains of the far off land or riding upon the ocean’s wave, “In every clime the magnet of the soul, “Touched by remembrance, trembles to the pole. “Speaking for our sex, it is the nucleus around which clusters all our hopes, and the fount from which emanate all our joys — the place whose atmosphere floats so brightly around us that even life’s sorrows fail to darken its halo — the halo of our homes. “He was a patriot who wrote, and surely there is music in the soul of him who sung: ‘ ’Mid pleasures and palaces tho’ we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.’ “And you will allow us to add, there is no place like America for a home and our country is dear because it protects our home. Thus it is not strange that we should regard with jealous eye what is light or darkness, and more than life or death to us; and that we should greet, with grateful hearts, those who would intervene a shield between our country and danger, however remote. For well do we know, and it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge it, that on all the green earth, there is no country in which woman occupies so truly an exalted position as in the land of the gallant and brave. With great deference to the opinions of those who deem all military displays useless demonstrations in times of peace, we would say there is no ray of light shines into the future except as it is reflected by the past; and we see all along the world’s history startling examples which press upon every great and prosperous nation the necessity of well armed soldiery. “When the proud Anglo-Saxon stepped, as from the ocean, upon the shores of this untamed land, and the wilderness had fled from before his face, and the mountains looked proudly down upon the valleys where civilization loomed up in peaceful glory, then did Oriental misrule reach forth to enslave his fair 142 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI daughter of the Land of ‘the Setting Sun.’ But in that hour of peril, she called to her citizen soldiery, and brave hearts responded from hills and valleys, who stayed the giant arm and loosened the iron grasp of the oppressor. Once, since then, has her liberty been maintained, and once her honor defended by the same mighty power. “And now, although peace has long spread her white wings over the land, and the clouds have continued to drop their bounty down into the lap of the earth, and prosperity has taken her abode here, there may be a cloud in the horizon ‘of the size of a man’s hand’ which may yet gather and darken the whole heavens, and, looking down with wrathful brow, threaten terrible de- struction. And as the miser looks kindly upon the strong bars that secure his cherished treasures, we rejoice to see between our homes and the storm a bat- tlement which no flood, has ever borne down. “We present you this flag as a memento of our appreciation of your gal- lantry in enlisting in the service of the greatest country the earth has ever turned to the sun. We have inscribed among the stars the motto nearest our hearts, in token of our confidence in the brave spirits who shall unfurl it to the breeze. “In memory of the land we love above all others, we have placed upon it the insignia of our native State, whose colors have been borne always in tri- umph on many a fearful field, through many a fierce struggle, by the gallant old man whose honored name you bear. “We present you this flag upon its own birthday, with no desire to encour- age a spirit of aggressive warfare, or to-kindle within your breasts the fires of ambition, for every true woman’s heart revolts at the thought of a catalogue of the slain, which might bear the name of her dearest friend; but if such a dire calamity should come, which may the God of nations avert, that the land of our birth should be disgraced, our country dishonored or our homes invaded, whether it be threatened by an alien enemy or a fratricidal hand, we ask you to take this flag and beat back the foe. “The history of the past warrants the assertion that no true American, and we are sure that no brave son of the gallant State of Mississippi, where we are proud to claim our homes, would purchase ease or escape danger at the cost of independence; and every woman of noble soul, though sad the thought, would deem it a dearer joy, whether he be father, brother or lover, to spend a life of solitude in strewing flowers upon a hero’s grave than in peace to share a vassal’s home. “To you we commit our country and our homes, with the confident hope that upon each Independence Day, for generations to come, brave soldiers will tread the soil of America to the sound of martial music.” At the conclusion of Miss Coney’s address she presented the banner, which was received by H. E. Weathersby, on the part of the Quitman Guards in a few well-chosen remarks, in which he stated that “where HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 143 duty calls the Quitman Guards will go;” and thus the young ladies were considered as adopted members of that company. At the conclusion of these ceremonies the people repaired to the beech grove at the foot of the bridge over the Bogue Chitto River, where the barbecue Was held and where Eugene Weathersby delivered the oration of the occasion; Colonel Eshelman and others of the Washington Artillery being present, specially invited guests of the occasion. Political excitement and sectional feeling between the Northern and Southern States had become greatly intensified by questions per- taining to the new territory acquired from France by purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte, the admission of Texas and other new States, the right of property in slaves, the extension of slavery in the new terri- tory and the sovereignty of States. The Constitution of the United States recognized the right of property in slaves and threw around it its protecting arm and upheld it by decisions of its highest tribunals, and the owners claimed the right to remove to any of the public domain with this species of property. This privilege was contested by those at the North who were opposed to allowing any owner of slaves to enter the new territory. A noted suit was instituted in Mis- souri as a test case, known as the Dred Scott case, to determine the question whether a negro slave taken into territory claimed by aboli- tionists to be non-slavery territory, by his owner, should remain a slave or be liberated. Dred Scott was taken into this disputed terri- tory by his owner, an army officer, who died leaving him in the terri- tory, and the question was sprung as to what disposition should be made of him. None of his owner’s heirs wanted him, yet he was properiy, and the courts were resorted to. It was greedily seized upon by abolition political agitators at the North and a great effort made to secure a verdict against the slave owners of the South, but the Supreme Court of the United States held that the removal of the slave with his owner into non-slave holding territory did not change the status of the slave as property and decreed that he be delivered to the nearest heir at law of the deceased owner. This was done, and the negro was liberated or emancipated by the owner. This judgment 144 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI of the highest tribunal of the United States Government created an intense furore throughout the North among the abolitionists. There had been many years of wrangling over this question which brought about the extension of Mason’s and Dixon’s line, and for forty years the country was more or less agitated over matters pertaining to the rights of the States. The Southern States as such were not respon- sible for the institution of slavery nor its establishment within their borders When Virginia was a colony under Great Britain, in 1620, the first load of negro slaves were landed at Jamestown from a Dutch vessel. It was fostered and nursed by the English crown up to 1807 and by people in the Eastern States. New England men, New England money, New England vessels, New England inhumanity, in coalition with the English crown and Dutch navigators, are the parents of the trade in slavery and its establishment in this country, and Massachu- setts the first slave State. It proved unprofitable to the North on account of the long winters, but profitable to the South under good management, and after the slave trade was forbidden by act of Par- liament in 1807, and the Southern States passed laws forbidding any further importation of slaves from foreign countries, and it ceased to be a source of wealth to the avaricious Yankee, then schemes were concocted to bring about its abolition in the South by those who were jealous of Southern prosperity. Long before the admission of Mississippi as a Territory the South was so apprehensive of future troubles growing out of the accumula- tion of negroes that they passed laws prohibiting the landing of Afri- can negroes on their shores and the organic act creating the Territory of Mississippi forbade it ; but the slave speculators and kidnappers of New England with hundreds of vessels continued to ply their avoca- tion and smuggled them through from the North and unfrequented lakes and rivers unguarded by government and where communication to legal authority was difficult. Virginia put a stop to it as soon as it was in her power to do so, and it was one of the express stipulations constituting Oglethorpe’s charter for the establishment of his Mo- ravian Colony in Georgia. Any attempts of Northern haters of the South to fix the blame of the institution on the people of the South, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 145 or their secession from the Union for the purpose of perpetuating it, is disproved by all the facts connected with its history. General William Cain had been appointed general of the militia organizations of South Mississippi counties, and in i860 he ordered a review to take place in the town of Magnolia. The Quitman Guards were ordered out and responded, the whole company going to Mag- nolia, clothed in their military uniforms, to participate in the grand review. General Cain was handsomely uniformed and mounted on a splendid iron-gray charger, accompanied by a numerous staff of ele- gantly uniformed officers. It was a gala day in Magnolia, but the Quitman Guards had possession, from a military point of view, of the entire field, under direction of the commanding general. No other troops presented themselves for review, and the history of the occasion becomes deficient by the absence of the mass of South Missis- sippi forces. Nevertheless this was a historical occasion. It was a niche in events to follow. It was duty performed. The year i860 was a stormy period in the political history of the country. The Southern States clung tenaciously to the constitution and combatted every infringement of its provisions assailed by its enemies. So many things had been done and threatened that endan- gered their peace and happiness that they were seriously considering the question of a dissolution of the Union, by passing ordinances of secession, and forming a separate government, with which there could be some unity of feeling, friendship and mutual benefits. The stu- dent of political history must turn to other works to learn all the causes which plunged the country into a great fratricidal conflict after this time. Pike County is only a drop in the bucket hat overflowed, a grain of sand on the shore lashed by the sea of human blood. On May 16, i860, a Republican convention, a purely sectional body of men, was held in the city of Chicago, 111 ., for the purpose of nominating candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States. This party at the time was commonly known as the “Black Abolition Party,” and was composed of delegates of the abolition faith. Not a single Southern State was represented in it. At this convention 10 146 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer and politician, was nominated for Presi- dent, and Mr. Hamlin of Maine was nominated for Vice-President. Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed that the Union “could not permanently endure half slave and half free.” This of itself was a declaration on his part, endorsed by this purely sectional convention, that the institution of slavery was to be attacked and should be abolished if possible. A society of abolitionists had been formed in England long before the abolition of slavery and the slave trade by the English Parliament, and another one in the city of Philadelphia in the early thirties. At the convention of Democrats, which met in Charleston, S. C., there was a division which resulted in the nomination of two sets of candidates. Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, being selected for Presi- dent, and Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, for Vice-President, by one faction, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, for President, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for Vive-President, by the other faction. Another convention assembled in the city of Baltimore, Md., and nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, for President, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President. Thus there were four tickets in the field. At the election in Novem- ber following, there were 4,676,853 votes polled. Of this number Lincoln and Hamlin received 1,866,352, and of the 303 votes cast in the electoral college they received 180 and were declared elected. It was clearly sectional in its results. Lincoln and Hamlin received a little over one-third of the popular votes and over one-half of the electoral vote. Their party leaders had declared against the institu- tion of slavery and that it could not exist “only by virtue of munici- pal law,” “no law for it in the territories.” This was an open declara- tion of lynching the Constitution of the United States and setting aside the decision of its Supreme Court. The South saw its perils. Her institutions had been assailed and her constitutional rights tramped upon for forty years, and her people thought it was time to seek relief by separation. After the announcement of the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, South Carolina, acting in her sovereign capacity as a State, in Decern- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 147 ber, i860, passed the ordinance of secession, severing her relations with the general government. Mississippi followed on the 9th of January, 1861, Dr. James M. Nelson, of Holmesville, being the delegate from Pike County. The convention which passed the ordinance of secession adopted the Bonnie Blue Flag as the State flag. The main field of which was white with a red fringe around its borders and a square blue field occupying about one-fourth of the flag in the upper comer attached to the staff. In this blue field a single white star. In the white field of the flag was the imprint of a green tree. The adoption of this flag inspired the writing of the song of the “Bonnie Blue Flag” by Harry McCarthy. SONG OF THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG. BY HARRY M’CARTHY. We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil, Fighting for our liberty, with treasure blood and toil; And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far, Hurrah for the Bonny Blue Flag that bears a single star! CHORUS. Hurrah! Hurrah! for Southern rights, Hurrah! Hurrah for the Bonny Blue Flag that bears a single star. First, gallant South Carolina nobly made the stand; Then came Alabama,, who took her by the hand; Next, quickly, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida, All raised on high the Bonny Blue Flag that bears the single star. Ye men of valor, gather round the banner of the Right, Texas and fair Louisiana, join us in the fight! Davis, our loved President, and Stephens, statesman rare, Now rally round the Bonny Blue Flag that bears the single star! And here’s to brave Virginia, the Old Dominion State, With the young Confederacy at length has linked her fate, Impelled by her example, now other States prepare To hoist on high the Bonny Blue Flag that bears a single star! 148 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI THE SECESSION CONVENTION. In the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register of 1904, compiled and edited by Dunbar Rowland, Director Department of Archives and History, the following account of the Secession Convention is given: “It was a notable assemblage that met in the Hall of Representatives on the morning of January 7, 1861, and one girt for action. The time for argu- ment, concession, compromise had passed. The supreme act remained to be done. The convention set about its business in a spirit of seriousness, as aware of the tremendous responsibility pressing upon it, but with an unfaltering look toward the one fixed goal. The one hundred delegates, representing the flower of the State, soon organized themselves in a business-like manner by the selection of W. S. Barry of Lowndes to preside. A committee of fifteen was speedily appointed to draft an ordinance of secession. Mr. Lamar was chair- man. The overwhelming sentiment of the convention in favor of immediate secession, as opposed to any form of ‘co-operation with other States,’ had already declared itself unmistakably. “On the third day of the committee’s deliberations the ordinance was reported by Mr. Lamar as chairman. The man who, later in life, was to reach out across the chasm between the North and South was the central figure in the drama of secession. Efforts to retard its passage or change its complexion were in vain. The roll call on the main question began amid a breathless silence. The name of J. L. Alcorn, an ardent co-operationist, was first called. ‘The Rubicon is crossed,’ he said, ‘I follow the army that leads to Rome.’ Oth- ers yielded to the dominant sentiment, and the ordinance passed by a vote of 84 to 15. “The President announced the vote amid a solemnity that had something religious in it. Moved by the impulse of the moment, he asked a minister to invoke God’s blessing on what had been done. The immense audience stood while he complied. Nor Cromwell’s pikemen on the eve of battle felt their dependence on the will of Providence more than they. The prayer concluded, a dramatic incident came to relieve the tension. A gentleman entered the hall bearing a blue silk flag, in the center of which glittered a single white star. It had been made overnight by a Jackson lady, in anticipation of the action of the convention. He handed it to the President, who paused a moment and then waved it aloft with the exclamation that it was the first flag of the young republic. The audience broke into applause, rising to salute the emblem. Without were heard the salvos of artillery that greeted the new republic. The next night, it may be worth remarking, ‘The Bonny Blue Flag’ was sung in a local theater. It had been composed by Harry McCarthy, a comedian, imme- diately after witnessing the scene in the capitol. “The convention knew its act meant war. Preparations were made for the conflict. Jefferson Davis was elected Major General of the State troops, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 149 and four Brigadier-Generals were chosen. Delegates to the Convention of the Southern States at Montgomery were also elected. The ‘swelling prologue’ to the theme of the Civil War was over as far as Mississippi was concerned. The decision of the United Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, fixing the status of the negro race, giving the owners of slaves the right to settle with them in the territories, was disregarded by abolition agitators. The substance of this decision was that the African slaves were not and could not be acknowledged as “part of the people,” or citizens under the Constitution of the United States, and that Con- gress had no right to exclude citizens of the South from taking their negro servants as any other property into any part of the country. Continued interference, the instigation of negro insurrection, the invasion of John Brown in Virginia to free the negroes, and the scat- tering of emissaries over sections of the South, coupled with past aggressions on Southern rights and efforts to deprive her of equality in the Union by discrimination in legislation, and denying them the right to settle with their slaves in the common territory in face of this decision of the highest tribunal of the land, created a deep feeling of insecurity and further inflamed the passions of the people. It was evident to the minds of Southern people that it was the policy of the abolitionists to irritate the South to the commission of an act to get an excuse to invade the country with the ultimate object of the abolition of slavery and the Africanization of the Southern States. Pike County was not without its share of these sneaking abolition emissaries, going from plantation to plantation, secretly among the negroes, endeavoring to incite them to insurrection against their masters and families. This writer knows whereof he speaks on this matter in so far as Pike County was concerned. There was no more cruel and murderous intent perpretrated on a people than that at- tempted by Northern emissaries here in i860; and it became neces- sary for the manhood of the South to be on the alert. On his father’s estate on Topisaw the writer caught one of these scoundrels among the negroes trying to persuade them to rise and massacre his widowed mother and her children, which they refused to consider; and the same villian attempted the same thing on the plantations of Judge 150 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI James B. Quin, Hardy Thompson, Christian Hoover and others. This is localizing evidence and facts in a small radius. Put it thus over the entire South, where there were four millions of negro slaves, equal in number to the whites, what was there under these circum- stances for the Southern people to expect? With twenty millions of white people in the Northern States, turned to be their enemies, send- ing their murderous emissaries among these four million slaves to incite them to massacre the four millions of whites in the South, thus placing the four million Southern whites at the mercy of the twenty million Northern whites and the four million negroes in their midst, what can be said against the South seceding and Southern manhood asserting itself for its own preservation? What constituted a greater incentive to manly and heroic effort to beat back the foe? The Southern people were true Americans, and were not moulded from that class of the human race to stand idle and inactive while an insolent foe marched in among them to cut their throats or rob them of all the rights of freemen under a government which their fathers had given their best blood and brains to establish. In 1859 H. E. Weathersby, the brilliant young lawyer previously mentioned, was elected to the State Legislature, and J. B. Crisman was elected to represent the counties of Pike and Laurence in the State Senate. They were gentlemen eminently qualified for these responsible positions. They were both men of ability and reflected honor upon the constituency they represented in these days of political commotion. H. Eugene Weathersby was a young man born and raised in Amite County, and was educated at Centenary College in Louisiana. He was one of the class with Judge Thomas C. W. Ellis, of the Civil Dis- trict Court of New Orleans, and a bosom friend. He was tall, handsome, talented, chivalrous and brave; and he had entered the practice of law in Holmesville at a period of life when noble aspira- tions fill the soul, and a laudable ambition urges one to seek the highest place among men; and it was at a time when trained and brilliant lawyers, in the floodtide of success, occupied the bar in South Missis- sippi, many of whose names have already been mentioned in these pages, and whose fame will go down to the ages. He became a part- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 151 ner with Hugh Murray Quin, a native of Pike County, and Thomas R. Stockdale, recently of the State of Pennsylvania, in the practice of law, and was the chosen orator of the day at the 4th of July celebra- tion in i860, the occasion of the presentation of the banner to the Quitman Guards. It was fitting that this should be the greatest celebration in Pike County, and it was fitting too that the gallant, the good, the chivalrous Weathersby should occupy such a conspicu- ous place in connection with the event, as it was the last for many years to come, and the young man who stood there the object of so much admiration, with his hands raised to high heaven, prophetically deplor- ing the signs of the coming storm, became a sacrifice upon the altar of a principle he loved so well. At the fall election in i860 Robert Bacot was succeeded by the election of Louis C. Bickham as sheriff. Louis Bickham was the son of Thomas Bickham, of Louisiana. His mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Bickham, becoming a widow by the death of her husband, became a resident of Holmesville and a conspicuous factor in its higher social life. She was a woman of queenly bearing, tender-hearted and kind, and delighted in the entertainment and happiness of young people. Her children, like herself, were all hand- some and proud. Louis C. Bickham married Margaret, one of the beautiful twin daughters of B. B. Lindsey, the noted millwright and mechanic. Her twin sister was named Jennie, whose first husband’s name was McClendon. They were so nearly alike that even intimate friends were sometimes puzzled to tell which was Margaret or which was Jennie, when met separately. Louis Bickham’s grandfather was Maj. Benjamin Bickham, who emigrated from South Carolina in 1811, in company with Benjamin Youngblood, the father of Joseph Youngblood, and John Brumfield, the father of Jesse and Isaac Brumfield, and settled in Washington Parish, Louisiana. Louis Bickham was a man of delicate mould, handsome and friendly, but he was brave and fearless in the discharge of the duties of sheriff. Among the original settlers of Summit and business men were William H. Garland, one of the original promoters of the building of 152 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad, as previously mentioned in the organization of that great enterprise. Louis Alcus and Isaac Lichenstein became merchants there, also Hatch Hiller, James and Clint Atkinson, J. B. Wilson and John Cotton, J. D. Jacobowsky and Jake Hart, Sol. Hyman, Henry Lotterhos, John W. Huffman, dentist; Lemuel J. Quin, Ed. Mogan, I. Moiese, Henry Lotterhos, D. C. Packer, John D. Farnham, Algenon Sidney Mitchell, Isaac C. Dick, William McNulty, Sam Hyman, Louis and Isaac Scherck, Ben Hilbum, Rene H. Brunette, the Cunninghams, Boyds and Godbolts and James H. Wingfield. Rene H. Brunette, previously mentioned as one of the original settlers of the town of Summit in 1856, was from the city of New Orleans, La. His wife was Susan Jane Thompson. They had four sons, Rene H., Jr., William M., Birkett Thompson and Frank. At the commencement of the Civil War Rene, Jr., and William joined Charlie Drew’s battalion of infantry, made up of some of the best young men of the city of New Orleans, which was immediately sent to Richmond, Va., with other forces to meet the invasion of the peninsula. They became engaged in a skirmish fight with the enemy near Newport News, July 5, 1861, at which time Charlie Drew was killed and it became a noted historical fact that he was the first field officer on the Confederate side to become a martyr to the cause of Southern independence. In accordance with the terms of their enlistment the battalion was disbanded and the men given their discharge at Yorktown, in 1862, and Fenner’s battery was formed from members of the battalion, and the two Brunette brothers from Summit became members of it when it was organized at Jackson, Miss., under orders, in May, 1862. William Brunette was killed at the battle of New Hope, Ga., May 24, 1864. Frank was too young to become an active soldier during the war. The family returned to New Orleans in 1866, where they engaged in merchandising. The elder son, Rene H., Jr., at this writing is over seventy years of age, in good health, active and strong and of superb memory connected with events of the Civil War. He married Miss Alice Shamwell, of New Orleans, and has one living son, Wiliam A. Brunette, of Gulfport. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 153 The Reynolds family, also pioneer settlers of Summit, from New Orleans, returned to that city some years after the close of the war. One of the daughters of this family became the wife of Mr. Soule, of Soule’s College. Col. William H. Garland, one of the promoters of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad, and founder of the town of Sum- mit, was a widower from New Orleans with the following children: Lizzie, wife of Dr. James M. Ferguson, of Stockdale’s Cavalry; David and William H., Jr., when he married the widow O’Callahan, with the following children: Baldwin (known as Bun), Harold and Mollie. Colonel Garland and his wife, Mrs. O’Callahan, were the parents of Sidney and Bettie Garland. In 1859, while Robert Bacot was sheriff, Ralf Summers, a negro slave belonging to Jack Summers, the tanner, was killed by Green Wingo, a slave of Asa Wingo, for which the latter was hung after trial by jury in the circuit court. This killing occurred on the public road near the plantation of Andrew Kaigler, across the river from Holmes- ville. Ralph Gibson, Capt. Westly Thomas and William Carr, who lived on Leatherwood, were members of Jefferson Davis’ celebrated 1st Mississippi Regiment in the War with Mexico, noted for excellent services, crowning the American arms with success by the heroic efforts and gallantry of its illustrious colonel and his men. William Sparkman, Joseph Page, Elijah Page, Felix Campbell, John and Josh Bishop and their father were the principal carpenters and builders in Holmesville. William Sparkman was a fine violinist and furnished the music for the balls in Holmesville during his time when the California House was famous for these occasions. Holmesville was the scene of many a happy gathering. An inland resort, the gay and the chivalrous came from near and far; distant States often lent their charmers, and there was no rural town or county that could boast of more attractive and lovable women. One of the first fandangoes the writer visited while in his tender teens was at the residence of Joseph Luter, on the farm where he settled 154 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and lived on Vamal Creek. It was often the case that boys or young men from towns would attend these country dances, and they some- times indulged in the habit of poking fun at the country lads and lasses. It was a fashion for them to wear fine red-top boots in attendance at these balls. The country girls were taught to dance all the fandango figures, “Virginia reels,” “fisher’s hornpipe,” “heel and toe,” “side shuffle,” the “backstep” and “pigeon wing.” On this occasion, Flem Burkhalter, with his inimitable bow and fiddle and the magic pat of his foot, “filled the orchestra.” The country boys fixed up a job — one of the relics of Pindar Ridge, in Washington Parish — on a youngster with red-top boots and a stand- ing collar An old Virginia reel was arranged and partners chosen. One of the handsomest and best fandango dancing girls was robed in a homespun dress and kept in the background until the time came for the red-top boots to sidle out bantering for a vis-a-vee. Flem Burk- halter was “up to the game” and he laid his head down on his fiddle and went to work. A lithe, smiling figure tripped out in front of the red-top boots, her head leaning coquettishly to one side, a twinkle in her eyes, a happy smile upon her cheeks, with her homespun dress slightly tucked above the ankles. The knight of the red-top boots was amazed, he hesitated for a moment, but hands clapped, a shout went up. Flem Burkhalter came down vigorously with his bow, his foot went up and down, red-top boots took in the situation, and he proved to be a “clipper” in the art; but there was a match for him in the homespun dress. All the other dancers rested back on one foot in line, with their hands folded in front of them, eyes riveted on the performers. Flem Burkhalter sailed out from one tune to another for half an hour, and then plunged into Fisher’s hornpipe. Red-top boots figured with the time, and so did the figure in the homespun dress. The smile that lit her pretty cheeks was there yet, calm and beautiful, the head leaned from one side to the other, and there was not an error in the motion of the well-shaped, flexible limbs. She was one of “Flem Buck’s” pupils; he knew the power of her endur- ance, and he fiddled to break down her opponent; but “red-top” was game; he was loath to yield to the pineywoods’ smiling gazelle; great HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 155 drops of fluid formed on his chivalric brow, his collar went limp, his linen was dripping. The nimble gazelle sidled him around; she wouldn’t swing; it was a test of endurance, but red-top boots had to succumb, and he bent his obedience to his matchless conqueress in heroic fashion, and from that hour on, after she had donned her gayest attire, they were the charming leaders; took the first place at the magnificent supper prepared, wound up the fandango happy-hearted, and went their way rejoicing. The actress in this famous contest was Miss Louisa Burkhalter, an aunt of the wife of Irvin A. Quin. The first man to receive a license to teach school in Pike County was W. D. Clarke, in the forties. One of his pupils, in the person of Hon. Henry S. Brum- field, still survives. In 1902, when these notes were compiled, Prof. Clarke was still living at the ripe old age of eighty-one, in the city of Springfield, 111 ., and had recently written a beautiful letter to his pupil of the long ago. The grading of the railroad was completed to Magnolia in 1856. The land upon which the town was built belonged to Ansel H . Prewett, and was laid off in town lots and sold to the settlers. Ansel H. Prewett was a son of Elisha Prewett and Ann Huckabee, pioneers from Georgia. His first wife was Julia Ann Rabom, and they were the parents of the following children: Sarah Ann, who first married Wesley Powell, and then Howell Dickey, second husband; Wm. Harrison Prewett, who married Polly Ann Vaughn; James Smiley Prewett, who married Elizabeth Vaughn: Martha Ann, who married Newton Nash; Elisha Taylor, who married Sally Harris, Ansel H. Prewett The founder of Magnolia. Appointed Sheriff of Pike County by Governor Alcorn in 1870 156 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Naomi Eviline, who married David Vaughn; Mary Ann, who married Cornelius T. Zachary. His second wife was Miss Lucinda Barron, and they had an adopted daughter, Ann Elizabeth, who married Erasmus Nash. Magnolia is ninety-eight miles from New Orleans, and is located on a gentle, undulating elevation sloping eastward with the little Tangipahoa flowing past its eastern border, and Ballards Creek, since called Minnehaha, marking its western boundary, emptying into the Little Tangipahoa below the town. The following are numbered as the original settlers of the town: Nick Sinnot, S. R. Jones, Capt. Robert L. Carter, W. H. Joiner, W. H. B. Croswell, Joseph Evans, Abraham Hiller, Bennett Carter, Evan McLennan, L. Goumy, Prof. Vincent, E. H. Pezant, Ira Cockerham, Dr. Hart, Dr. Snyder, Dr. T. J. Everett, Samuel Murray Sandell, John Carter, Henry Hall, Jasper Coney, Dr. J. H. Laney, Mr. Nurse, George Clarke, Mrs. Lagrue (Widow Marshall), Mrs. H. H. Hadden, Rev. W. H. Roane, Mrs. Emiline Coney, widow of Jackson Coney, and Eugene M. Bee, who was the first depot agent. The Central House, erected by Dr. Clark and kept by Henry Gottig, was built in 1858. Capt. Joseph H. Miller, the husband of Miss Rachel Coney, was a son of Ebenezer T. Miller and Miss Lucinda Davis, of Morgan County, Illinois. He came South in 1858 and located in New Orleans. At the breaking out of the war he joined the Washington Artillery and subsequently was stationed at Camp Moore as a drill master and assisted in organizing the nth Louisiana, Colonel Marks, and went to the front as Captain of Company A. While in service he was wounded, and being thus disabled he was sent back to Mississippi as a recruiting officer, stationed at Holly Springs and Jackson, Miss. In the meantime he became acquainted with Miss Rachel E. Coney at Magnolia and married her in that town. At the close of the war he settled there and engaged in the mercantile business. He died February, 1874. He possessed a Washington Artillery pin with his name inscribed thereon, dated September 6, i860, presented by S. H. to J. H. M., which is an heirloom of his family. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 157 In order to ascertain what command Capt. J. H. Miller and Capt. A. LeBlanc belonged to during the Civil War, the writer addressed a letter to General John McGrath, of Baton Rouge, La., and received the following reply: Mr. L. W. Conerly, Baton Rouge, La., July 31, 1908. Griswold , Miss. My Dear Friend: Yours of the 25th instant to hand, and in answer will say that I knew Capt. Miller and Lieut. Alex LeBlanc both. LeBlanc was second lieutenant of a company made up in Baton Rouge, but locally known as the Point Coupee Volunteers. The reason for the name was that the Pointe Coupee furnished the money to equip the company, which was officered as follows: Wiley Barrow, Captain; Thompson J. Bird, First Lieutenant; C. D. Favrot, Second Lieuten- ant; and Alexander LeBlanc, Junior Second Lieutenant. The Eleventh Regi- ment was broken up in 1862, and the non-commissioned officers and men, after the formation of two companies of sharp shooters known as Austin's Bat- talion, were divided between the Thirteenth and Twentieth Regiments and the officers sent on provost and conscript duty. Under this arrangement, LeBlanc was sent to Magnolia, or that vicinity. I did not know much of Capt. Miller. There are no records of Confederates in Louisiana except a few old rolls in Memorial Hall. Regards to yourself and family. Yours truly, John McGrath, Per M. Note.- — Alex. LeBlanc, above mentioned, married Miss Jodie Coney, sister to Mrs. Joe Miller. James Buchanan was President of the United States in i860, and upon the assumption of her individual sovereignty, South Carolina demanded of the Federal Government a return to her the possession of Forts Moultrie and Sumpter, which Were parts of her domain conditionally held by the United States Government, with a garrison in Fort Moultrie under Maj. Robert Anderson The secession of South Carolina and Mississippi was closely followed by Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas and Louisiana. A pro- visional government was formed and named the Confederate States of America. Virginia held back for some time in the interest of peace, 158 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and called a convention of States to meet in Washington for the pur- pose of trying to adjust the difficulties, but all her efforts were scorned by the Northern States, there being twenty represented. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, who had served the United States conspicuously in the war with Mexico and as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, and as United States Senator from Missis- sippi, a man of great ability and unblemished character, a gallant soldier and wise statesman, was chosen President of the Confederate States, with the provisional capital located at Montgomery, Ala., and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, was chosen Vice-President. The State of Maryland was handicapped and practically subju- gated by an early invasion by Federal troops. The State had not seceded, but her people were in sympathy with her sister States of the South, and their enthusiasm, particularly in the city of Baltimore, was kindled to a high degree. The Secretary of War, by proclama- tion, had called on the States for their quota of troops to be used in the war about to be inaugurated for the coercion of the seceded States, and it was learned that troops from the West were to come through Maryland. On the 19th of April, 1861, a body of them landed at the depot in Baltimore and their further progress disputed. The soldiers were attacked with stones and many of them injured, when they fired on the citizens, killing a few and wounding others. This move- ment of the troops was in open violation of the United States Constitu- tion ; a provision incorporated in the States’ Constitutions, to move troops through a State without the knowledge and consent of its Governor. On the nth of April, 1861, General Beauregard demanded of Major Anderson the surrender of Fort Sumpter, which he held, after secretly leaving Fort Moultrie, in violation of an agreement pending negotiations for a peaceful settlement, by order of his government, which he declined to do. In a second communication to General Beauregard, he offered to do so provided he should not receive before that time controlling instructions from his government or additional supplies. As it was known by General Beauregard that these con- trolling instructions had already been issued and the supplies expected HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 159 every moment, and that the naval forces had already arrived oft the harbor, and were prevented from coming in by a gale, there being no other recourse to prevent a conflict with the combined forces of the fleet and the guns of Fort Sumpter, General Beauregard notified Major Anderson, on the 12th of April, at 3:20-a. m., that he would open fire on his batteries in one hour from that time, which he pro- ceeded to do. After a bombardment of over thirty hours the fort was partially destroyed and set on fire by shells and Major Anderson surrendered on the 13th. The persistent and stereotyped rant of Northern demagogues and Southern haters about “firing on the flag” will not be considered by impartial students seeking the truth of history, as it is an undeniable fact of record that after Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the most cunning treachery was practiced in the negotiations for the evacu- ation of these forts, and every principle of honor violated by gov- ernment authorities, in communications with the commissioners rep- resenting South Carolina and the recently organized Confederate Government. Horace Greeley, who was considered the best authority from a black Republican point of view, and who was considered fair and honorable, said: “Whether the bombardment and reduction of Fort Sumpter shall or shall not be justified by posterity, it is clear that the Confederacy had no alternative but its dissolution.” On the 5th of May following the scenes enacted in the city of Balti- more were followed up, and a body of United States troops were quartered at the relay House under General Butler, who subse- quently took possession of Federal Hill and consummated the military possession of Baltimore, disarmed the people and placed that city under martial law. The police commissioners were arrested and the city marshal, George P. Kane, who had rendered effective service in preserving the peace, was sent to Fort McHenry by General Banks who succeeded Butler, and thus the State of Maryland was subjugated and wronged by the Federal Government at Washington in spite of the protests of her Governor and her people. A touching record of facts relating to the gross usurpations of Abraham Lincoln’s govern- 160 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ment in direct violations of the oath of office he had taken may be properly inserted here from the pen of Jefferson Davis, in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government: “Henceforth the story of Maryland is sad to the last degree, only relieved by the gallant men who left their homes to fight the battles of State rights when Maryland no longer furnished them a field on which they could maintain the rights their fathers left them. This was a fate doubly sad to the sons of the heroic men who, under the designation of ‘Maryland Line’, did so much in our revolutionary struggle to secure the independence of the States; of men who, at a later day, fought the battle of North Point; of the people of a land which had furnished so many heroes and statesmen, and gave the great Chief Justice Taney to the Supreme Court of the United States.” During these eventful times Pike County had but one military organization, the Quitman Guards. The excitement produced by the aggressive acts of Abraham Lincoln after his inauguration on the 4th of March, 1861, was keenly felt and aroused the Southern people to a sense of the great danger threatening them. Lincoln could not be regarded by them as anything else but a revolutionist, heading the abolition party, by whom he was elected, and who had for long years been menacing the institutions of the South, not only in their incendiary efforts to raise insurrections among the negroes in the South against the whites, but the actual invasion of the State of Virginia by abolition filibusters, under the leadership of John Brown, who, after his capture and execution at Charlestown, was made a saint in the songs and prayers of his abolition followers and sympathizers throughout the North. Many of the young men of Pike County immediately rseponded to the call of President Davis for troops to protect Pensacola; among them being James Bridges and Joe Quin, students at Holmesville, and Hugh Q. Bridges, Wm. J. Lamkin and Wm. Clint Barnes, and Alexander Mouton Bickham, students at Oxford, who joined the University Greys attached to the nth Mississippi Regiment. Upon polling the Quitman Guards it was found that a number of them, including Capt. Brent, could not immediately take the field if called upon, and it was determined to reorganize the company and HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 161 a call was made to make up the maximum of one hundred men al- lowed by the military regulations, and Captain Brent resigned, on account of his planting interests which he could not suddenly leave. On the 15th of April, 1861, Abraham Lincoln issued his proclama- tion calling for seventy-five thousand men to suppress “combinations” opposed to laws “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or the powers invested in marshals by law,” “the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Car- olina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas,” “by virtue of the power in me vested by the constitution and laws,” etc. It will be remembered here that in his correspondence with Alexander Stephens he said the South had nothing to fear from him. The President of the United States had no such authority under the Constitution. This act of Abraham Lincoln Was clearly an assumption of authority, a violation of the Constitution, which he had sworn to support, in the very beginning of his executive career; a preconceived revolutionary measure for the coercion of the Southern States and the abolition of negro slavery. The Constitution of the United States clearly and emphatically says: “The Congress shall have power to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union suppress insurrection and repel invasions.” “Congress shall have power to declare war,” says the United States Constitution, not the President, and when this man who had sworn to support the Constitution invaded Maryland and occupied her terri- tory and shot down her people in the streets of Baltimore, and placed that city under martial law, arresting and imprisoning her civil officers, who had committed no unlawful act against the Government of the United States, it was a declaration of war upon a State of the Union which had not denied, nor attempted to deny, any lawful authority of the United States, nor attempted to obstruct the execution of its laws, certainly exceeded the bounds of his executive authority. It was an act of revolution and invasion without a lawful excuse, and under the rant of firing on the flag at F ort Sumpter and the destruc- tion of the Union, men flocked to his standard to defend their “liber- 11 162 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ties,” “liberties” assumed to invade a peaceful State of the Union and to make war on and destroy others acting solely in self-defense. Seventy-five thousand men to suppress “unlawful combinations!” Sovereign States acting in the peaceful exercises of State rights. The earnest and impartial student of the political history of the United States cannot fail to be convinced that the Southern States were eminently correct in their attitude and acts in 1861. That Abraham Lincoln, who has been worshipped and lauded as a patriot and martyr to liberty, was a tool of abolition conspirators, a violator of the organic laws of the land, a revolutionist, a destroyer of the fundamental prin- ciples upon which the government was founded, acting in direct con- travention to the action of the colonies in their exercise of the right to withdraw their allegiance to the British Government in 1776; the reverse of George Washington, with whom the feeble effort has been made to class him. In his own language I would say: “We cannot escape history.” These matters are here mentioned in order to prepare the mind of the reader for the future, and to show why the South was forced to resort to arms, and why Pike County, a mere speck on the map, became like other sections of the South, almost stripped of her gallant men and boys in the conflict which followed. The future pages contained in this work are embellished with their names — their deeds are recorded in story and song, in ably written histories of the land and in the published official reports of the armies. When Virginia failed, through the convention of States called at Washington, to secure an amicable adjustment of pending difficulties, and seeing the hopelessness of her efforts and the determination mani- fested at Washington to invade and coerce the Southern States, she positively refused any aid for that purpose, but promptly withdrew from the Union and cast her destinies with the Confederate cause. The secession of the Southern States was peacefully accomplished, and every effort consistent with honor was made by them to avoid war, but when they saw the treachery manifested over the Fort Sump- ter affair and the determination of Lincoln to coerce them they deter- mined to prepare for the issue as best they could. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 163 SOME NOTES ON SECESSION. It would seem proper just here to give some notes on secession, as the Southern States have had to bear the blame for the inculcation of the doctrine and for the “destruction of the Union,’’ from a Northern point of view. We are at a period now when the Southern States are exercising the right of secession, not threatening to do so. Here- tofore they had held fast to the Union, defended it and used every means in their power to sustain it in all its purity and in accordance with the rights declared by the Constitution. As early as 1781 the New England States began the agitation of secession; only a few years after the Declaration of Independence, and from this time on down to 1845, a period of sixty years, promi- nent men supported and sustained by the people in New England advocated and agitated the question of secession and the formation of a Northern Confederacy. Let us go back a little and see how history sustains this declara- tion: Jefferson Davis has been scurrilously attacked by Northern writers and historians as the father of secession and the arch traitor of America, from the time imperial Abraham Lincoln displayed his infamous con- tempt for American institutions, founded on the independence achieved by the colonists in the revolution of 1776. If Jefferson Davis is the father of secession and the arch traitor who began the war between the North and South what name can be given to those who brought on the war against Great Britain ? Who were the fathers of that great struggle? In other words, who were the grandfathers of the sin of secession? What Southern State ever made the threat of secession prior to i860? Then what Northern State did? For the benefit of the reader it may be well even in this little history of Pike County to inform him on this subject. The historian says: “While the thirteen States were living under the old Articles of Confederation, 1781-1788, threats of a new England confederation were loud and deep, and prominent men declared that if the Mississippi River were not closed up for twenty-five years the New England 164 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI States would secede from the perpetual ‘Union’ and establish a con- federation for themselves,” and this was because commerce of the country went out through that great highway instead of through the Eastern States. Mark the date, 1781-1788. Lieutenant-Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, made this declara- tion: “I sincerely declare that I wish the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment that event (which was the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency) shall take place.” The election of Jefferson a cause of secession? That was before Jefferson Davis was born. Some years later on, while negotiations were pending for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, out of which five great States were carved, the Massachusetts Legislature passed the following resolution: “Resolved, That the annexation of Louisiana to the union transcends the constitutional power of the government of the United States. It forms a new confederacy to which the States united, by the former compact, are not bound to adhere.” The North threatened to secede if the Embargo Act, which was passed to protect citizens of the United States on the high seas and the honor of the flag, were not repealed. When Congress was considering the admission of Louisiana to the Union, in January, 1811, Massachusetts spoke out vigorously in the person of her representative, Hon. Josiah Quinsey, thusly: “I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes the bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved, that it will free the States from their moral obligations; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare for a separa- tion.” Another father of secession. When was Jefferson Davis bom? June 3, 1808, and he must have been learning his A, B, C’s about this time at the point of a goose- quill. In the proceedings of the Hartford Convention, in 1814, the fol- lowing has been preserved in history (some more Connecticut feeling) : “In cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of the State, it is not only the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 165 right, it is the duty of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection in the manner best calculated to secure that end. States, which have no common umpire, must be their own judges and execute their own decision.” This was good secession doctrine for New England in 1814, but it was a crime in 1861 for the Southern States to act upon it! When the Florida purchase was made by President Monroe in 1819, he was prevented from securing the Spanish claims west of the Mississippi River by “ominous threats of New England to secede.” We have not yet read of any Southern State doing this up to this time. In 1845 Massachusetts again threatened to secede if Texas was admitted to the Union, when her Legislature passed the following resolution : “The annexation of Texas will drive these States into a dissolu- tion of the Union.” What States? The Northern States. And down to 1845, including the threat to secede in case of war with England in 1812, the North made nine different threats to secede, and Jefferson Davis, though he had been admitted to a seat in Congress in 1845, had not been permitted the privilege of giving expression to his senti- ments on secession, learned from the North, and we have not heard from South Carolina yet, except incidentally in asserting her sover- eign rights. New Hampshire spoke, through its Governor, in this wise in 1792: “All who are dissatisfied with the measures of government look to a separation of the States as a remedy for oppressive grievance.” “A war with Great Britain! We, at least in New England, will not enter into. Sooner would ninety-nine out of one hundred of our inhabitants separate from the Union than plunge themselves into this abyss of misery.” Thus spoke Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, in 1792. Who fought the War of 1812-15 and beat back British invasion of our country? The South did. Massachusetts presented a petition from citizens of that State in 1842, through John Quincy Adams in Congress, praying that Congress 166 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI immediately adopt measures, peaceably, to dissolve the Union of these States; and one of the reasons given was that if the Union per- sisted in the present state of things it would overwhelm the whole nation in destruction. The Southern States were not oppressing New England nor inter- fering with their affairs. “Up to 1830 the right of secession was universally admitted,’’ said Charles Francis Adams. We have not heard from Jefferson Davis yet, though we have searched the records clear on down to Daniel Webster, in 1851. But Daniel Webster was of Massachusetts, and was regarded as a very wise man, a great statesman, and one whose opinion was considered correct. What does he say when the Dred Scott fugitive slave question was on? Here it is: “I do not hesitate to say, and to repeat, that if the Northern States refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provides no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact.” And the Northern States refused to obey the mandates of the Supreme Court, and according to Webster the South had a right to secede and set up a Southern Confederacy. N. P. Banks, when Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1857, said: “Under these circumstances I am willing to let the Union slide. If slavery is to continue the Union cannot and ought not to stand.” When one expedient failed to keep up the agitation the North adopted another, and the question of slavery was wrung in as an excuse for Northern secession and a free Northern confederacy. “Let the wayward sisters depart in peace,” said Gen. Winfield Scott, Commander of the United States Army, 1861. Where was Jefferson Davis then? In the United States Senate pleading for peace, fair play, and for the security of the rights of the States composing the Union. Col. Timothy Pickering said, as far back as 1804: “The principles HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 167 of our revolution point to a remedy: A separation. A Northern confederacy would unite congenial characters and preserve fairer prospect of public happiness.” That is what the South thought in 1 860-61, and acted upon it. Secession was good for the North when it suited the Northern case, but when it came to be necessary for the South to exercise the right peaceably to save herself, which she claimed, it then became an act of treason, and since we have arrived at that point let us hear something more. William Lloyd Garrison, a representative of the North, and ex- pressing Northern secession sentiment, spoke thus on the question: "Justice and liberty, God and man, demand the dissolution of this slave-holding Union, and the formation of a Northern confed- eracy, in which slaveholders shall stand before the law as felons and be treated as pirates. No Union with slave-holders! Up with the flag of disunion, that we may have a free and glorious Union of our own. . . This Union is a lie; the American Constitution is a sham, an imposture, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell! Let the slave-holding Union go, and slavery will go with the Union down into the dust! If the Church is against disunion . then I pronounce it of the devil! I say let us cease striking hands with thieves and adulterers and give to the winds the rallying cry: ‘No Union with slaveholders, socially or religiously, and up with the flag of disunion.’ ” You may search the records in vain, you cannot find any such sentiments uttered by Jefferson Davis. Abraham Lincoln said: "This country cannot remain half free and half slave.” He was nominated and elected by a party pledged to the abolition of slavery without compensation to the owners. ^ Charles Sumner said it was “a dog’s job to obey it.” Thaddeus Stephens said: "To hell with the Constitution,” and Abraham Lin- coln followed his advice from beginning to end. William Lloyd Garrison failed to tell us who the slave pirates were. He passed over the fact that 360 Yankee vessels were at that very time engaged in the felonious act of kidnapping uncivilized 168 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI negroes in Africa, bringing them over to the glorious, free, humane and religious North and criminally smuggling them into the Southern States, in violation of their established laws prohibiting the importa- tion of African slaves from foreign ports. It was big money in the Yankees’ pockets and a saintly avocation so long as it paid handsome profits; but slavery, which they established and kept up, like the Constitution which protected it, became "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell” as soon as the poor African was turned over to the Southern slaveholder and the Yankee pirate got the shining gold for him! Who were the thieves, the adulterers, the pirates and felons that stimulated Mr. Garrison to raise the rallying cry of “No Union with slaveholders, socially, religiously, and up with the flag of disunion?” His own people of the New England States, and it is getting time for the people of the North to learn the truth, for in the language of their idol, “They cannot escape history.” In the face of these historical facts the South has been assailed by Northern writers, newspapers and historians as the hotbed of secession. If the North was so anxious to secede and form a Northern con- federacy which would give them security and peace, why did not they begin at the time they thought it essential to their interests to do so ; and if the North desired a free confederacy God knows the South would have been glad of it, and what motive could they have to deny to the South that which they clamored so long for themselves, and what motive actuated them when the South felt aggrieved and formed a confederacy by peacefully withdrawing from the Union ? Let history speak for itself. The South tried to abolish foreign and ocean slave trade in a constitutional convention held in 1787, but the pious New England Puritans and African negro kidnappers defeated the effort; and while the abolition cohorts of the North and East were organizing their forces in 1859 and i860, New York fitted out eighty-five ships, bring- ing over from Africa between thirty and sixty thousand negroes annually, to further stimulate the pious and moral fumigations of Abraham Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison; and from the time HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 169 of the constitutional limit against importation of slaves in 1808, up to i860, it has been declared that 270,000 negroes were introduced into New England and smuggled into the Southern States by the pious abolition Yankees; and while they were doing this they were stealing from the Southern people the slaves they sold them, and they openly boasted of it, one Levi Coffin declaring that he alone had been the means of carrying away 2,500 slaves, valued at $2,500,000. From 1770 Rhode Island maintained as many as 150 vessels, most of the time in the slave trade, to a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War. She probably quit the ocean business then to make other warlike preparations to help rob the Southern owners of all the others sold to them or to become saints when their kidnapping, smug- gling and stealing back ceased to be profitable. And many of the palatial residences of the New England States stand as monuments to the slave trade which their owners followed. As Massachusetts was the first to legalize slavery within her borders, it is nothing but justice to her to give her credit for it, by laws passed in 1641. If the 2,500 slaves that Levi Coffin stole back from Southern pur- chasers were worth $2,500,000 it was a good business for the pious puritans, who have been classed by historians “Not mere slave- mongers. To themselves they appeared as the elect to whom God had given the heathen as an inheritance. In seizing and enslaving Indians, and trading for negroes, they were but entering in possession of the heritage of the saints.” Each cargo brought over by the eighty-five vessels fitted out in New York in 1859-60, ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 annually, repre- sents so many millions of dollars, and if they were worth $1,000 each then the 4,000,000 slaves owned by the South in 1861 were worth four thousand millions of dollars taken from the Southern States, by force of arms, by the tender-hearted Abraham Lincoln who loved them so well. Massachusetts was pious enough to pass a law abolishing the ocean slave trade about 1787, but Virginia preceded her by ten years. And Massachusetts kept up the institution until it ceased to be profitable, 170 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and sold them off to Southern people and got the money for them, and so did the other Northern slave States. It is so hard to "escape history” that a few bits of advertising done later on in Boston and Philadelphia would be interesting. The Boston Continental Journal of 1799 advertised: “FOR SALE. — A likely negro girl, sixteen years of age, for no fault but the want of employment.” “FOR SALE. — A likely negro wench, about nineteen years of age, with a child six months of age; to be sold together or apart.” The above matters are mentioned as a preface to what the New England States did in 1861-65 on the question of a "free Northern confederacy” versus a slave Southern confederacy. It is intended that the reader should know that Massachusetts and the other New England States are responsible for the institution of slavery in this country, and that they plied the ocean trade in violation of the United States Constitution limitation of 1808 and in violation of the laws passed by Southern States prohibiting importa- tion of negroes from Africa, and brought them into Northern and Eastern ports and sold them into Southern States. As the secession of the Southern States began in December, i860, the ocean slave trade of the New England States had to stop, and the millions of money flowing into their coffers from the South also. Now let us see how many troops each of these self-constituted "elect to whom God had given the heathen as an inheritance,” fur- nished for the next four years to abolish slavery in the South without compensation to their owners. We will try to be fair and give the statistics published as historical authority: Massachusetts (army and navy) 159, 165 Connecticut (army) 57,882 Maine (army) 70, 107 New Hampshire (army) 32, 750 Vermont (army) 36,755 Pennsylvania (army, exclusive of militia) 362, 284 New York 448,850 Rhode Island 23,236 Total 1,191,029 HISTORY OF PIKE .COUNTY MISSISSIPPI 171 And those pious, benevolent, kind, Christian kidnappers and abolition soldiers have had the gall to assert that the slaveholders got all they were entitled to out of the negroes and should ; ot be remunerated for them. This would be poor logic applied to them- selves if they had thus been robbed. And the Northern States should be made to pay full value for every slave emancipated with- out compensation, and until they do it the crime of this stupendous robbery will hang over their heads and taunt them in the coming centuries. Physically the Union is restored; spiritually the Southern people cling to their ancient blood inheritance, and the crime of Southern invasion and coercion and their attendant disasters are unforgivable, and will haunt Yankee-doodle-dum until the crack of doom. 172 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER VI. The exciting events leading to the secession of the Southern States, the formation of the Confederate government, President Davis’ call for 1,500 troops to protect Pensacola, the fall of Fort Sumpter and Mr. Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men to put down what he termed “combinations opposed to laws” “too powerful to be sup- pressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” created a spirited military activity all over the south, and it was clearly seen that the cloud in the horizon “of the size of a man’s hand” men- tioned in Miss Rachel Coney’s speech on the 4th of July, the year previous, was rapidly accumulat- ing in volume. In response to the President’s call there were imme- diately two companies, the Quit- man Guards and the Summit Rifles, prepared for coming events. In April the Quitman Guards were reorganized with 107 members and Capt. Samuel A. Matthews the Summit Rifles With a lesser Quitman Guards number. The following is the muster roll of the Quitman Guards mustered into the State service on the 21st of April, 1861: 1 Samuel A. Matthews, Captain 2 James M. Nelson, 1st Lieut. 3 Thomas R. Stockdale, 2nd Lieut. 4 S. McNeil Bain, 3rd Lieut. 5 Wm. M’Cusker, 1st Sergt. 6 R. J. R. Bee, 2nd Sergt. 7 Colden Wilson, 3rd Sergt. 8 Frank P. Johnson, 4th Sergt. 9 Luke W. Conerly, 5 th Sergt. 10 Louis N. Coney, 1st Corp. 11 Dr. R. T. Hart, 2nd Corp. 12 Warren R. Ratliff, 3rd Corp. 13 Charles A. Ligon, 4th Corp. 14 E. G. Cropper, Ensign 15 Wm. Thad Tyler, Commissary HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 173 1 6 Andrew, E. C. 17 Ast, John 18 Ard, A. E. 19 Allen, George W. PRIVATES. 20 Barksdale, John T. 21 Brent, J. A. 22 Brent, Geo. W. 23 Badon, H. B. 24 Burkhalter, John T. 25 Burkhalter, Charles 26 Breed, E. 27 Barr, Thomas M. Capt. John Holmes Quitman Guards 28 Coney, William L. 29 Coney, John H. 30 Crawford, Jesse 31 Cook, Thomas D. 32 Conerly, Mark R. 33 Collins, Joseph W. 34 Carter, Harvey 35 Coney, Van C. 36 Fry, Charles H. 37 Friedrich, Phil. J. 38 Forest, Thomas Jeff. 39 Forest, Benjamin F. 40 Foil, J. D. 41 Finch, William 42 Finch, Milus 43 Gamer, William 44 Gibson, Jesse F. 45 Guina, Asa H. 46 Gillespie, J. P. 47 Holmes, John 48 Holmes, Benjamin 174 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 49 Hamlin, O. C. 69 50 Harvey, W. Pearl 70 51 Hamilton, Thomas 71 52 Howe, Charles 72 53 Hewson, George 73 54 Irwin, James 74 55 Jelks, Eugene W. 75 56 Jewell, Collin wood 76 57 Jones, H. L. 77 58 Ligon, Lemuel T. 78 59 Lewis, Jesse W. B. 79 60 Lewis, Benjamin H. 80 61 Lewis, Martin L. 81 62 Laney, E. A. 82 63 Lamkin, Charles A. 83 64 Lamkin, Samuel R. 84 65 Leonard, David 85 66 Leonard, John 86 67 Lawrence, Irwin G. 87 68 Luter, William D. 88 McIntosh, D. M. McGehee, William Frank McGehee, Dr. J. G. L. McGill, Henry McCusker, John McNabb, James Mixon, Alex. R. Matthews, George N. Martin, William May, William May, Jared B. Morgan, Green W. Newman, Thomas H. Neal, James N. Netherland, Joseph N. Pearson, Holden Pendarvis, James Page, James Pearl, Seth W. Root, George W. 89 Ratliff, Simeon 90 Regan, Thomas G. 91 Reeves, William R. 92 Rushing, Elisha T. 93 Stovall, Robert D. 94 Sutherland, Alex. 95 Simmons, George B. 96 Sandell, S. Murray 97 Sparkman, A. P. 98 Tarbutton, A. J. 99 Tarver, John E. J. 100 Travis, John Q. 101 Tisdale, Joseph M. 102 Walker, John A. 103 Walker, Anderson 104 Williams, W. L. 105 Winbome, Benjamin Frank 106 Wilson, R. D. 107 Yarborough, Wesley Thus organized the Quitman Guards were mustered into the State service on the 21st of April, 1861, by Capt. Griffith, in front of the residence of John T. Lamkin, on the public square at Holmes- ville, in the presence of a large number of ladies; and on the 26th of May following the company embarked on the cars at Magnolia for Corinth, Miss., where they were ordered to rendezvous. On this occasion, Magnolia was the scene of a great gathering of the people from all parts of the county to witness the departure of the soldiers to the seat of war, as every precinct in the county was repre- sented in the ranks of that company. Their names are all here, carefully preserved by this Writer, ever since that eventful period. Arriving at Corinth, the Quitman Guards were connected with the 1 6th Mississippi regiment, composed of nine other companies as follows, and designated Co. “E:” |b Summit Rifles, Co. “A,” Capt. Murphy, (succeeding Blincoe, re- signed) of Pike County. Westville Guards, Co. “B,” Capt. Funches, Simpson County. Chrystal Springs Southern Rights, “C,” Capt. Davis, Copiah County. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 175 Adams Light Guards, “D,” Capt. Robert Clark, Natchez, Adams County. Jasper Grays, “F,” Capt. J. J. Shannon, Jasper County. Fairview Rifles, “G,” Capt. Moore, Claiborne County. Smith Defenders, “H,” Capt. W. H. Hardy, Smith County. Adams Light Guards, “I,” Capt. Walworth, Natchez, Adams County. Wilkinson Rifles, “K,” Capt. Carnot Posey, Wilkinson County. Capt. Posey was elected Colonel, Capt. Robert Clark, of Co. D., Adams Light Guards, was elected Lieutenant Colonel and Lieut. Thomas R. Stockdale was elected Major. These troops all volun- teered for one year, counting from the organization of the regiment at Corinth, May 27, 1861. These troops were kept at Corinth in camp of instruction from this time until the 24th of July, after the news was received of the battle of Bull Run or First Manassas, July 18-21, 1861, when they were ordered to Virginia. Considerable sickness prevailed among them at Corinth, caused from the water they were compelled to use, being impregnated with lime, to which they were unaccustomed, and improperly cooked food. Provisions were given under the old army rules and really in greater quantities than necessary and a large number were stricken with diarrhea, and besides this the measles broke out among them, and the mortality was very great, and had a very discouraging influence in the ranks. The Quitman Guards were particularly unfortunate in this respect. The following mem- bers died at this place: Benjamin H. Lewis, F. P. Johnson, Pearl Harvey, Thomas Hamilton, Corporal Louis Coney, William D. Luter, and several were discharged from disability incurred. On the 22nd of July, after the men had cooked and eaten their supper, the news came along the electric wires of the battle of Bull Run, and its results, which was received with vociferous shouts from the five thousand Mississippians stationed at Corinth, and on the 24th, Col. Posey received orders to repair with his regiment to Vir- ginia. 176 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Dr. Wm. J. Lamkin Gloster, Miss. Quitman Guards, Co. E, 16th Miss. Regt., Harris’ Brigade, Lee’s Army The following recruits were subsequently added to the Quitman Guards : i Andrews, Thomas J. 12 Guy, William Jefferson 2 Boutwell, William 13 Gamer, Ransom 3 Bankston, Burton D. 14 Holloway, T. P. 4 Barnes, B. L. 15 Holloway, Felix H. 5 Barnet, James A. 16 Hartwell, Charles E. 6 Conerly, Buxton R. 17 Lamkin, William J., (transferred 7 Coleston, John A. from nth Mississippi). 8 Donahoe, John A. 18 Lamkin, Tilman S. 9 Estess, William A. 19 Lyles, John Y. io Foxworth, George 20 McGehee, Hans J. ii Guy, Jesse W. 2 1 Miller, George W. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 177 22 Magee, William Levi 23 Newman, Joseph B. 24 Newman, John A. 25 Payne, William L. 26 Rushing, Warren T. 27 Rhodus, Reeves 28 Stanford, James D. 29 Sandifer, Hans D. 30 Sparkman, William L. 31 Scarborough, Henry 32 Simmons, Jeff. E. 33 Smith, C. C. 34 Smith, George 35 Smith, Dan J. 36 Welch, Samuel 37 Watts, Arthur T. 38 Wilson, Matthew Thus it will be seen that the number of men belonging to this company was 145, but it was reduced by losses in transferred and discharged to the number of forty two. The readers attention is called to the fact that some of the names of men who were discharged and transferred appear in the rolls of other companies from Pike County, subsequently formed. Some were transferred to other State regiments. The following named persons ceased to be members of the Quit- man Guards by being discharged on account of disability at the time of discharge or transferred : 1 Ast, John 2 Breed, E. 3 Barnes, J. A. 4 Barksdale, A. J. 5 Cropper, E. G. (over age). 6 Cook, Thomas D. 7 Coleston, John A. 8 Conerly, M. R. 9 Coney, William L. (under age). 10 Crawford, J. D, 11 Estess, W. A. 12 Forest, B. F. 13 Gibson, Jesse F. 14 Gillespie, J. P. 15 Hamlin, 0 . C. 16 Hewson, George (to Co. D, 16th). 17 Holloway, T. P. (over age). 18 Garner, Rans 19 Irwin, James 20 Laney, E. A. (to 15th Alabama). 21 Leonard, John 22 Lamkin, Charles A. (under age). 23 Ligon, Charles A. 12 24 Lawrence, Irvin J. 25 Lewis, Martin L. 26 May, William 27 Morgan, Green 28 McGehee, Dr. J. G. L. 29 McCusker, John 30 McIntosh, D. M., (transferred to Co. C, 1 6th Mississippi). 31 Martin, William, (transferred to Washington Artillery). 32 Neal, James 33 Netherland, J. A. 34 Newman, J. B. 35 Pearl, Seth 36 Ratliff, Warren 37 Rushing, W. T. 38 Smith, C. C. 39 Sutherland, Alex. 40 Tisdale, J. M. 41 Welch, Samuel 42 Watts, A. T., (transferred to Summit Rifles). 178 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The recapitulation of the Quitman Guards is as follows: Enlisted 107 Recruited 38 Total 145 Died of disease 27 Killed in battle 13 Died of wounds 3 Discharged and transferred 48 Officers retired 4 Men living and belonging to com- pany May 1, 1865 50 Total 145 QUITMAN GUARDS SURVIVORS KNOWN TO BE LIVING, APRIL 21, 1906. 1 Capt. John Holmes, Picayune, Miss., died 1907. 2 Lieut. John Q. Travis, Magnolia, Miss., died 1907. 3 Sergt. Elisha C. Andrews, Gloster, Miss. 4 Dr. Wm. J. Lamkin, Gloster, Miss. 5 Dr. A. P. Sparkman, Magnolia, Miss. 6 Simeon Ratliff, McComb, Miss. 7 Dr. R. T. Hart, McComb, Miss., died 1908. 8 Thomas Regan, Darbun, Miss. 9 Charles E. Hartwell, Wesson, Miss. 10 George W. Root, Linus, La. 1 1 Thomas M. Barr, Kansas City, Mo. 12 George Smith, Tylertown, Miss. 13 Warren Lafayette Payne, Tyler- town, Miss. 14 John A. Walker, Magnolia, Miss. 15 Buxton R. Conerly, Marshall, Tex. 16 Luke W. Conerly, Gulfport, Miss. 1 7 Thomas Andrews, Monticello, Miss. 18 Hans J. Sandifer, McComb, Miss. 19 William Thad Tyler, Chattanooga, Tenn. 20 William L. Coney (later in Stock- dale’s Cavalry), Magnolia, Miss. 21 Chas. A. Lamkin (later in Holmes- ville Guards), Texas. 22 Irvin G. Lawrence, Pike Co., Miss. 23 Jared B. May, died 1907 24 Jefferson Guy, Texas. 25 Frank B. Forest, Texas. 26 B. F. Winbome, Columbia, Miss. 27 Eugene W. Jelks, Marion Co., Miss. COLONEL SENECA M’NEIL BAIN. Colonel Seneca McNeil Bain was a native of New York State. He married and emigrated to Mississippi in the early fifties with his wife and cousin, William J. Bain, and Miss Orrie Gillis. William J. Bain was a talented young lawyer and a popular man among the people, especially with the young men and young women at Holmesville. He died in Covington County while on one of his pro- fessional trips in i860, during the heated season, deeply mourned by all his young friends. Col. Bain engaged in school teaching with Miss Orrie Gillis at Holmesville, and was so engaged at the time of the breaking out of the Civil War. He and HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 179 his wife had an only child, a little girl, that they named Dixie, and Dixie was a favorite song sung and played on their musical instruments by the family. Col. Bain studied medicine and attended a course of lectures at the Medical Institute of Louisiana in New Orleans, during the term of i860— 1861, in com- pany with Dr. A. P. Sparkman, Dr. C. P. Conerly and Dr. Joe Thornhill. He joined the Quitman Guards, was elected lieutenant and went out into the Con- federate service with that company and fought through the war in Virginia. He was elected captain of the Quitman Guards in 1862 and rose to the rank of colonel of the regiment at the battle of “Bloody Angle,” Spottsylvania Court House, May 12, 1864, and was the last colonel of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment. He was captured in the battle of Weldon Railroad, during the siege of Petersburg, August 21, 1864, and was held a prisoner until the close of the war, when he returned to his old home at Holmesville, where he remained until he finished his course in medicine. He subsequently removed to the State of Texas, where he remained until his death, about 1900. He was greatly loved by the members of the Quitman Guards and by the entire Sixteenth Mis- sissippi Regiment. He was a quiet man, handsome, and genteel in his deport- ment, and as cool in battle while commanding his men as he ever was in the quiet control of his classes in the school room. His name will live in the history of the services of the Sixteenth Mississippi in the great conflicts in Virginia under Lee, along with Carnot Posey, Samuel E. Baker, A. M. Feltus and the intrepid Coun- cil, who lost their lives commanding that regiment in the sanguinary conflicts of Bristoe, Spottsylvania and Petersburg. OFFICERS RETIRED APRIL 26, 1862. 1 S. A. Matthews, Captain. 3 Thomas R. Stockdale, 2nd Lieut. 2 James M. Nelson, 1st Lieut. and Major. 4 R. J. R. Bee, 3rd Lieut. KILLED IN BATTLE. 1 Elisha T. Rushing, Bloody Angle, Spottsylvania C. H., Va., May 12, 1864. 2 Alex. R. Mixon, Brigade Ensign, Bloody Angle, Spottsylvania C. H., Va., May 12, 1864. 3 J. D. Standford, Turkey Ridge, Va., June 6, 1864. 4 Matthew Wilson, Sergt., Wilder- ness, Va., May 6, 1864. 5 A. E. Ard, Corp., Weldon Railroad, Va., August 21, 1864. 6 Tilman S. Lamkin, Weldon Rail- road, Va., August 21, 1864. 7 William L. Sparkman, Petersburg, Va., April 2, 1865. 8 Robert D. Stovall, Sergt., Peters- burg, Va., April 2, 1865. 9 James Page, in trenches, Peters- burg, Va., October 9, 1864. 10 Asa H. Guina, Chancellorsville> Va., May 2, 1863. 11 John A. Newman, Chancellorsville. Va., May 2, 1863. 12 Westley Yarborough, mortally wounded, Cross Keys, Va., June 8,1862. 180 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI KILLED IN BATTLE. 13 George W. Simmons, mortally wound- 16 Jesse W. Guy.ySharpsburg, Md., ed, Cold Harbor, Va., June 27, 1862. September 17, 1862. 14 Joseph W. Collins, Cold Harbor, June 17 Wm. R. Reeves, mortally wound- 27, 1862. ed, Gettysburg, Pa., July 4, 15 Lieut. Colden Wilson, mortally 1863. wounded, ( Sharpsburg, Md., Sep- tember 17 i8"62. WOUNDED IN BATTLE. 1 A. P. Sparkman, Cross Keys, Va., June 8, 1862. 2 Jared B. May, Cross Keys, Va., June 8, 1862. 3 Thos. Jeff Forest, Gettysburg, Pa.. July 3, 1863, and in the trenches at Petersburg, July, 1864. 4 Samuel R. Lamkin, lost arm, Au" gust 21, 1864, Weldon Railroad- 5 J. Alex. Brent, Petersburg, Va., September, 1864. 6 Hans D. Sandefer, Bloody Angle, Spottsylvania, May 12, 1864. 7 L. W. Conerly, Bloody Angle, Spottsylvania, May 12, 1864, and at Sharpsburg, Md., Sep- tember 17, 1862. 8 R. D. Stovall, Bloody Angle, May 12, 1864. 9 William J. Lamkin, Weldon Rail- road, August 21, 1864; Second Manassas, August 30, 1862; also at Bull Run, July 21, 1861, while a member of nth Miss. 10 Holden Pearson, Weldon Railroad, August 2i, 1864. 11 John A. Donohoe, Petersburg, Va., July, 1864. 12 John A. Walker, Turkey Ridge, Va., June, 1864; Second Manas- sas, August 30, 1862. 13 Lemuel T. Ligon, Turkey Ridge, Va., June, 1864. 14 William Gamer, permanently dis- abled, from which he subse- quently died, Cross Keys, June 8, 1862. 15 George Root, Cold Harbor, June 27, 1862, both knees. 16 Lieut. John Holmes, Cold Harbor, June 27, 1862. 17 Wash L. Williams, arm off, Second Manassas, August 30, 1862. 18 Benjamin Holmes, Second Manas- sas, August 30, 1862. 19 Burton D. Bankston, Second Ma- nassas, August 30, 1862. 20 Matthew Wilson, Second Manassas, August 30, 1862. 21 Lieut. Van C. Coney, Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862. 22 Reaves Rhodis, Sharpsburg, Sep- tember 17, 1862. 23 David Leonard, Sharpsburg, Sep- tember 17, 1862. 24 A. J. Tarbutton, Sharpsburg, Sep- tember 17, 1862. 25 William McCusker, Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862. 26 A. E. Ard, Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862. 27 Thomas M. Barr, Sharpsburg, Sep- tember 17, 1862. 28 Lieut. J. Q. Travis, Chancellors- ville, May 2, 1863. 29 Simeon Ratliff, Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863. 30 W. L. Payne, Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863. 31 T. J. Forest, Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 181 Lieutenant John Q. Travis Second Lieutenant Quitman Guards, 1 6th Mississippi Regiment JOHN QUINCY TRAVIS. Lieut. John Quincy Travis was bom in Amite County on the 30th day of December, 1832, near Travis Bridge, on the Amite River. His grandfather, John Travis, came to the territory of Mississippi in early 1800 from South Carolina, when his father, John Travis, was a small boy, and he came directly from the old pioneer stock of South Carolina, who plunged into the deep wil- 182 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI demess amid all its dangers and hardships to establish new homes as soon as Mississippi was constituted a territorial government. The name of Travis belongs to the history of the past, and is associated with all that excites the admiration for heroism and chivalry. It is stamped indelibly upon the recollec- tion of the Texas revolution and the Alamo lives in history as a monument to its memory. John Travis, the grandfather of our subject, was a first cousin to the celebrated Travis of Alamo fame, who, while on his way to join the Texas patriots, stopped a few days in Amite County with him. John Quincy Travis’ mother was Polly Raibom, daughter of Joseph Rai- bom, who also came from South Carolina in the early 1800 and settled on Tan- gipahoa, about four miles from the town of Magnolia. In his boyhood Mr. Travis learned the carpenters’ trade and in 1852, at the age of 20, he went to Holmesville and pursued his occupation there until 1855, when he went to Eastern Texas and lived until the breaking out of the war in 1861, then returned to Holmesville and joined the Quitman Guards as a private in the ranks, and went with the company to Virginia under Capt. Samuel A. Mathews. He was with the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment in the celebrated Valley Campaign, as part of Ewell’s command, who reinforced Stonewall Jackson and partici- pated in the battle of Winchester on Sunday, May 25, 1862, which resulted in the defeat of N. P. Banks and his expulsion from Virginia. Previous to this battle, at a reorganization of the company, he was elected second sergeant. He participated in the battle of Cross Keys, when Fremont’s forces were defeated, and then on through that wonderful movement of Jackson and Ewell to Rich- mond, when on the 26th of June, 1862, they struck McClellan’s right, and, in the Seven Days’ Battles, beat him back under cover of his gunboats. He was in the fight at Turkey Ridge and Cold Harbor. He participated in the battle of Second Manassas on the 30th of August, 1862, when the army of Northern Vir- ginia, under Gen. Robert E. Lee, defeated the Federals under Pope and drove him back to Washington. It was at this battle that Sergeant Travis was recommended by Gen. Featherston for promotion for meritorious conduct on the field while the Sixteenth Mississippi was exposed to a deadly fire from the enemy’s batteries. He was at the siege of Harpers Ferry, where Gen. Miles and his command of eleven thousand men were captured, and at Sharpsburg, Md., on the 17th of September following. He was at Hazle River with his command, in support of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart on the 10th of November, and at Fredericksburg on the nth, 12th and 13th of December, 1862, where the Con- federates under Lee so signally defeated Gen. Burnside. At the battle of Chancellorsville, on the 2nd of May, 1863, he commanded the second platoon of the Quitman Guards on the picket line, when some hard fighting was done, Lieutenant Van C. Coney being in command of the company. They became exposed to a severe artillery fire of the enemy and it was here that Lieutenant Travis lost his right hand, thus commingling his blood on the same field made famous by the defeat, by Gen. Lee with 40,000 men of Gen. Joe Hook- er with iio.coo men, and the loss by the Confederate army of the illustrious Stonewall Jackson. In this great battle, Lieutenant John Holmes acted major HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 183 of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment. After returning home from the army Lieutenant Travis engaged in the occupation of farming. He married Sarah K. Coney, daughter of Jeremiah Coney and Emily Quin. In 1871 he was elected Sheriff of Pike County and served three terms, being elected by a good majority in the campaign of 1875. He was afterwards assistant postmaster at Magnolia for six years. In the army he gave to the Confederacy, in behalf of his native State, all the spirit it was possible for him to give, sanctifying his devotion to duty with his blood upon the altar of its cause. In his declining years he carried along with him the tender love of his sur- viving comrades and the esteem of his fellow citizens; and after an eventful life covering a period of seventy-six years, he passed from among them and was laid peacefully to rest in the cemetery at Magnolia. SUMMIT RIFLES. On the 20th of April, 1861, the Summit Rifles were organized and mustered into the State service by R. W. Bowen, in the town of Summit. The following is the muster roll of that company as originally formed and afterwards recruited: Capt. J. D. Blincoe resigned and did not enter service with company. 1 E. H. Murphy, 1st Lieut., pro- moted to Captain, died at War- ren ton, Va. 2 L. R. Austin, 2nd Lieut., pro- moted to Captain, mortally wounded at Sharpsburg or An- tietam, Md. 3 P. H. Thorpe, 3rd Lieut., trans- ferred to Kentucky regiment. 4 C. H. Lyster, 1st Sergt. 5 D. B. Packer, 2nd Sergt. 6 George Ernst, 3rd Sergt. 7 4th Sergt., vacant. 7 T. J. Casey, 5th Sergt., killed at Weldon Railroad, Va. 8 H. Lotterhos, 1st Corp. 9 2nd Corp., vacant. 10 Thomas D. Day, 3rd Corp., wounded, lost leg. 11 Henry Bonner, 4th Corp. 12 Algenon S. Mitchell, Ensign, killed at Bulls Bluff, on James River, in fight three days after Lee’s surrender. 13 B. T. Gatlin, C Guard. 14 S. D. Autie, C Guard. 15 Andrews, Robert 16 Adams, J. O. 17 Burk, M. 18 Byrd, James 19 Byrd, George W. PRIVATES. 20 21 Black, Elisha, (killed.) Brown, James, (promoted to Cap- tain, killed at Malvern Hill, Va.). Bales, Jesse 22 184 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI SUMMIT RIFLES CONTINUED. 23 Boyd, Tames, (killed). 24 Clarke, A. S. 25 Conlon, T. M. 26 Connelly, P. 27 Collins, W. G., Captain, (resign- ed). 28 Carruth, John P. 29 Coon, W. C. 30 Coon, David 31 Coon, J. C. 32 Coon, Louis 33 Cole, Wash, (killed). 34 Collins, Calvin 35 Coffin, Sam T., (ex-Nicarauga soldier, under Walker). 36 Cook, C. P. 37 Carter, J. M. 38 Crocket, Joe, (killed). 39 Conden, Enos 40 Cummings, Charlie 41 Carter, Henry 42 Carter, Daniel 43 Dick, Isaac C., (severely wounded at Cold Harbor; subsequently transferred to the Washington Artillery, of New Orleans, La. At the battle of Cold Harbor he was color bearer of the Sixteenth Mississippi and was shot down in the- charge made on the Penn- sylvania Bucktails, who were routed and driven from the field. 44 Dunker, Henry 45 Dawling, W. M. 46 Dixon, James D. 47 Delaughter, Warren 48 Dick, Benj 49 Delaney, Ned, (killed). 50 Denman, W. C., (killed). 51 Davis, Charles 52 Ezell, Roulst 53 Farnham, John D. 54 Farrell, David 55 Folts, Henry 56 Felder, Hansford 57 Fronthall, Louis 58 Forester, C. H. 59 Fonden, Anderson 60 Ferguson, James M., (transferred. See Stockdale’s Cavalry, Capt. Hoover). 61 Gamer, Thos. A., (wounded; last captain of company). 62 Gunnels, N. R. 63 Gatlin, Thos. I., (died). 64 Gatlin, E. H., (mortally wounded; was captured at Bloody Angle, Spottsylvania C. H., Va., May 12, 1864). 65 Gerald, A. G., (killed). 66 Gibson, Ralph, (wounded; ex- vet- eran First Mississippi, under Jefferson Davis, in war with Mexico; severely wounded at Hazle River, Va.). 67 Huckaby, James, (died). 68 Hales, D. F., (killed). 69 Hoover, Christian, (wounded; see Stockdale’s Cavalry — captain). 70 Hiller, Nathan 71 Hammond, W. C. 72 Harris, R. G. 73 Hooter, David 74 Hill, I. I. 75 Holloway, V. M., (killed). 76 Holmes, Crawford 77 Hart, Pincus 78 Hart, Morris 79 Hart, Nathan 80 Kruse, Charlie, (died). 81 Kennedy, T. E. 82 Louden, Andrew 83 Lenoir, John G., (killed). 84 Lanagan, Dan, (killed). 85 Lotterhos, Fred 86 Lewis, Martin, (from Quitman Guards). 87 Lenoir, D. C., (died). HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 185 SUMMIT RIFLES CONTINUED. 88 Lea, Willie, (died). 89 Moise, I. 90 Mogan, Edward 91 McCloy, S. W. 92 Monaghan, James 93 Maples, John H. 94 Miller, Charles 95 McGowan, Pat C. 96 Maples, Erastus 97 Maxie, James L., (killed). 98 Montgomery, W. H. 99 Murphy, Pete, (killed). 100 McClosky, Dan 10 1 McColgin, M. 102 Miller, George, (killed). 103 McDavid, W. A. 104 Montgomery, William 105 Moak, A. 106 Newsom, James M., (died). 107 Newman, , from Chatawa. 108 Nall, Mike, (wounded). 109 Neeley, J. M., (killed). no O’Callahan, Baldwin (Bun). in Peterson, C. S. 1 12 Rodgers, C. 1 13 Rodgers, R. W. 1 14 Spicer, John Y. 115 Sipple, L. 1 16 Scherck, Louis 11 7 Shaw, G. M. 1 18 Standard, Geo. W., (wounded). 1 19 Turner, A. S., (wounded). 120 Tunison, Edward 1 21 Taylor, D. C. 122 Wadsworth, W. M., (killed). 123 Westrope, D. C. 124 Watts, Arthur T., (from Quitman Guards; lieutenant). 125 Wagoner, Louis, (originator of the word” bulldose,” “bulldozer,” “bulldoozer,” as applied to that organization). 126 Westbrook, J. B. 127 Weil, Meyer 128 Wells, Columbus The Summit Rifles was designated as Co. A, 16th Mississippi, and the Quitman Guards Co. E, of the 16th Mississippi Regiment. Their first colonel was Carnot Posey, Captain of the Wilkinson Rifles, afterward Brigadier General of the 12th, 19th, 16th and 48th Regiments, mortally wounded at the battle of Bristoe Station, Vir- ginia, October 14, 1863, General Posey commanded this brigade in the center of Lee’s line against a brigade of United States regulars at the battle of Sharpsburg, (Antietam) Maryland, September 17, 1862. The brigade Was then under Gen. W. S. Featherston, who had been wounded at Richmond. The second colonel of the 16th Mississippi, was Samuel E. Baker, of the Adams Light Guards, from Natchez. He and Lieut. Col. A. M. Feltus, of the Wilkinson Rifles, were both killed in the fight at “Bloody Angle” or “Blood Bend” at Spottsylvania, C. H., Virginia, in retaking Lee’s works captured by the enemy May 12, 1864. 186 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The third colonel was Capt. Council of the Adams Light Guards, from Natchez. The fourth and last colonel was Seneca McNeil Bain, of the Quit- man Guards. Col. Bain survived the war, graduated in medicine and spent the remainder of his life as a practicing physician in Texas. The Summit Rifles and Quitman Guards with their regiment, participated in the following campaigns and battles: Front Royal, Virginia, May 24th, and Winchester, Virginia, May 25th, 1862, under Ewell and Stonewall Jackson, against N. P. Banks, in the Shenan- doah Valley; and Jackson’s and Ewell’s celebrated retreat from Harpers Ferry, after driving Bank’s forces out of Virginia, eluding the junction of Fremont and Shields to intercept them at Strasburg. Cross Key, Va., June 8, 1862. Mechanicsville, Va., June 26, 1862. Cold Harbor, Va., June 27, 1862. Malvern Hill to the close of the seven days battles before Rich- mond against Gen. George B. McClellan. The Maryland Campaign. Second battle of Manassas, Aug. 30, 1862, against the Union forces commanded by Gen. Pope. Siege of Harpers Ferry, Va., where the Union General Miles was forced to surrender with eleven thousand men. Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam), Maryland, against the army of Gen. George B. McClellan, Sept. 17, 1862. Hazle River, with the 10th Alabama, in support of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry, November 10, 1862. Battle of Fredericksburg, Va., against the forces of Gen. Bum- side. Featherston’s brigade was stationed immediately in front of the town where the heaviest and most desperate assaults of the enemy were made by the “Red Shirt Zouaves,” who were successfully beaten with great slaughter by the Mississippians. This battle be- gan on the nth and closed on the 14th of December, 1862. After this battle Col. Posey was promoted to Brigadier and put in com- mand of the brigade, Gen. Featherston being sent to the department of Mississippi, Alabama and East Louisiana. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 187 Battle of Chancellors, Va., May ist, 2nd, and 3rd, against Gen. Joe Hooker, who succeeded Gen. Burnside, and whose army was completely routed. The Pennsylvania Campaign, battle of Gettysburg, July ist, 2nd and 3rd, 1863. Battle of Bristoe Station, October 14, 1863, where Gen. Posey was mortally wounded. Battle of Mine Run, Va., against Gen. Meade, November 30th and December ist, 1863. Campaign of 1864 and 1865. Battle of the Wilderness, May 5th and 6th, 1864, against the Union forces under Gen. Grant. Shady Grove, May 8, 1864. Spottsylvania Court House, Va., 9th, 10th, nth and 12th of May, 1864. In this battle the brigade was commanded by Gen. Nathaniel H. Harris, colonel of the 19th Mississippi, who succeeded Gen. Posey, and was one of the brigades selected by General Lee to retake his lost works on the 12th of May, which had been captured by the enemy. Subsequently at Richmond, Va., Gen. R. S. Ewell wrote General Harris the following letter: Headquarters Department of Richmond, Va., Dec. 27, 1864. Gen. N. H. Harris, Commanding Brigade General. I have omitted to acknowledge the valuable services rendered by your brigade on the 12th of May instant, at Spottsylvania, not from any want of appreciation, but because I want my thanks to rest upon the solid foundation of official reports. The manner in which your brigade charged over the hills to recapture our works was witnessed by me with intense admiration for men who could advance so calmly to what seemed and was almost certain death. I have never seen troops under a hotter fire than was endured on this day by your brigade and some others. Major General Edward Johnston, since his exchange, has assured me that the whole strength of the enemy’s army was poured into the gap caused by the capture of his command. He estimates the force engaged at this place, on their side, at forty thousand, besides Bimey’s command of perfectly fresh troops. Prisoners from all of their corps were taken by us. Two divisions of my corps — your brigade and two others (one of which was scarcely engaged) — confronted successfully this immense host, and not only won from them nearly all the ground they had gained, but so 188 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI shattered their army that they were unable again to make a serious attack until they received fresh troops. I have not forgotten the conduct of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment, while under my command, from Front Royal to Malvern Hill. I am glad to see, from a tidal more severe than any experienced while in my division, that the regiment is in a brigade of which it may well be proud. Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, (Signed) R. S. Ewell, Lieutenant General. In this battle the 16th Mississippi colors were perforated by over two hundred and fifty bullets. Alexander R. Mixon of the Quitman Guards, promoted to the rank of ensign, bearing the battle flag when they retook our works, waived it in the faces of the enemy and died on the breastworks an American soldier and a Mississippi hero. From this time to the investment of Richmond and Petersburg, and up to the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox Court House on the 9th of April, 1865, the army of Northern Virginia, under Lee, and the army of the Potomac, under Grant, confronted each other in line of battle. They fought at Hanover Junction on the 24th of May, 1864. At Cold Harbor on the 3rd of June, 1864, the scene of the great battle in 1862. They fought at Turkey Ridge, June 6th, 1864. On the 18th of June, 1864, they were put in the trenches at Petersburg. In July they were taken out of the trenches, made a force march to Lee’s right and whipped the enemy at the Davis House, near the Weldon Railroad, and then returned to the trenches. On the 17th of August, they were again taken out of the trenches, went to Richmond and fought at New Market, on the 18th. On the 19th returned to Petersburg, and on the 21st, engaged in a fight on the Weldon Railroad. In this fight the Quitman Guards lost two killed and fourteen captured. After the battle the brigade returned to the trenches and fought day and night until the 12th of November, 1864, when they were taken out and went into winter quarters, but were constantly on duty. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 189 They fought at Hatcher’s Run on the 5th and 6th of February, 1865, where they defeated an attempt to turn Lee’s right. On the 1st of March, they held the position vacated by Picket’s Division between the Appomattox and the James Rivers. When Sheridan began serious demonstrations on Richmond, they were sent to the aid of Stuart’s and Causey’s Virginia brigades and defeated his movements and then returned to their position between the Appomattox and the James, remaining there until the 2nd of April, when they were ordered to the right of Petersburg to reinforce troops who had lost their Works and immediately went into action, but were compelled to retire before overwhelming numbers until the remnants of the 16th and 12th not killed, wounded or captured, took refuge in Fort Gregg, where they made a stand and fought with their usual desperate determination. A correspondent of the London Fortnightly Review, who Was with Lee’s army at the time, published the following article in reference to this struggle, putting the number of Mississippians in the fort at 250, while many of the survivors say there were not over 125, as the 19th and 48th regiments under General Harris made their escape, and the troops in Fort Gregg were of the 12th and 16th regiments with a few artillerists. This correspondent says: "The officer in command of Fort Alexander, which was fartherest away from the oncoming Federals, deemed it more important to save his guns than to try and help Fort Gregg. Receiving no assist- ance from its twin brother, Fort Gregg, manned by Harris’ Missis- sippi brigade, numbering 250 undaunted men, breasted intrepidly the tide of its multitudinous assailants. Three times Gibbon’s Corps surged up and around the works — three times, with dreadful car- nage, they were driven back. I am told that it was subsequently admitted by General Gibbon, that in carrying Fort Gregg he lost five or six hundred men, or in other words, that each Mississippian inside the works struck down at least two assailants. When at last the works Were carried, there remained out of its 250 defenders but thirty survivors. In those nine memorable days there was not an episode more glorious to the Confederate Army than the heroic 190 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI self-immolation of the Mississippians in Fort Gregg, to gain time for their comrades.” In this episode Pike County’s name became glorified in the names of Robert D. Stovall and Wm. L. Sparkman, of the Quitman Guards, who sealed their devotion with their lives in the last grand struggle that marked the closing end of the Confederacy. Col. Bain had been captured and Lieut. Col. Duncan, commanding the 16th, was severely wounded. Capt. Applewhite, of the 12th Mississippi, was next in command, and he and the following are present survivors: Buxton R. Conerly, Wm. F. Standifer, Bright Wil- liams, Sam Howell, Joe Thompson. The Summit Rifles were especially un- fortunate in the loss of officers. J. D. Blinco, who organized the company, resigned soon after. H. E. Murphy died at Warrington Springs, Va., in the winter of 1861-62, of consumption. James Brown, one of the most daring scouts in Lee’s army, was killed at Malvern Hill (seven days battle before Richmond, 1862). It was ordered that the Summit Riffles, under his leadership, be mounted as scouts, but his death prevented it. Louis R. Austin, another gallant young officer, was mortally wounded in the battle of Sharpsburg, Md., September 17, 1862, in the desperate encounter of the Mississip- pians with a brigade of U. S. Regulars in the center. Lieut. E. H. Gatlin was mortally wounded at ‘‘Bloody Angle,” Spotsylvania C. H., May 12, 1864. T. J. Casey, was killed at Weldon R. R. Thomas A. Gamer, last captain, was shot through the cheeks and nose but lived many years after the war. May 1, 1 86 x, the Bogue Chitto Guai'dswere organized and mustered in by Robert J. Bowen, with the following original officers and men: Capt. Thomas J. Connally Bogue Chitto Guards 1 R. S. Carter, Captain. 2 Thomas J. Connally, 1st Lieut. 3 Joseph Hart, 2nd Lieut. 4 G. A. Bilbo, 3rd Lieut. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 191 PRIVATES. 5 Albrittan, R. R. 29 Hodges, John C. 6 Albrittain, John M. 30 Hall, Thomas J. 7 Brister, J. Milton 31 Howell, James H. 8 Bisbee, C. M. 32 Harrington, H. F. M. 9 Buett, Joseph 33 Johnson, A. B. 10 Buett, Thomas 34 Kinneally, Thomas 11 Bount, A. A. 35 Kazza, James W. 12 Brown, Robert M. 36 Martin, James M. 13 Brown, J. 0 . 37 Netherland, T. L. 14 Buster, John 38 Newman, Jasper 15 Crosby, Thomas 39 Price, Uriah 16 Courtney, B. F. 40 Prestridge, W. P. 1 7 Coon, Samuel 41 Price, William 18 Gill, T. H. 42 Prestridge, Zachariah 19 Givin, W. J. 43 Price, H. H. 20 Gill, John J. 44 Richardson, Martin 21 Gill, John A. 45 Rawls, Jesse 22 Hart, I. M. 46 Saper, Stephen 23 Hart, John G. 47 Sasser, Joseph 24 Hart, H. L. 48 Terrell, Foster 25 Hart, I. A. 49 Turner, Francis I. 26 Hart, Judge A. 50 Sasser, James S. 27 Hart, James L. .51 Price, T. M. 28 Hampton, Jasper The above company was attached to the 7th Mississippi regiment, Gen. C. G. Dalhgreen. THE DAHLGREEN RIFLES. The Dahlgreen Rifles organized on Topisaw, by Capt. Parham B. Williams, and mustered in by him August 22, 1861, was also attached to the 7th regiment as Co. H, under Gen. Chalmers — Cheat- ham’s division. The following is the roll of the company: 1 Parham B. Williams, Captain, (killed in railroad collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 2 Joseph M. Thornhill, 1st Lieut., Asst. Surgeon. 3 Zebulon E. P. Williams, 2nd Lieut. 4 Jordan B. Williams, 3rd Lieut.) (leg broken in collision at Pon- chatoula, La.) 5 Elijah Cothem, Ensign. 6 Peter J. Felder, 1st Sergt., (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 192 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI THE DAHLGREEN RIFLES CONTINUED. 7 John J. Sibley, 2nd Sergt., (dis- charged). 8 Wiott Thornhill, 3rd Sergt., (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 9 Isaiah Greer, 4th Sergt., (died). 10 William L. Walker, 5th Sergt., (ap- pointed Lieutenant). 11 Harvey Boyd, 1st Corp., (substi- tuted by Isaiah Boyd, wounded). 12 F. M. Coglin, 2nd Corp., (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 13 William Dunaway, 3rd Corp., (killed near Atlanta, Ga.) 14 William W. Gunnels, 4th Corp. PRIVATES. 15 Adams, Joseph P., (killed in colli- sion at Ponchatoula, La.) 16 Adams, John 17 Boyd, William, (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 18 Boyd, Jeremiah 19 Boyd, Thomas 20 Boyd, Jesse 21 Boyd, Thomas C. 22 Curtis, R., (killed at Murfreesboro, Tenn.) 23 Cothem, Joseph 24 Cothem, John 25 Coon, Craft 26 Coker, John W., (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 2*7 Coon, Louis 28 Coker, A. L. 29 Coglin, Thos. J., (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 30 Craft, Jackson 31 Coglin, Frank 32 Coglin, Jasper 33 Collins, Joe 34 Davis, Aaron 35 Davis, Arthur 36 Dunaway, Asa, (killed in battle at Harrisburg, Miss.) 37 Dunaway, Pearl, (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 38 Dunaway, Jesse F., (killed in battle at Atlanta, Ga.) 39 Dunaway, Stephen, (killed in bat- tle). 40 Day, Pleasant 41 Davis, John 42 Dunaway, Osburn 43 Fortinberry, Jack, (transferred). 44 Felder, J. Smith, (wounded in colli- sion at Ponchatoula, La.) 45 Gullage, G. C. 46 Greer, Newton 47 Greer, Francis 48 Hathom, John, (transferred). 49 Hampton, Jasper 50 Hope, Cornelius, (wounded in col- lision at Ponchatoula, La.) 51 Jenkins, Jesse 52 Jenkins, Bill 53 Keen, Daniel 54 Keen, Charles, (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 55 Keen, Harvey 56 Kitt, Harrison 57 Morgan, J. H. 58 Morgan, William A. 59 McKinzie, A. N. 60 McClendon, Jack, (discharged). 61 Massey, Elisha, Jr. 62 McGallon, John J. 63 McGinty, Joseph 64 McDavid, William 65 McEwen, Silas 66 Leonard, Raford 67 Leonard, William 68 Leonard, Pleasant 69 Pollard, John R. 70 Pollard, Pleasant HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 193 THE DAHLGREEN RIFLES CONTINUED. 71 Pollard, Raford 72 Turpine, John 73 Thornhill, Wyatt 74 Thornhill, J. Martin 75 Thornhill, J. Newton 76 Thombs, George, (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 77 Wallace, J. B., (leg broken in colli- sion at Ponchatoula, La.) 78 Wallace, E. H. 79 Saul, William J. 80 Slaven, John, (wounded in battle at Shiloh, Tenn.) 81 Reeves, Stephen, (killed in collision at Ponchatoula, La.) 82 Reddy, Mike, (killed at Harris- burg, Miss.) 83 Rutland, Cullen, (died at Corinth, Miss.) This company met with a very serious accident during the war at Ponchatoula, La., by the collision of the train they were being transported on with another, which resulted in the death of Captain Williams and several of his men and wounding many others. It was charged that this was prearranged by persons controlling the trains for the purpose of killing the men, being northern men and in sympathy with the Union army. The engineer and others made their escape and kept out of the way until after the close of the war, else they might have paid the penalty of their crime. In October, 1861, the McNair Rifles were organized with the fol- lowing officers and men, attached to the 3rd battalion and 45th Mis- sissippi, consolidated as Company E, Mark P. Lowry’s brigade, Army of Tennessee. MCNAIR RIFLES. 1 Robert H. McNair, Captain, (pro- moted to Lieut. -Col.; killed at Shiloh) . 2 William M. McNulty, 1st Lieut, and Captain. 3 James R. Wilson, 2nd Lieut., (re- signed) . 4 Isaac Scherck, 3rd Lieut. 5 Rialdo Downer, 1st Sergt., (mor- tally wounded at Shiloh, Tenn.) 6 James B. Martin, 2nd Sergt. 7 John H. Thompson, 3rd Sergt., (af- terwards Captain ; mortally wounded at Chickamauga.) 8 Robert Brown, 4th Sergt. 13 9 Dr. Busby, 1st Corp. 10 Clint J. Martin, 2nd Corp. 11 Alf A. Boyd, 4th Corp., (last Cap- tain of company). 12 M. M. Murray, 1st Lieut., (close of war). " 13 Samuel E. McNulty, 2nd Lieut., (close of war) . 14 Dr. Boyer, Hospital Steward. 15 O. V. Shurtliff, Asst. Surgeon 16 Austin Hooker 1 7 Andrews, Robert 18 Byrd, Charlie, (died at Chicago, 111., in prison). 194 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI MCNAIR RIFLES CONTINUED. Capt. A. A. Boyd McNair Rifles 19 Brown, Newton M., (killed at Chic- 31 Canter, W. D., (died at Shiloh). f'amauga, Ga.) 32 Cornwall, F. M., (killed at Atlanta, 20 Boyd, William Ga.) 21 Borosky, Julius 33 Clark, Herbert 22 Browm, Asa 34 Chamberlin, Silas 23 Bigner, William 35 Cosgrove, Thomas 24 Bridges, C. B. 36 Clarke, Thomas, (died at Bowling 25 Causey, I. L., (died in prison at Green, Ky.) Camp Chase). 37 Clark, Jessee 26 Carroll, James, (died at Triune, 38 Dunica, Leon Tenn.) 39 Dunica, George 27 Carruth, J. E., (prisoner at Camp 40 Daunis, A. J. Douglas). 41 Dawson, D. A. 28 Carruth, Robert M., (wounded at 42 Day, Dave, (discharged). Lovejoy, Ga.) 43 Ezell, Tom 29 Cutrer, Newt. 44 Flood, Martin, (prisoner at Camp 30 Carruth, James B., (killed at Shi- Douglas). loh). HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 195 MCNAIR RIFLES CONTINUED. 45 Flowers, John H.,(disch’d, overage) 46 Gardner, Seaborne 47 Gammon, Alex. 48 Gatlin, Elbert 49 Gatlin, Pinkney 50 Gotowsky, 51 Hyman, Sam 52 Hales, T. Benton 53 Hoover, Charles 54 Hodges, Sam J. 55 Hilborn, Benj. 56 Harvey, William, (wounded at Lovejoy, Ga.) 57 Hamil, Hugh J. 58 Johnston, William B. 59 Kinebrew, L. M. 60 Keen, John 61 Keen, F. M. 62 Keen, Cal L. 63 Keen, W. H., (killed at Franklin, Tenn.) 64 Latham, John P. 65 Latham, Nimrod 66 Martin, Frank M., (prisoner at Camp Douglas). 67 Martin, W. G., (died at Murfrees- boro, Tenn.) 68 Miller, Poley 69 McGehee, Dunk, (mortally wound- ed at Shiloh). 70 Moak, Martin M. 71 McNulty, Hugh, (killed at Frank- lin, Tenn.) 72 McGehee, William 73 McKeating, William 74 Mason, M. M. 75 McComb, Ephraim 76 Ott, Frank M. 77 Pitman, Hardy 78 Powell, Abner D. 79 Powell, James (transferred). 80 Pitman, John 81 Roundtree, Starling (mortally wounded at Shiloh). 82 Reeves, Thomas (killed at Shiloh). 83 Richmond, A. 84 Richmond, 85 Simmons, Riddick 86 Steel, Jarvis (killed at Shiloh). 87 Smith, C. B., from Catahoula, La. (died at Shiloh). 88 Stevens, C. K. 89 Schreck, Louis. 90 Standard, Geo. (wounded). 91 Sharp, John 92 Sublett, T. J. 93 Turner, Wm. H. 94 Turner, Louis M. (killed at Jones- borough, Ga.) 95 Turner, Joseph, from Wilkinson Co., (killed at Franklin, Tenn). 96 Thompson, Silas (son of Hardy). 97 Thompson, Hugh (son of Hardy). 98 Terrell, Wm., (killed at Ringold Gap, Ga.) 99 Travis, W. J. 100 Terry, Benj. ici Turner, Henry W. 102 Vamado, Felix 103 Vamado, Meredith 104 Wilson, Murdock 105 Wilkinson, R. B. 106 Wilkinson, S. C. 107 Williams, Jackson (son of Meyer Williams). 108 Williams, James (son of Meyer Williams). 109 Westrope, D. L. (mortally wound- ed at Perry ville, Tenn.) no Williams, James (son of Sam, died in service). in Woodall, Hezekiah (killed at Shiloh). 1 12 White, Emmet A. 1 13 Woodall, Joe (died in service). 1 14 Wilson, Jasper 115 Quin, John H. 196 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The author is indebted to Mr. Enoch Carruth, of Auburn, Lin- coln County, for the entire memoranda of the above company given him from memory in 1902. It is not of record in the department of Archives and History, nor in the war department. After the organization of the McNair Rifles, the people of Summit assembled at the Presbyterian Church, October 3rd, 1861, under the auspices of the Soldier’s Friend Society, with Rev. Mrs. William Hoover, president, who was attended by the vice-presidents, Mrs. Phoebe Whitehead, Mrs. Dr. William Bacot, Mrs. Dr. John Huff- man, Mrs. Helen Gracey and Miss Hattie Wicker, for the purpose of presenting a camp Bible to the company. Rev. D. W. Dillehay lead in prayer and Captain McNair introduced Rev. Mrs. Hoover, delegated by the society, to present the Bible, which she did. the Bible being received by William McNulty, subse- quently captain, on the part of the company. CAPTAIN m’nAIR. Capt. McNair was born in the city of New Orleans. He married Miss Columbia Sarah Sydnor, daughter of Col. Sydnor, a wealthy merchant of Galveston, Texas, who was regarded as one of the loveliest and most beautiful women that ever lived in Pike County. Capt. McNair taught school in New Orleans, and was for a time Superintendent of Education in that city. He also taught in Amite City, and was induced by Col. Garland to settle in Summit. Here he erected a handsome college building east of the railroad, which was destroyed by fire and one of the students was lost in the conflagration. He rebuilt on a small scale, intending to erect a more handsome building than the first, but, the war coming on, he went into the army. He organized the company which bore his name, and on the 9th of November, 1861, left the town of Summit, via Natchez, for New Orleans, where they were mustered into the Confederate States’ service and became attached to the Army of Tennessee, then under command of General Albert Sidney Johnston. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel of the 45th Mississippi HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 197 Regiment, and was mortally wounded at the battle of Shiloh, at the same time his illustrious chief fell, crowned with the glorious victory over the superior forces of the enemy under Gen. U. S. Grant, the 6th of April, 1862. Col. McNair was a man of superior mold and his intellect was cultivated up to the highest standard, and his friends claimed that it was like an inspiration to be in his presence. He was cut down in life at a time when he had attained qualifica- tions for the highest usefulness. He died in the arms of Benjamin Hilbum, in the town of Corinth, where he was sent after he was wounded. “Tell my wife that God will protect her,” was a portion of his dying mes- sage. Col. Preston Brent Brent Rifles, Lt. Col. 38th Mississippi BRENT RIFLES. The Brent Rifles, 38th Mississippi Regiment, was organized on the 26th day of April, 1862, by Capt. Preston Brent, in the town of Holmesville, with the following officers and men : 1 Preston Brent, Captain (subse- quently Lieutenant-Colonel). 2 Henry S. Brumfield, 1st Lieut. 3 David C. Walker, 2nd Lieut. 4 J. Cy Williams, 3rd Lieut. 8 Andrews, Jack 9 Alexander, Henry 10 Alexander, Daniel (wounded). 5 Wm. E. Brent, 1st Sergt. 6 Jesse K. Brumfield, 2nd Sergt. (wounded). 7 W. H. H. Brumfield, «3rd Sergt. (wounded). PRIVATES. 11 Andrews, F. G. 12 Andrews, James. 13 Andrews, Mack 198 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI BRENT RIFLES CONTINUED. 14 Allen, William 15 Brumfield, Elisha 16 Ball, Sampson E. 1 7 Bullock, Joel J. 18 Bickham, T. D. 19 Brumfield, W. N. 20 Blunt, S. S. 21 Burkhalter, J. Flem (wounded at Shiloh). 22 Brown, Wm. 23 Boyd, W. D. 24 Bacot, Levi. 25 Boyd, Benjamin 26 Boyd, Jefferson 27 Boyd, Jasper 28 Boyd, Newton 29 Beard, Thomas 30 Brumfield, Wm. Monroe 31 Brumfield, John 32 Blunt, James 33 Blunt, Balas 34 Brumfield, Jackson 33 Boyd, Andrew (killed April, 1862, at Shiloh). 36 Ball, John Ira 37 Ball, Jesse W., Captain (killed at Harrisburg, Miss.) 38 Brumfield, Geo. W. 39 Beard, C. D. 40 Breland, Elisha 41 Breland, Hillary 42 Coney, D. Aquila 43 Conerly, John M. (wounded). 44 Cavanaugh, J. N. 45 Clarke, John 46 Douglas, A. N. 47 Dillon, Clarke 48 Dilloft, Willis R. (killed 1862 at Shiloh). 49 Dillon, W. R. 50 Dillon, Chauncey 51 Davis, Z. T. 52 Green, John 53 Ginn, Haverson 54 Hickman, Joshua 55 Holmes, Wm. Dort 56 Holmes, J. N. (wounded). 57 Holmes, Frank 58 Harvey, Henry 59 Holmes, Jackson 60 Hickman, Nitey 61 Irvin, Jack 62 Jones, Milton 63 Jones, W. T. 64 Lampton, Alexander Frank 65 Lampton, James (killed). 66 McEwin, Archie 67 McEwin, John 68 McCullough, Jasper 69 Magee, Irvin 70 Morris, Martin 71 Morris, Offie 72 McCalem, Simon 73 Magee, Fleet 74 Owens, W. R. 75 Parker, William (wounded). 76 Payne, Ed. 77 Payne, N. R. 78 Payne, Albert 79 Pigot, Wm. 80 Pigot, Ellis 81 Pigot, Charles 82 Pierce, Ed. 83 Page, Josiah W. 84 Pound, Daniel M. 85 Pinkerton, Sam 86 Quin, J. C. 87 Rollins, Chris. 88 Reeves, Joe 89 Smith, A. H. M. 90 Smith, Winston 91 Smith, Benton. 92 Smith, Jasper N. 93 Smith, J. R. 94 Smith, Ansel 95 Smith, G. W. 96 Sartin, Wesley 97 Sartin, Leander HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 199 BRENT RIFLES CONTINUED. 98 Sartin, James 99 Sartin, Gus 100 Sartin, Robert 10 1 Sandifer, Wm. (wounded). 102 Sandifer, John 103 Sandifer, Peter 104 Sandifer, R. P. 105 Sandifer, Billie 106 Sandifer, Carroll 107 Stovall, Wm. 108 Stalling, John 109 Simmons, J. D. no Simmons, John in Simmons, B. F. (killed). 1 12 Simmons, J. M. 1 13 Smith, Ralph 1 14 Thornhill, H. C. 1 15 Thornhill, Isham 1 16 Thornhill, James 117 Walters, Newton 1 18 Walters, Pearl 1 19 Williams, Bose 120 Williams, Hamp 1 21 Williams, Ruben 122 Williams, S. C. (wounded at Shiloh). 123 Williams, Mac In the siege of Vicksburg, Col. Preston Brent was severely wounded in the face. Lieut. Jesse Ball and W. H. H. Brumfield were wounded and B. Frank Simmons killed. At Harrisburg, Lieut. Jesse Ball and James Lampton were killed, and Capt. J. C. Williams, Sergt. J. K. Brumfield, Daniel Alexander, John M. Conerly, J. N. Holmes, J. F. Holmes, William Parker, Wm. Sandifer and one other were wounded. Thirteen of this company went into the fight at Harrisburg and came out with two unhurt. The same month and year, April, 1862, Nash’s Company was organized in Magnolia. This company was commanded by William Monroe Quin, and was attached to Colonel Shelby’s 39th Missis- sippi regiment of the Tennessee army. This is another one of Pike County companies that served in the Confederate army and did gallant service, which is not of record in the department of Archives and History. The writer is indebted to the extraordinary memory of the Spinks Brothers, sons-in-law of Wm. Guy, for the entire list of names. Making it a special trip and a special business he stopped over night with them and thus procured them. 200 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Nash’s Company, 39th Mississippi, Tennessee Army, Colonel Shelby, Capt. Wm. Monroe Quin. This company was organized in Magnolia, April, 1862, with the following officers and men : nash’s company. 1 Wm. Monroe Quin, Captain 2 J. A. Nash, 1st Lieut. 3 J. W. Sandell, 2nd Lieut. 4 Wm. D. Coney, 3rd Lieut. 5 Luke Magee, Orderly Sergt. 6 W. W. J. Magee, 2nd Sergt. 7 Wm. C. Vaught, 3rd Sergt. 8 Dickey, Howell, 4th Sergt 9 Alford, Raymond xo Allen, Lafayette 1 1 Anders, Geo. 12 Buett, Emanuel 13 Barmister, Henry 14 Barnes, Webster 15 Brock, Alex. 16 Brock, William 17 Barksdale, Joe 18 Bankston, Ab. 19 Ballard, James 20 Ballard, Anthony 21 Carter, Henry Y. 22 Carter, Winston 23 Coney, Jasper, Lieut. 24 Cohn, The Shoemaker 25 Coney, Frank 26 Carter, Duncan 27 Carter, D. H. 28 Cliette, Harvey 29 Cook, Thomas 30 Cook, A. U. 31 Cook, F. A. 32 Dowling, James 33 Dickey, Wm. 34 Dickey, Seaborne 35 Dillon, the Fiddler 36 Estess, Thomas 37 Everette, T. J., Dr. 38 Ellzey, Benj. Frank 39 Ellzey, John 40 Ellzey, James 41 Foster, Joe 42 Feaney, 43 Guy, A - T. 44 Gibson, Cornelius C. 45 Harhill, Cliett 46 Hodges, M. G. L. 47 Haverland, Henry 48 Hamilton, Ardell 49 Johnson, Alex. 50 Jenning, B. B., Sr. 51 Lane, J. F. 52 Lea, J. F. 53 Lenoir, Josephus 54 Lenoir, Pink 55 McDaniel, Pink 56 McNeil, H. D. 5 7 Maples, Erastus 58 McCaffrey, James 59 McGehee, John 60 McGehee, Wm. 61 Magee, H. W. 62 Martin, J. S. 63 Martin, Jasper 64 McDaniel, George 65 Norman, Asa (killed at Corinth). 66 Nash, Erastus 67 Prewett, W. H. 68 Prewett, J. S. 69 Prescott, J. S. 70 Prescott, W. H. 71 Powell, J. O. 72 Phillips, Wm. 73 Pendarvis, Richard 74 Powell, John HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 201 NASH’S COMPANY CONTINUED. 75 Phillips, John 76 Prescott, Frank 77 Quin, Frank M. 78 Quin, R. R. 79 Raybom, James 80 Russell, Jessee 81 Roberts, Wm. 82 Schilling, Roderick 83 Stecky, I. 84 Stevenson, T. J. 85 Stevenson, W. M. 86 Simmons, Jackson 87 Simmons, Jack, Jr. 88 Simmons, Francis 89 Spinks, J. N. 90 Spinks, W. G. 91 Spinks, E. B. 92 Stuckey, Isaac 93 Smith, John 94 Smith, Wm. 95 Story, John 96 Tarver, Lum 97 Tuttle, B. 98 Tarver, Fred 99 Travis, Sim 100 Taylor, Marion 101 Vamado, S. H. 102 Vamado, Hardy 103 Vamado, Norval 104 Winbome, David 105 Williams, Harvey CAPT. WILLIAM MONROE QUIN. Capt. William Monroe Quin, who commanded this company, was a grandson of Peter Quin, Sr., who settled in Pike in 1812. His parentage has already been given. He married Miss McKay, a daughter of Robert McKay and Eliza Harrell. Robert McKay came from Ireland and settled on Little Tonsopiho, but afterwards lived on Hurricane Creek, in the neighborhood of Muddy Springs. Capt. Quin was the owner of a large cotton plantation and many slaves, located equidistant between the towns of Magnolia and Summit, at what was known as Quin Station after the railroad passed through the plantation, which is on Little Tonsopiho, between Femwood and Whitestown. He and his wife had two daughters — Alice, who married Capt. Thomas A. Gamer, and Nanny. HOLMESVILLE GUARDS. Holmesville Guards organized in Holmesville in April of 1862, by Capt. John T. Lamkin, attached to 33rd Mississippi Regiment (Co. E) . Featherstones Brigade, Army Tennessee, commanded by Col. David W. Hurst. 1 John T. Lamkin, Captain 2 H. Eugene Weathersby, 1st Lieut. (killed at Franklin, Tenn., No- vember 30, 1864) 3 John S. Lamkin, 2nd Lieut, (Captain close of war) 4 Robert H. Felder, 3rd Lieut. 5 Lenoir, George B. 202 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Hon. J. T. Lamkin 12 Lamkin, Wm. J. (son of Sampson Lamkin, killed in Georgia) 13 Abner Lamkin (son of Sampson Lamkin, killed in Georgia) 1 4 Briley, George (wounded at Peach Tree Creek) 15 Turnipseed, Clifton 16 Kavanaugh, Henry 17 Moore, George W. 18 Garner, David (killed) 19 Conerly, Owen L. (33rd Regiment Color Bearer, killed charging the enemy’s works at Frank- lin, Tenn., November 30, 1864) 20 Conerly, Flem P. (wounded) 21 Conerly, James R. 22 Conerly, Mark R. 23 Price, Jasper A. 24 Harrington, James (killed) 25 Harrington, Wm. (killed) 26 King, Allen 27 Price, Wilson 28 Dunaway, Jesse Dr. Chauncey P. Conerly Holmesville Guards Dr. Conerly was Acting Assistant Surgeon of the 33d Mississippi Regiment and Chief Clerk of Surgeon-General P. F. White- head of Loring’s Division. HOLMESVILLE GUARDS — CONTINUED. 6 Miskell, Austin (killed at Peach Tree Creek, Ga.) 7 Quin, Lucius M. (arm disabled at Peach Tree Creek) 8 Richmond, Thomas Dilla (wound- ed at Peach Tree Creek) 9 Ratliff, Warren 10 Conerly, Wm. M. 1 1 Conerly, Dr. Chauncey Porter (hospital Steward and acting Assistant Surgeon 33rd Missis- sippi Regiment and Clerk of Chief Surgeon P. F. White- head, Loring’s Division) HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 203 HOLMESVILLE GUARDS CONTINUED. 29 May, Fred 30 Dunaway, Pink (killed at Frank- lin, Tenn., November 30, 1864) 31 May, John 32 May, Wm. (killed) 33 May, Richard H. 34 Lenoir, Joseph (died) 35 Magee, Wm. 36 Holmes, Wm. 37 Morgan, Green (killed at Peach Tree Creek) 38 Payne, Thomas (died) 39 Magaha, John (died) 40 Fisher, Christian 41 Bullock, Thomas (killed) 42 Bullock, Jeremiah (killed) 43 Rushing, Wiley 44 Rushing, Evan 45 Rushing, U. K. 46 Rushing, Matthew 47 Rushing, Novel 48 Carr, George 49 Dunaway, Dennis 50 Forest, Frank 51 Foil, Martin (died) 52 Lewis, Lemuel 53 Lewis, Samuel (died) 54 Holmes, David 55 Holmes, Raiford 56 Holmes, Jesse 57 Barnes, Pinkney L. 58 Felder, Rufus 59 Lee, Marion (wounded) 60 Ligon, Charles A. 61 Vanorten, John 62 Warner, John D. 63 McCormick, Ed. 64 Ware, Hiram (died) 65 Elliott, Dr. J. H. 66 Bacot, Adam, 67 Ginn, Newland (died at Grenada) 68 Lamkin, Charles A. (substitute) 69 Thompson, Hugh (died) 70 Hoover, Rev. Wm. (chaplain 33rd Mississippi Regiment) . 71 Blackburn, Dr. 72 Hall, Thomas 73 Ratliff, Calvin 74 Ratliff, Green 75 Harvey, John (died) 76 Quin, Arthur 77 Ware, Frank 78 Bonney, Henry S. 79 Sandifer, Levi 80 Price, Alex (killed) 81 Booker, Wm. 82 Crosby, Thos (died) 83 Ball, Newton 84 Fritz, Chas. (died) 85 Hammond, Arrington 86 Rushing, Levi 87 Sandifer, Wallace (killed) 88 Sandifer, Joseph (killed) 89 Barr, Westley 90 Morgan, Frank 91 Dunaway, John (killed at Cor- inth) 92 Price, James stockdale’s cavalry. Stockdale’s Cavalry, Company I, 4th Mississippi Cavalry, organ ized at Holmesville, Miss., on the 1st of July, 1862, by Thomas R. Stockdale: 1 Christian, Hoover, Captain, Pike 3 Doug. Walker, 2d Lieut., Wilkin- Co. son Co. 2 Dan Williams, 1st Lieut., Wilkin- 4 Burrell C. Quin, 3d Lieut., Louisi- son Co. ana. 204 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI STOCKDALE’S CAVALRY CONTINUED. 5 H. N. Shaw, ist Sergt. Amite Co. 7 W. M. Cain, 3d Sergt., Franklin 6 Drew Godwin, 2nd Sergt., Amite Co. Co. 8 F. Wall, 4th Sergt., Abbeville, La. PRIVATES. 9 Anderson, B. F., Amite Co. 10 Anderson, Henry, Amite Co. 1 1 Andrews, Robert, Amite Co. 12 Andrews, Adam, Amite Co. 13 Bouie, Dan, Franklin Co. 14 Burras, Enos, Franklin Co. 15 Briley, Benjamin F., Pike Co. 16 Barnes, W. Clinton, Pike Co. 17 Booker, Jim, Pike Co. 18 Bryant, Lewis, Wilkinson Co. 19 Berryhill, G. W., Amite Co. 23 Butler, Hugh, Amite Co. 21 Beam, Walter, Franklin Co. 22 Brown, George, Amite Co. 23 Bell, John, Amite Co. 24 Bell, A., Amite Co. 25 Criswell, M., Wilkinson Co. 26 Collier, Tobe, Wilkinson Co. 27 Cox, W. H., Amite Co. 28 Cain, Isaiah, Pike Co, 29 Cox, William, Amite Co. 30 Collins, Levy, Wilkinson Co. 31 Carey, Richard, Wilkinson Co. 32 Coon, Frank, Centerville. 33 Crozier, Robert, Wilkinson Co. 34 Cameron, , Centerville. 35 Causey, William, Amite Co. 36 Cassedy, Hiram, Franklin Co. 37 Crow, Thomas, Wilkinson Co. 38 Coney Wm. L. (Bose), Pike Co. 39 Crago, Doug., Wilkinson Co. 40 Caston, West, Amite Co. 41 Dies, Dave, Amite Co. 42 Davis, C. W., Wilkinson Co. 43 Dickerson, Jim, Pike Co. 44 Everett, W., Amite Co. 45 Everett, Alex., Amite Co. 46 Everett, J., Amite Co. 47 Everett, Chas., Amite Co. 48 Everett, Marshall, Amite Co. (killed at Harrisburg, Miss.) 49 Everett, James, Amite Co. 50 Flowers, E. W., Amite Co. 51 Ferguson, Jas. M. (Dr.), Pike Co. 52 Fenn, D. W., Amite Co. 53 Gatlin, W. M., Amite Co. (killed at Harrisburg, Miss.) 54 Gamer, James, Amite Co. 55 Gildart, James, Wilkinson Co. 56 Gamer, J, J., Amite Co. 57 Glass, J., Wilkinson Co. 58 Godwin, J., Amite Co. 59 Hurst, Wm., Amite Co. 60 Howell, Joe, Wilkinson Co. 61 Harkless, , Amite Co. 62 Howell, Henry, Amite Co. 63 Hart, Joe, Pike Co. 64 Huckleby, Dave, Pike Co. 65 Hamilton, Gus, Pike Co. 66 Huff, T. H., Amite Co. 67 Huff, Van, Amite Co. 68 Holland, Sam, Wilkinson Co. 69 Harris, Tom, Amite Co. 70 Harris, Enoch, Amite Co. 71 Jones, Pink, Franklin Co. 72 Jackson, Frank, Amite Co. 73 Johnson, Alex, Pike Co. 74 Jenkins, Wiley, Amite Co. 75 Kaigler, John, Pike Co. 76 Kaigler, Andrew, Pike Co. 77 Longmire, Wm., Amite Co. 78 Linton, Sam, Amite Co. 79 Lenoir, Walter, Pike Co. 83 Lusk, Joe, Amite Co. 81 Lusk, John, Amite Co. 82 Lewis, E. H., Wilkinson Co. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 205 STOCKDALE’S CAVALRY CONTINUED. 83 Ligon, Woodville, Miss. 84 Martin, Frank, Amite Co. 85 Martin, Wiley, Pike Co. (killed at Harrisburg, Miss.). 86 Martin, R. P., 87 Morris, Monroe, Wilkinson Co. 88 McReady, Wilkinson Co. 89 McGehee, T. L., Amite Co. 90 McGehee, Lewis, Amite Co. 91 Moore, Bill, Amite Co. 92 Mays, Bill, Wilkinson Co. 93 McLain, E. B., Amite Co. (Gloster) 94 McLain, George, Amite Co. 93 Newsom, H. C., St. Helena Par- ish, La. 96 Nunery, Henry, Amite Co. 97 Netterville, Jesse, Wilkinson Co. 98 Noble, W. H., Wilkinson Co. 99 Posey, Jeff, Wilkinson Co. 100 Pascoe, W. H., Wilkinson Co. 101 Patterson, Wm., Wilkinson Co. 102 Prosser, Henry, Wilkinson Co. 103 Price, J. G., Pike Co. 104 Quin, Sherod R., Pike Co. 105 Rollins, Thad, Franklin Co. 106 Reeves, James, Amite Co. 107 Roberson, Thomas, Amite Co. 108 Roudolph, G., Amite Co. (South Carolina). 109 Rutland, Berry, Wilkinson Co. no Richardson, P. A., Wilkinson Co. in Riley, G. R., Wilkinson Co. 1 12 Rodgers, Robert, Wilkinson Co. 1 13 Roark, T. J., Wilkinson Co. 1 14 Simrall, Flem, Wilkinson Co. 1 15 Simrall, Scrap, Wilkinson Co. 1 16 Swearingen, Henry, Amite Co. 117 Smith, Wade, Amite Co. 1 18 Sample, William, Wilkinson Co. 1 19 Smith, R. K. 120 Stewart, Henry, Wilkinson Co. 1 21 Statham, Charles, Pike Co. 122 Sharpe, Ed., Amite Co. 123 Thornhill, J., Pike Co. 124 Tillery, D. W., Amite Co. 125 Thompson, Bell, Amite Co. (killed at Harrisburg). 126 Terrell, Griff, Amite Co. 127 Thompson, John, Amite Co. 128 Terrell, James, Amite Co. 129 Tolbert, Polk, Amite Co. 130 Vaught, W. W., Pike Co., Bri- gade Quartermaster. 131 Vaught, Wm. C., transferred from 39 th Mississippi to 4th Mississippi Cavalry F ebruary, 1863, at Port Hudson. 132 Van, Norden, Pike Co. 133 Wright, Charles, Wilkinson Co. 134 Wright, E. A. Wilkinson Co. 135 Walker, Ed., Wilkinson Co. 136 Wroten, W. M., Pike Co. 137 Webb, P. C., Amite Co. 138 Weathersby, L. O., Amite Co. 139 Whittaker, James, Wilkinson Co. 140 Sleeper, Gardner, Amite Co. 141 Wilson, W. H., Amite Co. 142 Pandarvis, Dick, Pike Co. (killed at Harrisburg). The above company was organized July 1, 1862, by Thomas R. Stockdale, who had served in Virginia one year as Major of the 16th Mississippi Regiment, then under Brigadier Isaac R. Trimble. The company was first officered by Thomas R. Stockdale, Captain ; Christian Hoover, 1st lieutenant; Dan Williams, 2nd lieutenant; W. W. Vaught, 3rd lieutenant. It was formed into a battalion with W. Norman’s company and 206 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Thomas R. Stockdale was elected major, when it was known as ‘'Stockdale’s battalion” of Cavalry. This battalion was subse- quently consolidated with Wilbome’s batalion and formed into a regiment known as the 4th Mississippi Cavalry, with W. W. Wilbome, as colonel; Thomas R. Stockdale, lieutenant colonel and W. Norman, major. W. W. Vaught was promoted to brigade quartermaster and B. C. Quin was elected 3rd lieutenant of the company. The company was first under Col. Frank Powers, as one of the companies of Stockdale’s battalion, and afterwards in the spring of 1863 was consolidated with Colonel Wilborne’s battalion and formed the 4th Mississippi Cavalry, and formed a part of Logan’s cavalry brigade, which was composed of the 4th Mississippi, 14th Confederate, nth and 17th Arkansas regiments, Roberts’ Battery and Brown’s Scouts. Stockdale’s cavalry company was in all the skirmishes in rear of Port Hudson; fought at Fayette against Elliot’s marine brigade, fought Sherman from Vicksburg to Meridian and back. Skirmished with McPhearson’s Corps from Big Black to Brownville and back. Fought around Oxford, was engaged in the battle of Harrisburg, Miss., having six men killed on the field and a number wounded, among them Lieut. Col. T. R. Stockdale, severely. Was in the cele- brated raid with General Forest to Johnsonville, Tennessee, de- stroying over one million dollars of the enemy’s property; captured and sunk three gunboats; was with Forest in the last campaign in Alabama, where Wilson made his celebrated raid destroying Selma, Ala., and Columbus, Ga., and finally surrendered at Gainesville, Ala., May 12, 1865. The author is pleased to acknowledge his indebtedness to Hon. The. L. McGehee, for the muster roll of this company and valuable data and also to Dr. Wm. Monroe Wroten, and Wm. L. Coney for desirable information connected with its history, concerning which Dr. Wroten says in a note: “I have carefully gone over the list and made all the corrections, assisted by W. L. Coney. I hope, by a little pains and patience on your part, you will be able to get things measurably correct. (Signed) W. M. Wroten.” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 207 CAPT. KIT HOOVER. Capt. Kit Hoover, who commanded Stockdale’s cavalry company, was a son of Judge Christian Hoover, and his wife, Mary Newland Nails. At the begin- ning of the war he joined the Summit Rifles and served with that company in the army of Northern Virginia. Being severely wounded in one of his limbs, he returned home and joined Stockdale’s Cavalry and became its captain. After the close of hostilities he graduated in medicine. He married Mary Virginia Barnes,, daughter of Harris Barnes and his wife, Julia Lott, who resided at Columbia, in Marion County. Mary Virginia Barnes was a sister of Mrs. Emily Atkinson, of Summit. These young ladies were among the most accomplished in Marion County. They had two brothers, Allen and L. T. Barnes, and a sister, Mrs. David. Capt. Hoover and his wife had two Capt Kit hoover children, Harrie and Mamie. Stockdale’s Cavalry DIXIE GUARDS COMPANY h” THIRTY-NINTH MISSISSIPPI REGIMENT. The Dixie Guards were organized and mustered into service May 5, 1862, with James R. Wilson, captain; Joseph B. Wilson, 1st lieutenant; Ned Bullock, 2nd lieutenant and Wm. Thompson, 3rd lieutenant. Lieutenant Bullock resigned. The following is the roll of the Mr. John P. Carruth, of Auburn: 1 J. R. Wilson, Captain. 2 J. B. Wilson, Lieut. 3 J. B. Gatlin, Lieut. 4 J- J- White, Lieut. 5 J. P. Carruth, Sergt. 6 J. J. Sibley, Sergt. 7 Z. B. Gatlin, Sergt. 8 J. E. Denman, Sergt. lied and Lieutenant Thompson company furnished the writer by 9 N. W. Gatlin, Sergt. 10 J. M. Jones, Corp. 11 W. T. Jones, Corp. 12 W. J. Wilson, Corp. 13 W. M. Small, Corp. 14 Adams, M. A. 15 Arnold, J. J. 16 Arnold, J. W. 208 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI DIXIE GUARDS- 1 7 Alford, H. 1 8 Andrews, A. ig Bowlin, W. L. 20 Bowlin, W. H. 21 Booth, R. 22 Barron, A. W. 23 Barron, R. B. 24 Bigner, G. 25 Bigner, W. 26 Edwards, J. E. 27 Edwards, D. 28 Freeman, I. 29 Gardner, S. R. 30 Hunt, F. J. 31 Huckaby, J. 32 Hancock, J. R. 33 Huffman, j. W. 34 Johnston, D. W. 35 King, W. A. 36 Lea, Z. Z. 37 Montgomery, W. 38 Montgomery, C. 39 Montgomery, J. A. 40 McManus, L. M. ■continued. 41 McDonald, J. 42 Newsom, W. W. 43 Roundtree, E. R. 44 Raybom, I. B. 45 Raybom, J. J. 46 Sudduth, W. B. 47 Small, F. M. 48 Steel, A. P. 49 Turner, J. W. 50 Turner, F. E. 51 Terrell, J. N. 52 Terrell, J. A. 53 Travis, J. E. 54 Weathersby, L. L. 55 Wilson, J. D. 56 Wroten, E. W. 57 Wilkinson, T. W. 58 Westbrook, W. H. 59 Dr. Alex. Thompson, discharged. 60 Elisha Marsalis, died in service. 61 Newton Turner, died in service. 62 Walter Terry, killed in battle of Tallahatchie. This company was engaged in the battles of Tallahatchie and Corinth, and was in the siege of Port Hudson. At the surrender of Port Hudson the officers of the company were retained in prison and the men were paroled and never reorganized as Company H. Some of them re-enlisted in other commands. One of the members, H. Alford, died during the siege of Port Hudson. Dr. Wm. T. Coumbe was a member of Captain Nick’s company (E), 22nd Mississippi regiment, from Amite County; also J. Dock Harrell, Nick Tate and Leander Vamado. Capt. Josephus Quin, who married a Miss Murphy, of Kentucky, sister of Capt. Hatch Murphy, of the Summit Rifles, was killed at the battle of Harrisburg, Miss. In 1862, N. G. Rhodes, from Baton Rouge, La., raised a company of cavalry at Osyka, known as Rhodes’ Cavalry. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 209 RHODES’ CAVALRY. 1 N. G. Rhodes, Captain. 2 W. T. Wren, ist Lieut. 3 R. B. Easley, 2nd Lieut. 4 W. B. Lenoir, 3rd Lieut. 5 W. H. Terrell, ist Sergt. 6 H. Delemaer, 2nd Sergt. 7 R. A. Smith, 3rd Sergt (Pass Christian). 8 W. S. Gordan, 4th Sergt. 9 F. A. Way, 5th Sergt. 10 E. F. Loftin, ist Corp. 11 D. M. Redmond, 2nd Corp. 12 D. W. Wall, 3d Corp. 13 J. D. McLain, 4th Corp. 14 Anderson, J. C. 15 Bridges, J. W. 16 Bastiem, C. 17 Bamler, James. 18 Briant, N. (Liberty) 19 Bradham, B. 20 Brown, A. M. 21 Covington, J. C. 22 Cutrer, E. 23 Cutrer, J. F. 24 Davis, J. B. 25 Duff, M. 26 Easley, E. W. 27 Easley, W. E. 28 Easley, N. Q. 29 Gordan, George (Raymond) 30 Honea, T. P. 31 Jones, D. 32 Kennedy, R. 33 Laird, L. 34 McDaniel, H. 35 McDaniel, J. 36 Miller, W. 37 Miller, B. 38 Morgan, S. 39 McCall, P. M. (Raymond) 40 Mulky, J. (Liberty) 41 Mixon, J. 42 Newman, G. P. 43 Owens, J. J. 44 Powell, H. 45 Raybom, J. E. 46 Raybom, A. 47 Stroud, P. S. 48 Smith, R. 49 Smith, Wm. (Liberty) 50 Stokes, G. W. (Clinton, La.) 51 Sleeper, G. 52 Sandifer, J. J. 53 Sandifer, J. W. 54 Sandifer, R. M. 55 Sandifer, W. E. 56 Spears, A. 57 Taylor, C. D. 58 Taylor, S. 59 Vamado, Lain. 60 Wall, L. C. (Gallatin) 61 Wright, E. A. 62 Wilson, S. 63 McLendon, M. These men all enlisted at Osyka, except those marked in paren- thesis. The above is a copy of the original muster roll on file in the Archives of History at Jackson, and the writer has been unable to get any other report of them. Some time after the Holmesville Guards went out into the army, Capt. John T. Lamkin Was elected to a seat in the Confederate Con- gress, sitting at Richmond, in which capacity he served until the close of the war. 14 210 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI John S. Lamkin then became commander of the company and served as such until the close of hostilities. The following names have been preserved of men and boys be- longing to the home militia stationed at Summit under Colonel Wingfield. Andrew Kaigler, Captain. 13 Dail, John. Sampson Ball, Lieut. 14 Martin, Will. Lamkin, James. 1 s Curlett, George W. Payne, Lewis. 1.6 Lamkin, Walter F. Applewhite, Alex. 17 McClendon, James. Wroten, D. H. 18 Sandifer, James. Grabbs, Henry. 19 Brown, Abner. Guy, Luke. 20 Laney, Robert. Ellzey, Jack. 21 Lampton, Benj. Turnage, R. 22 Andrews, Thompson Bridges, Linus. 23 Brent, John. Vaughn, D. F. 24 Bridges, R. Robert S. Bridges belonged to Captain Bates’ company of Col. Frank Powers’ regiment. Capt. Josephus R. Quin, who was killed at Harrisburg, was a citizen of Pike County. Col. Oscar James Elizabeth Stewart, a lawyer, who lived many years at Holmesville, was stationed at Summit in charge of home military affairs. Colonel Stewart was ever zealous in the discharge of his duties as an officer of the Confederacy. Capt. R. W. Duke, a saddler by trade, raised a company of boys under 16 years of age, whose main object was to preserve the status quo at home and protect their country from its assailants. They rendezvoused at Summit and went into camp and some of them were detailed on courier service for a few days. This new demand on the department commanders’ commissirat caused him to make the threat that he would send them all to Virginia where some of them would get hurt. This caused a stampede from the headquarters at Summit and that place was thus deprived of the important services it might have had of Duke’s command against the enemy. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 211 CAPT. JAMES CONERLY’S COMPANY, MISSISSIPPI MILITIA. i James Conerly, Captain. 7 John Magee, 3rd Sergt. 2 John B. Leggett, ist Lieut. 8 J. A. Crawford, 4th Sergt. 3 E. Prescott, 2nd Lieut. 9 W. Rushing, 5th Sergt. 10 Stephen McLendon, ist Corp. 4 S. A. Blackwell, 3d Lieut. 1 1 Wm. Guy, 2nd Corp. 5 D. H. Quin, ist Sergt. 12 Wm. Boyd, 3rd Corp. 6 W. McDowell, 2nd Sergt. I. Smith, 4th Corp. PRIVATES. 14 Aron, S. 40 Rushing, J. C. 15 Bond, J. 41 Ryals, H. 16 Brauss, R. 42 Rehorst, J. 17 Bing, A. 43 Rulphin, H. 18 Bom, 0 . 44 Rabum, A. 19 Bickner, C. 45 Rushing, W. T. 20 Browning, W. 46 Smith, G. 21 Clough, J. 47 Stephenson, W. 22 Davis, C. P. 48 Stephens, P. 23 Felder, D. F. 49 Simmons, H. 24 Gardner, A. H. 5 ° Schnider, P. 25 Hall, H. R. M. 5 i Toby, W. 26 Hume, R. 52 Vamado, I. E. 27 Heirling, I. 53 Wote, G. 28 Headen, H. H. 54 Wroten, V. J., Dr. 29 Harrison, W. H. 55 Causey, I. B. 30 Huckabee, I. 56 Fortenberry, B. T. 31 Lenoir, J. H. 57 Hughs, W. 32 Lem, I. 58 Sandifer, R. M. 33 McDaniel, H. 59 Sandifer, W. E. 34 McElveen, M. 60 Sandifer, J. W. 35 McElveen, S. D. 61 Seal, E. 36 Miller, R. D. 62 Sinott, N. 37 Magee, S. 63 Waruke, I. 38 O’Quin, I. 64 Calliard, I., substitute for A. H 39 Quin, Peter H. Gardner. The fall of Fort Sumpter and the surrender of Major Anderson soon transferred hostilities to Virginia and the seat of government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond. It was evident that Virginia would be the principal battle ground of the war. General Beauregard was stationed at Manassas Junction, on the Orange and Alexander Railroad, with a small force, and Joseph E. Johnston was 212 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI sent to the Shenandoah Valley, which was threatened by a force under Patterson, and Manassas by a force under McDowell, who advanced and attacked Beauregard at Bull Run, on the 18th of July, and was defeated. McDowell, however, having a force double that of Beauregard, it was evident that he would renew the attack. J oseph E. Johnston was ordered by the President at Richmond to reinforce Beauregard at Manassas, which he proceeded to do, keeping his an- tagonist ignorant of his movement. McDowell attacked Beauregard again on the 21st of July, with 40,000 men, when a hard and bloody struggle ensued. Johnston’s forces coming up in due time, however, McDowell’s forces were put to flight and driven back across the Po- tomac at Washington. This was the great battle of 1861, which proved to the invaders that it was not as easy a job to capture Richmond before breakfast as they had claimed they would do, and no doubt believed they would do, as they brought along a good supply of ladies in carriages to participate in the great ball they were to have in Richmond, and some 20,000 handcuffs to put on the "Rebels” to be captured by them. After this battle the year 1861 was principally occupied by both parties in making preparations for the future with some minor demonstrations and engagements in different sections. The battle of Bull Run, or first Manassas, gave to the South a considerable quantity of small arms and some cannon which were very much needed. In view of the approaching magnitude of the conflict, the Congress of the Confederate States passed a conscription act approved February 17, 1862, requiring all male white persons of military age to become enrolled in the army. The men in the field at this time had volunteered for one year and in the face of a large invading force it was evident that it would be a calamity to the Southern States should these now trained vol- unteers return home at the expiration of their term of service. The conscription act was intended to meet this emergency as well as to bring a large force in the field to repel the enemy. The volunteers unhesitatingly volunteered again for the war, and were permitted at the expiration of their term of service to reorganize their com- panies and regiments. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 213 The term of the 16th Mississippi regiment would expire May 27, 1862. They were in R. S. Ewell’s division on their route to the Shenandoah Valley, to reinforce "Stonewall” Jackson for the pur- pose of expelling the Federal General, N. P. Banks, from Winchester, and were camped not far from the base of the Blue Ridge Mountain, on the route leading across Swift Run Gap. Here the reorganization took place which made the change in the official status of all the companies and of the regimental line. As a matter of history with which Pike County is connected this circumstance is referred to. The election occurred on the 26th of April, the anniversary of its departure from Holmesville. Colonel Posey was re-elected colonel; Capt. J. J. Shannon, of the Jasper Grays, lieutenant colonel; Samuel E. Baker, of che Adams Light Guards, major, thus retiring Lieut. Col. Robt. Clarke and Maj. T. R. Stockdale. The Quitman Guards elected Lt. S. McNeil Bain, captain; Colden Wilson, 1st lieutenant; John Holmes, 2nd lieutenant; Van C. Coney, Jr., 2nd lieutenant, thus retiring Capt. S. A. Matthews, Lieut. J. M. Nelson and Lieut. R. J. R. Bee, who returned to their homes. In the early part of 1862 events indicated that the Southern States were entering the boundaries of a tremendous struggle. Pike County was doing her duty. She had already sent out some of her boys with the University Grays attached to the nth Mississippi regiment under Captain Lowry, who participated in the first battle of Manassas, and two companies of over 200 men to Virginia now engaged in active hostilities, and with the opening of the campaigns her other eight companies followed in rotation and were attached to the western or Tennessee army; over one thousand men out of a population of 11,135, including slaves. Patriots imbued with the common cause came out from every nook and comer of the county, from all classes of whites. They saw the giant with frowning brow looking on them and threatening them with destruction and they calmly and resolutely came and took their places in the ranks. The formation of these companies well nigh stripped the county of its men, except those over military age and boys under the age, and among this class a large number were serving in the army. 214 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI There was one great problem to be solved and to be met by the people at home which fell upon the women and girls until the Con- federate government could prepare for the necessity. The South had no manufactories and supplies of clothing must be had by the men in the army. They had no uniforms and they, of necessity, went out with such as would best suit the conditions. The task to supply these necessities naturally fell on the women and they took hold of the situation with a genius and a patriotic impulse which few, if any, women of any country or age has ever equaled. The artisans who had come as pioneers from the older states in the beginning of the century had not come in vain. From John Barnes, the father of little Margaret, who floated down the Cumber- land, Ohio and Mississippi rivers in a cypress canoe in 1798, William Ravencraft, who pulled his mill stones and turning lathes all the way from South Carolina to Magees Creek with cows, and from the Walker’s and others down on the Bogue Chitto the lessons had been taught and handed down to the beginning of this conflict. The loom makers, slay makers, reel and spinning wheel makers were put to work to supply the needs and soon the hum of the wheel, the scratch of the cards, the flutter of the reel and the thump of the looms were heard in every household. The women and girls, and those who had slaves, the negro women and girls too, with creditable devotion, entered into the spirit of supplying the needs of the soldier as well as themselves. From Indian Creek and the Darbun to Dillon town, from Hoover’s to the Louisiana line; from Bogue Chitto to Osyka; from Clabber Creek to Bahala; from Topisaw and LeatherWood and Vamal; from Still Creek to the limits of the county on the western line, all through the hills and valleys of Pike County, amid the moaning of the pines, the thump of the loom and the buzz of the wheel Was heard, cho- rused with the inspiring notes of the Bonnie Blue Flag, Dixie and the Homespun Dress. The “Homespun Dress” was written by Lieutenant Harrington, an Alabamian, belonging to Morgan’s cavalry command, who was killed in the battle of Perryville. It is said that the words were not HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 215 printed during the war. However, it got rapid circulation and was generally memorized among the Confederate soldiers in the early part of the war, and was sung at home by the women and girls through- out the South to the tune of the Bonny Blue Flag. A Writer in the Age-Herald of Birmingham says: “While Morgan’s army was in Lexington, Ky., the women of that city gave a ball one night in honor of Morgan’s men. On this occasion it is said the women appeared in homespun dresses. Lieutenant Harrington, of Alabama, who was a member of Morgan’s army and who attended the ball, was so deeply affected by the flower of Kentucky’s young womanhood appearing at a ball gowned in homespun dresses that he wrote the words to the song: ‘The Homespun jDress.” The following are the words: Oh, yes, I am a Southern girl, And glory in the name; I boast of it with greater pride Than glittering wealth and fame ; I envy not the Northern girl Her robes of beauty rare, Though diamonds deck her snowy neck And pearls bestud her hair. CHORUS. Hurrah! Hurrah! For the sunny South, so dear; Three cheers for the homespun dress The Southern ladies wear! Now Northern goods are out of date, And, since old Abe’s blockade, We Southern girls can be content With goods that’s Southern made. We send our sweethearts to the war, But, girls, ne’er you mind — Your soldier love will not forget The girl he left behind. The Southern land’s a glorious land, And has a glorious cause ; Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights And for the Southern boys! 216 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI We scorn to wear a bit of silk, A bit of Northern lace, But make our homespun dresses up, And wear them with a grace. And now, young man, a word to you, If you would win the fair, Go to the field where honor calls And win your lady there; Remember that our brightest smiles Are for the true and brave, And that our tears are all for those Who fill the soldier’s grave. On the 25th of May, 1862, Stonewall Jackson and R. S. Ewell attacked the Union forces under General Banks at Winchester, and drove them pell mell back across the Potomac. A large force under Gen. George B. McClellan, was threatening Richmond. At the battle of Winchester Jackson and Ewell’s forces captured six hundred wagons with their horses and equipage, and a large quantity of small arms with some cannon and army supplies. In order to save all this valuable stuff and to elude the junction of Fremont and Shield at Strasburg, forty miles in his rear, Jackson made a rapid retreat back to Cross Keys and Port Republic and made a stand. Fremont and Shields came up and on the 8th and 9th of June, both of them were severely defeated and driven back down the valley, followed by a few squads of cavalry and daring scouts. In the battle of Cross Keys Jared B. May, William Gamer and Dr. A. P. Sparkman were wounded and returned home, and Wesley Yar- borough was mortally wounded and died. Immediately following Cross Keys, McClellan advanced on Richmond against the Confeder- ate forces there under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, Jackson and Ewell secretly, and by a most extraordinary rapid movement, put their commands in position in front of Richmond without the knowledge of Fremont and Shields in the valley, and the series of battles before Richmond lasting seven days, resulted in the latter part of June and early days of July. At Cold Harbor, where Ewell’s forces fought, Captain Brown, of the Summit Rifles, and Joseph W. Collins, of the Quitman Guards, HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 217 were killed and George W. Simmons of the latter company mortally wounded. George W. Root and Lieut. John Holmes were wounded, and Ike Dick, of the Summit Rifles, badly wounded while bearing the colors of the 16th Mississippi in a desperate charge on the enemy’s works. These series of battles resulted in the defeat of the enemy and forced them to abandon this line and fall back on Washington. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston being wounded during this great con- flict, Gen. Robert E. Lee was placed in command of the army in Virginia and then another series of battles ensued at Slaughter Moun- tain, Second Manassas, Harpers Ferry , Boonsboro, Md., Sharp sburg and Fredericksburg in this eventful year, and the roll of the killed and wounded and prisoners of Mississippians in Virginia was greatly enlarged. While all these stirring events were occurring in Virginia, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston was organizing for the defense of the Southwestern department and the formation of the Army of Ten- nessee and the conflict was gathering with stupendous proportions. The Bogue Chitto Guards under Captain Carter, were organized May i, 1 86 1. The Dahlgreen Rifles under Capt. Parham B. Wil- liams, August, 22, 1 86 1, and the McNair Rifles in October, 1861, and then followed the Brent Rifles on the 26th of April, 1862. Nash’s company, Holmesville Guards, Dixie Guards, Stockdale’s Cavalry and Rhodes’ Cavalry following. Of these the McNair Rifles par- ticipated in the battle of Shiloh. General Johnston fought this battle With less than 40,000 men, while his antagonist is credited with over 49,000 men, reinforced by Buel with 21,579 m en. The war had been carried into Missouri and elsewhere west of the Mississippi river and in Kentucky and Tennessee. Forts Henry and Donald- son on the Tennessee river, had fallen under combined land and naval forces of the enemy in February, 1862, by which the Confederacy lost some 15,000 men by surrender and in killed and wounded, and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston concentrated all of his available forces near Corinth, with General Beauregard second in command. The success of the Union arms at Forts Henry and Donaldson caused President Lincoln to make U. S. Grant a major general in command of that department and the two armies came together at Shiloh 218 [: HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Church in Tennessee, on the 6th of April, when the great battle of that name was fought. The Union army under General Grant, was defeated and driven back under cover of his gunboats at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee river, but in the hour of the triumph of his mag- nificent military genius the great Confederate general received a mortal wound and died on the field from loss of blood from a severed artery in his leg, which misfortune to the Confederate arms, occur- ring when it did, prevented the utter destruction or surrender of their enemies. The enemy claimed a victory at Pittsburg Landing, but the facts seem to indicate that their victory consisted in not being destroyed, which was prevented by the timely reinforcement of Buel with over 21,000 fresh troops. In the batcle of Shiloh the Confederates lost 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded and 959 missing or captured; total, 10,699. The enemy lost 1,500 killed, 6,634 wounded and 3,086 missing or captured, total, 11,220. The reader of these pages must not expect in them a history of the war or detailed account of battles. The events which have been mentioned are intended to call the attention of the uninformed more particularly to the character of the great war in the beginning of active hostilities at this period. The student must turn to works devoted to it in order to obtain correct information as to the causes and events following, and they can find no better works on the sub- ject than Jefferson Davis’ Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govern- ment and the Life of Albert Sidney Johnston, by his son, Wm. Pres- ton Johnston. The year 1862 was fraught with many hard fought battles, with a preponderance of numbers always in favor of the enemy, and the victory generally in favor of the Confederates. At the end of two years from the secession of the States, with all the blood and treasure which had been expended on both sides, the war appeared to have just begun. The South had garnered nearly, if not all, her resources in men and means to beat back her ruthless invaders. Her entire roll of men reached only 600,000 and from this enrollment was taken men for employment in every branch of the civil and military service outside of the field. Some Southern HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 219 historians have claimed that the South had less than 400,000 actual and effective fighting men in the different fields of operation, while the enemy shows by published records of their own that they en- listed and put in the field 2,678,967 men, besides their militia and maritime forces against our people. These figures come from the Rebellion Records published by the government and are copied from Davis’ Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. In Henry W. Rauff’s Century Book of Facts, page 617, the reader will find the following figures: Lincoln’s Calls, 2,942,748. Obtained, 2,690,401. Number of men furnished by states in same table, 2,778,304. These do not include the U. S. regular army and navy, nor several hundred thousand militia. So persistent has some northern historians been in falsifying the true records that they cannot be relied upon. And this very same man Rauff in his Century Book of Facts is one of them, for he has stated that the North never had over 700,000 active men in the field at any one time. They have strained consciences and veracity to such a degree that they have tried to make it appear, and to falsely teach northern children, that the South outnumbered them in troops in the field, as shown by an essay written by a northern girl in which she stated that the Confederates numbered two-thirds of the Union soldiers, when the truth is they numbered about one-fifth. What of this unequal contest? What age of the world has its like? Where is the argument or the record to justify the North’s contemptuous boast of whipping the South? Four years for such a stupendous army and navy with unlimited means and armament, with the entire world to draw from, to overcome the South’s 400,000 “ragged, barefooted, sickly, half-starved rebels,” as they were sneer- ingly denominated in northern prisons to justify the inequality of prison deaths! History reveals the “Story of the Lost Cause.” No people under the sun struggled under greater difficulties, or fought more desperately for the preservation of their rights and in defense of their homes and their beloved land, against such tremendous odds, 220 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI cut off from the outside world, than those constituting the armies of the Confederate States. When Thaddeus Stephens, the great abolition leader, gave the word to "beat the devil out of the South,” it was the slogan for destruction; the obliteration of the South’s manhood and womanhood; the piling up of hecatombs from her chivalric sons and daughters, and the fulfillment of a cruel conqueror’s dream of an African domination constructed over the ruins of her temples and the embers of her Cau- casian glory. "To hell with the constitution,” which the South had revered, was the motto and the watchword in the coercion of the Southern States, with Abraham as their willing executive. Mr. Lincoln stated in his first inaugural address that he had no constitutional right to interfere with the institution of slavery and that there was no purpose to do so ; but there was just as much reason to believe this as there was to put confidence in anything which had transpired relating to the Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumpter affairs— a complete and cunning piece of official perfidy, from start to finish. In his second inaugural address after he had issued his emancipa- tion proclamation, he said: "All knew that this interest (slavery) was somehow the cause of the war,” and he helped to make it so. In 1833, at a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at Philadelphia, a declaration of sentiments was adopted as follows: "We maintain that the slaves of the South ought to be instantly set free.” "We maintain that no compensation should be given to the planters emancipating their slaves.” When it is considered that this same year the British government had paid her planters the sum of one hundred ($100,000,000) millions of dollars for their slaves emancipated, and the South’s slave property largely greater than this in value, the intelligent reader will admit that from a financial point of view alone, the South had a good cause for her fears and complaints. It was a consciousness of right that actuated them. "I had rather be right than to be president,” said an eminent Southern man. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 221 “I may not be on the winning side, but I know I am on the right side,” said a Southern Governor. Vice-President Alexander H. Stevens, of the Confederate Gov- ernment, a man acknowledged by all to be devoted to the Union and the Constitution at the period of the secession of Georgia, which he represented in the United States Senate, said: “l am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth, or under the earth, except to do Wrong.” "Duty is the sublimest Word in the English language,” said Gen. Robert E. Lee. The declaration embodied in the resolutions of the American Anti- Slavery Society was an echo of the sentiment of England after it was found that there was no more kidnapping money to be made out of the Southern States, which had passed laws forbidding their nefarious crime. It was all right for the Eastern Yankee to steal Africans and sell them to the South, but it was Wrong in their eyes for the South to be paid for them on emancipation. A period frought with so many things to attract the attention of the historian cannot be given in a local record. When all the men fit for military duty in Pike County were in the field, it must be plausible to the minds of the living, that the women had a struggle all to themselves that no man or woman of the present generation can comprehend. More than half of them had to depend on their own resources, for they were not slave owners. And with all their efforts for the maintenance of themselves and children came the reports, wafted by every breeze, of the great battles being fought, bringing tidings of loved ones killed or wounded. Distress and suffering broadened and deepened the chasm where sorrow found its habitation. Old men and women of pioneer fame who sprung from revolutionary sires, fell upon their knees in humble suppli- cation to ward off the great affliction ; but here in these pine hills, where joyous hopes had lived and brightened and beautified life, a deep wail went forth to gratify the ever insatiable maw of northern hatred and crime. 222 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI All the men in Pike County capable of bearing arms were in the field, as stated before, except a few men who were allowed under the conscription act of Congress to remain at home to manage negro labor in productions necessary for the support of the army. One- tenth of the home productions of all were exacted for this purpose, and those who had no slaves to help them on the farms were equally burdened with this tax, making it doubly severe on those unable to provide a sufficiency for themselves and helpless children. Some old men, subject only to militia duty as home guards, were detailed to look after those who were in dire distress and seek means for their relief. Human fortitude was taxed to the extreme point, but they never lost any of their chivalrous characteristics. Like their an- cestors of the revolutionary period, they could and did often subsist on parched com and roasted sweet potatoes. In the year 1863, the Confederate Army may be said to have reached its full strength, about 600,000 men, while the enemy had called out nearly 3,000,000, and the prospect for peace was yet with- out hope. This preponderance of forces enabled the U. S. govern- ment to blockade all the Southern ports and in a manner cut them off from foreign communication, besides placing more than four times their strength against them in the field. The enemy had captured New Orleans, thus cutting off the main depot of supplies for a large section of Louisiana and Mississippi. It was difficult to procure salt and the people had to dig up the dirt of their old smoke houses and boil it to extract the salt from it. At times it could be procured from the Avery Island, in Louisiana. Sugar was procured from Baton Rouge and other points by wagons and taken in exchange for cotton or other products. No means were at the command of the people at times, and it was a desperate con- dition which confronted them. Confederate money was greatly depreciated in value. Flour and coffee were out of the question with the masses far South, and even the wealthy could not procure them. Parched meal or com and other things were used as substi- tutes for coffee. Sometimes the blockade, as it was termed, could be slipped through and coffee obtained from places within the enemy’s HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 223 lines. A woman with a house full of little children to support was at a great disadvantage in the struggle for existence. The years of 1863 and 1864 were fruitful of desperate encounters. The enemy was straining every resource and power to accomplish the defeat of the Confederate armies. Thousand dollar bounties were given to enlist, and hundreds of thousands of foreigners from Europe flocked to their standard for the sake of the money to fight “mit the flag” and save the Union (?). After a most heroic defense, Vicksburg and Port Hudson were given up in 1863, and Lee, with his invincibles, penetrated into Pennsylvania and the swelling tide of the struggle seemed to be at its height ; but there were no re-inforce- ments nor recruits to be had to replace the losses of the Confederates, while to destroy a thousand of the enemy might bring a hundred thousand more. Shut out from the whole world, with depleting ranks and scant rations, they fought on without a thought of defeat, and the whole land from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and to the Gulf, was baptized in blood and marked with conflagrations and ruin. A considerable force of the enemy’s cavalry under Grierson, taking advantage of the absence of regular troops, marched diagonally across Mississippi through Meridian, tearing up the Vicksburg and Meridian and the Mobile and Ohio railroad tracks, destroying the town and committing other acts of vandalism, which was one of the peculiar characteristics of Yankee soldiers. They were notorious as robbers and thieves, when there were no forces in their way to oppose them, except a few squads of militia and women and children. They passed through the town of Brookhaven, and of Summit, in Pike County, plundered the towns and destroyed all the business houses and some residences that belonged to men in the Confederate army, whose names are recorded in this book; men who were pur- suing a civilized mode of warfare and not cowardly and disgraceful vandalism, perpetrated by these so-called United States patriots. The small force of militia composed of men and boys exempt from the regular army stationed here under Colonel Wingfield did not feel it safe to risk a battle with the well equipped and trained troopers 224 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI under Grierson, and they retreated across the Bogue Chitto at Hoover’s bridge, while Grierson, after accomplishing his vandalism, proceeded on his route unmolested through the country to the Southwest. Lieut. Sampson Ball, who had seen service in the regular army and had been discharged, made application for ioo boys belonging to the militia forces for the purpose of disputing the passage of the enemy across the Tangipahoa, but the application was refused. Hoover Iron Bridge Scene on the Bogue Chitto River Lieutenant Ball related to the writer that he thought Grierson’s forces had been greatly overestimated and with a bold attempt, coupled with a little strategy, he might have delayed and annoyed them sufficiently to have secured their surrender to other forces seeking to apprehend them on the line to Baton Rouge, but his appli- cation was refused. The few conscripts stationed at Brookhaven, under Capt. S. A. Matthews and Lieut. A. M. Bickham, made a circuitous retrograde HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 225 movement into the dismal regions of the Otopasas and thus eluded the Yankee cavalier, running rough shod over the unprotected women and children of Mississippi and Northeast Louisiana. Grierson, like Sherman, in his celebrated, proudly heralded farce act through Georgia, against a similar foe, landed at Baton Rouge, covered all over with glory and wreaths of victory in the estimation of the Northern government. When the civil war ended in 1865, the South was a land of deso- lation indeed, and those who survived its consequences were left without a ray of hope. All they had possessed was gone save the land they returned to, and that Was offered by the Yankees to the negroes in sections of forty acres and a mule. The great battles fought by the Army of Tennessee succeeding that of Shiloh, under the command of Gens. Leonidas Polk, Beauregard, J. E. Johnston, Bragg and Hood, on the fields of Marietta, Resaca, Peach Tree Creek, Mission Ridge, Chicamauga, Atlanta, Franklin and elsewhere, reduced their forces so much that when Lee surren- dered, the others followed in quick succession. During this war and previous to the general surrender, the Con- federates captured Union prisoners to the number of 270,000 men; killed over 350,000 of them and caused over a million of them to be placed on the pension rolls from being disabled. The Unionists captured 220,000 Confederates and according to a report made by Surgeon Gen. Barnes, of the 270,000 Union soldiers captured by the Confederates, 22,000 died in Southern prisons; and of the 220,000 Confederates captured by the Unionists, 28,000 died in Northern prisons. Ever since the close of that war there has been a persistent at- tempt on the part of Northern writers to misrepresent the truths of history in order to cover up and hide the cruelties and inhumanity of united soldiers and its authorities from the knowledge of coming generations, but in the language of Abraham Lincoln, “we cannot escape history,” they have charged that the Confederates were cruel and barbarous in their treatment to Union prisoners, and claimed chat the rigors of the climate where Confederates were held was the cause 15 226 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI of a larger proportion dying, though the South held over 50,000 more prisoners than they, when the North was possessed of everything and every means necessary to prevent the wholesale mortality which prevailed in their prison and the South did not. The false assertions and arguments and mutilations of history, in the efforts to justify their ruthless invasion and coercion of the South- ern States and to make Confederate authorities greater sinners than Northern authorities, has fallen stiffly to the ground, as dead and worthless literature, and repudiated by intelligent investigators in the face of official reports. General Lee’s army in Virginia was never beaten on a single battlefield, nor driven from one, from Bull Run, July 18 and 21, 1861, to the last days at Petersburg, and it never yielded to its foe until reduced by hard and constant fighting to a mere fragment as com- pared with its ever recruiting antagonist, surrounded by ten times its number. With the close of the career of this invincible body of men came the fall of the Southern Confederacy, as all the other armies agreed upon the terms arranged between General Grant and General Lee, approved by President Lincoln, who was shortly after assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, in Ford’s Theater in Washington City. President Jefferson Davis, of the Confederacy, was captured by a troop of Wilson’s cavalry in Georgia and placed in irons and chained in Fortress Monroe, by General Miles, and tortured therefor two years, with inhuman cruelty. He was subsequently released from custody under bond signed by Horace Greely and others, as the government of the United States was unable to make out a case against him. Many cruel things were done after the close of this war in a spirit of vindictiveness and many innocent men and women made to suffer death; among them Mrs. Surratt, of Maryland, an innocent and help- less Woman, charged with complicity in the assassination of Presi- dent Lincoln; and Captain Wirz, who was commander in charge of Union prisoners at Andersonville, Georgia. In the long years of hard fighting against great odds, the Southern armies, by the casu- alties of war, were reduced and overpowered. The Southern people HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 227 had suffered much and might have quietly borne the disaster, but the end was not yet. Capt. Henry A. Wirz, above mentioned, was a Switzer and was the commander of the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Ga. After the close of the war he was hanged at Washington, November io, 1865, as the result of suborned testimony, or subordination of perjury, under pretense of conspiring to cause the death of Federal prisoners at Andersonville, but really for refusing to give evidence or perjure himself against Jefferson Davis. He was charged in con- spiracy with Jefferson Davis, James A. Seddon, Howell Cobb, W. H. Winder and others to kill Union prisoners at Andersonville, in his keeping. There was a conspiracy, known as the Conover conspiracy, gotten up in Washington City, to connect Jefferson Davis with the assassi- nation of Abraham Lincoln, which failed; and the attempt to fix the other crime on him was made to secure his destruction ; and Wirz was convicted on perjured testimony, and the effort was made to induce him to testify against Mr. Davis to save his own life, which he refused to do. His conviction was secured upon the perjured testimony of a Frenchman named Felix de la Baume, a grand nephew of Marquis Lafayette, who was given a position in the interior depart- ment as a reward for his perjury. He was shortly after recognized as a Saxon named Oeser, a deserter of a New York regiment, and was dismissed eleven days after the execution of the man whose life he had sworn away. Sam Davis, of Tennessee, a young Confederate soldier caught within the Union lines, was executed under similar circumstances. He was a scout and penetrated the enemy’s lines and was captured. Certain information found on his person, procured from a personal friend in the Union lines, caused him to be tried as a spy, though un- disguised. His life was offered to be spared if he would turn traitor to his friends, which he refused to do, and he was hung in Tennessee. The trial of Captain Wirz is of record and cannot be destroyed, neither can the records of the Secretary of war in reference to the test of the treatment and suffering of the prisoners of war North and 228 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI South, and will always be available to the historian; and any attempt to fix criminality on Southern leaders or men for cruel treatment to union soldiers will be met by these records. The writer of this book was for three months, while disabled for service in the field, detailed for service with an attending physician in the prisons at Danville, Va., and can testify from his own knowledge of kindness shown them by Confederate officers at that place in 1864. The necessities and conditions at the time compelled the crowding of them in smaller spaces than was conducive to their health, and the living was hard, but it Was as good as that issued to Lee’s veterans, confronting the powerful and preponderating forces under General Grant at Peters- burg. The government at Washington had all the resources of the world at its command, which the Confederacy was cut off from, and the North claimed a more healthful climate, and yet, the deaths of Confederate soldiers in Northern prisons was 25 per cent, greater than that of Union prisoners in Southern prisons. It stands any ex-union soldier or Northern man in bad plight to attempt to fix such crimes upon Southern men and try to exonerate themselves from inhumanity and barbarity. This Writer, a prisoner himself, knew of Southern soldiers at the old capitol building in Washington City, brutally murdered by the guards for thoughtlessly looking out the bars at the windows; and there was no necessity for starving them, as was done, and which every Confederate prisoner can testify to, while upon the other hand the South’s resources were exhausted; but they gave their prisoners what their own soldiers had who were termed “poor, feeble, ragged rebels” — requiring nearly three millions of men with the resources of the world at their command four years to subdue. There is no question of doubt that the barbarity practiced on Confederates was vindictive and intentional in order to accomplish the attrition necessary to overcome them, as their immense armies could not subdue them on the field of battle, and the suffering and mortality of both Confederate and Union soldiers is due to the refusal of Northern authorities to exchange prisoners, which would have saved thousands of lives on both sides. The fields of Virginia were spread with the dead and the line on HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 229 the frontier, where the armies had so often clashed, was a mark of desolation. The hope of the country was centered on Lee and he knew the great responsibility. It was a heavy burden sustained as he was by his noble compatriots, but his master mind wavered not until the very climax of dissolution was forced upon him. When the opposing chief offered him the opportunity to surrender the little Gen. Nathaniel H. Harris guard that was left him, he replied that the time had not yet come. His army had never been driven from a single battlefield, though al- ways matched against superior numbers. The climax came when after eleven months incessant fighting his heroes had been taken from him by the force of overpowering numbers, and the last lingering hope died only, when in response to his order to “Hold the Fort at all hazards,” it was entrusted to Harris’ Mississippians, who went down at Fort Gregg. 230 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Buxton R. Conerly HOW FORT GREGG WAS DEFENDED APRIL 2, 1865. BY BUXTON R. CONERLY, One of its Survivors — Quitman Guards, Company E, Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment, Harris’ Brigade. Fort Gregg was situated about two miles southwest of Peters- burg, Va., and was one of the many earthworks or redouts that Gen- eral Lee had constructed for artillery in the rear of his main line of defense covering the cities of Richmond and Petersburg. Its form was semi-circular — a space was left open in the rear for the entrance of wagons and artillery. The earth was thrown up HISTORY OR PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 231 from the outside forming a ditch 12 or 14 feet wide and from 4 to 6 feet deep — the walls were from 6 to 8 feet wide at the top and the ground on the inside next to the wall was raised for the cannon and for men to stand on. A considerable amount of artillery ammunition was in the fort, consisting of grape, canister, bomb shells and solid shot, stacked in pyramid form. The disaster on the right wing of General Lee’s army at Five Forks, causing the loss of the South Side railroad, forced the evacu- ation of Petersburg and Richmond The position at and near Fort Gregg evidently Was and became of great importance at this time to that portion of our army in the trenches around Petersburg, as it covered the pontoon bridges that had been thrown across the Appo- mattox river, west of the town, over which the artillery wagon trains and troops were crossing in their retreat. During the latter part of March, 1865, our brigade, composed of the 12th, 1 6th, 19th and 48th Mississippi regiments, commanded by Gen. N. H. Harris, occupied a position between the Appomattox and James rivers, watching and guarding the line from Dutch Gap on the James, southward in a deployed line. About 2 o’clock on Sunday morning, the 2nd of April, 1865, we received orders to move, leaving about one-third of our men on the picket line in front of this position. We marched rapidly in the direction of Petersburg, following the Richmond and Petersburg Turnpike road until within about two miles of Petersburg we left the main road, turned to the right and crossed the Appomattox river on a pontoon bridge about two miles west of the town. We then crossed the South Side railroad and marched by the Forts Gregg and Alexander (or Whitworth, as it is called by some). We moved to a position about four hundred yards in front of these Forts, and formed in line of battle with skirmishers well thrown out to the front. Every foot of ground was familiar to us, for here we had spent the greater part of the preceding winter and had guarded this part of our line for several months — our old uncovered winter quarters were just behind us. Long lines of Federal infantry were advancing on our front; batteries of artillery were coming into 232 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI position, and as far as we could see to the right and left the enemy’s guns and bayonets glistened in the rays of the morning sun now well up over the hills in the east. Our skirmishers soon became hotly engaged in our front, and the leaden hail was striking our ranks. “Stand like iron, my brave boys,” Said General Harris, as he walked along the line. “Stand like iron.” Our skirmishers were soon driven in and our brigade opened fire on the advancing Federal line with deadly aim and effect. They gained the shelter of a sunken road about 150 yards in front of us. Continuous firing was kept up from this position for about one hour. On the right and left of this position the F ederal troops continued to advance, threatening to enfilade us on both flanks. Quite a number of our men fell killed and wounded in this position. General Harris, seeing that our position was untenable, ordered us to fall back to the shelter of the Forts Gregg and Alexander. Leaving a skirmish line to hold the enemy in check, our brigade began the backward move in a storm of shot from the enemy’s sheltered position in the sunken road and the crest of hills on the right and left flanks, behind which they were rapidly increasing in strength. General Harris led the greater part of the brigade into Fort Alexander and Lieut. Col. Duncan, of the 19th Mississippi regiment, led the remainder, about 250 men, principally from the 12th and 16th Mississippi regi- ments, into Fort Gregg. The enemy, discovering this movement, rushed forward with loud huzzas, and our skirmishers were pressed back over the open field by overwhelming numbers, but taking the ad- vantage of every protection the ground afforded to rest a moment and load — they never failed to give them a parting salute as they retired from one position to another. During this time the men in the fort had gathered all the loose grass they could find scattered over the field around and near the fort. The Federal forces had advanced to this place early in the morning (before we arrived), but had been driven away by Gen. A. P. Hill, leaving quite a number of rifles scattered over the field. The men quickly gathered them to- gether— not forgetting their experience in the “Bloody Angle” at HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 233 Spottsylvania, May 12, 1864, when they used the enemy’s guns against them that they had captured, practically giving them the advantage of repeating rifles, as they had from two to four guns each, all loaded. In addition to the artillery ammunition in Fort Gregg, there were also several boxes of rifle ammunition, about 1,000 rounds to the box. About the time that we were as well prepared as we could be under the circumstances, the enemy appeared in such overwhelming numbers that Colonel Duncan decided to evacuate the fort. We marched out of the fort to the rear about one hundred yards, where we met a carrier who handed Colonel Duncan a paper which he read aloud : “Hold the fort at all hazards.” (Signed) R. E. Lee. The men immediately returned to the fort, as no other order was necessary, and resumed their positions around the walls. Our soldiers understood the conditions and every one knew that he must delay the advance of the enemy to gain time for his comrades. The Federal troops at this time had reached a point about 300 yards in front of Fort Gregg, and were moving on Fort Alexander at the same time behind or under cover of our old winter quarters, huts which had been set on fire, and the smoke obscured their movements. Fort Alexander (or Whitworth) was about 300 yards to the right of Fort Gregg, and was at this time under the command of General Harris. The fighting on other parts of the line to our right and left stops for a while as if the men were watching the results of the move- ments about Fort Gregg. Colonel Duncan watches the men and tells them not to fire until the word is given. With his sword flashing in the sunlight of that beautiful Sunday morning, he insists (with his appeals to the state pride of Mississippi) that we should obey his orders. All around the walls of Fort Gregg was the cry of the officers, “Keep down men, keep down,” — officers who had never quailed on any field from first Manassas to that hour — to name their record would be to write the history of the army of Northern Vir- 234 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ginia soldiers that knew them, with their suspension drawn to a tension indescribable, yielded to the order, and waited with apparent patience until that magnificent line of Federal soldiers was within less than one hundred yards of us, and not the flash of a single rifle had yet defied them. The last order of our officers, “steady boys,” was interrupted by the cracking of the rifles sending their death dealing missiles with telling effect. Gibbon’s men fall fast and thick — his line staggers and finally breaks in confusion, seeking shelter behind the crest of a ridge. A great cheer went up from our lines on the right and left and our boys responded with their cus- tomary yell of triumph from Fort Gregg. Reinforcements were hurried forward by the enemy from their sheltered position behind the hill, and their second line came forward at a double quick, in broken and scattered ranks. We opened on them at a distance of three hundred yards, firing as fast as we could. They staggered up within one hundred yards of us, when the greater part of their line broke and ran back under cover. The balance, perhaps three or four hundred, reached the ditch in our front — they were not strong enough to take us and could not retreat without running the gauntlet of death. Before we could turn our attention to the enemy in the. ditch, reinforcements were hurried to their assistance and a third line came rushing on us with loud huzzas, from their covered position behind the hill, but in broken and scattered ranks. The greater part of them succeeded in getting in the ditch and completely sur- rounding us. During this time the men in Fort Alexander assisted Fort Gregg to some extent with an enfilading fire from that fort. It seems that General Harris at this moment, seeing and believing that we were captured, evacuated Fort Alexander to save his men. Our men deployed so as to cover every part of the walls of the fort and detailed twenty-five men to hold the gate in the rear. Now the solid shot, cannon balls and bomb shells found in the fort came into use. Our men hurled them on the heads of the enemy in the ditch. The fuses of the bomb shells were fired and rolled on them. This Work did not stop until all or nearly all of the solid cannon balls and shells were gone. Brick chimneys built to tents for artillery men HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 235 were thrown down and the bricks thrown at the enemy. Numbers of efforts to scale the walls were made, but the Federal soldiers would not act together and consequently the most daring ones were shot down on the Walls and fell on their comrades below. A color-bearer fell on the fort with his flag, falling over on our side. During all this time the men at the gate were engaged in a death struggle and the last one fell at his post. The Federal troops having no further resistance there began pouring in from the rear and firing as they came. So many of our men had now fallen that the resistance was weak all around, and the Federal troops began pouring over the walls where a hand to hand encounter ensued on the crest, and our brave men went down in death. Quiet soon followed and about thirty sur- vivors were marched to the rear as prisoners of war and sent to Point Lookout prison. General Harris evacuated Fort Alexander about the time we were surrounded and made his way to the balance of the army in the retreat to Appomattox C. H. The men of our brigade left on the fines between the Appomattox and the James also were in the re- treat and the final surrender at Appomattox. Our brave Lieut. Col. Duncan was left in Fort Gregg, wounded in the head in an unconscious condition, rolling in the blood of his fallen comrades, when we were marched out. Our bullet-ridden flag that had been borne proudly on so many victorious fields had been planted upon its last rampart, waived its last defiance and gone down on the bodies and laved in the blood of its brave followers and defenders, who here made a chapter for the stories of the Army of Northern Virginia and left a gem for their mother State to place in the crown of her soldiers who had responded to her call to arms and faithfully performed their last duty. 236 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI HOW FORT GREGG WAS DEFENDED. LIEUT. -COL. JAMES HENDERSON DUNCAN. Lieut. -Col. James Henderson Duncan, who commanded at Fort Gregg in the last bloody struggle near Petersburg, was a son of Dr. Isaac A. and Isabella Lucinda Craig Duncan, and was bom at Mount Pleasant, in Maury County, Tennessee, on the 15th of March, 1839, and was thirty-five years of age when Lieutenant Colonel James Henderson Duncan Who commanded the Mississippians at Fort Gregg this battle was fought. In 1840 his father moved to Sarepta, Miss., in that portion of the State now Calhoun County. Col. Duncan was engaged in the mercantile business at Oxford when the war began, and at the first call of arms he enlisted as third lieutenant in Comjany A, Nineteenth Mississippi, under Capt. Dr. John Smith. Later he was promoted to captain and rose to lieutenant-colonel, by gradation. Dr. Isaac Alexander Duncan, Lieutenant- Colonel Duncan’s father, was bom in Smith County, Tennessee, in 1810, came to Mississippi in 1840, was member of convention in 1850, and served in the lower HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 237 House of the Mississippi Legislature from Calhoun County in 1858, 1859 and i860. His father was from Maryland, and was a soldier of the revolution. David Craig, the father of Colonel Duncan’s mother, was bom at Chapel Hill, N. C., and his father was a revolutionary soldier. Colonel Duncan recovered from the wound received at Fort Gregg and re- turned, after the close of the war, to his home in Mississippi, where he died some ten or twelve years after the war. The seeds of grief had been scattered all over the land and every- where the mantle of sorrow was to be seen. Here where noble aspi- rations had been cultivated, where love lived, where beauty crowned the thresholds of the homes of Pike County, deach had cast its sombre shadows. Men who had gone to the war flushed with majestic man- hood, were shattered in health or driven to the ultimate fate which awaits those who offer themselves as a sacrifice upon their country’s altar. Ages ago the heralds of destiny brought the messages that gave hope to a brave people, but here in the ruins which blackened the once beautiful South, a veil of gloom fell over the vision of those crushed by the hand of a powerful and unfeeling foe. When the news came of Lee’s surrender, mothers went down on their knees and prayed that their loved ones might be spared to crown their happiness in the years to come, but with many the Angel of Death had stalked and bowed them down in grief. Many waited and prayed in vain. The crucible of war had consumed the objects of their love and hopes. When the end came it was an end indeed. The Southern cross that fluttered proudly and defiantly for four years, -went down in a halo of imperishable glory; sanctified with the blood of the chivalrous and brave, and was furled forever at Appomattox April 9, 1865, and its tablet of memory, inscribed with the following lines written by the South’s poet priest, Father Ryan. THE CONQUERED BANNER. Furl that banner, for ’tis weary; Round its staff ’tis drooping dreary; Furl it, fold it, it is best, For there's not a man to wave it, And there’s not a sword to save it, And there’s not one left to lave it In the blood which heroes gave it. Furl it, hide it — let it rest. 238 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Furl that banner! True, ’tis gory, Yet ’tis wreathed around with glory And ’twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust, For its fame on brightest pages, Penned by poets and by sages, Shall go sounding down the ages — Furl its folds though now we must. Furl that banner softly, slowly, Treat it gently, it is holy, For it droops above the dead! Touch it not, unfold it never, Let it droop there furled forever, For its peoples’ hopes are dead. When the leaders of the Southern armies accepted the terms of surrender to the United States forces they bound their people to an observance of its authority and when the shattered remnants of those armies, yielding only to overpowering numbers, came back to their homes they meant to be true to the terms imposed upon them, but when the government itself disregarded the objects contemplated in the terms of surrender, the situation changed. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Northern presi- dent, with which the South had nothing whatever to do, all the venom of a furious enemy was forced to the front to take revenge, the mag- nitude of which will scarcely be conceived by those living after the enactment of these horrible scenes. It was related to the writer by a gentleman who was closely connected with the Confederacy, and who was a prisoner at the time in Washington, (a bit of suppressed history) that at a meeting of nine Northern governors, headed by Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, and members of the cabinet, that a resolution was passed to arrest and execute all Southern leaders from Jefferson Davis down. It was referred to General Grant, who refused to countenance it, but asserted he would use the entire army of the government to protect them and the men who had accepted his terms of surrender. R. S. McCollough, the renowned Confederate chemist, whose invented explosives sent so many Yankee vessels HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 239 to the bottom, and who was one of the men included in the intended holocaust of vengeance, subsequently connected with the Louisiana State University, at Baton Rouge, in 1881, related this circumstance to the writer himself as a fact while a guest of his and his family in the suite of rooms occupied by them in the Jadot Hotel, in the city of Baton Rouge, and how his little daughter, Grade, then only 9 years of age, went to see President Andrew Johnson, and, sitting upon his knees, begged that the life of her father be spared. Colonel McCollough was captured at Richmond at the time of its evacuation by the Confederate forces and was conveyed to Wash- ington in a closed carriage, confined there in prison and was informed of the conspiracy above alluded to. But when General Grant gave it the black eye — a crime so revolting and perfidious as to cast an eternal stigma on his own name and honor, the conspirators retired and suppressed a record of their meeting and resolutions. All North- ern writers have carefully eluded any mention of it, if they knew of it. In later years some of them who have been disposed to be fair in speaking of President Davis’ unjust imprisonment and treatment at Fortress Monroe, have hinted at it only, but in such terms as to indi- cate a knowledge of it. CAPTURE OF DAVIS. There were so many lies published in Northern papers immedi- ately after the war and persistently continued and believed by a large class of Northern people about Mr. Davis being captured in the disguise of a woman’s apparel, and pictures of the same scattered everywhere, and even pretended to be believed by some to this day, that it would be proper to insert the facts here. He had fled from Richmond upon the evacuation of Petersburg by General Lee’s army, with his guard, with the purpose of joining Kirby Smith or Magruder west of the Mississippi river, and was in camp near Irvinsville, Ga., where he had joined his family. On the rainy morning of May 18, 1865, the President’s guard had surrendered and what followed is here reproduced from an article written by Mr. T. C. DeLeon, in New Orleans Picayune. 240 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Through the dim pre-dawn a troop of Wilson’s cavalry dashed into his camp by chance. His old instinct told him the truth and he whispered to his wife that they were regulars, and all was lost. Rapidly he told his plan, the troopers deployed and with leveled carbines. He would (with the old West Point trick) seize the foot of the nearest rider, hurl him from saddle and vault into it, flying for liberty or for quick death into the dense woods— thence, alone to the Mississippi. As he spoke, he grasped his pistol, creeping stealthily to the nearest horsemen’s side. Already in the damp morning Mrs. Davis had thrown about his shoulders the light, sleeveless raglan from her own shoulders. While he spoke the last words, she threw about his neck the small, square shawl she wore. But it was too late for the West Point trick, or for any escape, the destined object of attack wheeled his carbine and a dozen more centered on the one man, as locks clicked. With a scream, the wife threw herself between him and their muzzles, and the end had come. But, in creeping up to the troopers in the dim light, the raglan and the shawl had both fallen from the husband’s shoulders, yards away from the spot where he was seized. As for the shawl, its “biography” is told by Mrs. Clem Clay Clop- ton, with all persiflage on dress subjects. In her book describing the trip of the prisoner to Fort Monroe, on the William P. Clyde, she tells that she and Mrs. Davis had two shawls so exactly alike that neither knew her own. One of these his wife had thrown about Mr. Davis’ shoulders. She had picked it up when dropped unheeded by him. Both ladies had these shawls on the voyage to prison. Mrs. Clay’s diary was written while she was at sea, a guarded prisoner on a United States ship, and precluded from possibility of newspapers and the wild stories filling a superheated Northern press as to Mr. Davis’ “disguise.” She gives dates, facts and names. Her story has been in type for years. It is still uncontroverted. When anchored off Fortress Monroe (the diary tells), two women were sent aboard the Clyde to search the persons of the female prison- ers for treasonable papers. Then Lieutenant Hudson, of the guard, demanded of Mrs. Davis her shawl as proof against her husband. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 241 She demurred; but, it being the only wrap she had, Mrs. Clay took her own duplicate shawl, folded it within Mrs. Davis’ and gave them both to the officer. Later Mrs. Clay’s shawl was returned, a maid of Mrs. Davis having identified hers, and that is the shawl formerly exhibited in Washington and recently “exhumed from a disused drawer in the War Department.” Few people noted its earlier exhibition along with the spurs, sleeveless raglan, etc. Nobody, North or South, cared a rush whether they had been refound or not. Time, the cure-all of ills, mental or moral, has passed the episode. The war is ended. The union of states physically restored and the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution forced upon the South by Federal bayonets, through compulsion and fraud, stand as an insult and a curse to our people for which there will be no for- giveness until they are repealed. CHAPTER VII. The high price of cotton in 1865 and 1866 was a blessing to the people. Large quantities had been hidden away in nooks and cor- ners where the Yankees could not find it, or failed to do so, by those who were exempt from military service, and in the fall after the sur- render a small crop was gathered which brought the high price of fifty cents and over. This gave strength to the merchants who were thus enabled to help the farmers, struggling against the fretful con- ditions that prevailed. All the merchants in Summit, whose business houses had been swept away by the vandalism of Grierson’s raiders, were rebuilding their stores, and those in Holmesville, Magnolia, Osyka and Tylertown endeavored to place themselves in condition to meet the necessities of their people. The demon of despotism was an ever haunting spector, and as time passed the evidences accumu- lated, showing the trend of the powers to subvert their cherished hopes. Every man who had been a soldier of the Confederacy Was 16 242 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Working to re-establish himself in the conditions had before the war, and all worked to rebuild their lost fortunes. The evils which surrounded them at the beginning were meas- ured by the power of endurance given them under the train of events which gave to their past a halo of glory. All the elements which went to form the nucleus of a powerful endeavor Were centered in their great hearts. The wails of the widow and the suffering of her children were heard and given attention. When freedom vanished with the fall of the stars and bars, the giant monster that had crushed them had no terrors for them save the dastard attempt to supplant them with the recently liberated negro slaves. They had been deprived of their arms, but a way was provided to place themselves in a position to meet the worst. In his admirable book on the “Ills of the South” Rev. Charles H. Otkin, of Pike County, has given in his first chapter a description of conditions prevailing at this time, 1865, so truthfully and with language so appropriate that I am pleased to be permitted to copy from it as follows: “chapter I, PAGE I.” “the condition of the south in 1865.” “Widespread desolation reigned in every portion of the South in 1865. The. war of the States was ended. The South had staked all — lives and for- tunes — upon a principle, and lost. The four years’ struggle, with its hopes and its fears, was behind them; defeat, with all its vast significance, was before them. The Southern soldiers returned to their homes. It is not too much to say that a large majority of the soldiers of the Confederate armies had homes. But these homes of comfort and plenty in 1861 were not those to which they returned after the surrender. A great change had swept over them. Four years’ ruthless war had left indelible marks. Time, with its ravages, the mis- management of farms and plantations left largely in charge of the negroes, the vandalism of armies in the destruction of property, had made hideous alterations in the condition of the country. Dilapidated dwellings, fences out of repair and in many instances burned, sugar-houses and gin-houses damaged or in ruins, were seen everywhere. Farms once producing profitable crops were now grown up in broomsage. The chimneys of hundreds of comfortable dwellings furnished the only evidence that these places were once the abode of human habitation. Cattle and live stock of every description were largely diminished. Everywhere devastation met the eye. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 243 “The Southern farmers commenced life anew under many and disheartening disadvantages. Not a few were well advanced in years, and had large families. There was mourning throughout the Southland. Many husbands, fathers, and sons slept on distant battlefields, never to return. Thousands of widows were left penniless. The gloom was appalling, and the people were poor. Those that had something left were ill-prepared to help their poorer neighbors. Hun- dreds returned maimed in body. There was nothing to relieve these scenes of ruin, save the brave, resolute determination to commence the hard struggle for existence.” The order of Thaddeus Stephens had been executed. The procla- mation of Abraham Lincoln had been consummated at the cost of three billions of treasure to his government, a million of human lives of his Own white race, and the widespread ruin of the fairest land on earth; the habitation of his countrymen, the descendants of those who had been the founders of the government he represented and devoted adherents to its principles. Four million negroes amanci- pated, valued at over two billion of dollars, without compensation to the owners, thus carrying out the resolution of the American Anti- slavery Society held at Philadelphia, all done under the cry of “save the Union.” Mr. Otken further says: “Four million negroes were not only free, but were invested with civil rights. What a novel condition! What a tremendous experiment! ” At this stage a most novel condition was presented by the ex- negro slaves. The sudden close of the war and the knowledge of emancipation struck the great mass of them with amazement. They were living with their families in comfortable homes, on the plantations of their masters, who had always provided for them. They had no knowl- edge of the responsibility which emancipation had cast upon their own shoulders. They had nothing on earth with which to begin life; not a mouthful of food, not a stitch of clothing, not a cent of money, not a shelter to protect them from the weather except that which came through the tender humanity of their former masters. The impulse Was to leave their old homes and go somewhere else. Think of it! Four million ignorant slaves suddenly liberated and 244 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI thus actuated and no provision made by the government to care for them. Were their old masters bound to do it? They were penni- less, too. But the negro men by the thousands scattered hither and thither, leaving their wives and helpless children at the old planta- tion quarters to be taken care of by “de white folks.” The majority of slave owners who could manage to provide for them tried to keep them at home to finish their crops with such wages as the conditions justified. Those who could not provide for them had to let them' go, and they could not undertake to take care of the women and children when the men were gone and the bulk of the farm work left undone. They flocked to the military camps in great droves, men and women, with complaints of inhuman treatment and stories of barbarity, and the Yankee officer, who was bred and bom and brought up to the period of donning the brass button in the belief that the negro Was a peer of himself, believed these stories, and this resulted in squads of cavalry and infantry being sent over the coun- try to investigate them, thus eternally harassing the white people and overturning their efforts to bring about a just equilibrium be- tween themselves and these ex-slaves. Thus fell upon the authori- ties a new problem. They had just disbanded a couple of million of soldiers, but it was about to incur the greater responsibility of giving subsistence to four millions of ex-slaves who, if they ever had a thought of the necessity of labor for support, it was blotted out when freedom was announced to them by their old masters, and the “year of jubelo” had dawned, which condition was not mentioned in the emancipation programme. The military Were driven to the necessity of organizing a Written contract system in order to force the negroes to remain on the plantations and relieve themselves of the burden. This system, while it Was the best that could be done at the time, Was fruitful of great vexation and trouble. All infringe- ments or violations of the contract must be referred to the military authorities. The Southern white man and ex-Confederate soldier, in his man- agement of the negro as a slave, Was content only with obedience to his orders and instructions; but the negroes, having been received HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 245 with the right hand of fellowship and brotherly love by the epanleted fraternity and his conceit galvanized, in the course of a very few weeks began to show his contempt for the “boss,” and hence sprung an endless stir and flurry and military investigation of violated con- tracts. Under this system the negroes were required to procure passes from their employers when they wished to go away from the plantations. This was adopted to put a stop to their indiscriminate roaming and desertion of their own families and to give relief to the authorities. The pass system was productive of much good, but it was also productive of much evil. At the close of the war the country was infested with many bad characters who had no regard for law and order, nor for the rehabil- itation of the country. They were usually roaming characters, with no fixed abode, and whose means of support was a question to those who had borne the brunt of the struggle and had returned to their homes with their minds directed to the restoration of peaceful con- ditions and prosperity. The planters Were not always strict about giving trusty negroes passes, and it occasionally happened when one should accidentally be met by the characters above alluded to it resulted in an inhuman flogging and sometimes a more severe pun- ishment. Then the military were resorted to for redress, every- body in the region held accountable and the reins tightened on all. Social intercourse between the negroes and the Federal soldiers, without regard to color, became a fixed reality and their camps on Sundays and other times were scenes of social intercourse. Mis- cegination Was openly inculcated and practiced, and the negroes were taught by the Yankee soldiers, in 1865 and 1866 what, in three hundred years, they had never learned from Southern white people. This may truthfully be said to be the beginning of race troubles after emancipation. The negro men seeing and having a knowledge of the intimate relations between white Federal soldiers and officers with negro women and openly taught equality, led them to desire an equal opportunity with white women, but there was a barrier that stood between them and the white women, and they knew it. It Was a gun and a Southern white man behind it. There was no stat- 246 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI utory law that could be brought into play to prohibit intermarriage, nothing except the inflexible principle and will of the Southron. But miscegin ation was conceived and bom through the instrumental- ity of the Federal army stationed in the South — in Mississippi — in Pike County, and through an influx of Northern carpetbag negro- phites who married negro women. There was one instance in Pike County where a white girl was persuaded to run away with a young negro man, which resulted in the parties being overtaken, the girl rescued and the negro escaped. One can scarcely conceive how gradually, but how quickly, the situation dawned to excite :he fears of the white people of the South in regard to dangers threatening their race. One who has lived through it and taken a part in the events and changes of the times can more fully, perhaps, appreciate the wide world calamity that stared them in the face then and which leads to a recital of circum- stances following in these pages. There was a chivalric principle implanted in the bosoms of those who had given their services in the cause which had succumbed to overpowering numbers, and the love they bore for cheir women who had passed through the crucible with them was such that nothing must come between them to contaminate their blood or mar their existing relations. The Confederate soldier, with trained eye and experience, saw with deep concern the danger which threatened and was increasing in the intimate relations and intercourse of Federal white soldiers and intermarriage of white men from the North with negro women and encouragement given to amalgamation of the races. The protection given the negroes, as they viewed it, by the soldiers, and the unmistakable partiality extended to them in all controversies between them and their late masters, made them in- solant and created a spirit of defiance, encouraged by the Federal troops which was soon followed by insults and crimes. In the towns and cities Yankee white soldiers thought nothing of walking arm in arm with negro women, and negroes would shove white women off the banquettes. There was no redress to be had. Complaint to the military authorities was contemptuously ignored; protection HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 247 Was thrown around the culprit; insolence encouraged and white men and women turned aside in favor of the negroes. Amid these gathering disturbances the great Southern heart swelled with deep mortification and indignation and lifted itself above the ashes of desolation, and the impending degradation and ruin that seemed about to engulf their Caucasian civilization. When the armies were disbanded and the Confederate soldiers who had survived returned to their homes, relying on the generosity of their former enemies, as manifested by General Grant at Appomat- tox, they believed that with the restoration of peace, and left un- trammeled to the task of providing subsistence for their dependents and the rebuilding of their lost fortunes, the country would recover, in a measure, in a few years. But the vindictiveness of the Northern States was not yet abated, and the storm that arose over the unfor- tunate assassination of President Lincoln burst out with fury and revenge on the South as the conspirator and perpetrator of the crime. And hence United States soldiers were stationed everywhere in the South to overawe them and further crush their hopes. A company of negro troops were stationed at Holmesville, in Pike County. No white person was allowed to keep firearms of any description, and thus the people were forcibly reminded of the cold blooded answer of Abraham Lincoln when he was to issue his emancipation procla- mation in 1863, and Mr. Wm. H. Seward, his Secretary, who had lived in the South, expressed his great fear of the horrors that would ensue by the insurrection of the negroes who might rise and butcher the wives and children of the Confederates behind their armies: "It is time for us to know whether these people are for or against us.” Where should they turn for hope? What herald Would bring them the tidings? Everything gone, disarmed, manacled, and the despot’s heel stamping out the last glimmer of freedom! It was a solemn hour; their wives and sisters and mothers and daughters and widows and orphans of their dead comrades in the peril. Thou- sands wished themselves back in the fields where the conflict had raged in the past with chances of success. 248 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI “It is time for us to know whether these people are for or against us,” echoed over the land. A cold blooded sentiment expressed by a man at the head of a government who looked Southward with the belief that four million negro slaves Would rise up and with the maul and the axe and the dagger butcher four million helpless, defenseless white women and children of his own race, behind the Confederate armies, which would make his victory complete! The answer was now given: “It is time for us to know, and we will see if these people are to rule over us and destroy our civiliza- tion.” A message came and gave to them a gleam of hope and with it came the mystic letters K. K. K. It was an order of mysteries; one that carried determination and skillful planning by men who knew no fear in the face of despotic power. The issue Was sprung. The fiat of self-preservation or death to the hilt or muzzle of the revolver. It Was an order of mas- terful command, of obedience and discipline. It was the ego of duty. It had for its object the salvation of the Caucasian race in the South, threatened with destruction, and the protection of its help- less Women and children, the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers. Upon the threshold of a great calamity this organization arose, out of the bowels of the earth, as it were, and formed into a solid phalanx of oath-bound determined men. Who Were they? Whence came they? The shades of the dead who have passed the Styx of Dante’s infernal regions, where they were sent for their inhuman crimes could not tell, nor the ghosts of the villains who Wronged our helpless and defenseless Women. It rose, it flourished, it performed its mission and disappeared as mys- teriously as it came; this wonderful organization, The Ku Ivlux Klan . The Writer hopes that the readers of this volume will not consider him boastful nor egotistical when he tells them he was eminently familiar with the Workings of the Ku Klux Klan. He does not have to draw on the imagination nor search the musty records of HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 249 the past, nor cull from others what has been said of it. There lived a principle that swelled within the bosoms of every man who clung to and which was the motive power of this great order. It was the trying ordeals of the period which animated them to the verge of desperation. Around their homes and firesides there were those they loved, and the hand of barbarism, upheld by the conquering power of the United States Government, was raised to destroy the hopes of their country’s future. When the reader turns to the history of the South wdiich glows with daring deeds, his soul will rise above the dastards who wrung freedom from its grasp. No people on earth who carry the prin- ciples of self-preservation within their bosoms will ever turn a deaf ear to a recital of the wrongs forced upon our beautiful South. The organization of the Ku Klux Klan was so thoroughly sys- tematized that all its movements were in harmony. Its secrets were so well guarded that its leaders and members were unknown outside of the organization. Its objects were summarized as fol- lows: “To the lovers of law and order, peace and justice, and to the shades of the venerated dead, Greeting: “This is an Institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy and Patriotism, embodying in its genius and principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood, and patriotic in purpose; its peculiar object being, First, To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and the oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers. “Second, To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and all the laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the States and the people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever. “Third, To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws of the land.’’ Their places of meeting were called “Dens of the Klan,” and pre- sided over by the Grand Cyclops, who was the presiding officer of the township or precinct. The uniform or disguise for man and horse was made of a cheap domestic, weighing three or four pounds. 250 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The white robes for the men were made in the form of long, loose gowns or ulsters, with capes, the skirts reaching to the ground and hanging below the stirrups when mounted. The men Wore red belts which supported two revolvers. On each man’s breast there Was a scarlet circle within which was a white cross. The same appeared on the horse’s breast and on his robe at the flanks, the mystic letters K. K. K. Each man Wore a white cap, from the edges of which floated a piece of cloth extending to the shoulders. Over the face was a white covering with eye holes and an opening for the mouth. On the front of the caps of the Hawks appeared the red wings of a hawk as an en- sign of rank. From the top of each cap was a spire or spike 18 or 20 inches high, covered with the same white material and supported by wire. These uniforms were easily folded and concealed within a blanket and kept under the saddles without discovery. It Was only a question of two or three minutes to dismount, unsaddle, doff the uniform and be on the move as if suddenly coming out of the bowels of the earth. The men were provided with various devices to create consternation among the superstitious. Their eyes looked like balls of fire at times, and sulphurous fumes emitted from their ranks. Several buckets of water was a commom draught for a man who suffered the intense thirst incident to the regions of heat below, where it was thought he made his abiding place. In companies of one and two hundred men, thus disguised at night, the spectacle was terrorizing, but the organization was composed of level headed men, trained Confederates who knew no fear. The operations of the Ku Klux Klan were not confined to their own precincts altogether, as the United States soldiers were on the alert. They were ever watchful and any Work to be done at home was often performed by those living many miles away, strangers to the community, who were notified by a relay system of couriers when messages could be sent long distances without any one being missed, except for a few hours, from the neighborhood. Lou- isianians worked in Mississippi, and vice versa, and so with counties and districts. If any serious work was to be performed it was some- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 251 times prefaced by some public demonstration or amusement, when the home Klan had everything fixed, the criminal located and watched. The distant Klansmen appeared and mingled with the people, com- ing in from different quarters as others without a suspicion of their mission. Their mystic signs enabled them to recognize each other and to arrange the details of their operations. When night came they assembled in the vicinity and donned their disguises for them- selves and horses, which were folded in their blankets, and a great apparition seemed to rise from the earth, and before the criminal suspected that danger lurked near him he was in their clutches. He was then taken to a place presided over by the Grand Cyclops, where witnesses were presented and a thorough investigation had. If adjudged guilty, when day dawned the culprit would be missing and sometimes found in his neighbor’s yard, a dead proposition, or found dangling from the limb of a tree, and sometimes officials who were obnoxious and oppressive in their acts or exhibited a disposition to overawe the white people, were given the opportunity to break- fast on the carcasses of their unscrupulous henchmen and pets. The thief and rapist, the murderer and the instigators of negro supremacy and self-importance had a poor show in the days of Ku Kluxism. Those who were under the ban of suspicion in minor cases were often warned by the mystic letters K. K. K. posted where they were sure to see them. They observed the laws which governed the different degrees of crime, but they executed those laws in their own way in proportion to the nature of the crime. In May, 1865, Governor Charles Clarke called an extraordinary ses- sion of the Legislature to meet in Jackson, and the same month was arrested by General Osband, of the United States Army, and was sent to Fort Pulaski and there imprisoned, for the reason only that he had served the Confederacy and happened to be Governor at the close of the war of a State whose interests had been identified with that government. Judge Wharton, in describing his arrest, says: "The old soldier, when informed of the purpose of the officer, straightened his mangled limbs as best he could and with great diffi- culty mounted his crutches, and with a look of defiance said: ‘General 252 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Osband, I denounce before high heaven and the civilized world this unparalleled act of tyranny and usurpation. I am the duly and constitutionally elected Governor of the State of Mississippi, and would resist, if in my power, to the last extremity the enforcement of your orders. I only yield obedience, as I have no power to resist.’ ” A more glaring piece of tyranny and deviltry could not be thought of at this time than the infamous act of the officer who thus assailed a shattered veteran and legally elected Governor of a State, whose life was so nearly spent and whose beautiful character was con- spicuous in the history of his country. A man Worn With age and mangled beyond ability to walk without crutches, thus forced from his high position and carried under a military guard and impris- oned in a felon’s cell at Fort Pulaski, beyond the borders of his own State. After the ejection of Governor Clarke the executive office was for the time being occupied by General Osterhaus. Subsequent to the preformance of this disgraceful act the Presi- dent of the Uuited States, Andrew Johnson, who had been inaugu- rated after the assassination of President Lincoln, appointed William L. Sharkey Provisional Governor. When he thus became the head of the executive department he called what has been termed “the Abortive Reconstruction Convention,” August 14, 1865, which de- clared the ordinance of secession “null and void,” and recognized the abolition of slavery in Mississippi. It also called a State elec- tion at which General Humphreys was chosen. But the military assumed the role of superior authority, and under it all persons were required to appear at the courthouse and record their oath of alle- giance before they were allowed to pursue their regular avocations or transact any legal business. State sovereignty and individual liberty were wiped out. In Pike County Robert H. Felder had suc- ceeded Louis C. Bickham as sheriff under Governor Clarke’s admin- istration. He held over until after the appointment of Governor Sharkey, when he was deposed by order of the military because he could not take the iron-clad oath. His brother, Levi D. Felder, was appointed and Robert filled out the term as his deputy. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 253 Hon. Dunbar Rowland, in the Mississipi Official and Statistical Register of 1904, page 589, has the following to say of the Black and Tan convention in 1868, called during General Humphrey’s administration in pursuance of the Congressional plan of recon- struction, which had been adopted when "General Ord, who had just completed revising the electorate of the State,” called an election to determine whether there should be a Constitutional Convention. Of course the proposal was carried: “Both the tragic and comic masks are needed to do justice to that notorious convention. It was a motley group, with a slender conservative membership, but composed chiefly of negroes and “carpet-baggers,” both equally ripe for plunder. Ignorance and corruption combined, and there was such another revel as the “ Broecken ” could never match, This august body met in the Hall of Representatives on January 7, 1868. “Buzzard” Eggleston of Lowndes County, whose name bears witness to a certain unclean rapacity, was elected President. The compensation of members was the first question raised. A committee was appointed to report a schedule dis- posing of that important matter. Its report was most liberal in tone. Long and interesting were the debates, but it was finally decided that the president should receive $20 per diem and the members $10, exclusive of mileage. The official reporter and secretary were given $15 per day each, and a number of other superfluous officers were provided for at the rate of $10 per day. The hour had come and the harvest was ripe for the loyal Republican contingent. Protest against extravagance on the part of the few Democratic members was fruitless. One offered a resolution declaring the convention illegal, and the members not entitled to compensation. There was a long uproar and loud cries for his expulsion. Another suggested that after the expiration of twenty days each member should pay his own expenses. His language was denounced as “insulting” and he was requested to withdraw.- A new spasm of indignation came when the superintendent of the city gas works sent the convention word that he would have to be paid in advance for all the gas used, as he doubted the solvency of the State and the convention. A reso- lution was passed declaring that no night sessions would be held. The con- vention triumphed only to be met by a new annoyance. It was observed that the newspaper reporters did not prefix “Mr.” to the names of the negro delegates. The reporters were promptly excluded from the sessions after that.” “The important offices of the State were held by white Democrats. This called for reform. A resolution was offered appointing a committee of seven to memorialize Congress to declare all civil offices vacant and to vest the appointment in the convention, Heroic efforts were made to exploit the treasury under the guise of appropriations for the relief of indigent and suf- 254 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI fering freedmen. The scheme failed because General Gillem, Military Com- mander, refused to sanction the appropriation.” ‘‘After a session of a month it occurred to several members that they were sitting for the purpose of framing a Constitution. They hastened to repair the oversight. A committee was appointed to prepare a draft and report in three days. Prompt at the time the report was made the franchise pro- visions, depriving a large section of the intelligence of the State of the right to vote, attracted main attention. They were debated [long and bitterly, the few conservative members making a last vain stand . Fights were of frequent occurrence and feeling ran high. Finally the obnoxious provisions were adopted. The democratic members indignantly resigned and went home. Provisions were made for submitting the Constitution for ratification, and the convention adjourned on May 18th. It is a matter of history how it was rejected and adopted in 1869 without the franchise qualification. The con- vention had cost the impoverished State about a quarter of a million of dollars.” In June, 1868, General Adelbert Ames was appointed military Governor, who sent a body of soldiers under Colonel Biddle and ejected Governor Humphreys, taking military possession of the executive department himself, under instructions from General McDowell, military commander of the district. The reader may be curious to know why this was done when the State had been moving along smoothly for some time under Governor Humphreys. The Constitution adopted by the Black and Tan con- vention was rejected in June following its adjournment. This was followed by the immediate appointment of a set of interlopers, more commonly known as “carpetbaggers,” from Northern States, as officers to fatten on the spoils of war. After Ames took forcible possession of the executive office he ap- pointed Peres Bonney, an old citizen of Pike, Clerk of the Probate Court, ousting William M. Conerly, who had been legally elected. Bonney was a Republican and had been a member of the Black and Tan convention. Levi D. Felder was ejected and superseded by the appointment of Charles B. Young as sheriff, a stranger to the people and an ex- Union officer, who, it was said, had commanded a negro regiment in the war against the South. Young was a Canadian Irishman, and Was sent to Pike County by Ames to act as sheriff without bond. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 255 His coming, under the circumstances, revived and stirred up the ani- mosities of the people. His course in office, favoring negroes over whites and using them in the arrest of white people, intensified their animosity to a high degree. To be placed under the domination of negroes and held there by the powerful hand of the military was revolting, to say the least of it. A man named Joseph W. Head, charged with the killing of Abra- ham Hiller, of Magnolia, was arrested by Young, assisted by negroes. Head was handcuffed by them and taken to prison. He had friends who sought revenge, as well as his release. After this Young mys- teriously disappeared and was never seen nor heard of afterwards. Various theories have been offered as to the manner of his taking off. The writer has traced all of them. The body of Charles B. Young never left Pike County. He was overhauled on the road leading from Holmesville to Magnolia and shot to death by men in sympathy with Head and with those he was sent to Pike County to oppress, and his body buried in a hole dug for that purpose in the southwest comer of Hardscrabble plantation, two miles south of Holmesville, and his grave can be located where mentioned. It was discovered by the Board of Supervisors after Young’s disappearance that he was defaulter in about twelve thousand dol- lars in warrants and money, about one thousand dollars in tax money. This was substantiated by inquiries being made by parties living in Can- ton, Miss., as to the value of these warrants on the market. Noth- ing was ever done toward their collection from the county, as the holders were advised that they had better not undertake it. On one occasion, while making a speech, Governor Ames was asked by a man in the audience what about his sheriff Young in Pike County? His reply was: “I have information that the bones of Chas. B. Young are now bleaching in the Bogue Chitto Valley.” The information obtained by the writer leads him to the conclusion that the usurping Governor was correct. It Was a lesson to be duly heeded by him, as well as his successors. He saw the danger which threatened the commonwealth in his hands if he attempted to repeat the appointment of men not living in the county and not identified 256 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI with its people, and it Was a proof of the extremity to which men were driven to rid themselves of their oppressors and to counteract the desperate measures of the military authorities to overturn white supremacy and blot out Anglo-Saxon blood in the South. James L. Alcorn being inaugurated Governor March io, 1870, he reversed the policy of Ames. Governor Alcorn knew the temper of Mississippians, and his plan was to make appointments from the best who could meet the requirements under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress. He appointed Ansel H. Prewett, of Magnolia, as Young’s successor, which gave general satisfaction. This good man, while in the discharge of his official duties, con- veying the prisoner Head to Vicksburg for safe keeping, until his trial could be had, was assassinated on the cars at Bogue Chitto Station, and his son, Elisha Prewett, and his deputy, W. L. Coney, wounded by Head’s friends and rescuers, who held up the train for that purpose and all made their escape. It was said that they were formerly members of the noted Quantrell partisan rangers that operated in Missouri and the Trans-Mississippi. At this critical period there was a man come to the front who exerted himself and wielded an influence to save Pike County from the scenes of blood that threatened it. Wherever Ames’ policy was attempted to be carried out these chaotic conditions were multiplied. Negroes unaccustomed to being petted and given the hand of fel- lowship in equality with the white man, as they now were by the carpetbaggers and camp followers seeking their votes and their admiration, were growing insolent to those who had previously been their masters. This was a fatal step made by the powers at Wash- ington. Had they left the negroes to be controlled by their late masters and gradually become acquainted with their new conditions the troubles would not have been so great. The efforts of their lib- erators to install them in the main offices of the government and to ecome the law making and law executing power Was a thing too preposterous to be considered by the intelligence of the South. It was purely a fool’s errand when the Government of the United States undertook such a task. Benjamin Lampton Of Tylertown Appointed Sheriff of Pike County by Governor Alcorn to succeed Ansel H. Prewett 258 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI W. H. Roane, a Presbyterian minister Who resided in Magnolia, was elected to the Legislature in 1870, while Alcorn Was Governor, and clung to the policy of Alcorn in appointing to office none but native or adopted white citizens whose interests were identified with the people. With this policy carried out there would be less danger of a con- flict between the races, which Was daily threatening the entire com- monwealth. Roane succeeded in having Benjamin Lampton ap- pointed to succeed the lamented Prewett, and he appointed Peres Bonney Probate Clerk and Frederick W. Collins Circuit Clerk. In 1871 an election was held. Wm. M. Conerly, Dem., was elected Probate Clerk and Fred. W. Collins, Rep., was elected Circuit Clerk, both serving until the fall election in 1875, when Conerly succeeded himself and Collins was succeeded by the election of Dr. A. P. Spark- man, who has held the office consecutively ever since. Benjamin Lampton was succeeded in 1871 by the election of John Q. Travis, Rep., beating Robert H. Felder, Dem. W. M. Conerly held the office of Probate Clerk until the fall elec- tion of 1879, when he was succeeded by the election of W. C. Vaught. From the close of Ames’ military administration, March, 1870, the expenditures of the State government were as follows: In 1869, white rule In 1870, negro rule In 1871, negro rule In 1872, negro rule In 1873, negro rule In 1874, negro rule In 1875, negro rule In 1876, white rule $ 463, 219 71 1, 061, 249 90 1, 729, 046 34 1, 596, 828 64 1, 45°; 632 80 x, 319, 281 60 1, 430, 102 00 591, 709 00 Here is a proof of the systematic robberies carried on by the powers of darkness and light mixed, and a proof of the utter inca- pacity of those forced upon the people to govern them, and the white people, not the negroes, had to meet these heavy expenditures. The Reconstruction Act was a measure which disclosed all the venom that could be incorporated into a law, and with it came an army HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 259 of adventurers in search of the spoils which they expected to obtain by the confiscation of property and by ingratiating themselves in the love and affections of the nation’s wards. Adelbert Ames was the man to do their bidding, and when it became necessary to make appointments he favored those who were not of the manor bom and gave to the newly enfranchised negro the same honors bestowed on the white carpetbaggers. Troops were quartered in different parts of the State to suit the necessities of the case upon the least complaint made by those in authority. A large body were kept at the State capital as a forcible reminder, and it was sometimes the case they were sent to places of public Worship to overawe the people when ministers were dragged from the pulpit for declining to offer up prayers for the rulers and daring to protest against the wrongs per- petrated on the people. As an illustration of the character of stories invented by the carpet- baggers to bring troops to places desired, the Writer reproduces an article credited to the Meridian Gazette, printed in the Magnolia Herald: “TERRIBLE VANDALISM IN JEFFERSON AND CLAIBORNE. ALCORN UNIVERSITY DESTROYED HORRIBLE DESTRUCTION OF HU- MAN life!” “A body of White League Ku Klux from Louisiana, five hundred strong, well mounted and equipped with Winchester rifles and navy sixies, crossed the Mississippi River at Rodney, spreading terror and dismay to the peaceful inhabitants of that village. They moved upon Alcorn University, arriving there about daylight, where they are now bivouacked. Here have been enacted scenes at which humanity and civilization shudder. “We are carried back to the days of cannibalism. This body of lawless invaders is under the command of Colonel Blood, a notorious desperado who has hitherto operated chiefly in Texas and Arkansas. As soon as they had tethered their horses and spread their tents in the beautiful groves of Oakvale, a detail of thirty men were sent into the chapel of the university, where all the pupils and professors were at prayers. Without a word they shot down the professors and pupils, and carried the little fat ones screaming to the camp. They alleged, amid coarse jokes and brutal laughter, that the old bucks were too tough for broiling purposes. They wanted tender steaks. When they reached the camp, these innocent youths were slaughtered and cut up into steaks and roasts, barbecued and eaten by the vandal host. 260 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI “Alas, that I should live to see a State in the American union relapse into cannibalism! I wish I had died before my eyes were blistered with such a sight, my ears pierced with such screams, my soul sickened with such horror! Alcorn University is no more! It has been eaten up by white cannibals. “Not content with this terrible feast — this orgy of the demons — the same band are now scouring Jefferson and Claiborne Counties with blighting effect. All the tender little negro children are carried to the pot. They live only on human flesh and they are men of enormous appetites. An infant weighing twenty-five pounds will furnish food for one day for only four of these terrible gormandizers, and they all fastidiously refuse to eat tough meat. They shoot the men and drive the women in droves into the river, where, of course they are drowned. The colored population in this fertile but fated region has almost disappeared. This terrible band have killed six thousand men, drowned four thousand eight hundred and sixty women and eaten one thousand six hundred and seventy-five healthy children within the last five days. “It is believed they have virtually cleaned out the illstarred Counties of Jefferson and Claiborne. Where they will now go, God only knows. “It is believed in Jackson, in official circles, that the whole purpose of this Louisiana invasion was to intimidate the negro by a little so-called wholesome killing and eating and drowning, in order to enable the Democrats to carry the election. The facts have been presented to Governor Ames, and I understand the Governor will promptly despatch to the Attorney General of the United States and ask for troops. It is to be hoped he will succeed in getting the whole army of the United States in Mississippi, for all good citizens must deprecate such lawless and inhuman outrage as I have described. “I send you this without signing my name, or indicating the place from which I write. Such is the reign of terror in this unfortunate section that my life would not be worth a button if it was known that I had given you these awful facts. “P. S. — Since writing the above, I have visited the Southern portion of the State and find the same affairs existing there. In Wilkinson, Amite, Pike and Marion it seems as if the whole Ku Klux population of Northeast Louisiana, commonly known as the Florida parishes, had concentrated in these counties and are holding one grand barbecue of negroes. Such fearful and barbarous destruction of human life practiced there — it would seem past mortal descrip- tion. At Rose Hill, in Amite County, they roasted seventy-five at one time and about two hundred of those Louisiana cannibals feasted on them; and out at a little place called Tylertown, in Pike County, where there are two water- mills, I am told they have been keeping about three hundred large sugar kettles stewing with negro hash, and then can scarcely supply the demand; and they tell me that the citizens in these localities have been thinking, for some time, of making application for troops. The fact is there is not a negro or white radical in this whole section of country that will dare to go to the polls unless the troops come, for Tylertown has always been noted for such remarkable events!” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 261 The reader will understand that the above is a burlesque, but it is a fair sample of the reports circulated and presented to the au- thorities in order to induce the dispatch of troops to desirable points where there was any chance for the Democrats to carry the election, and there were thouasnds of people who actually believed the cir- cumstances set forth in the above letter to be true, and it was a most excellent incentive to the military authorities to comply with the request. It may be safely said that truth is turned into burlesque by the ingenious framing of the Gazette article. There was no fiction about the organization of the Ku Klux Klan, and the White League, nor in the determination of the white people of Mississippi and Louisiana to overthrow the regime of scandal that was besmirching the names of these great States. Side by side as sisters they had risen to a high fame and the destiny which awaited one must fall to the other. Their people were united by all the ties that could bind them to each other. It was a law of self-preserva- tion that prompted them to act in harmony. If the reader could see the inner chambers of the demon-like con- claves that secretly met in the night times everywhere When it was supposed all white people Were asleep, they would be astounded. And with each of these secret negro carpetbag meetings held in some out of the way house, if you could look under you would see the figure of the Night Hawk of the Ku Klux Klan on duty, with his revolver in his hand, listening to the schemes concocted within. Nine out of ten of all the troubles that sprung up between the whites and the negroes were instigated at some of these secret meetings by the carpetbag politicians, inciting the negroes to acts that would bring trouble with the whites in order to have an excuse to apply for and bring troops into the county or precincts where elections were to be held. The negroes were in a state of transition. When it was seen that they could be made to answer, as instruments to carry out the pur- poses of carpetbag freebooters, the plan was concocted and the negroes were made to bear the consequences to follow. The negroes were 262 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI not to blame for these things, because they Were led and controlled by white men who cared nothing for their Welfare. In Pike County the conditions were greatly ameliorated by the strong influence wielded over them by one man. Without this man there is no telling what may have been the fate of the negro in the county. His own people were as much concerned as the mass of citizens in the county in the careful control of the negro population under the new conditions. Many of his connections had been slave owners, and he belonged to a class of high respectability. He was too young to become a soldier in the war, but in his boyhood and young manhood he learned the lessons which should guide him for the right and he stood high in the estimation and friendship of Con- federate soldiers who had safely passed through the war, as well as with all others who knew him. On a little stream in the southeast portion of the county, where nature has given the sweetest hopes and the greatest joys to those who were ushered into life, a child was bom whose ancestry Was of a high class of Scotch people. In the morning of his life he imbibed from a Christian mother all the attributes of a pure and upright character. When the war closed he had not entered his majority, and when it became necessary to fit himself for higher duties he had to do so by his own exertions, as his father was unable to help him. The name of Frederick W. Collins will go down to posterity as the one who saved his native county from the terrors of a race war. He had more influence over them than all the other Republicans in the county combined, and if he had not been firm with them and held them within his own grasp the doom of the negroes, wrought up by the influences of others, would have been sealed for the time in Pike County, and the day that W. H. Roane had him appointed Clerk of the Circuit Court, that day marked the salvation of the negroes in the county. If he had not thus been put forward it is likely no one else would have come to supply his place in the ranks of the Republican party, the bulk of which had no other influence over the negro than to incite him to wrong and to further their polit- ical schemes. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 263 Fred Collins told them in their conventions that they knew not what they did, that they Were “treading on coals of fire, Which, if kindled to a blaze, would be the death knell of themselves and Would sweep the negroes of Pike County from the face of the earth.” He knew the temper of his Confederate soldier friends. On one occasion when the feelings of the people were wrought up to an explosive point, one of the most dangerous and determined negroes was burning to begin a race war and was Working his plans for that purpose, instigated by designing members of the radical party. Collins, being informed of it, immediately put a stop to it and informed his associates that such a thing should not be permitted to have encouragement. Another effort was made when the negroes attempted to dispossess the whites of their lands through the instru- mentality of a set of scoundrels who came into the county under the pretense of locating the forty acres each of them was promised by the leaders of the Black and Tan government. This was an aggrava- ting measure to stir up strife in order to compromise the white people and drive them to acts of desperation. In this instance, as in others, the advice of Mr. Collins prevailed and trouble was happily averted. Collins was a consistent conservative Republican, having at heart the best interests of the commonwealth, and as such he was in touch with the best people of the county; at the same time, by the force of his logic and influence, the negroes recognized him as their best friend and safest advisor, and he thus stood as a breakwater against race conflicts. The fact should also be recorded that no love existed be- tween Fred Collins and the carpetbaggers. FRED W. COLLINS. Fred Collins was bom on Magees Creek, or rather on Collins Creek, near its junction with the former stream in the southeastern portion of Pike County, on the 14th of September, 1846. His father was Chauncey Collins, of Scotch ancestry, a native of Salisbury, Connecticut, and came to Mississippi in 1842. His mother was Amelia Woodruff, who was a daughter of Elias Woodruff, a native of New Jersey, and Ailsey Collins, of Columbia, Marion County, Miss. Fred W. Collins received his education in the common schools in the neigh- borhood of Tylertown. He grew up with the boys of his generation on Magees 264 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Creek, a section of Pike County which has sent out into the world some bril- liant self-made men. He was too young to enter into the Civil War. At the age of twenty-three, on the 12th of January, 1870, he was married to Mary Elizabeth Smith, then eighteen years of age, a daughter of William Smith and Angeline Magee. William Smith was of German descent and a son Hon. Frederick W. Collins Summit, Miss. Collector of Port, Gulfport, Miss. From a late photograph. of one of Pike County’s original pioneers. Angeline Magee was a daughter of Sier Magee, who settled on Magees Creek, above the junction of Dry Creek with that stream, in 1811. It was from Sier and his brother Jeremiah that Magees Creek took its name. The Magees came from South Carolina; the Smiths came from Germany; the Collins and Woodruffs came from New England. It was a very important epoch in the history of Pike County that brought Fred Collins to the front as a public man. It was the fiat of a necessity, and it HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 265 was to save Pike County from carpetbagism. The Confederate soldiers were his warm personal friends. Governor Ames tried the experiment of appointing an alien Sheriff, who mysteriously disappeared. W. H. Roune, of Magnolia, member of the State Legislature, in support of Alcorn’s policy of appointing native citizens (under the reconstruction acts) to office, had him appointed Circuit Clerk, to which position he was twice elected, while nearly all the other offices were filled by the election of Democrats. In 1870 he was elected Mayor of Magnolia and served as Deputy Sheriff under J. Q. Travis. He changed his residence to Summit and was elected by the Democrats of that town as its View on F. W. Collins’ Farm, looking toward the Judge Hoover Place, on Bogue Chitto River near Summit Mayor. He held the office of postmaster of Summit for several years under appointment of President Hayes. In 1890 President Harrison appointed him United States Marshal for the Southern District. In 1892 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Minneapolis, and a delegate at large to the St. Louis Convention. He was appointed MarshaLby President McKinley in 1897. The Governor of Mississippi appointed him alternate commissioner to the World’s Fair at Chicago. Fred Collins was a Republican of wise and tactful conservatism, and an essential factor as such in Pike County, and occupies a conspicuous place in its history. There are few, if any, Republicans in the South who have been so warmly supported by Democrats and held office as long as he through their support. He knew how to be a Republican and at the same time merit the support of Democrats. Few men have such a record. 266 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI In June, 1900, he was sent as a delegate at large to the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia, that nominated McKinley and Roosevelt for Pres- ident and Vice-President. In 1904 he again served as a delegate from Mississippi at large in the Repub- lican National Convention at Chicago, and supported Roosevelt and Fairbanks for President and Vice-President. He was also elected Chairman of the Repub- lican State Committee, and assisted in managing the national campaign. When Mr. Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency upon the death of Presi- dent McKinley, he appointed Mr. Collins Register of the Land Office at Jackson, Miss. At the end of his four years’ term, Mr. Roosevelt appointed him to the office of Collector of Customs for the District of Pearl River, in Mississippi, with headquarters at Gulfport. Some of Mr. Collins’ strongest political opponents have been his truest and sincerest personal friends. He has risen from circumstances in his career that called for peculiar merit and good ability. The Clinton and Woodville riots, and the flame that burst out in Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta, and other places leaped over the borders. The White League Ku Klux, as they Were then termed, of Louisiana and Mississippi, were aglow with warmth and burning for action, and when it Was seen that they Would not submit to the efforts being made to Africanize their country, troops Were stationed in every available locality to overawe them. In the county of Amite a deputy United States Revenue Collector had his headquarters and made it a special part of his duties to dodge about from place to place in order to create the impression that his life was in peril. He succeeded in having a detachment of cavalry sent to McComb City for the purpose of using them to intimidate the White Leaguers. These soldiers scoured the county for the purpose of arresting men who were under the ban of Ku Klux suspicion in forming associa- toins to resist the government’s policy. A negro who had been a slave of the Sartin neighborhood, in the eastern portion of the county, assaulted his former master’s young daughter while on her way to school and then cut her throat and left her for dead. This brutal assault on an innocent and helpless child he had known from infancy, belonging to one of the first families of Pike County and descending from one of the first pioneers who came from the old historic State of Georgia and settled here, was an outrage which even HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 267 to think of was revolting, much less the actual fact of the crime. In all the long years of slavery in Pike County no such a crime had been committed on a white girl by a negro, and when the news spread over the county among the people a body of determined men were ready to begin the work of extermination. It was a conclusion based upon this fact that led them to begin at once to rid them- selves of a curse that was about to become their heritage. Know- ing what would be the consequences to follow, the officers of the county promptly apprehended the negro and incarcerated him in a safe place until his trial could be had, which resulted in a verdict of assault and battery with intent to kill, and he was sentenced to the penitentiary for twenty years. The unfortunate girl recovered, but with the loss of speech for several years. From the very begin- ning of the outrages which cursed the South after the close of the Civil War, there was none perhaps which failed to meet its reward, but the public mind in Pike County has never been free from the stain it felt was left by not executing this negro at once. Here the Writer desires the indulgence of the reader for the pur- pose of referring to circumstances occurring in the sister State of Louisiana, which was felt by the people of Mississippi as concerning themselves. A negro in Union Parish of that State was burned at the stake with the assistance of men of his own race, for a similar crime. He had been the outrager and murderer of a most estimable white lady and was caught, and after proof and confesson he was tied to a stake at the spot of his crime where his victim was found, and made to suffer death by cremation in the presence of over two hundred men. This lady, Mrs. Kidd, was the wife of one of the best young men in Union Parish and the mother of two beautiful children. Dragged from her horse while on the road to visit a sick neighbor in the after- noon, she was not seen again until found several days later chained to a tree, where she had been kept, and her brains knocked out. There was another which occurred about the same time and which may be classed as the crowning of all outrages yet known in the annals of crime in this country. 268 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI In the Parish of Grant there lived a most estimable widow lady, Mrs. Lecour, who was the mother of a beautiful daughter seventeen years of age. They were relatives of one of the foremost families in the State of Louisiana and descendants of a high class of early Spanish and French settlers. Here in the midst of the presence of a body of United States troops under a Federal officer who bore the name of Colo- nel Decline, this young widow lady, with her daughter, were dragged from their home in the dead hour of night by nine desperate and brutal negroes and carried away into the adjacent swamp and there made to suffer the horrors of assault the whole night through, from which both died in a short while after being found by their friends. When application was made to the officer in command of the troops at Colfax for assistance to arrest and punish the perpetrators of this revolting crime, he "declined,” saying that he had come there for a “higher purpose.” (?) What action does the mind suggest to the reader when such out- rages, so revolting in their nature, perpetrated in the very presence of United States troops, who were supposed to be there to protect the weak and defenseless and to keep the peace of the community? When Colonel Decline, the commanding officer of these troops stationed at Colfax, refused the application for assistance to capture these criminals he was told that they would be caught and executed under his nose, if the State of Louisiana had to rise in solid mass and drive a devil like him from its borders to accomplish that end. The news spread throughout the adjacent country with almost lightning rapidity. All through Rapids, Grant, Sabine and Natchi- toches the news passed from house to house. The organization that had been ushered into being and brought with it the flame that arose among the Scottish hills in the past came to the rescue to place the stamp of its order. Where was Decline’s power then? Ask the little negro mulattoes rocked in the cradles of carpetbag concubinage in Grant Parish. In the face of him and his troops and the "higher purpose” of his mission, these demons of his household were captured and made to suffer the penalty of their crime "under his nose.” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 269 And while these terrible crimes were being perpetrated on our white women by negroes upheld by Yankee troops, all the sympathy of Northern radical newspapers was given to the negro criminals and our white people assailed as barbarians for vindicating the Wrongs, and the merciless power of the military invoked to punish them. Columbus Nash, the gallant young sheriff of Grant Parish, with his heroic posse cometatis of young men of Grant and Rapides, was hunted as an outlaw for trying to preserve order and protect the helpless. When we go over the past and reflect We may wonder that there ever lived a people on earth who could be so controlled as not to rush into measures which might result into a sweeping destruction by again coming in conflict with the United States forces. This was one of the great characteristics of the Ku Klux Ivlan that stood forth to protect the weak and the helpless and to punish crime. They were men who had been trained in war, recruited by youths of their own blood, and they were men who could control their own acts so as to avoid a conflict with the United States forces, yet they feared them not. In all the cases where the negroes were concerned in these crimes they were or had been under the influence, openly and through secret channels, of carpetbaggers from the Northern States, who instilled in their minds that they were the special Wards of the Government — the "children of Israel,” led out of bondage by their Moses sent from God, cruelly assassinated in Washington, and by their Joshua who crushed the Philistines at Appomattox ; that they were the masters now and could act with freedom as they regarded it. The great riots of Grant Parish, where several hundred negroes were slain, and Coushatta, in Red River Parish, which resulted in the execution of the carpetbag leaders of that section, were the off- springs of Northern adventurers. Referring back to the events connected with the negro govern- ment of Mississsippi the writer must be excused for indulging at length on these occurrences. They Were the measures adopted by the carpetbaggers who came South to possess themselves of the wealth they thought existed among the white people, and they were 270 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI men who believed the government would confiscate all the property of those engaged in the war on the Southern side and divide it out among those who had been instrumental in the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy ; a concerted movement of rapine and plunder. This class of men put in their claims as deserving the rewards of the conqueror, and they were not scrupulous about how they obtained what they wanted. It mattered not to them if all the white people of the South were swept from the face of the earth, and they were men to do their dirty work through the ignorant negro. The Southern armies had been overcome, and, returning to their homes, the Confederate soldiers cherished the hope of being able to retrieve their lost possessions, but within their hearts there was a spark of manhood left and it never became dimmed by anything that was offered by their enemies. The year following their capitulation Was a time of deep distress among those dependent on them for the absolute necessities of life. They bore the indignities of the mili- tary rulers with a patience worthy of a race of freemen, but they never yielded a thought which they believed to be for their future welfare, and when the trying ordeal again came the reward of a faithful adherence to those principles which gave to them renewed hope and energy Were realized. A people that can be driven to the verge of desperation and then recover their lost liberties by the power of mind over matter are a people to stand the cests of any disaster. In the years that follow these events there will come to the surface conditions which will disclose all the virtues of a noble race. In the future there must rise a spirit which will animate them to the point of war or peace at all hazards, and in the conflict which shall be waged against the South’s heroic warriors will come the requiem of a dead dynasty buried in its own polluted garments, which shall live in tradition and in history and story as the shame of the American Continent. For a more unholy piece of stupidity and oppression never cursed a people than the rule of the carpetbaggers and ignorant negroes, supported, de- fended and sustained by the military power of the Government of HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 271 the United Northern States against the white people of Mississippi and Louisiana during this period. It is well that the people of the South should persist in preserv- ing the truths of history and keep before the civilized World the cruel enormities practiced upon them which their adversaries have endeav- ored to falsify and conceal from the rising generations, not only at the North, but in the South, and to force into the school books for the education of our children absolute falsehoods relating to events connected with the Civil War and the reconstruction era. Under the fluttering folds of the vaunted star-spangled banner, held aloft as the emblem of freedom and hope and happiness for the oppressed of all nations, the very people whose genius made it famous in what it represented, upholding it in times of peril, were made to suffer the most damnable coercion, subjugation and despotism, and to cover up their crimes against the South, blot out the records or mutilate history with glaring falsehood, while their poets feebly sing and their orators swell in recounting the “immortal deeds” of their invading armies whose vandalism was never equaled; fighting for freedom, as the Hessians of England fought for it against us in the revolution of 1776, and in depopulating Nova Scotia of the un- fortunate Acadians, scattering them along the bleak and wild gulf coast, as they fought for it in the subjugation of Ireland, and as the Spaniards fought for freedom in Cuba and elsewhere. Hundreds of books have been Written and published by Northern men on events of the Civil War who have wilfully falsified the number of men en- listed and used in the subjugation of the South. The writer listened with amusement to an educated young man from the State of Mich- igan regaling a crowd of boarders on one occasion in the city of Wagoner, Indian Territory, on the history of the battle of Gettys- burg, stating that there were forty thousand men killed on both sides in the battle, besides enumerating other wonderful things. Upon being asked where he learned that history he answered, “from an English Cyclopedia.” His story was that Lee had 125,000 men engaged in the battle and Meade only 75,000, or thereabouts. He admitted he had never seen the “Rebellion Record,” published 272 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI by the Government. He asserted that the South had two million of men and the North had one million of men during the War. When I told him I happened to be present and “performed a part in that little skirmish” and corrected him with the official figures, more than he were struck with amazement. That if he Would take off fifty thousand from Lee’s forces and add them to Meade’s he would come nearer to the truth of history; that the forty thousand included killed, wounded and prisoners captured on both sides. It is well for the South to keep in mind the difference in the num- ber of forces engaged, and for the benefit of those in whose hands this book may come in future years, I insert the following: The South enlisted, all told, 600,000 men, which included those on post duty, hospital service and the men engaged in government service not actually on the field. From an article Written by Gen. Stephen D Lee the following figures are gleaned: “The North enlisted 2,864,272 men (not including three and six months’ volunteers), giving them 2,264,272 men more than the South had altogether. To this must be added 600 vessels of war manned by 35,000 sailors used in the blockade of Southern ports, harbors and river warfare in support of their army. Against these marvelous odds the Southern armies fought for four years, suc- cessfully beating them back until by the casualties of war they were completely overpowered by the inexhaustible recruiting service of the Northern armies from Europe. There were only 100,000 effective Confederate fighting men for duty in the field when the war ended. The death roll of the Confederate armies numbered 325,000 men. They had contested every foot of ground against their enemies all over our beloved land on nearly two thousand battlefields. “The death roll of the Yankee armies numbered 359,528 men, 275,000 of them buried beneath Southern soil. “When the war closed the enemy had one million (1,000,000) men for duty in the field, or ten men to one Confederate, and a fabulous pension roll. “The number of killed or mortally wounded of the Yankee Army in battle amounted to five per cent and the Confederates ten per cent of the numbers engaged, which is larger than any of the bloodiest wars of Europe, which has not been more than three per cent. “In this great struggle the North owed its success to its continuous stream of recruits from Europe in quest of the |i,ooo bounty and its ability to blockade our ports. If this contest had been narrowed down strictly to the two sections it is very questionable whether the South would ever been overcome; and it is left to the reader to judge if the Yankee armies have any room to boast of this prowess, or honors to claim in their invasion, and as to whether the judg- ment of the world is against them in favor of the South.” HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 273 Bishop Charles B. Galloway, in speaking of this period some years later, said: “The final test of Southern character was not displayed in laying the broad foundations of a new civilization; not in the solemn but tumultuous councils out of which was evolved our great system of govermment; not in the historic halls of State, where Titans struggled for mastery over national principles and policies; not in the splendid valor of her sons in the storm and red rain of ter- rific battle; not in the military genius of her peerless captains, pronounced by critics to be the greatest marshals of modem times; but in their serene fortitude and unyielding heroism and unconquerable spirit, after the storm of battle had ceased and they were left only ‘the scarred and charred remains of fire and tempest.’ Surpassing the splendor of their courage in battle was the grandeur of their fortitude in defeat. The sublime hour in the Southern sol- dier’s life was the time of his pathetic home-coming. I have seen the painting representing the returned Confederate soldier, which, in my judgment, is not true to the facts of history. He stands, in tattered garments, amid the mins of his home, the gate fallen from its hinges, weeds covering the doorsteps, leaning upon his old musket, with a downcast look and broken heart. As a matter of fact, he only waited long enough to greet the faithful wife whom he had not seen for four stormy years, and kiss the dear children who had grown out of his recognition, and then with grim determination put his hand to the stem task of reconstructing his once beautiful home, and rebuilding his shattered fortunes on other and broader foundations. Men of principle never falter, though they fail. They felt the bitterness of defeat, but not the horrors of despair. How those brave men, the sons of affluence, addressed themselves to the grinding conditions of sudden and humiliating poverty can never be described by mortal tongue or pen. And those pitiless years of reconstruction! Worse than the calamities of war were the ‘desolating furies of peace.’ No proud people ever suffered such indignities, or endured such humiliation and degradation. More heartless than the robber bands that infested Germany after the Thirty Years’ War were the hords of plunderers and vultures who fed and fattened upon the disarmed and defenseless South. Their ferocious greed knew no satiety, and their shameless rapacity sought to strip us to the skin. As Judge Jere Black, with characteristic vividness and vigor, has said : ‘Their felonious fingers were made long enough to reach into the pockets of posterity. They coined the industry of future generations into cash and snatched the inheritance from children whose fathers are unborn. A conflagration, sweeping over the State from one end to the other, would have been a visitation of mercy in comparison to the curse of such a government. ’ ’ ’ Such are the honors that go sounding down the ages the Yankee soldiers acquired in their so-called battle for liberty and the flag. 18 274 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI The Bishop further says: “But no brave people ever endured oppression and poverty with such calm dignity and splendid self-restraint. And by dint of their own unconquerable spirit and tireless toil, they saw their beautiful land rise from the ashes into affluence. The South no longer ‘speaks with pathos or sings miserere.’ She has risen from poverty and smiles at defeat. Out of the fire and tempest and baptism of blood, our State has come, undaunted in spirit and unfaltering in the future. It is said that the green grass peacefully waving over the field of Waterloo the summer after the famous battle, suggested to Lord Byron, in his Child Harold, to exclaim: ‘How this red rain has made the harvest grow!’ So every battle plain that was once furrowed with shot and shell and wet with the blood of brothers, now waves with abundant harvest of a new and larger life. The refluent wave has set in. After a long and bitter night the morning dawns. ‘It is daybreak everywhere’.” Following in the same line of thought Chief Justice Albert Hall Whitfield said: “Cold in death our hearts must indeed be when they do not warm to our Tartan — the Confederate grey. What a civilization rushes upon our memory as we gaze upon you! We are with our ancestors of the sunny South of old! We see again that ‘glorious loyalty to rank and sex,’ that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is there! And there, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it miti- gated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. “It was a civilization which developed individualism; it magnified man, it enthroned woman. It imparted to the individual the sense of worth; the honor that preferred death to disgrace; fidelity to every trust; the sacred observance, as a matter of individual conscience, of every obligation, national, State and social, and it exacted of every official, from the highest to the lowest military and civil, that stainless standard of conduct, that lofty conception of public office as a public trust, which made every public servant tremble under the sense of responsibility, like the needle, into place. Cultivated, fired with the noblest patriotism, self-centered, used to power, the people of the South gave the United States, by this matchless statesmanship, a government strong in its justice at home, great in its dignity abroad, loved as the asylum of the oppressed of all lands, attracting at once the reverence and the affection of universal humanity. Such was the South in i860. Illimitable wealth and boundless content were present everywhere. Her civilization was, in all that HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 275 makes up the real blessings of civilization, the purest and loftiest time has ever yet known. Her people stood apart among the nations of the world. Their bosoms were the home of the most exalted honor. Whatever was mean, or low, or sordid, fled scorned from her borders. Majestic truth, imperial con- science, Olympian power, toned by the very courtesy of the gods, lifted its noble men and its glorious women far, far up, above the levels of all other civilizations. Content, happy, prosperous, moved always to splendid action by the highest ideal, if some god descending from superior worlds, in quest of the race most akin to his own, had swept with his vision the land of the South in i860, he would have claimed us as his offspring, and here made his home. Soldiers of that elder and grander day, time and occasion do not permit refer- ence to your achievements on the field of war. Rather let me hold in relief for the contemplation of your country a record nobler far than all the victories you have won. “Other nations have greeted returning legions, victorious from the field, with triumphal arches, with marble monuments, with cheering thousands, with processions and bonfires; we, whose cause is said to have been lost, can bring alone the treasures of the heart. “The Confederate soldier, when he left the final scene of surrender, passed before no reviewing stand, was greeted by the thunderous acclamation of no thousands and ten thousands of his fellow citizens, met no rejoicing multitudes on the way home, has since been sustained by no pension from the Federal treas- ury in his struggle with penury and want. I see the long, grey line melting back into private citizenship, when the sword of Lee was tendered. “ ‘As some dark thunder cloud lowers upon the horizon, marshals its battal- ions and threatens all the landscape with ruin, yet is found, on the succeeding morning, in pearls of dew on flower and blade and grass, refreshing and beauti- fying God’s earth,’ so the Confederate soldier, after achieving immortal fame, and presenting the most matchless front that ever bore back invasion, became, when peace spread its banner o’er the land, the noblest, the safest, the surest citizenship that' ever rescued civilization from night. “Wearisome, I see him plod his way homeward. Finally, his eye rests upon the homestead, property all gone, in many instances blackened chimneys to testify how truly ‘War is hell,’ not a rose of the wilderness left on its stalk to tell where the garden had been. Does he murmur? Does he repine? Not so, my countrymen. He took up those burdens, he met those difficulties, the prospective statutes, the era of alien mastery and dominion. Repressing all tendency to lawlessness, restraining everything that passed the bounds of rea- son and prudence, curbing all passion in his onward march, he gradually but surely brought back, out of chaos, order “From where Potomac’s waters lave The tomb of Washington To Rio Grande’s distant wave, Beneath the setting sun, the reign of beneficent laws. 276 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI ‘I know that McDonald led no grander charge at Wagram than did Pickett at Gettysburg; and I know that the bodies of dead Mississippians were found higher up that dread slope than those of any other State. I know that the aw- ful shock at Chickamauga’s field is not surpassed, if it is equaled, in the annals of tremendous and deathlike stubbornness of fighting. But, I tell you, my coun- trymen, that the grandest monument that the historian shall record, as rising in perpetuation of the name and fame of the Confederate soldier, is the record that he left through the days of reconstruction, the blessing which he gives us to-day of equal sisterhood in the union of States, with the privileges and laws and rights our fathers left us, intact and undiminished. “But I want to ask, just here, the question: How far would the Confeder- ate soldier have gotten in that magnificent effort if it had not been that he had beside him the inspiration of the Southern woman ? “Women of the South, you gave into his hands the banner of the free — you cheered and upheld him on ‘the perilous edge of battle;’ and when wounded or dying on the tented field, in the private home, in the hospital, you ministered to his wants, bound up his wounds, or closed the dying eyes, no more to see ‘wife or friend or sacred home;’ you were performing the very ministries of the angels themselves. “It is a little thing to give a cup of water, but its draught of cool refresh- ment when drained by the fevered lips may give a shock of pleasure to the frame more exquisite than when nectarian juice renews the life of joy in hap- piest hours. It is a little thing to speak a word of common comfort, which, by daily use, has almost lost its sense, yet, on the ear of him who thought to die unmoumed, ’twill fall like choicest music. “There are those listening to me to-day who have ministered the comfort that should bring back to them the sweetest of memories. And when the war was over and the Confederate soldier returned, he was met not with reproaches, but with love, sustained by confidence, guided, upheld. God has so ordained that man may meet the brunt of some sudden storm, may live through and master some great crisis, but it is woman alone who can wear through the su- preme crisis of individual or national life, by the endurance, the fortitude and the patience which she alone possesses. “And so in the midst of the gloom, the women of the South rose resplendent to the occasion. She remembered that grief sanctified makes great. What, though she stood amid the wreck of desolated and dismantled homes, with the bright relics of princely fortunes strewn ruthlessly about her, the qualities of the eternal granite were integrated into her endurance. What, though her household Penates lay dashed to fragments on the hearthstone, her idols in the eternal silence, and the power of the despot attempted to bury in the grave of the slain the hopes of her country, set its seal upon the grave, rolled the rock upon the sepulchre and placed its watch. Her sublime faith has lived to see the resurrection angel of the South roll back the stone from the sepulchre, destroy the seal, break the fetters of political disability, shatter the bonds of industrial, agricultural and commercial subordination, and raise, radiant from HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 277 the grave of the old, the figure of the new South, to stand in transfigured beauty, fronting the deepening glories of the Twentieth Century, ‘like the winged god breathing from his flight.’ “She remembered that whatever was sublimest in the annals of Christianity looms o’er the ocean of time, like the Northern lights, more resplendent for the surrounding shadow of relentless persecution. She recalled that whatever is most glorious in the achievements of military heroes have been the triumphs of men who were cradled in storms and schooled by adversity. She remem- bered that whatever in literature is truly immortal, unvarying history proves the ripened products of intellects that have towered to the regions of perpetual sunlight, through atmospheres dark with clouds and tempests! And, remem- bering these things, she called her patience to her aid — she summoned her en- durance to the tremendous task; she nerved the returning husband, father, or son, to the herculean task of the years that have just receded from us, and to-day, women of the South, if there be hope in this land it is due to your courage; if there be promise in the future it is the result of your faith; and if, my countrymen and countrywomen, if, I say, in the years that are to come, when we who stand under this evening sky shall sleep the dreamless slumber of the grave, when we shall no more be known amongst men, these Southern States shall fill with fifty millions of happy men and women — if the Isthmian Canal shall be gay with the merchantmen of every nation upon earth — if the Galveston of the future shall remember the Galveston of the tempest but as a nightmare dream; if New Orleans and Mobile and Savannah and Charleston and Wilmington and our own Gulfport and a hundred other marts shall become imperial ‘cities, proud with spires and turrets crowned, in whose broad-armed ports shall ride rich navies laughing at the storm;’ if, above all that, literature, and religion, and art, shall fill this land with temples and lyceums, and galleries glorious with immortal paintings and statuary, and with a knowledge univer- sally diffused — if, I repeat, that glorious day shall come to this land we love, the land of the magnolia and the orange, the land of the mountain and the sea and of the tropic stars; the land of Lee and Jackson and of Davis; if the coming years shall bring these splendors to this clime, it will be due, women of the South, to the deathless fidelity with which you have held fast to the principles of jus- tice and right and truth; immutable and eternal, because of the possession of which God has made the heart of woman, in every age, the last repository of the faith of every creed, and the patriotism of every land. “Meet indeed it is, soldiers of the Confederacy, that your sons have deter- mined to erect, in honor of the transcendent women of the South, whose inspir- ing patriotism made you in war the finest soldiery of time, whose love and sym- pathy and fortitude enabled you, through wreck and ruin, to preserve and perpetuate the liberties of your country, and who for forty years have annually covered the graves of your dead with flowers and tears of fadeless affection, a monument, the noblest in its proportions, the most exquisite in its carvings, the loftiest in its inscriptions, affection has ever reared to make virtue immortal ! Let it rise in the purity of spotless white, against the dark background of our 278 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI national sorrows, high up into the serene heavens! and through the ages to come, when garish day has gone, and with it the harsh clangor of commer- cialism, let the vast silence of the starry midnight steep it in holy, healing quiet! “The Southland mourns her dead to-day And hangs a funeral pall From Old Virginia’s crimson plains To Pickens’ gulf-girt wall. Along her coasts, across her fields, And o’er her meadows fair, She mourns to-day her chieftain dead, In earnest, sadd’ning prayer. The humble and the low, The solemn sounds of heartfelt grief, In fervent prayers now flow.” — Emmet L. Ross. PEABODY PUBLIC SCHOOL, SUMMIT. In 1868 one of the first public schools established in the State of Mississippi Was located in the town of Summit. It was inaugurated under the provisions of the system devised in the will of the great educational philanthropist, George Peabody. Rev. Bamas Sears, General Agent of the Peabody educational fund, visited Summit, and under an agreement for an equal amount of money to be raised by the people as an endowment for the support of an institute of learning, the Peabody School was established and its doors opened at the Episcopal rectory in November, 1868, which was leased for two years until a suitable building could be erected. The Board of School Directors consisted of Wm. H. Garland, James B. Quin, James N. Atkinson, Thomas R. Stockdale and Chas. E. Teunison. Rev. Charles H. Otken, of Amite County, was chosen as Superintendent, with Mrs. Josephine Newton, Mrs. Mary B. Blin- coe, Miss Emma Foumiquet and Miss Hattie Wicker, afterwards wife of Sheriff-Captain William McNulty, as teachers. There were several causes that contributed to the difficulties in the beginning of this institution which were serious obstacles in the way of its Superintendent and teachers, as Well as the authorities and citizen supporters of the town of Summit. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 279 The country had been desolated by the war and there was a cha- otic condition in the system of labor incident to the abolition of slavery. The farms had to be rehabilitated and agricultural indus- tries made to prosper before other business or educational enter- prises could succeed, except under the most trying circumstances. We were in the beginning of the ordeals of reconstruction. The Federal military were stationed in every county. Pike County had a negro military company stationed at its courthouse under an officer whose duties came under the plan of Thaddeus Stephens for the Africanization of the Southern States, which throttled die efforts of the people of Summit to establish the Peabody Public School in the beginning. But the men and women who were interesting them- selves had passed through the crucible that tested their strength and their virtues, having lived through the flames of fire and the swelling streams of blood that characterized the Civil War. After the first two sessions were over a handsome building, costing $5,000, was erected and the attendance rose from 142 in 1868 to 347 in 1871. Among those already mentioned in connection with the insti- tute will be found the names of C. L. Patton, Mrs. Annie Jackson, Miss A. T. Boyd, Miss Annie Flowers, Miss Octavia Johnson, Miss Annie Cunningham, Miss Ellen Hamerton, Miss J. B. Grant, Miss Caroline Augusta Lamkin, Miss G. Leonard, Rev. J. C. Graham, J. B. Winn, J. M. Sharpe. Dr. Otken filled the place of Superintendent for nine years and successfully steered through the most difficult period of its exist- ence. During the nine years of his services as principal the school directors were Wm. H. Garland, Thomas R. Stockdale, Jas. N. Atkin- son, C. E. Tunison, J. L. B. Quin, I. Moise, W. A. Cotton, Wm. Cunningham, Dr. W. W. Moore, Gen. W. F. Cain, Chas. W. Bean, Ben. Hilborne, Rev. Wm. Hoover, Judge Hyram Cassidy, Sr., and after 1872 Col. Wm. Campbell and Mr. W. T. White served as mem- bers of the Board of Directors. 280 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI JUDGE HUGH MURRAY QUIN. Judge Hugh Murray Quin was a son of Peter Quin, Jr., and Martha Cathe- rine Moore. The Quins were from York District, South Carolina. Peter, Jr., married his wife in North Carolina. Her mother was a Miss Murray, whose brother was the author of Murray’s Grammar. They emigrated and settled in Holmesville in 1815, where Hugh Murray Quin was bom on the 22nd of February, 1819, and where he grew up and was educated. In his young manhood he married Delilah Bearden. He settled on a farm purchased from Anthony Perryman, lying in the Bogue Chitto Valley, one mile and a half above Holmesville, where he lived, acquiring considerable property in land, slaves and stock. He was for many years clerk of the court at Holmesville and was admitted to the practice of law. During the Civil War he filled the position of Probate Judge, and after the close of the war, when county courts were established, he occupied the bench as Judge of that court, but was put out by order of the military and superseded by the appointment of Judge T. E. Tate. He afterwards, through the solicitation of the people, moved to the town of Summit, and was elected to the office of Mayor. At the expiration of his term he returned to his plantation near Holmesville, where he remained until his death in 1900. With Delilah Bearden he raised the following children : Dr. Lucius M Quin, who married Courtney Magee; Wallace W. Quin, who married Neelie Williams; Emma Eoline, who married Luke W. Conerly; Lula, who married Charles H. Rowan; George, who married Alla Irvin. Judge Quin was left a widower by the death of his wife in 1867, and subse- quently married Nannie Sumrall, of Copiah County. With her he raised two children — Henry and Ina. After returning to his plantation from Summit in the early seventies, he filled the position of justice of the peace for his district up to the time of his death, about twenty-seven years. He was as well posted in the laws of Mississippi as any man who ever lived in Pike County. He was an excellent probate judge and practitioner in chan- cery. He was the soul of honor, broad minded, liberal to a fault, true in friend- ship, sympathetic, loving and kind, and his home was noted for being the place of unbounded hospitality, where the humblest wayfarer could always find a night’s lodging and the hungry were never turned away from his gate unfed. He was a warm-hearted, devoted husband. He loved his own children ten- derly and those who became members of his family by marriage. He was re- ligious and a devoted member of the Methodist Church, and a Mason of high standing. He was sought far and near for advice, which was freely given, and few men have lived in Pike County whose death was more regretted and whose loss was more keenly felt. He died in the Christian faith, without a blemish upon his name or his character. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 281 THE BURRIS MAGEE TRIAL. One of the most noted criminal trials that occurred in Pike County after the close of the Civil War was that of J. Burris Magee, of Wil- kinson County, charged with the killing of Connover in Summit. Magee had been a conscript officer in the service of the Confederate Government. A difficulty arose between the two men at the depot, Connover using violent language in the abuse of Magee. The latter withdrew from the depot, followed by Connover, who Was armed with a heavy stick. Magee drew his revolver and leveled it at Con- nover, telling him to keep back, at the same time retreating across the street. As Connover advanced Magee fired one shot at his right arm with a view of stopping him, but he continued to advance with his uplifted club. Moving backward Magee stumbled in a ditch and fell, and as Connover with his stick raised over him, in his prostrate condition, Magee fired on him again, and killed him. The grand jury of Pike County indicted Magee for murder, though the prelimi- nary examination disclosed the fact that it was not necessarily so, and he Was given bail. Magee secured the sendees of three of the most noted lawyers in South Mississippi, Judge Simrall of Wilkinson, Judge Hyram Cassidy of Franklin, and John T. Lamkin of Pike. It was as fine a legal team as could have been selected in the State. At the trial the State was represented by H. F. Johnson, Dis- trict Attorney, latterly President of the Whitworth College at Brook- haven, and Rev. W. H. Hartley, a Methodist minister, belonging to the Mississippi Conference, who felt it his duty and volunteered to assist in the prosecution of the case. The trial excited widespread interest. Judge Simrall’ s part of the programme was to dwell upon character, the reputation of the defendant and his people in the past. John T. Lamkin was to proceed on evidence and the testimony of witnesses in the case, and Hyram Cassidy was to close the defense with his inimical witticism, anecdotes and ridicule. The destruction of the court records by fire in Magnolia rendered it impossible to give the names of those concerned in the trial and the writer gives it entirely from memory, being present from first to last. 282 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Judge Simrall’s speech on character, in which he alluded to Judge Magee, the defendant’s father, in Wilkinson County, a Christian gentleman and devoted adherent of the Methodist Church, whose house Was always open for the hospitality of its ministers, was one of the finest ever delivered in the Pike courthouse. John T. Lamkin, in the magnitude of his superior genius on testimony and evidence, eloquence and moral influence, stood for three mortal hours before the jury in defense of a client who had acted solely in self-defense. Judge E. McNair was on the bench. A compact mass of humanity filled and surrounded the courthouse. Judge Cassidy followed “Brother Hartley,” as he spoke of him in the beginning of his address to the jury. All of his witticism, invective, anecdotes and ridicule, condensed and doubly distilled, as only Hyram Cassidy could do it, was hurled at “Brother” Hartley.” He told the jury how the “Brother” had so often received the hos- pitality of Burris Magee’s father, whose beautiful character Judge Simrall had portrayed, said grace at his table and eat the food his beloved and Christian mother had prepared for him, accepted his money and shared in the support he had given his church, and in the plentitude of his gratitude he had come here and volunteered his services in the prosecution of Judge Magee’s son for doing only that which was the first law of nature, self-preservation. Judge Cassidy stated, in closing his address, that out in Franklin County there was a certain cross roads where there was a whisky shop, a blacksmith shop and a race track, to say nothing of other matters that men indulged in where grand jurors were not generally allowed as guests or participants. About a mile west of this place Was a farmer who had some noted breed of pigs, not long ushered into existence. About the same distance east of the cross roads was another farmer who Wanted a pair of those pigs and had spoken for them. He owned an old negro named Ben. At the cross roads grocery the proprietor owned a gip that had recently presented the establishment with a hamper basket full of puppies. So neighbor Jones sent Ben over to neighbor Smith’s with a basket to bring him the pair of pigs he had spoken for. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 283 Ben stopped at the grocery, and in order to get a few dashes of "de side shuffle,” and "de piggin whing,” the boys gave Ben a good jigger of red eye, who, of course, was free to tell them what he was going over to Mr. Smith’s for. Ben went over and got a pair of the pigs from neighbor Smith, put them in his basket and tied a sack over them, but was inately persuaded to stop over at the cross roads for another drink, and while he was doing the dancing act to the old familiar tune of "Hog- eye” the boys made the exchange and put a pair of puppies in Ben’s basket in place of the pigs. When Ben got home he was gladly welcomed by his good master Jones. "Well, Ben, have you got my pigs?” “Yasser, Master, and dey’s fine pigs, too, dat dey is!” Ben opened the basket. "Why, Ben, these are puppies. I told you to bring me a pair of neighbor Smith’s fine pigs.” Ben’s eyes dilated. "Fore God, dey is puppies, fur a fac, but dey wus pigs when I put em in dar.” "Go back and tell Mr. Smith I want pigs, not puppies.” Ben shouldered the basket, but Was again inclined to stop at the grocery. "What’s the matter, Ben?” asked the boys. "Gwine back to Mr. Smith to git dem ar pigs Master sont me fur. When I got home wid em dey Wus puppies.” The boys entertained Ben with another jigger and “old Jim Crow,” while the puppies were exchanged for the pigs, the basket covered again and Ben sent on to farmer Smith. "What’s the matter, Ben, don’t Want the pigs?” "Oh, yasser, Master says he wants de pigs, but dese is puppies.” "Take the cover off, Ben, and let me see,” said Smith. "There, you dam fool nigger, don’t you see they are pigs?” Ben was astonished. "Fore God dey is pigs, but dey wus puppies when I got home wid em.” The same trick was repeated at the cross roads, and when Ben 284 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI got home the second time and opened the basket there were the puppies. Farmer Jones got wrathy and told Ben to take them back. Ben was outwitted, but after a moment’s philosophizing he raised himself up and said, "Master, fo God, if I wus you I wouldn’t hab nutting to do wid dem tings. I fotch em here and deys puppies, I take em back and deys pigs; dey kin be eider pigs or puppies.” And, gentlemen of the jury, said Cassidy, this is the deplorable condition in which we find "Brother” Hartley. He can be either pig or puppy, and has acted both in connection with this trial. A min- ister of God’s word, sharing the kindness and hospitality of this defendant’s home, the tender ministrations of his devoted Christian mother, and then volunteers to prosecute her son and place the hangman’s noose about his neck for doing that which he himself would have done under similar circumstances — to save his own life, take that of his antagonist, if he had a spark of manhood about him. Magee was justly acquitted, but the previous record and noto- riety of Pike County jurors in cases of the killing of a human being by another made it doubtful. There was a splendid animal standing near the public square waiting the verdict, which nothing in Pike County could overtake, in case its rider felt the necessity of fleeing from a cruel and unjust verdict. David W. Hurst, Who was a regular attendant of the Holmesville courts, Was a citizen of Liberty, Amite County, in the zenith of his career as a lawyer. He Was a man of great ability, and while a Warm personal friend of John T. Lamkin he Was usually his opponent in great contests before the courts in Holmesville, and more particu- larly in cases against the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad Company. He Was a persistent and stubborn fighter and full of sarcastic wit. He was a warm personal friend of Judge John E. McNair, but disliked one of the Chancellors (Berris), before whose court he had considerable practice. On one occasion they had a case up in which the rights of a girl minor were involved, and her advocate asked the Chancellor if she were entitled to a sewing ma- chine. The Chancellor hesitated and stammered sew — -sew — ma- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 285 chine — machine — and asked one of the other lawyers if she did and he could tell. Hurst spoke up and said yes, of course she has, and then he casually remarked that the Chancellor was all right now, as he had something with peddles he could work with his feet, and didn’t need any brains. On one occasion he was examining a negro witness about a fight and asked what the man hit the other one with. "With his fist,” said the witness. Then what did the man he hit with his fist do? “Why, he retreated backward,” Was the answer. Hurst, in commenting on the testimony of the witness, said he had often heard of retreats, but this was the first time he had ever heard of a retreat being made backwards. After the close of the Civil War, Joe Tuff Martin engaged in the mercantile business in Magnolia in partnership with Capt. Jo. Miller. Joe Tuff got into a scrap with Gen. William Cain. The General was too big a man for him and got him down and Joe fought and bit and scratched all he could and the best he knew how, until some of their friends pulled the big General off of little Joe Tuff. When Joe Tuff got up he said, “Well, by golly, I can say what no other man is able to say, and that is I am the only man who ever fought under General Cain, a distinction, by golly, that belongs only to Joe Tuff.” A negro named Martin Russell, who had served in the Yankee army, settled in Magnolia. He was a man of fairly good education and knew how to cultivate the friendship of the white people in order to further the interests of Martin Russell. He lived there during the exciting political campaign of 1876, and Was used by the Democrats in the organization and leadership of negro Democratic clubs. Martin thought he could see that the future feathering of his nest depended largely on that of a brush pile, and to be set up in business, which he was after the campaign was over, but eventually failed and had to fall back on his book learning for a livelihood and engaged in school teaching for his race. His school grew so large that it became neces- sary for him to have an assistant. He was a good judge of human nature and Was urged to go before the Board and plead his case for 286 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI an assistant teacher, and he did so, making a forcible and polite address before that body, which it was decided by hearers would be effective and secure what he asked. When he came out of the courthouse he was complimented on his sensible and forcible address by some of his white friends, who believed his speech was convincing and that he would get what he asked. “I don’t know, gentlemen,” said he, “this Board aint got on any drawers,” and he failed, as he expected. Prior to 1861 Holmesville Was a great place for horse racing. On one occasion a man came riding down Main Street from Louisiana leading a little long-haired, flop-eared Creole pony. The California House, which was then in its prime, had its complement of loafers and customers. Passing this place some one asked the stranger what he was going to do with that long-haired goat. “Never mind about the goat, it can win all the money any of you may have to risk on a race.” The stranger put up his horses at Wm. Johnson’s livery stable and stopped at his hotel, and then sauntered leisurely out on the streets and about the California House and got up some talk on horse racing. He boldly remarked, while in a drinking mood, that he would put up his “goat” pony against anything in the town on a quarter dash, Wheel and go, Without bridle or rider, and the boys took him up. Saturday Was the day fixed for the race. Eugene Weathersby had recently bought a large, long, active Tennessee horse from a drove, and the Holmesville sports decided to put this horse against the pony on the day of the race. The news got out in the country and the town was crowded. There was an old field below town and a level stretch from Owen Conerly’s mill on the river below, and this was the place selected to make the run. At the appointed hour Weathersby’s horse was trotted out with one of the best jockey riders on his back. A little boy came after- wards leading the sleepy looking pony with a halter on and a red girth around its body. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 287 Two to one on the horse, and bets went flying through the crowd that came in from the country. Hundreds of dollars were put up and the Louisiana stranger took every bet he could get offered against his pony. After all the preliminaries Were arranged the animals Were taken down to the mill to make the start, the stranger leading his pony. They were placed in position with their heads in the opposite direc- tion from which they were to run. At this moment the pony opened her eyes and cut them back in the opposite direction. Her master patted her on the neck and spoke a few words of kindness to her and she nerved herself for the contest. Weathersby’s horse had won considerable money in other races and his backers felt sure of an easy victory. The owner of the pony unhooked the halter rein and at the word “Go” the pony reared and whirled on her hind feet and shot off like an arrow and was a hundred yards away before Weath- ersby’s horse got fairly started, and as she ran out at the judges, stand, 300 feet in the lead, she kicked up her heels and, circling the grounds with wild prairie style, came trotting back to the stand. 288 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER VII. NEWSPAPERS. In 1840 Henry Smith Bonney first entered a newspaper estab- lishment as apprentice in the office of A. W. Forsyth at Liberty, in Amite County. He was a son of Nancy Floyd and Perez Bonney, who were married at Soco, Maine, May 16, 1819, and immigrated to Holmesville in 1831. Their children Were William, Hen- ry Smith, Samuel, Joel and Harriet, who married Major Gibson, and twin daughters, Mary Louise and Martha Elizabeth, dying young. Perez Bonney was born in the Province of New Brunswick Novem- ber 26, 1797. Henry Smith Bonney married Miss Evelyn French Adonis, daughter of J. Q. Adonis and Pella Experience Davy, of Massachusetts. She Was a sister of Lucy Whitmore Adonis, the wife of Curlette and then Henry Francis, the carriage maker at Holmesville, and subsequently the wife of Joseph Page. After serving his apprenticeship for two years at Liberty, Henry S. Bonney, in 1842, established a newspaper business for himself at Holmesville, calling it the Holmes- ville Whig, then the Quarto Whig, and later the Planters’ Free Press. In 1847 he went to New Orleans and worked on the New Orleans Bee and the Commercial Bulletin. In the meantime Barney Lewis and Robert Ligon established the Southron at Holmesville. Nelson P. Bonney Summit Sentinel HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 289 In 1851 Henry S. Bonney, after his marriage, returned to Holmes- ville and for the next two years was employed on the Southron, when he bought the material of the office and established the Holmesville Independent, which he continued up to 1862, when he joined the Holmesville Guards, organized by John T. Lamkin, who became Captain of the Company and was attached to the 33d Mississippi Regiment under Col. David W. Hurst, C. S. A. In 1869 he moved to Osyka and started the Reporter. After the railroad entered the county and depots were located, John Waddill established the Grand Trunk Magnolian at Magnolia. This was succeeded by the establishment of the Magnolia Gazette by J. D. Burke. After the close of the Civil War Fleet T. Cooper established the Summit Times, which subsequently fell into the hands of Capt. John A. Crooker and changed from a Democratic to a Republican paper. Crooker sold it to William H. Garland, Jr., who conducted it in the interest of the Republican party in 1875. In 1870 Henry S. Bonney discontinued the Osyka Reporter and moved to Magnolia and began the publication of the Eureka Cen- tralian. This enterprise, like its predecessor, was short lived and he moved everything to Summit, which was aiming to become the lead- ing town in the county, and here he established the Summit Sentinel, which still lives as the grandchild in the fifth degree of the Holmes- ville Whig. Henry S. Bonney Was the pioneer editor and newspaper man of Pike County. He possessed persistent and staying qualities and was an acknowledged able and fluent Writer, and down to the present time, for sixty-three years, his name and the influence of his papers, through his own long term of sendees, and that of his son, Nelson P. Bonney, has been associated with Pike County, the latter with the Sentinel for thirty-four years, but in fact wdth his father’s business from childhood on the Holmesville Independent. Henry Smith Bonney and Evellyn French Adonis were the par- ents of the following children: Nelson P. Bonney, editor Summit Sentinel; Mrs. E. E. Davison, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. W. T. Head, 19 290 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Terry, Miss.; Miss Flora A. Bonney, Summit; C. D. Bonney, New Orleans, La.; R. M. Bonney, Terry, Miss. Nelson P. Bonney’s wife, whom he married in 1881, Was Miss Alexis A. Foumieque, of New Orleans, La. In 1875 Luke W. Conerly, who was editing the Amite County Democrat, in Amite City, Tangipahoe Parish, La., was urged, by his old comrades and friends in Pike County, to establish a partisan cam- paign paper at Magnolia to aid in the defeat and overthrow of the Republican regime that had held sway since the close of the Civil War. He had for the previous eight years been connected with the stirring events of Louisiana in the struggle of her people during the reconstruction era and was at this time an adherent of the John McHenry State government, and was at the time commander of a company of young men at Amite City training for service in support of the White League. Louisiana was making the great struggle of her life and so was Mississippi to re-establish the supremacy of white rule now under the dominating power of Republican carpet- bag-negro rule, supported by the military of the United States Gov- ernment over the Southern States. Yielding to the solicitations of his friends, he bought an old ex- tinct newspaper outfit at Ponchatoula, La., and shipped it to Mag- nolia. He was given a room in the store of Cornelius C. Gibson, and with the assistance of James Ballance, an experienced printer, on the 17th of September, 1875, he issued the first number of the Magnolia Herald, and continued as its proprietor and editor until 1878, When he sold it to Henry C. Capell and Charlie Lee. J. D. Burke afterwards got possession of the office material and revived the old Gazette. In 1875 the McComb City Intelligencer, devoted to immigration and industrial pursuits, Was established with W. H. Townsend as editor. After the overthrow of the Republican regime in the county the Summit Times Was consolidated with the Sentinel under the name Times-Sentinel and subsequently changed back to the Summit Sentinel. Richard B. May, a little lad, picked up a card press in 1874 and HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 291 procured some cards and paper and printer’s ink, with a few words of encouragement from this writer, and began his newspaper career. He afterward drifted to New Orleans and learned book binding, and later on established the McComb City Enterprise. After J. D. Burke’s last venture with the Magnolia Gazette it was owned and edited by John S. Lamkin. It then became the property of D. M. Huff and from him it passed to H. H. Norwood. CHAPTER VIII. In Louisiana, a detachment of Federal soldiers, under one Colonel De Trobiand, marched into the legislative halls of that State, while in session, and forcibly ejected Louis A. Wiltz and Robert L. Luckett therefrom, at the point of the bayonet, without a substance of reason except that they were Democrats and dared to expose the infamy of those in control of the State government; and, in 1875, the further out- rage of driving Governor John McEnery out of the executive office, to which he had been duly and legally elected by a majority of over 14,000 votes, and installing William Pitt Kellogg, an imported politician, were so criminal in their nature as to arouse the white people of Louis- iana to a state of revolution. These circumstances, being a repeti- tion of the scenes perpetrated in Mississippi, instigated by the most infamous designs on the liberties of the people, and the threatened destruction of their racial character, were the means of bringing to the front the perfect manhood and intellect of the two States. Away from the scene of action one could not realize the efforts of those whose homes were involved and their masterful self-control. They had resisted every attempt to Africanize their States, and while doing so, carefully avoided coming again in conflict with United States troops, which was the only hope of the negro-carpetbag element. They could create a revolution in their own States and struggle on until the future should develop something to give relief. Nothing 292 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI but the full power of the United States army among them could stay their determination to drive our their oppressors. Politically the negroes were a unit. The White League and the Bulldoozer organizations were formed in both States, the latter being more on the order of the Ku Klux Klan. This organization had its origin in the early seventies, and was com- posed of the agricultural element of the country, whose property had been so repeatedly depredated on by thieves. They were unable to get redress through the courts in numerous instances, and, as a means of self-protection, they banded together and hunted down the crim- inals and punished them in their own way, which, in most cases, was done by a vigorous application of the bull whip; and "bull-whipped” got to be a common phrase and a common remedy to punish depre- dators on the live stock and fowls of the farmers. In the roll of the Summit Rifles, recorded in this book, will be found the name of Louis Wagoner, who served through the war in Virginia as a Confederate soldier. He was a blacksmith and was liv- ing in the town of Clinton, in East Filiciana Parish, La., at the in- ception and beginning of the organization of Bull Whippers. Becom- ing irritated with some one on an occasion when he was in his liquor, he remarked: "Tam him, I’ll bull dosch him.” The word then grew to bulldose, then bulldoozer, and lastly bulldozer. This organization was a strong one and existed in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana and in the southern counties of Mississippi. It was made up principally of farmers, or those engaged in agricultural pursuits, and originated purely and simply for mutual self-protection of each other from the depredations of thieves and criminals. It has been wrongfully charged against the merchants of the Florida Parishes of Louisiana and of the Southern counties of Mississippi that they were responsible for this on account of their oppressions of the farmers and greed for gold, by driving them into such an organization. This proposition is simply one of theory set up by those who are practically unacquaint- ed with the facts. It was natural for every merchant in Pike County and elsewhere to try to benefit his financial condition, and, being men of business experience, they knew their own welfare depended on the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 293 welfare of the intelligent farmers of the country. While there may have been a few cases of unjust and oppressive dealings which invited retaliation from the Bulldozer organization, or members of it, the fair minded, impartial reader will scarcely entertain the proposition that the merchants, on account of their worship of the god — gold, can be held responsible for this organization. In its very inception this writer became familiar with all the causes and fretful conditions which led to the necessity of a unity of action among neighborhoods to protect themselves from criminals. He got right in among these people at the time in East Filiciana, St. Helena, Tangipahoe and Washington Parishes and elsewhere, consulted with them and learned from their own lips the causes which made them feel the necessity of an organization which Would give security to their property and their families. Arm chair philosophers, ministers of the gospel and news- paper theoretical writers, have been misled themselves and have indulged in false theories and given current circulation to false pub- lications against the Bulldozer organization of South Mississippi and the Florida Parishes of Louisiana. A theory based on false premises is more sinful and has a more deplorable effect than the acts reputed to the Bulldozers. The writer is not summarizing on hearsay nor theory. There is a difference in obtaining facts by mixing with the operators, and basing conclusions upon reports received from afar off. In these days the country was flooded with criminals of all classes — whites as well as negroes. Horse-stealing, cattle and hog-stealing, and sheep -stealing pervaded the land Negro camp meetings became a chronic disease; their zeal and enthusiasm in religion was encouraged by ministers of the gospel for their good. Their camp meetings extended through weeks at a time, becoming an unbearable nuisance, at which time the chickens, hogs and cattle of the White farmers who needed their labor were conspic- uously thinned out. It Was freedom, and these imitating worshippers assembling in large bodies for weeks at a time, must be fed, and they had little of their own to subsist upon; and while the mass of them were supposed to be conforming to the well-wishers of the various de- nominations, squads were scouring the surrounding country at night, 294 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI doing the commissary act on chicken roosts and com cribs, cattle herds, sheep ranches and pig sties. In one immense gulley in East Filiciana was found the heads of one hundred and fifty cattle, thrown in there by these negro camp meeting love feasters, stolen from the planters and farmers in the vicinity. The Writer afterwards Worked one of the leaders of this gamg on a sugar plantation in Louisiana. The frequent mysterious disappearance of stock and products of the farm during these religious revelries made it necessary for the farmers to get together and make investigation and devise Ways and means to check, if not entirely break up, these depredations. They were traced to the correct source and the farmers saw it Was necessary to have some unity of action, and hence, formed into squads, and, as these criminals could not be reached with any certainty of punish- ment by the courts, they resorted to the whipping post, and to secure themselves against legal process for taking the law in their own hands, it became obligatory upon all the neighbors to become members of the law and order society. Hence the Bullwhippers — hence the Bull- dozers. This organization continued to grow, but its inception and formation had no relation to the merchants at the time, nor to any political motive. It afterwards drifted in that direction and became identified with the White League. The White League organization was formed in every parish in Louisiana, its purpose being to over- throw the carpetbag and negro rule of the State. In the State of Mississippi, in the fall of 1875, there Was to be an election to fill the offices of State Treasurer, members of Congress, District Attorneys, State Senators, Representatives, Sheriffs, Chancery and Circuit Clerks, and on down, for all the county and precinct offices, and it Was determined that no means should be spared to bring about a sweeping victory for the party supported by the native white people. A long time had elapsed since the close of the Civil War and the carpetbag-negro government was held over them only by the power of military authority. At the close of the war they were powerless, but in the course of time, through agricultural means, they had be- come strong and self-reliant and Were prepared to undertake a more radical course, and when the campaign of 1875 came on they were HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 295 prepared to furnish proof of the power of intelligence over ignorance, vice and stupidity. The removal of the court house from the town of Holmesville was a question which had agitated the entire population of Pike Coun- ty, and one which created a strong enmity between two of the rail- road towns. The main issue on this question was its central locality. The question was sprung as to the center of population, the railroad people holding that the western portion of the county, being more thickly populated, should have the court house, and the eastern people declaring that it should remain in its present geographical center, declared by law to be the permanent seat of justice. Summit, which had acquired a larger population than any other town, was anxious to have the court house moved to that place. McComb Was in its infancy, and, being made up largely of an immi- grant population, was not in a position to make contention. Mag- nolia Wanted it and Osyka, being in the extreme southern part of the county, favored Magnolia. The election decided in favor of Magnolia. The Board of Supervisors rented an old frame building in the lower part of town, near the railroad avenue, and had the records moved from the old clerk’s office at Holmesville, and then the quarrel began over the insecurity of the records. The Board of Supervisors proceeded to advertise for the building of a new court house and for the issuance of bonds for the payment of the same. The town of Summit contended that the county was unable to build a new court house and an injunction suit was instituted, which was carried to the Supreme Court, but the removal of the court house and the proceedings of the Board of Supervisors were sustained. During this time the fever of animosity between the two towns had risen several degrees above the normal and the two were so stirred up as to make it absolutely unpleasant for a person living in one town to visit the other. The women even caught the infection and would toss their heads and shake their skirts in derision at each other, which was very hurtful to those of a tender and sympathetic nature. So- ciety functions, in which our Southern women of aristocratic mould took delight, were greatly interfered with by this unhappy state of 29G HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI affairs, as a woman of one of the towns might refuse to take part or participate in, if a Woman of the other had anything to do with it. This was a local condition existing at the beginning of the cam- paign of 1875, and when the Executive Committee of the Democratic party began its preparations for the November election the county was in a turmoil over the court house question. A recent edict of the Republican party indicated that a system of intimidation, as in the past, Would be inaugurated, and then the Democrats, Bulldozers and White League determined to overthrow the negro-carpetbag government at all hazards, “peacefully if possi- ble, forcibly if they must,” and a regularly organized system of work was determined on. One important thing was necessary to be done to insure success and to prevent the bloody scenes which were sure to follow, which Was the immediate disbandment of Ames’ negro militia, then under arms to intimidate them. On the 13th day of October, 1875, i n the town of Osyka, a meeting was held and addressed by David W. Hurst and Isaac Applewhite. A set of resolutions were adopted and a club formed as an initial move to aid in the coming election. The club was composed of all the best men in the town and was the first to enter the campaign. Isaac W. Cutrer was elected its President and Joe Mallett its Secretary. On this same day it so happened, by pre-arrangement, that a conference was held by a committee of citizens of different sections of the State, and Governor Ames, in the city of Jackson, when it was agreed that all the militia should be disbanded at once. This was a measure preconceived by the White League and which alone would prevent a bloody revolution throughout the entire commonwealth. When the people of Pike County put out their ticket it was not certain how the election would terminate. It was so uncertain that a well organized party was necessary. John S. Lamkin, who was Chairman of the County Executive Committee, issued a call for a meeting of the committee on the 1 5th of October, two days after the organization of the club at Osyka and the conference meeting at Jackson. The success of the party in Pike HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 297 was so uncertain it was thought best to make an effort to employ or secure the services of a newspaper to be located at the seat of justice, if possible, to aid in the campaign. In the town of Summit The Sentinel, edited and published by the able veteran pioneer newspaper man of Pike, stood alone. The Sum- mit Times, established in 1866 by Fleet T. Cooper, had fallen into the hands of Capt. John A. Crooker, who converted it into a Republican paper. He sold it to William H. Garland, Jr. Garland had been associated with the Democratic party, but took up the Times in the interest of the Republican party and became a candidate for the State Senate. He was a son of William H. Garland, Sr., one of the original founders of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad Company, now the Illinois Central Railroad Company, a leading man in this great enterprise and the first man to build a handsome resi- dence in the town of Summit. When young Garland began to make speeches and write strong editorials it was seen that something besides mere organization was necessary. John Quin- cy Travis Was a candidate for Sheriff on the Republican ticket against R. H. Felder, Democrat; and Frederick W. Collins, Republican, was a candidate for re-election as Circuit Clerk against Dr. A. P. Sparkman, Democrat. Travis was an ex-Lieutenant of the Quitman Guards and had lost a hand at the battle of Chancellorsville, Va., May 2, 1863. Sparkman had been a member of the same company and was dan- gerously wounded in the battle of Cross Iveys in the Valley Campaign, under Ewell and Stonewall Jackson, in 1862. These facts were not lost sight of by the ex-Confederates of Pike County. Dr. Achilles P. Sparkman Quitman Guards Wounded and disabled at the Battle of Cross Keys, Va., June 8th, 1862 Dr. Sparkman married Mary E. Vaught, daughter of Maj.W.W. Vaught, one of the charming girls who partici- pated in the banner presentation in 1860. Dr. Sparkman was elected Cir- cuit Court Clerk of Pike County in 1875, and has held that position consecu- tively since then, covering a period of thirty-four years. 298 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI A delegation of citizens inv'.ced the writer, editor of the Amite City, (La.) Democrat, to Magnoli „ for a conference, the result of which was to establish a paper at once at Magnolia, which was done, and the Her- ald began on the 17th of September, 1875, with the writer proprietor and editor, and when the campaign was opened, its services were given to the candidates nominated by the Democracy. Frederick W. Collins, the candidate on the Republican ticket, had been holding the office of Circuit Clerk since his appointment by Governor Alcorn and his election in 1873 and gave entire satis- faction to the people, and he Was a hard candidate to beat. His magnetism and personal popularity was such that the party he be- longed to even during this period of political animosity, was lost sight of by those with whom he had grown up, but in this election he was pitted against an ex-Confederate soldier — a member of the Quitman Guards — Who had become disabled by a serious wound received in the battle of Cross Keys, Va. R. H. Felder, the candidate for Sheriff on the Democratic ticket, had filled the office by election as the successor of Louis C. Bickham, had been put out by the military, had served as deputy for many years and was a popular man, but he Was pitted against a handless veteran. U pon the above four men hinged the election in Pike County. Upon general principles the issue was white supremacy During this campaign, according to a correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune, the town of Columbus Was fired in fourteen differ- ent places in one day by radical negroes. The fire Was quickly extin- guished and the citizens armed and placed the city under martial law. Four negroes Were caught in the act of setting fire to the houses and they Were immediately shot, and the New Orleans Delta stated that on the 4th of October a consignment of forty boxes of cartridges came in over the New Orleans and Mobile Railroad to William Pitt Kellogg, the usurper, of Louisiana. These and other circumstances intensified the fever of excitement and a clash between the races was avoided only by the great self- control and counsel of the white leaders. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 299 The campaign was short, but decisive, in its results for white supremacy. The Democratic party carried the State by forty thou- sand majority. In Pike County the result was as follows: State Senator — R. H. Thompson, Dem., over W. H. Garland, Jr., Rep. Representative — James M. Causey, Dem., over C. W. Beam, Rep. Sheriff — J. Q. Travis, Rep., over R. H. Felder, Dem. Chancery Clerk — William M. Conerly, Dem., over Gideon Montford, Rep. Circuit Clerk — A. P. Sparkman, Dem., over F. W. Collins, Rep. Treasurer — Henry S. Brumfield, Dem., over C. S. Simmons, Rep. Assessor — Samuel R. Lamkin, Dem., over P. F. Williams, Rep. Surveyor — S. M. Simmons, Dem., over Peres Bonney, Rep. Coroner and Ranger — E. P. Stratton, Ind:, over H. S. Bonney, Dem. (com- plimentary vote). Supervisors — First District, John G. Leggett, Dem.; Second District, Wal- ter M. Lampton, Dem.; Third District, E. C. Andrews, Dem.; Fourth District, R. L. Lenoir, Dem.; Fifth District, William L. Coney, Rep. Justices of the Peace — First District, J. M. Vamado, Dem., John A. Walker, Dem.; Second District, J. H. Crawford, Dem., A. F. Lampton, Dem.; Third District, E. L. Reeves, Dem., F. M. Walker, Dem.; Fourth District, S. A. Mat- thews, Dem., W. S. Mount, Dem.; Fifth District, W. C. Harrell, Dem., E. P. Stratton, Dem. Constables — First District, L. T. Vamado, Dem., Andrew Jackson, Dem.; Second District, Harris Bullock, Dem., William Graves, Dem.; Third District, L. W. Sartin, Dem., Henry Jones, Dem.; Fourth District, H. H. Kuykendall, Dem., G. T. Smith, Dem.; Fifth District, Ed. Ricks, Joe Norris. The Independent, a Republican paper published at Amite City by R. W. Reed, commenting on this election, said: “ The Magnolia Herald has had its effect. That town has gone Republican.” To which the Herald replied: “Yes, ‘The Herald has had its effect.’ Pike County has gone Democratic by 225 average majority, and the force of The Herald has been acknowledged. The town of Magnolia went Democratic. The Republican vote polled here did not live in Magnolia. Most of them were like the great mass of the Repub- lican party: They were interlopers.” “ ‘Roll on, Thou Deep Blue Sea’!” 300 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI “ ‘As little as you may think of it,’ says The Magnolia Herald, ‘somebody is going to get beat next Tuesday.’ And The Herald knows who it is just as well as it knows its own party.” — Amite (La.) Independent. Again : “The Magnolia Herald and other Democratic organs of Mississippi think they have everything fixed to their own liking, and talk gushingly of the ‘roll of the deep blue ocean.’ The sea is too far distant to be of any service to drown the sorrow of their approaching defeat, but a mighty wave of another color will roll inward and produce some Democratic lashing and heaving that will put the salt water to shame.” To which the Herald replied: ‘‘Your rotten radical concern has been shattered. The echoing thunders of a Democratic victory are heard all over the land and are caught up by the echoing voices of the deep! ‘Roll on, thou deep blue ocean, roll!”’ And the white-capped waves rolled on. FROM NEW ORLEANS. Editor Magnolia Herald: Sir: Yours of the 24th received. No “loud crowing cocks” in stock. The demand has exceeded the supply. Yours truly, E. C. Palmer & Co. “Mississippi is redeemed. Truth and honesty and intelligence have pre- vailed over falsehood, ignorance, fraud and oppression. The hand lifted to crush Mississippi has been paralyzed.” said the Herald. “The immaculate Stephen A. Douglas, colored, who tried so hard to stick his finger in Pike County politics, did a little fingering over in Amite this time, and the last we heard of him, he was in Summit tracking it after Parker and his layout. He said he ‘woods’d it’ all the way from Liberty, and that if he dab- bles in politics again he wants somebody to kill him. He had better go back to Massa Tom Green Davidson, of Louisiana,” said the Herald. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 301 The largest vote polled in Pike County Was between Janies M. Causey, who received 1,414, against C. W. Beam, who received 1,188. An important question to be considered by the farmers and plant- ers of the county was a system of labor that could be relied upon, and a more perfect confidence among the negroes themselves in the duties to which their new conditions had brought them. The last days of slavery were fraught with many troubles and the negroes were in a fearful condition of unrest, if such may be said, and when the events of the past Were brought back to them, they again thought of the dangers of re-enslavement. The carpetbagger Was the barrier which prevented the prosperity that should follow the productions of the Southern States, under a peaceful management of the negro labor. His eternal intermeddling in the plans of the planters, by exciting them and diverting their minds, Was an ever fruitful means of destroying the good that might have been done in the quiet control of the negroes under their former masters. When the carpetbaggers Were compelled to retire, the burden of responsibility to secure an equal protection to the negroes was given to the whites and they proved the certain fact that they were the better friends in all that pertained to their Welfare. In the year 1871, when the great school, which became a part of the State’s charge, was put in a fair way to educate the children of the negroes, the voice of reason was heard and they began to see the light which previously had only shown to them in the temples of the strangers who had come to fatten on their ignorance. Among all the great commonwealths of the South there are none which have given to the negroes a more liberal opportunity than the State of Mississippi. In the fall of 1875, when the visions of departing freedom came to them, they trembled and felt the force of the white man’s power, and when it was shown to them that their fears were groundless, a perfect confidence should thus have been a part of the outcome, but instead of this, it was broken into by the ever-prevailing incubus of political excitement. A better understanding had come to the surface and 302 HTSTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI the negroes had understood, but not heeded. If such forces as those used in the past to convince were not necessary, it Was considered to be so by the White League. In a few months after the election, the executive committee gave notice that there would be a national election held in the coming fall and it was desired to keep up all organization and to arrange a plan to insure the success of the white man’s party in the State. When we look back and see the condition of things, and see the success of the White League over the rule of carpetbaggers, held in power by the military, it shows the fallacy of not trying to make their past success a fixture; and when it is shown that the future Welfare of both races must depend on the superior race now in power, it will be understood why the methods used Were resorted to. “Forget and forgive — this world would be lonely, The garden a paradise left to deform, If the flowers but remembered the chilling winds only And the trees gave no verdure for fear of the storm.” Thus spake 1876 to 1875 as she assumed control over our ever changing destinies. On the 10th day of January, 1876, the town of Magnolia, now the permanent seat of justice, held an election to fill the offices of mayor and coun oilmen. At this election Frederick W. Collins, Republican, who had been defeated for the office of Circuit Clerk, was elected Mayor, and the following persons, all Democrats, Were elected Councilmen: William M. Conerly, Cornelius C. Gibson, William M. Wroten, and Jonas Hiller; and Henry S. Copes, Secretary, Treasurer and Tax Collector. Beginning With the new year, Hugh Q, Bridges’ name was placed at the head of the Summit Sentinel as associate editor. The new board of supervisors, composed of John G. Leggett, Presi- dent; Walter M. Lampton, Elisha C. Andrews, Robert L. Lenoir, Wm. L. Coney, John Quincy Travis, Sheriff, and William M. Conerly, Clerk, was organized on Monday, January 3, 1876. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 303 Wm. Brown & Co.’s bond, contractors for the building of the new court house, Was approved and filed. , Judge T. E. Tate, Republican, Was confirmed as school superin- tendent by the State Senate. Charles L. Patton became the owner of the Summit Times and the only newspaper ever published in Pike County in support of the Republican party, and negro government under military domination was expurgated, re-baptized in the folds of white supremacy. Through the machinations of W. D. Redmond, Dr. Barrett, ex-Sheriff Parker, of Amite County, and a few of their sympathizers about Summit, a company of United States cavalry Was stationed at McComb City, with orders, it was said, to protect Redmond and aid him in the discharge of his duties as United States Deputy Revenue Collector. When the result of the election in Amite County Was made known, Parker, Barrett and Redmond fled the county, under a pretended fear of assassination. It was said that Parker and Barrett were particularly obnoxious to the people of Amite County, but it was denied that there was any animosity entertained toward Redmond, who was connected with a very prominent family of Amite by marriage. After the election they had been dodging about between New Orleans and Jackson, under the pretense that their lives were in dan- ger. Christmas week, a few planters went to Summit to sell their cotton and buy their supplies. They camped a mile or so from town and during the night Were fired upon by a party of negroes and white men, and several of their number wounded. The following day a party of men from Amite County, hearing of the shooting of their friends, went to Summit to make an investigation of the affair and, if possible, learn Who were the perpetrators of the deed. During the day more or less excitement prevailed. Some unguarded men became intoxicated and a small row occurred which was promptly quelled. After this another melee Was raised at the market house, near the depot, which was quelled by General Cain, Chief of Police, and a few 304 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI citizens. It was said that Redmond was present as a spectator and was not disturbed nor threatened. When the row ceased, the next § day, Redmond stepped into the telegraph office and sent a message to Collector Shaunnessey, at Jackson, that he was being driven from county to county by an armed body of men, fifty or sixty in number, and that he could not perform the duties of his office without troops. Shaunnessey telegraphed to Washington, and upon his statement President Grant ordered the troops to be sent. The citizens of Summit got up a statement of the facts in the case, signed by nearly all the white people of the town, including some leading Republicans, and corroborated by a certificate from Sheriff Travis and Chancery Clerk W. M. Conerly, falsifying Redmond’s report of the necessity for troops, but this had no effect, and the troops were sent to McComb City and quartered there among its people. A committee appointed by the State Legislature, composed of J. E. Leigh, Chairman E. A. Rowan, A. C. McNair and James W. Shat- tuck, reported that the only relieving excuse or feature provided to justify Redmond’s charge that he was pursued from Amite County was that, in a drunken row at Summit, personal threats were made by one or more drunken men, who Were not armed, against Redmond, which caused him to leave town, and that the charges alleged in his message to Shaunnessey were false and the demand for troops unwarranted by the facts. This was regarded as the first step toward an effort in the future to reestablish the Sarpetbag government in power. It was a repeti- tion of what had been done in the past and the White League so regarded it, and a more perfect organization of the white people in Pike County was determined on. In the month of February, 1876, T. W. Cordoza, the negro Super- intendent of Education, was impeached and allowed to resign Feb- ruary 22. In the month of March, A. K. Davis, the negro Lieutenant-Gover- nor, was convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors and removed from office by the State Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 305 Charges for impeachment against Governor Ames were preferred and his trial begun. He Was allowed to resign March 29th, 1876, and John M. Stone, President of the State Senate, became Governor. On April 4th, 1876, Rev. William H. Roane died in the town of Magnolia. He was born November, 1826, near Huntsville, Ala.; was educated at Oglethorpe College, Georgia, and a member of the Presbyterian Church, North, and graduated in the Theological Sem- inary of South Carolina, preached the gospel upwards of twenty years and was a practitioner at the bar in Pike County. He was a mem- ber of the State Legislature and did all in his power for the well-being of the people. He was a classical scholar and a Mason, and deserves to be remembered as one who did much to ward off the perils of a race conflict and other bloody scenes threatened during the troublesome times previously mentioned. After the impeachment of the negro Superintendent of Education, Cordoza, the negro Lieutenant-Governor, James K. Davis, the resig- nation of Governor Ames, and the instalment of a complete white man’s government in Mississippi, the New Orleans, La., Democrat , edited by H. J. Hearsey, had this to say: “Radicalism has literally gone to pieces in Mississippi. The Mississippians made a heroic fight and won their State. When their Legislature assembled and talked about impeachment, Morton endeavored to intimidate them by his threats, while fierce dispatches announcing that armies of troops were to be quartered in the State, were sent from Washington, in the New York Herald , , and other journals of the same class, raised the stereotyped howl that the South- ern whites were bent on revolution; that so soon as they got in power they began to make war, and other stuff. But the Mississippians didn’t bully worth a cent. They told the New York Herald and the people of other States to attend to their own business, and, thinking it time enough to get scared when the troops came down on them with fixed bayonets, they went right ahead, drew up the charges against the rascals who had the State government, got full proof of them and impeached Davis and Ames. This did the business in Mississippi. So soon as it was evident that the Mississippians were in earnest and could only be prevented from doing their duty by being cleaned out vi-et- armis, the bullyism stopped, and radicalism went utterly to pieces. We wish Louisiana could charter the Mississippi Legislature for about a week or ten days.” 20 306 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI On April 26th, 1876, the survivors of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment had a reunion at Summit. In view of that coming event, Capt. Thomas A. Garner, Capt. Alph A. Boyd, and Ed. H. Mogan, addressed a letter to Gen. W. S. Featherston, inviting him to come to Summit to deliver an address. The Sixteenth had been under General Featherston in Virginia prior to his transfer to the Army of Tennessee. It is considered proper to incorporate General Feather- ston ’s letter in this book, as the Summit Rifles and the Quitman Guards Were members of this regiment and served under him while he commanded the brigade in Virginia, being succeeded by Gen. Carnot Posey: Jackson, Miss., April 7, 1876. Messrs. T. A. Garner, E. H. Mogan, and A. A. Boyd. Gentlemen : Your letter of April 4th, inviting me to address the survivors of the Sixteenth Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers at their reunion on the 26th day of this month, at Summit, has been received and duly considered. Nothing would afford me more pleasure, gentlemen, than to be able to com- ply with your request. I should be proud to meet the survivors of that gallant and noble regiment of Confederate soldiers and shake them by the hand and talk with them about our common toils, sacrifices and sufferings in the past as well as of the virtues of our lamented comrades in arms, who fell on the field of battle. A better regiment I never saw under arms than the Sixteenth Mississip- pi. Patient under discipline, unfaltering in the discharge of duty, prompt in action and heroic and invincible in the face of the foe, it had no superior. But, gentlemen, I have been away from my family and private interests since Sep- tember last, devoting my time entirely to public service. When the Legislature shall adjourn, at the close of the next week, I shall be compelled to forego the pleasure of meeting you on the 26th at Summit, and return to my family and my home. Thanking you, gentlemen, sincerely, for the honor of this invitation, and wishing you and all the survivors of the Six- teenth Regiment prolonged lives of happiness and usefulness, I am very truly, your friend and obedient servant, W. S. Featherston. General Featherston, a representative from Marshall County, had been conspicuous in the Legislature in offering a resolution for a committee to be appointed to inquire into the official conduct of Adelbert Ames, acting Governor of the State of Mississippi, which was adopted and he was appointed on that committee, which resulted HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 307 in the impeachment, trial of and resignation of Ames and the reinstal- ment of white supremacy. May 9, 1876, a meeting was held at the court house for the pur- pose of fixing on some plan of demonstration to be given upon the day of laying the corner-stone of the new court house, which was fixed for Saturday, May 27th following, and Dr. George Nicholson, Deputy Grand Master of the Seventh District of Mississippi, was invited to conduct the ceremonies according to the usages of the Masonic order. John S'. Lamkin, Samuel E. Packwood, Thomas R. Stockdale, and Isaac Applewhite Were selected orators of the day. C. C. Gibson, Henry Gottig, W. W. Vaught, A. LeBlanc, and Frederic W. Collins were appointed a Committee of Arrangements. It was thought that this occasion would be an opportune time to heal the differences existing between the towns of Summit and Mag- nolia over the court house question, and Thomas A. Gamer, Mayor of Summit, Was directed by its citizens to convey to the people of Magnolia, through Hon. Fred W. Collins, Mayor of that town, their sentiments of friendly regards on the occasion of laying the corner- stone, the centennial year of American independence. Following is the account given by the Magnolia Herald of June 2, 1876: LAYING THE CORNER-STONE. On Saturday last, May 27th, 1876, as previously advertised in the papers, the people of Pike County assembled at Magnolia to participate in the cere- monies of laying the corner-stone of their new court house, now in process of erection. At an early hour in the morning, though the weather threatened to be unfavorable, the people came pouring in, in squads, from all points of the compass, thus indicating that there would be a large gathering. At about half-past nine o’clock, Capt. Travis’ excursion train from Brook- haven,. conveying a large number of citizens from that town, Bogue Chitto, Johnstons Station, Summit, McComb City and Quin Station, arrived, and were received by the anxious crowd assembled at the depot, amid enlivening strains of music from the Jolly Brothers’ comet band, of Summit, engaged for the occa- sion. At about eleven o’clock, the excursion train from Osyka, heavily freighted with the beauty and chivalry of that lovely town, moved up, while hundreds of handkerchiefs waved on high and sweet music swelled the breeze and bade them welcome. 308 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI By this time the town was crowded with people from all parts of the county, as well as a few from Lincoln and Amite Counties, and Tangipahoa Parish, La. The doors of the Central House and private residences were thrown open for the reception, convenience and comfort of guests and friends, and the entire place was alive with masses moving to and fro, inspecting the town and the preparations which had been made on the picnic grounds and elsewhere to add to the beauty of the surroundings and to the comfort and pleasure of the people, At about half-past eleven o’clock, Sincerity Lodge No. 214, F. & A. M., and Tangipahoa Lodge I. O. O. F., of Magnolia, emerged from their places of meet- ing and formed in procession in the following order: S. A. Matthews, Grand Marshal, aided by Jonas Hiller and C. C. Gibson. Henry Swan, Tyler of Sincerity Lodge No. 214, F. & A. M., of Magnolia, accompanied by Tylers of other lodges. Stewards, with rods. Master masons. F. Prescott and M. Day, Deacons, with rods. A. L. Lazar, Secretary, and E. T. Prewett, Treasurer pro tem. R. H. Dickey, Senior Warden pro tem. Mark Master Royal Arch Masons. Royal and Select Masters. Knights Templar, as escort to Grand Lodge. Jolly Brothers’ comet band. C. H. Lyster, Grand Tyler. John Holmes and J. H. Monfourt, Grand Stewards, with white rods. H. Q. Bridges, Grand Secretary, and N. Greener, Grand Treasurer. Walter Cowart, Grand Pursuivant. Bible, square and compass, carried by Joseph Mixon, supported by stewards. J. W. Sandell, Grand Chaplain, and E. P. Stratton, Grand Lecturer. W. Fleet Simmons, with five orders of architecture.* Representatives of the press. W. M. Conerly, Junior Warden, with silver vessel of oil. H. M. Quin, Senior Grand Warden, with silver vessel of wine. A. A. Boyd, Deputy Grand Master, carrying golden vessel with com. J. S. Lamkin, Master of oldest lodge, carrying book of the constitution. George Nicholson, Grand Master, supported by J. M. Thornhill and P. C. Kennedy, Deacons, with rods. C. A. Zackary, Grand Sword Bearer. *These five orders of architecture were drawn in spatter work by the accom- plished and talented Miss H. May Lamkin, daughter of John S. Lamkin, Esq., of Magnolia, and were presented to Sincerity Lodge No. 214. They were taste- fully and beautifully executed, evidencing superior artistic skill, and are highly appreciated by the members of the lodge. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 309 Thus arranged they moved to the front of the sheriff’s office, on the comer of Railroad Avenue and Myrtle Street, where the order of Odd Fellows filed in at the rear, the procession moving up Myrtle Street to Clarks Avenue, down Clarks Avenue to Bay Street and down Bay Street to the court house square, filing in beneath the triumphal arch prepared at the entrance of the square. Upon arriving on the square, the Masonic procession opened to the right and left, uncovering the grand master and his officers, who repaired to a temporary platform ercted upon the foundation of the court house (in front of which was constructed a beautiful evergreen arch bearing the inscription, “Centennial”), where they were surrounded by the rest of the brethren. Dr. George Nicholson then read a letter from the Grand Master of the State, authorizing him to per- form the ceremonies of laying the corner-stone, which stated that Sincerity Lodge No. 214 had the matter in charge. He then delivered the proclamation as laid down in the Masonic ritual. Then followed a lesson from the Scriptures, and prayer by the Grand Chaplain, after which, accompanied by a splendid organ, the choir rose and sang in sweet harmony, to the tune of “Arlington When Solomon, with wondrous skill, A temple did prepare, Israel with zeal his courts did fill, And God was honored there. Celestial rays of glorious light, The sacred walls contained; The pure refulgence day and night With awful force remained. O may Thy presence, gracious Lord, In our assembly be; Enlighten us to know Thy word, That we may honor Thee. And when the final trump shall sound, To judge the world of sin, Within Thy courts may we be found, Eternally til’d in. A tin casket had been prepared, in which was deposited the following arti- cles: Three copies Magnolia Herald. One copy Summit Sentinel. One copy Summit Times. One copy Easy Chair , published at Summit. One copy Young America , published at Summit. 310 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI A list of officers and roll of members of Sincerity Lodge No. 214, F. & A. M., and the constitution and by-laws of the order. One nickel coin U. S. currency, valued at five cents. One Prussian silver coin, valued at twenty cents. One five-dollar note, Mississippi cotton money. One ten-dollar note, Confederate money. One silver coin U. S. currency, valued at five cents. A list of officers and roll of members of Company F, Third Regiment U. S. Infantry. A list of county officers of Pike County. Copy of programme of the day’s exercises. The box was then deposited in a vault prepared for it, and the corner-stone was lowered and laid in accordance with the usage and solemnity of the Masonic order, covering the box containing the above mentioned articles, which was cemented in its vault, and concealing them from the sight of man for ages, perhaps, to come ere they shall be admitted to the light of day. Inscription on the stone: North side — Laid May 27, 1876. Centennial Year. East side — C. C. Gibson, Architect & Builder. The choir then sang to the tune of Old Hundred, the following stanzas: Master Supreme! to Thee this day, Our corner-stone with praise we lay; And resting on Thy word fulfilled, To Thee, O Lord! our house we build. Nor build we here with strength alone Of carven wood or sculptured stone; But squarely hewed, and broadly plann’d, Our lines we raise, like ashlars grand. By Thee, O Lord! our work design’d, The widow’s son his help shall find; And we shall frame, for trembling youth, The winding stairs that lead to Truth. In Faith we toil — in Hope we climb To Charity — our Arch sublime; And evermore the Keystone see, O Master! Lord! in Thee — in Thee! HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 311 The benediction pronounced, Hon. T. A. Gamer, mayor of Summit, was introduced, who read a letter (previously prepared for the occasion), to Hon. F. W. Collins, mayor of Magnolia, presenting him (on the part of the good people of Summit) with a bronzed hatchet, to be buried in token of a cessation of sectional animosity hitherto existing and brought about by the removal of the court house from Holmesville to Magnolia, and as an evidence of a restoration of harmonious feelings and unity of purpose. The following is Mayor Gamer’s letter: Summit, May 27th, 1876. To Hon. F. W. Collins, Mayor of Magnolia, Mississippi. Sir: I am directed by the people of Summit to convey, through you, to the peo- ple of Magnolia, their sentiments of friendly regard on the occasion of laying the corner-stone of the new court house. The question of “removal or no removal,” which once so seriously agitated the public mind, and which unfortunately created sectional jealousies, not unmixed with sectional animosities, has been happily set at rest, and the people of Summit, in token of their magnanimity, desire to manifest their entire acqui- escence in the logic of events, as well as their complete reconciliation over the late “bone of contention.” With this view they have delegated me in their behalf to unite with you in conducting the present public demonstration, and to deposit in the cavity of the stone some suitable token of their harmonious feelings. To give expression of their wishes, I have selected the accompanying implement, which, in the earlier history of our common country, was not unfre- quently used as a symbol of buried animosity, and which besides has been made historic by the father of our country. It is fitting that in the centennial year of our existence as a republic the burying of the hatchet, which has more than once performed the conspicuous of- fice of securing profound and permanent peace for the nation, should now serve to allay sectional feeling, and mark the era of perfect peace and complete recon- ciliation in our county affairs. In humble imitation of this rude custom of our forefathers, I have the honor to place at your disposal this bronzed implement, to be used, if you please, in the manner, and for the purpose above indicated, with the additional assurance that it is our common desire that the people of this county shall henceforth, like brethren, dwell together in unity. I have the honor to be Very truly, T. A. Garner, Mayor of Summit. Mr. Collins, on the part of the citizens of Magnolia, accepted the hatchet from Mr. Gamer, with the following well timed impromptu reemarks: 312 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Ladies and Gentlemen: The document just read, by Hon. T. A. Garner, Mayor of Summit, fully explains itself. For and in behalf of the people of Summit, he presents to me, as the representative of the people of Magnolia, this ancient symbol, this hatchet, desiring that we bury with it, after the ancient custom, all the jealousies and animosities generated by the vexed court house question. I am not prepared to make any extended remarks upon this impor- tant occasion, but suffice it to say that I, on the part of the people of Magnolia, accept it in good faith — I accept it in the spirit in which it is presented. We will now deposit it in the cavity of the corner-stone of the court house, where we hope, and have every reason to believe, it will ever rest undisturbed. Capt. John S. Lamkin, Hon. S. E. Packwood and Hon. I. Applewhite were each respectively introduced and delivered addresses appropriate to the occa- sion. It was announced that dinner would be served on the island picnic grounds. The procession of Masons and Odd Fellows returned to their respective lodges, disbanded, and at two o’clock, as stated in the programme, the people repaired for refreshments. At the foot of Magnolia Street, over the west end of the bridge leading to the island, inscribed on an evergreen arch were observed the following words: “As citizens of Pike County, we give you a kindly greeting.” Near the end of the bridge leading from the island to the Central House, was another, containing the inscription: “Our wish is that together we may work for the good of our county.” The people had contributed generously, and seven long tables were laden with provisions prepared principally by the hands of the fair ones, sufficient for at least two thousand people. A large quantity of fresh meat — beef, mut- ton, kid and pork — was barbecued, supervised by our esteemed fellow citizen, William Stevenson, assisted by his son. We heard it frequently remarked by old “barbecued meat eaters” that this was the best they ever saw or tasted. Everthing was arranged systematically — ■ the ladies being invited to the table first and the men afterward. It was cal- culated that, allowing two feet for each person, these seven tables would accom- modate more than six hundred persons. The carving table, supervised by W. G. Tyler, John F. Lieb, B. F. Win- born, Mr. Lloyd, a worthy guest from New Orleans, J. H. Stevens, and others, was elegantly managed. Among the many large baskets noticeable, was one sent by Mr. George Fol- som, which came as near being a cart-load of good things as any we ever saw. W. W. Vaught, table manager, A. LeBlanc and H. Gottig were particularly active in their respective duties; while many others are equally deserving of mention, but not having been furnished with their names, we can not give them from memory. Mrs. Roane, and the ladies who assisted her in the decorations, deserve especial mention for the part they performed; and to the ladies generally, who so generously contributed in labor and provisions to the occasion, the thanks of the people are due. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 01 o DIO Particular mention is also due the ladies’ table committee for the part they performed in so tastefully arranging the tables. According to the published schedule, Capt. J. Q. Travis returned to their homes the good citizens of Osyka, Carters Hill, Chatawa, and those living at the various stations between Magnolia and Brookhaven, by his excursion train. At seven o’clock the doors of the Central House hall were opened for the ball, and when the twilight shades had passed away, the brilliant chandeliers spread their light over the most magnificent array of beauty and chivalry, attired in gorgeous suits, upon which our eyes ever feasted, and amid dulcet strains of music from that splendid “Jolly Brothers’ Comet Band,” terpischo- rean lovers, with joyous hearts, “whiled the happy hours away.” The ball was arranged and conducted under the auspices of W. M. Conerly, and was man- aged with judgment, skill and perfect order. At midnight the ball ceased, and our friends from McComb City, Quins Sta- tion and Summit were conveyed home by special train. The press, on this occasion, was represented by the handsome, good-natured and talented editor of the Brookhaven Ledger, Mr. R. H. Henry; Capt. J. D. Burke, formerly of the Brookhaven Citizen ; Hon. H. Q. Bridges, H. S. Bonney, and N. P. Bonney, of the Summit Sentinel', Col. W. Lee Patton, and his corps, of the Summit Times ; and the members of The Herald office. We were pleased to observe present Sam Henderson, Esq., of New Orleans, and several friends from Tangipahoa Parish, La.; Hon. J. B. Deason, from Brookhaven; and several handsome and accomplished young ladies from Amite County, among them Misses Safford, and Miss Raiford, daughter of our old friend, William Raiford, of Liberty. We were also proud to see so many of the good people of 'McComb City present. The ties of friendship between them and the citizens of Magnolia are growing stronger and stronger as time and again they are thrown together in social gatherings. To the people of Osyka, Johnstons Station, Summit and all intermediate stations, Holmesville and throughout the entire county, the compliments and hearty good wishes of Magnolia are extended. May they in the future be bound together in stronger ties of friendship, and work with more united hearts for the good of the county and for the elevation and prosperity of the people. For order, harmony of action, good feeling, plenty to eat and general sat- isfaction among the people, the occasion of the 27th of May, 1876, can safely be said to have had no equal since ante bellum days, and it is a forcible evidence of what can be accomplished and the satisfaction that can be enjoyed when there is a common object in view and a common purpose among the people. May they ever work together. At a meeting of the committee of general arrangements, held in this town on Wednesday, 31st ult., concerning the proceedings had on the 27th ult., the following resolution was adopted : Resolved, That the undersigned committee of general arrangements for the picnic and barbecue given in this place on the 27th ult., tender sincere thanks to 314 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI the various auxiliary committees for their kindly and prompt assistance in car- rying out the various details of the day’s programme. We especially return thanks to the venerable William Stevenson, and to his son Thomas, for their vigilant and untiring services and complete success in barbecuing the meats, and to the ladies who so kindly and beautifully decorated the grounds. We know no words commensurate with our appreciation of their noble services. C. C. Gibson, ' H. Gottig, F. W. Collins, A. LeBlanc, W. W. Vaught, , Committee. The occasion thus described in the foregoing article of the Herald was a great love feast in which the bitterness engendered over the court house question was softened and sweetened by forgetfulness of the past. Mayor Gamer and Mayor Collins shook hands over the "blood chasm” and cemented the bonds of friendship by the burial of a genuine hatchet, deposited in the vault of the corner-stone of the new court house. A good old time lady of direct pioneer descent, wearing an ancient pair of spectacles, held on by a cord around her head, remarked to the writer: "I am so glad the people of Magnoly and Summit is made up. I do hate these bickerins. I always heard it said that a man’s love, and a woman’s, too, for all-er that, was down his throat, and now I knows it. I bleve this dinner has had a powerful influence in settling the fuss.” In the early days of reconstruction the negroes were in a transitory condition, so to speak, and wholly unfit to perform any of the func- tions of government. A more stupid effort to force them to the equality of the white man was never made by any civilized or enlightened government on earth. It Would be bad enough now, with all the care and all the advantages of enlightened Christian education, to put them in possession of government with white people. To do so at the end of the Civil War, just liberated from slavery, was a crime of so great proportions as to stamp it the Stupidity of the Nineteenth Century. The negro was a child of the jungles in his native land, far below HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 315 the Indian in America, and never knew the value of anything. His ancestry for thousands of years was no wiser than those brought to Jamestown on a Dutch vessel in 1620 and sold into slavery for the ponderous sum of 150 pounds of leaf tobacco. A race so deficient in intellect as the native African in the jungles where life exists only as that of the wild beasts, that have not ad- vanced higher in thousands of years, are not expected, by people ac- quainted with negro characteristics, to become fit for rulers in a few centuries, even with the advantages of educational training under the higher civilizing influences and care of the Caucasian. In the nature of the creature there is no redeeming quality to fit him for self- government or the position of ruler over the white race. He is a child of the hour and concerned only about his stomach and comfort. His progress, little as it is, in the United States, has been forced upon him by the white man. His civilization here is due entirely to the discipline and training, for three hundred years, to the institution of slavery improving him gradually each generation in the manner the superior intellect has evolved the intelligence of animals of the brute creation. He cares no more for the general Welfare nor the upbuild- ing of a community now than he did thousands of years ago in his native jungles. As a race he cares nothing for law and order nor the attainment of the higher attributes of civilized man. A creature of the hour and present surroundings. The very idea of a people like those of the Northern States, with their claims of superior education and general attainments, marshal- ing an immense army, spending billions of treasury and sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives, murdering Women and children of their own race, devastating a vast territory occupied by enlightened citizens, to put a race of savages over their white brothers and drive them to destruction, is a crime so vast and so unforgiving that it must be classed as the demon age of American history. In the past as Well as the present the negro as a race has shown only the characteristics of the creature that sleeps with utter uncon- cern in the jungles where the God of Nature planted him. If the reader of this book will do as this writer has done in order 316 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI to fit himself for a proper conception and truthful exposition of negro character, he will easily understand. No one possessed with an im- partial desire for truth can go into the negro quarters of large cities or small towns and investigate their condition, habits and character- istics without a feeling of disappointment and disgust after forty years of freedom and special care given them under the efforts of Northern missionaries and under the educational advantages forced upon them by the white people of the South. And this is the creature, who, without having had these special intellectual advantages thrust upon them, just emerged from slavery, that the power of the military under Northern domination, holding the reins of government of the United States, put over our people to crush them and destroy their racial character, supervised by a horde of Northern adventurers, worshiping at the shrine of negro superstition, ignorance and idolatry. As a slave the negro could be controlled for good purposes; as a ruler he was the curse of the hour. In this the negro was not so much the criminal. It was his foster white brother, the Northern carpetbagger, political adventurer, so-called philanthropist, and fortune seekers. These observations and those in a previous chapter are given to show to the reader why the white people of the South took the steps they did to re-establish their supremacy and hold it at all hazards. The Southern people are persistently charged, by a certain class of Northern writers and historians, as being responsible for, and the foun- ders of, the institution of slavery in the United States; when it is a fact beyond contradiction that one of the very first acts of the founder of the first colony in Georgia Was to prohibit the introduction of sla- very; and later on the question began to look so serious that South Carolina and other States had to pass stringent laws to prohibit fur- ther importation of slaves. The very first act creating the territorial government of Mississippi prohibited the importation of slaves, from any foreign port, and as late as the secession of Alabama that State made the initiatory move for the abolicion of slavery, which was re- ferred to the Confederate government, but, the war coming on, it was not considered practicable to do so, as organized labor and their services were needed in the production of crops to sustain the armies; HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 317 and, besides, the Southern people held to the belief of gradual eman- cipation in twenty years, and compensation to their owners, while Northern abolitionists held to immediate manumission without compensation. CHAPTER IX. Ex-Governor Adelbert Ames, before the Congressional Committee of investigation on Mississippi affairs, testified to a general system of intimidation, frauds and violence on the part of the white people, by which voters in Republican counties were prevented from voting. He found it impossible, without a bloody collision between the masses (he should have said between the races), as he was not supported by the troops, to secure the negroes in their rights in the recent election. He testified that there were riots, shootings and threats, and that the pretext set up by the white citizens of Mississippi of robbing the State by excessive taxation Was wholly ungrounded — ■ that taxation in Mississippi was only seventy cents per head, against sixteen dollars in New York. He failed to draw the comparison be- tween the people of New York, possessed of billions of wealth, and those of Mississippi, whose fortunes had been swept away by the con- flagrations and vandalism of an invading army in which he aided, succeeded in its system of plunder by the military government set over them of which he assumed executive authority. In order to contradict the testimony of Governor Ames, given after he had been deposed, a few statistics will be valuable for the enlightenment of those in search of truth. The constitution of Mississippi did not authorize the executive to involve the State in debt, but at the expiration of his authority the debt of Mississippi is shown to be $2,631,804.24. Land assessed to owners $83, 774, 279 Land held for taxes 12,099,218 Assessed valuation of personal property 35, 639, 555 Grand total S131, S!3> °52 318 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI THE RATE OF TAXATION, In 1865 $ i .00 on $1, 000 — white rule In 1866 1 .00 on 1,000 — white rule In 1867 1 .00 on 1,000 — white rule In 1868 1 .00 on 1,000 — white rule In 1869 1 .00 on 1,000 — white rule In 1870 5.00 on 1,000 — negro rule In 1871 4.00 on 1,000 — negro rule In 1872 8.50 on 1,000 — negro rule In 1873 12. 50 on 1,000 — negro rule In 1874 14.00 on 1,000 — negro rule In 1875 9.25 on 1,000 — negro rule In the foregoing it will be seen that the rate of taxation under the government of Ames, in 1874, Was fourteen times greater than under white rule, and under military domination, the five years previous to negro rule supported by the military, and in 1875, the last year of his term, it was nine and one-fourth times greater; and in the face of these figures he goes before a Congressional committee and testifies that the charge made by the only taxpayers (the white citizens) of Mississippi, of robbing the State by excessive taxation, was wholly ungrounded. It was a source of pleasure to the white people of Mississippi, after so many years of excitement and peril, to have at the head of the executive department such a man as John M. Stone. Governor Stone was bom in Tennessee and entered the Confederate sendee as Captain of the Iuka Guards. He distinguished himself by his gal- lantry at the first battle of Manassas, in July, 1861, and became com- mander of the Second Mississippi Regiment. His career as a Confed- erate soldier and his personal courage was such that with him as Governor, and freed from Federal interference, the people of Missis- sippi felt confidence in maintaining white supremacy; but there must be no relaxation of vigilance and organization, not only to make secure the possession of the State government, but to Work for the success of the national Democratic ticket in the coming fall of 1876. On May 5th, John S. Lamkin, Chairman of the Democratic Execu- tive Committee of Pike County, issued a call to the Democrats of the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 319 county to meet in general convention on the 3rd of June to take into consideration matters recommended by the State Executive Commit- tee. At this convention the executive committee was reorganized by the election of W. F. Simmons, F. M. Lea, E. C. Andrews, A. A. Boyd, Ephraim Prescott, and Capt. John S. Lamkin, again chosen as Presi- dent, and Hugh Q. Bridges, Secretary. The following delegates were chosen to the State convention to assemble in Jackson on the 14th of June: Dr. George Nicholson, W. Fleet Simmons, Benjamin Lampton, Ralph Regan, W. C. Barnes, R. H. Felder, W. Lee Patton, James Greener, W. W. Vaught, and Joe Mixon. To Congressional convention: Dr. George Nicholson, W. Fleet Simmons, J. H. Crawford, Thomas J. Hall, R. J. Boone, Parham Thompson, D. W. Hurst, H. Q. Bridges, S. E. Packwood, and W. D. Davidson. A resolution was passed urging the various political clubs to keep up a thorough organization. The club at Osyka was organized with Joseph Mixon as President and Joe Mallett Secretary. The club at TyletoWn was organized with Benjamin Lampton, President; Jesse Iv. Brumfield, First Vice-President; George Smith, Second Vice-President; F. M. Lea, Treasurer, and J. H. Crawford, Secretary. The club at Magnolia was organized with Gen. E. McNair, President, and William C. Vaught, Secretary. On June 4th, 1876, the Hancock Democratic Club of Osyka was organized, with W. D. Davidson, President, and Meyer Wolf, Secretary, and a membership of sixty-seven, with ten negro members, being the first negroes to join a Democratic club in Pike County. The fol- lowing are their names: Rev. William Greenfield, Rev. G. Robertson, Henry Woods, Henry Roberts, T. B. Commons, Jacob Halfin, Henry Tate, Robert Brumfield, William Brumfield, Bird Braxton. Two large clubs were formed in the Silver Creek district, whose patriotic citizens Were ever in the line of duty. The Tilden Demo- 320 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI cratic Club was formed with the election of C. W. Simmons, President; S. M. Simmons, Vice-President; and R. L. Simmons, Secretary. Two negroes, Scott Barnes and Thomas Robertson, joined the club. H. W. Sandifer was elected Corresponding Secretary. The Tilden, Hendricks and Hooker Club was organized at Carters Creek on the 25th of July, 1876, with Joel J. Bullock, President, and John May, Secretary. The Tilden Colored Democratic Club was organized in Magnolia August 1, 1876, with Samuel Madden, President; Thomas Jefferson, Vice-President; James Scott, Treasurer; Martin Russell, Secretary; and Joe Singletary, Captain of the Club, and twenty-seven colored members. The men composing this club were the most influential of their race in the precinct, and went to work to organize this club of their own accord and without any influence used on them by the white people. They had lived ten years under the rule of the mili- tary and carpetbagism, which created only a feeling of unrest and a clashing of interests with the white people, and they were willing to make the change in harmony with those upon whom they must depend for peace and protection to themselves and their families. The Freedmans Savings Bank, the offspring of the system of carpet- bag robbery of the negro race in the South, and the total failure of a delivery of the gift of forty acres and a mule, had impressed them- selves on their minds and caused an awakening which placed them in line with their old masters to free the State from misrule. Simmons Precinct Democratic Club was organized July 29, 1876, with the election of Benjamin Franklin Ellzey as President, and A. S. Smith, Secretary. Resolution inviting colored members adopted. On the 12th of August, the Holmesville Democratic Club was or- ganized at Holmesville, with John G. Leggett, President, and Hugh Murray Quin, Secretary. A resolution inviting colored members was adopted. David C. Walker, Robert S. Bridges and H. M. Quin were elected delegates to the Central Club organization in Magnolia, third Monday in August. At the National Democratic Convention held in St. Louis, Mo., on the 27th of June, 1876, Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, was nomi- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 321 nated for President and Thomas A. Hendricks for Vice-President of the United States. Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, was nominated for President and William A. Wheeler for Vice-President by the Republican Convention. In the organization of the Democratic party of Mississippi in 1876, for the final overthrow of carpetbagism and military interference in State affairs, the people had much to convince them that their late defeated opponents were using every effort possible ro reestablish themselves and negro rule in power. John R. Lynch, negro, in the national House of Representatives, from Mississippi, said: “I desire to make what may be a final appeal. I use the word ‘final’ be- cause, as little as you may think of it, the condition of the colored people of the South to-day, if not of the whole country, is a seriously critical one. We are standing, as it were, upon the brink of our political and, I may add, personal destruction. When we look to the right we find the angry billows of an en- raged democracy seeking to overwhelm us. When we look to the left, we find that we are crushed to the earth, as it were, with an unjust and an un-Christian prejudice. When we turn to the rear, we find the assassin in certain portions of the country ready to plunge the dagger into our hearts for a public expression of our honest conviction. We turn our faces to you as our friends, our advo- cates, our defenders and our protectors. “The Democratic party has an armed military organization in several of the Southern States called the White League. This organization has been brought into existence for the sole and exclusive purpose of accomplishing with the bullet that which can not be accomplished with the ballot; for con- trolling public opinion and carrying popular elections by violence and force of arms; for the purpose of destroying the freedom of speech, the freedom of opinion, the freedom of the press and the protection of the ballot. Its mission is to accomplish practically within the union that which could not be accom- plished through the madness of secession.” This sable representative in the United States Congress, sent there by his carpetbag and negro supporters of Mississippi, forgot to say that the white people of the State had been for ten years held under the yoke of a military despotism, and made to pay all the taxes, and assume the burden of debts thrust upon them without their consent. This speech was simply one of the old appeals for United States troops. The Deputy United States Revenue Collector, D. M. Redmond, had succeeded in getting a troop of cavalry stationed at McComb City, and 21 322 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI to put a finishing touch to the speech of John R. Lynch, a white preach- er of the gospel who had made his home in McComb City, and shared the kindness and hospitality of its people, Rev. H. M. Church, pre- siding elder of the African Episcopal Church, came out in a slanderous letter published in the New York Witness, on the election of 1875, against the white people of Amite and Pike Counties, so full of vehe- ment slander and falsehood as to excite the contempt of all Northern people who had settled in McComb, and who, from a sense of justice to themselves and those with whom they had cast their destinies, felt compelled to publish a statement contradicting this intermeddlers’ statements. The Magnolia Herald copied Church’s letter at the time and char- acterized him as a man of mischief, sleeping and eating with negroes, and inciting them against the white people Bishop Haven, of the Northern Methodist Church, published a letter in which he stated that at a conference of the A. M. E. Church, he was told how a certain Louisiana representative was brutally mur- dered by the white people. The representative referred to was John Gair, a notorious thief and murderer, who caused the poisoning of Dr. Sanders of Clinton, La., and H. M. Church was Bishop Haven’s informer. The McComb City Intelligencer, published by a Northern gentle- man,* commenting on the scathing editorial of the Magnolia Herald on Church’s slanderous letter and that of Bishop Haven, said: “This is true. Our community here is composed of Northern men and Southern men and people of both political parties and the various Protestant and Catholic denominations, and we believe the feeling is universal that Church, when he resided with us, was a strife-making nuisance. His letter to the New York Witness, defaming the very people who, in another portion of it, he admits have treated him with hospitality and kindness, is characteristic of the man.” Fred Barrett, who had figured in Amite County, sent out the fol- lowing in an open letter in the Southern Republican, published by him at Jackson: *W. H. Townsend. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 323 “By becoming fiends infuriate, devils incarnate, as our enemies did last year, we could spread consternation and dismay, ruin and death, in our course; we could soon teach the enemy the full force of his favorite resort, violence.” GRANT MUST CALL OFF HIS DOGS. The New York Herald, in the following language, insisted that President Grant must be made to “take his heavy hand off the South.” “In this canvass one demand should be made by all who love their country, irrespective of party sentiment — let Grant take his heavy hand off the South. Of our soldiers we may say to him, as Richard III. said to Stanley, ‘What do they in the South when they should serve their country in the West?’ Why should Mississippi be strongly garrisoned while troops are wanted to fight Sit- ting Bull in Dakota and all that region which is now threatened with a cruel and possibly disastrous war? Senator Bayard, in a recent debate, showed how Mississippi has suffered under one of the worst governments ever known, and how much moderation and wisdom are wanted to enforce the much needed reforms. The views of Mr. Bayard are not extreme in this case. Mississippi and the whole South, indeed, are orderly enough, and a presidential campaign is not the time when large bodies of troops should be stationed in any State, when they are needed to fight the common enemy. There is a dividing line between caution and rashness, and we hope the administration may find it.” Rainey, the negro member of Congress from South Carolina, said if they failed to get troops in the South to control the election, he would advise his people to arm themselves and to sell their lives as dearly as possible. “Then,” he added with a snap of his jaws, “if we are not strong enough to light that way, by the living God, We will bring the torch into combat, and bum out all who seek our destruc- tion . ’ ’ Gen. Phil A. Sheridan, the “Rough Rider” of the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia, who, with five thousand troops, passed up that section and desolated it, at a time when there Were none to defend it, making war on its unarmed and helpless inhabitants, it was announced by telegram had been appointed military commander of the States of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama. The apprehension of the people in consequence of this appoint- ment could not be appreciated. It was evident to them that Presi- dent Grant and the radical party intended again to place the South- 324 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI em States under military rule in order to control the coming fall election. Sheridan’s connection with the Louisiana troubles and his denun- ciation of our people as banditti, and having advocated that they be tried as such and shot, gave room for the most serious consequences. Another military despotism, presided over by a man whom they re- garded as destitute of civilized sensibilities, a brute in character as a commander, the slaughterer of a camp of sick Indians, was considered to be willing to perpetrate any outrage that might be desired of him by his master against the white people of these States in order to reestablish negro supremacy. Just at this time a great fever of excitement was raised by the news from Wilkinson County and West Feliciana Parish, La. One Weber, a member of the Louisiana Legislature, instructed the negroes that the only hope for the success of the radical party in that State, was to prevent the Democrats from organizing and break up their club meetings by armed force. Learning a club was to be organized at Dr. Perkins’ place, seven miles south of Woodville, at the State line, about forty armed negroes went there to break it up. Finding no club and no one else to kill they murdered Max Aronson, a Jew storekeeper, and wounded his colored clerk. Gains, the negro leader, seconded by Swazey and Ben King, two other negro leaders, proclaimed war and began to increase his force. In the meantime Col. Mose Jackson raised a small body of men and on Sunday engaged in a lively skirmish with the negroes, about six hundred strong. On Monday it was ascertained that the negroes had concentrated a force of about eight hundred men at Fort Adams. Col. Jackson was heavily reinforced, and was joined by two large com- panies of cavalry, under Col. Powers. The negroes were attacked and routed with severe loss. Gains, the leader, was captured and hung. All these circumstances, with some little local disturbances caused by negroes insulting white ladies, created intense anxiety among the people of Pike County and convinced them that the time had not yet come when they should cease to be on the alert or relax their energies in the coming political contest. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 325 If the reader will bear with the writer in this recital it will be shown that all the means that could be brought to bear in Pike County would not prevent an utter destruction of the negro race at this mo- ment if the same circumstances surrounding other communities had been forced upon the white people here. It has already been said that a great influence was wielded by one man in Pike County, which few people appreciated at the time. The very first outbreak on the part of the negroes would have been the death knell of the race in Pike County. At Tylertown a negro named Dick Tyler, who has been mentioned in a former chapter as an obedient and trustworthy slave, insulted some white ladies in that community. It was a wise precaution taken by twenty men of his own color to provide them- selves with the necessary outfit for his punishment, which resulted in his leaving the country. The Democratic Club at Tylertown Was presided over by Benja- min Lampton, a man well beloved by all people, and it Was composed of members that Would not permit an insult to a white lady by negroes. They had invited the negro men of the community to join them and aid in the effort to restore amicable political relations with them. The negroes were dependent for homes, for labor to earn their support, for the food they ate, for the clothes they wore, for medicines and med- ical attention, for the education of their children, wholly upon the white people, and it was time for them to cease obstructing the ave- nues which led to peace and happiness and prosperity. When these things could be impressed upon their minds, it Was then and then only that a future security for them could be assured. On one occasion, the most important perhaps that ever occurred in that little village, a voice Was heard that awakened an interest in the future course of the negroes at Tylertown. When the Democratic Club told them that their rights were not in danger and that they should be made secure in all that pertained to good citizenship, the voice of reason should have come to them for once. They had never attended a Democratic political speaking. It had been the policy of their lead- ers to hold up to their view the ever frightful and cadaverous skele- ton constructed from the corpse of slavery. 326 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI In the next few weeks succeeding the one mentioned here a case occurred in the adjoining county of Lawrence which gave a backset to the efforts made to smooth over racial conditions. A negro com- mitted an assault upon a white lady, but was promptly hung for the crime. The radical papers all over the South began the publication of the most extreme and incendiary editorials, advising the negroes to acts of desperation, calculated to incense the Democratic press and cause them to retort in an equally threatening and vindictive spirit. These were some of the conditions presented at the opening of the campaign of 1876, and they were conditions to be met with a firm resolve. When the white people saw the character of the forces arrayed against them it was determined to be fully prepared and conduct a campaign under the most aggressive conditions. The executive committee arranged a plan of campaign and all the clubs in the county held weekly meetings. Hon. Samuel E. Packwood, Hugh Q. Bridges and the editor of the Magnolia Herald Were appointed speakers to visit the clubs and address the people on public occasions. Thomas R. Stockdale, Samuel A. Matthews, David W. Hurst, Isaac Apple- white, Harry Applewhite, John S. Lamkin, James C. Lamkin, all able speakers, entered in the work to secure the success of the party. An effort was made to break up the negro Democratic Club at Magnolia by putting the negro women forward to abuse its members, and threats were made by the “inconvincible” negroes, as they were termed, but the Democratic whites gave them protection and put a stop to it at once. Pike County had its share of irreconcilable and obstreperous negroes who needed something more than gentle per- suasion and argument, and, while the white clubs in all the election precincts were offering inducements to them to come with them, it was determined never again to be placed under negro domination. The carpetbagger and negro had been on top for some years and held the guns while the white people had to pay the bills and feed them. The whites were on top now and held the guns and they were going to continue to hold them at all hazards. Argument and reason had HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 327 failed to convince them in the past. It was time for a practical illus- tration of Caucasian manhood and tutelage by object lessons. The negro club at Magnolia Worked so earnestly and faithfully against the threats and intimidations offered them by men and women of their own color that they were honored by the white people of Mag- nolia with a public banner presentation. The banner was received on the part of the club by Martin Russell, the Secretary. Rifhsell was an ex-Union soldier, an educated man and a good- j^d'gef idfUiu- man nature. ^ j.s'roornsd It was a curious fact that all, or nearly all the great neWgpap^ at the North were wholly in sympathy with the carpetbaggers an® negroes against the white people of their own race and blood. All of the so-called savage barbarity, outrages and crimes claimed to have been perpetrated in the Southern States, were laid at the door of the white people. The negro was the innocent lamb led to the slaughter pen, and the carpetbaggers were the persecuted missionaries and Chris- tian martyrs to the cause of humanity, and it gave unction to their benighted souls when the military interceded to oppress the Southern whites. In every single instance within the knowledge and experience of this writer, where there was a clash between the negroes and whites, the negroes were the beginners and aggressors. It is so to-day. During this political campaign, in 1876, there is only one instance to be recorded where Democratic speakers succeeded in drawing the attention of a negro audience at a public meeting in Pike County. The club at Tylertown extended a special invitation to S. E. Pack- Wood, Hugh Q. Bridges and the writer to deliver addresses at that place. Packwood was well known as a forceful speaker; he had lived among them for twenty-five years. Hugh Bridges was a captivating orator and the editor of the Herald Was born and raised among them. A large number were present. At the beginning of the speaking they stood afar off, but were gradually coaxed up around the stand during the closing address, when they received enlightenment on the forty acres and a mule and the Freedmans Bank swindles, with an illustration of how they ob- 328 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI tained their pork and beans at the hands of Benjamin Lampton, the President of the Tylertown Club, whose interests they had been casting their votes to cripple; and if the members of this club who they had voted against in the past were to cut off their supplies, they, with their wives and children would starve to death in ten days, unless they went to stealing, which Would result in every one of them being hung. This was an opportune occasion and the first and only one when a Democrat got a shot at them from his mouthpiece, and they were admonished that the time had come when there must be a change in their attitude toward those who gave them houses to live in and furnished them the necessities of life; and there was going to be a change if every negro had to be swept from the face of the earth; and before the dawn of the day of the November election they would hear it thunder as it had never thundered before in Pike County. The writer does not say it boastfully, but he was almost constantly in the saddle or on other conveyance visiting clubs and arranging details to make sure of the result on the day of the election. A large amount of powder was obtained for different neighborhoods and election precincts to be used the night before the election. A torch light horseback procession was arranged to make a circuit from Holmesville around by China Grove to Tylertown and return. This procession was headed by Jesse K. Brumfield and the editor of the Magnolia Herald, who rode side by side the entire circuit of over thirty miles. The pine tree cannonading began about ten o’clock and con- tinued through the night. The torch light procession proceeded by China Grove and stopped for a few minutes at the residence of Hon. A. S. Bishop, where there was an exchange of courtesies in which Mrs. Bishop and some other ladies participated with most gracious hospitality and kindness. From here it proceeded to Tylertown, recrossing Magees Creek and passing by the old Smith place and the old home of Sampson L. Lamkin. During this time the horse of Jesse Brumfield took fright and lunged against the horse of the Writer, causing a severe and painful sprain of his left knee. Some little excitement was produced in the ranks by the report that a body of HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 329 negroes were in ambush, but nothing checked the procession. Rans Lewis, the only negro in Pike Comity who had never voted the Re- publican ticket, but always voted the Democratic ticket, was with this procession from start to finish. The procession arrived at Tylertown about twelve o’clock, where a large crowd of people, containing some negroes, awaited it. Mrs. Benjamin Lampton had prepared supper for a few. After partaking of this last supper with a much beloved aunt, the writer was forced to respond to repeated calls. During the year and through the campaign of 1876 the White League and the Bulldoozer organizations were kept up in Louisiana and in Mississippi. The most persistent and bitter opponents and denouncers of these organizations were the carpetbaggers — political adventurers, seekers after the flesh-pots, and ambitious negro poli- ticians. The United States military and government authorities were not on friendly terms with them either. It was a bold peasantry indeed that would arm themselves and assert their inherent rights against such tremendous odds. Mississippi had complied with the terms of the reconstruction laws. It was self-government they claim- ed and the overthrow of a system which was bankrupting the tax- payers, who were the white, bona fide citizens of the State. The State of Louisiana had been trampled under foot and the right of self-government completely overthrown by an insolent soldiery and it was deliberately approved by nearly a unanimous vote of the Re- publican majority in the United States Senate. In his message to Congress in February, President Grant proposed the invasion of Arkansas and the overthrow of the government of that State, then in the hands of the men he had already recognized. What then could be expected for Mississippi, even after she had deposed the military and impeached the usurping Governor Ames? An incident occurred in the town of Magnolia during this time to indicate the cool determination of the White League and Bulldoozer organizations. One of their number had been arrested and confined in the county jail at Magnolia. John Q. Travis was Sheriff, F. W. Collins, First Deputy, and Dave Walker, Under Deputy. A band of 330 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI about seventy-five White Leaguers, said to be from Louisiana, unex- pectedly appeared just on the outskirts of the western part of town and went into camp on the Minnehaha Creek, in old time cavalry fashion, late in the afternoon. The Sheriff and his deputies were un- able to cope wich such a body of men so unexpectedly appearing at the county seat, even if they had attempted or committed an overt act. They simply went into camp and proceeded to broil their meat and cook their hoecakes and procure feed for their horses, “very deliberately.” After dark the Sheriff sent his Deputy, Dave Walker, and one or two other persons out to spy and scout around to ascertain their objects. Walker was captured and held a prisoner all night. Scouting parties of this command were sent all over Magnolia making inquiries for the Sheriff, after night set in. It was a bright moonshine night. The Sheriff took refuge in the residence of Rev. Farris, a Baptist minister, and went to bed. Deputy Sheriff Collins became the guest of the editor of the Magnolia Herald, who had the reputation of being the Bulldoozer mouthpiece. The whole town of Magnolia soon got into a fever of excitement over the invasion of the Louisiana Bulldoozers and their determined effort to capture the Sheriff of Pike County and his deputies. After assuring Mr. Collins of perfect se- curity and protection at his home, the editor of the Herald walked out on the streets and encountered several squads and conversed with them. They said they wanted to find the Sheriff to get the jail key to get their friend out of jail and they intended to have him or tear the jail open, if they could noc get the key. The editor suggested to them that they all retire to camp and wait cill after breakfast time in the morning; that they could not find the officers even by searching every house in town, perhaps; to go back to camp and tell their com- mander to wait till morning and ride in to the court house square; that the Chancery Clerk was authorized under the law to fix the amount of the bond and they could get their comrade out of jail without violence and that there were some people in the community who would be pleased at their success in order that they themselves might escape apparent danger. The suggestion was adopted and the following day HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 331 the bond was fixed and the prisoner released, when the troop disap- peared as mysteriously as it came. It is estimated that over forty thousand negroes were enrolled in the Democratic ranks and voted the Democratic ticket in the fall election of 1876. A tremendous majority was given in the State for Samuel J. Tilden for President. In Pike County there was a clear gain of six hundred votes for the Democratic ticket over the returns of the election of 1875. From the very first pioneer who settled in Pike County territory, in 1799, there had not been any census of the county taken or re- ported until 1820, When the population Was shown to be 4,438, five years after the county was formed. In i860, it was shown to be 11,- 135; in 1870, 11,303; in 1880, 16,688; in 1890, 21,203; an d hi 1900, 27. 545- In consequence of the ravages of war and the revolutionary con- ditions prevailing the next five years after its close, the increase of the population of the county from i860 to 1870 was only 168, while the next ten years showed an increase of 5,365. After the re-establishment of authority and government by the white people and the restoration of peace and confidence, the gain was commensurate therewith, and che growth in population, prosperity, wealth and happiness that followed, the fulfillment of the aims of the leaders and the rank and file of the White League. Tilden and Hendricks were elected President and Vice-President at this election by a large popular vote and by a majority of the elec- toral college, but so determined were those of the Republican party in control of the executive and legislative branches of the United States government to keep the Democratic candidates out that a measure was passed by the Congress to render the decision of the election in a manner contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, and so stultifying in its character as to stamp the Republican candi- date who was declared elected by this fraudulent act, as "His Fraud- ulency R. B. Hayes,” thus adding another chapter of scandal to the name of the United States government, in its shameful record through- out the war against the Southern States and the reconstruction era. 332 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Infamous as the crime was in making R. B. Hayes President, it will always be remembered of him that he exerted himself in a laud- able way to harmonize the bitter feeling of the Southern people engen- dered during Grant’s administration, by removing the United States troops and stopping their interference in State affairs; and from his administration dates the beginning of the rehabiliment of Mississippi. Let the recollections of the past be a lesson for those who come in the future to teach them to love their country and adhere to the fun- damental principles upon which the government and their liberties were founded though the heavens fall. “Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay; Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them as a breath is made. But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied; 'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.’’ WILD JIM BARNES. In its early history there existed in the State of Mississippi a band of outlaws, and many were the scenes enacted that gave rise to exag- gerated sensational reports of lawlessness which frustrated the au- thorities as to the methods best to be adopted to defeat the schemes concocted by them to further their aims in depredating on the live stock and other movable property of farmers and others that the organization operated on. There Was an organization known as Copeland’s Clan. This clan had a line of operation from Alabama, through Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, and along this line there lived a class of farmers who were in league with the clan, aiding and abetting their Work and harboring the active operators. A system of relays was established so that a horse could be stolen from a community and, during the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 333 night, hurried off twenty miles to the next man and the actual thief back at the place of theft without being missed from the neighbor- hood and the horse hurried on to the next relay and so on until he was entirely out of reach, without the owner being able to get trace of him, and thus back and forth through a wide area the work went on for many years, until finally it was broken up by the Governor of Mississippi, who put a detective at work among them. They were sometimes called “Border Beagles’’ and a book was pub- lished bearing that title, giving a history of their operations. But there was what we may call a tail end to this clan which revived some years after the main head had been chopped off, that operated in scattered sections, almost every county in the State being more or less troubled at times with its work. This is reverted to in order to reach the subject of this article, who, many thought, back in the fif- ties, belonged to an organized clan during that time. Wild Jim Barnes was a native of Marion County and in his early training was given advantage of a good education. He sprang from one of the best pioneer families of that county and was considered to be a young man of model characteristics up to a certain period of his life, when he was set adrift in pursuit of a livelihood by his own exertions. In connection with his excellent education he possessed a most remarkable memory, and was considered a prodigy in this particular gift. Everything he heard was indelibly stereotyped on his brain, and, like the graphophone, had only to be wound up for the occasion to reproduce whatever he wished, and with this remarkable talent he was possessed of the gift of oratory, witticism and sarcasm to a wonderful degree. Whenever the occasion presented itself he could and would reproduce any speech or sermon he ever heard and even in his early manhood he got to be a regular encyclopedia of ser- mons, speeches and prayers. He figured in Pike County to some ex- tent and gave to the writer, in his boyhood, a lesson he never forgot. He was a prisoner in 1858, in the town of Holmesville, and was kept under guard until a trial could be had on the charges preferred against him, as the county jail had been destroyed by fire when the only pris- oner in it at the time was cremated in the building. The writer was 334 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI one of the guards appointed by the Sheriff to watch at night, and this fact gave rise co the information which this article contains. He was arrested ac the instance of Robert Ligon, a justice of the peace, in the town of Summit, charged with grand larceny. His witticism was pointed and side-splitting at times. He was a great talker and always commanded an attentive audience. He ridiculed the officer who had him arrested on such a charge and characterized his court as a nonentity. A famous expression fell from his lips in which he stated that “a bright idea has as much room for navigation in that officer’s brain as a frog has in Lake Erie.” On one occasion he was taken to jail and delivered an interesting sermon to a large crowd, on cucumberology, taking “the cool cucum- ber” as his text, and declared, with vehement emphasis, eloquence and convincing argument that the cucumber was as apt to be saved as some of the gourd-headed upstarts who had filed affidavit against him on charges they could not prove, based upon the best of their knowledge and belief, which was merely a freak of their imagination. Wild Jim Barnes traveled from Alabama to Texas, and back and forth, which gave rise to the supposition that he was following an unlawful avocation and belonged to one of the numerous gangs of horse and negro thieves that infested the South in those days, and it took considerable means to pay expenses. Horseback was the prin- cipal mode of traveling, on account of the character of the roads, trails and by-paths that had to be followed to reach given points in sparsely settled sections. There were no railroads nor telegraph lines, and the facilities for the transmission of news was through the slow process of the mails carried on horseback or by stage, and the outlaw or the one engaged in a questionable avocation could out travel these and be far away before the news would reach a point desired. Jim often got hard pressed for money to meet his demands, but he was resourceful, and when he got into a good neighborhood it was said he would hold divine services, either Baptist or Methodist, as occasion fitted, prayer meeting, protracted meetings and Sunday sermons, for the betterment of the community and particularly for the better- ment of his empty pocketbook, and he always left full handed. Wheth- HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 335 er Wild Jim Bames was the originator of this style of raising funds for the depleted finances of the ministry in South Mississippi and else- where, there is no positive proof, but it was practicable and Jim may have been the originator of it for aught we know. It is said at times, when he wanted to “raise a flush,” he would sell his horse and then hold a big meeting, make a poor mouth to the brethren about having lost his horse, being on his way to fill a mission or attend a special call at a great distance. He proved his mission by his ability to preach and would hold meetings and give them some of his fine sermons, and his gift of oratory and entertainment never failed him. He would stir up their religious feelings and sympathy and always got a new horse, and then when he reached a suitable village or town he was ready for a game of poker, or a horse race. One of his impressive sermons, for the “hat act,” was on the sub- ject of homes, the text being taken from the 5th chapter and 9th verse “of the gospel of our Lord, by Isaiah.” “In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.” Care was taken to impress upon his hearers that a homeless man was a sad subject to contemplate and how wholly dependent the sen’ ant of the Lord was on the brethren of the church for sustenance and support to enable him to satisfactorily discharge his duties to his flock. God had given to us all the privilege to locate a home and build a house and be the possessor of all that We need ; but when We thought we had reached the height of our desires for comfort and happiness, a wave of illness would spread over the land and the angel of death appear, and behold the house made desolate. It is the house well provided and administered that gives the happiness He intended we should enjoy on this earth, and when we believe in Him and do His will, we will be rewarded abundantly, as Was the case with Job, until he fell into the meshes of the devil. When we lay aside the will of the Lord that moment the devil reaches out and takes us by the hand and leads us astray from the paths of righteousness and we become sorely afflicted. Job was always patient, so say the Scriptures, and he believed it was for his own good that affliction was put upon him, 336 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and it Was Well that he believed this that he might bear his affliction with more patience. But I am not exactly prepared to say that I would feel as Job did. '‘Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant,” says the text, and in the palace as well as in the hovel there shall be desolation. "And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled,” says the prophet, Isaiah, and we see it all through our lives. No man or woman should fail to perform the duties devolved upon them in responding to the calls made upon them by one of the Maker’s servants who has laid aside all he possessed to administer to the spiritual needs of His children. Christ has said: "Sell all thou hast and follow me,” and now there is an opportunity presented for those whose alms should be freely given, if they would escape afflic- tion and torment, and desire to obtain everlasting life, lest the house become desolate. Let your light shine so that it will be acceptable to the Lord, that you may feel the consolation that you have given freely of your great abundance to advance His Divine Will.” And then Brother Barnes would submit his distressed condition to the congregation through one of the deacons whom he had previously coached to make the call for help. Success always crowned his efforts. When the Civil War broke out Wild Jim Barnes joined a compnay that became a part of the Thirty-third Mississippi Regiment, command- ed by Col. David W. Hurst, Featherston’s Brigade, Loring’s Division, of the Army of Tennessee, C. S. A., and performed the duties of a faithful soldier. But he kept up his old practice of preaching for profit in the army, taking up collections to buy blankets for the boys, and gambling. Whenever a chance offered, when near a large town, he would have it announced that Brother Barnes of the 33rd Mississippi would hold divine services in one of the churches and he would preach one of his most stirring sermons, and always made a good hit and a good haul, in Confederate money, which he divided generously with the members of his company, and when monotonous HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 337 camp life was on and the boys wanted something refreshing, they would call on him to hold a meeting. He always responded as sin- cerely and earnestly as if he had been a regularly ordained minister. A man who could thus command the wages of a minister of the gospel and be a mischievous runabout and sportsman was an enigma to all who knew Wild Jim Barnes. He may have lived in its atmos- phere as happily as any person performing the regularly ordained and acknowledged functions of the Church, and perhaps more so. We have no evidence that he ever gave a thought to anything of great- er value to himself or to the World. While he was a genius and a man qualified to stand aloof from such conduct as that attributed to him, he never gave to mankind any evidence of heroic self-abnegation that belongs to those whose lives are free from stain. If he possessed talents to advance a great cause it would seem reasonable that there is something in the personal influence of a Creator on man for special purposes. Here we have a man with power of thought, of language, eloquence and witticism and great memory traveling over the country as itin- erant minister at times and at others filling the roll of a gambler, or of a vagabond from established moral society. He performed the farce act for the ministerial department of churches on his own hook at a time when ignorance and superstition predominated a large class of the people in sections where he operated, a representation of hypoc- risy, of a class who; believe they only were the elect and saints on earth and who abused the power entrusted to them by humbugging the people, as illustrated by Wild Jim Barnes, who gave to the World the picture of saintly ministry for personal profit as proof of a plan which has dominated the ministerial forces of the Christian churches, as evidenced in later history, and which With thinking men has dam- aged the cause of Christianity; and religion has been prostitut- ed in the glow and glitter of costly edifices and paraphernalia for the edification of the rich and haughty, while the poor and meek and the lowly are driven to the hovels, beshamed and denied association with those they can not reach in personal adornment. The relig- ion of the holy Jesus who was bom in a manger and whose teachings 22 338 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI and examples were of the purest simplicity and suited to all mankind has been superseded by the glamor of costly temples, where wealth revels and where souls that are earnest and sincere are denied entrance without pay; and to raise means to sustain these establishments and their belongings, great advertisements and bill posters are sent abroad announcing protracted revival meetings which are turned into collection bureaux, while millions are starving on account of the taxation. In the widespread competition for supremacy every Chris- tian Church is struggling to outclass its rival in gorgeous temples of worship. Beneath the starry dome of heaven, the blue canopy above us, nor in the woodland groves where nature spreads out in wholesome glory, are not good enough places to commune with God. We live in an age When wealth stands as the personification of all that is great and good, and the mean man who has a rented pew set aside for his own exclusive occupancy is not disposed to worship and com- mune alongside of his neighbor whose bank account is inferior to his own. And this reminds us of a story told on Bob Ingersoll. While a country lawyer in Illinois, he visited a large city, and, as was his cus- tom, he attended church to get new material for his lectures and seated himself in the first convenient pew. Soon afterward the renter of the pew walked in, faultlessly dressed, and seeing his pew occupied by a stranger, drew a card from his pocket and wrote upon it the fol- lowing: "You are occupying my pew; I pay $500 a year for that pew.” This he handed to the old pagan through the usher. Inger- soll reversed the card and wrote the following: "You pay too damned much,” which he handed to the five hundred dollar pew man and walked out. Wild Jim Barnes gave to the world all that was necessary to illus- trate what has been Written, and he made a point which cannot be refuted, and in doing this, he may have performed the Work as- signed to him by his Creator. The great war lifted a veil from the eyes of the world. The com- batting forces have passed into the annals of fame and the sterling HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 339 worth of those who have been spared through eventful scenes is yet a synonym of glory. In the line that fame has rewarded there are a few who are the survivors of its immortal heritage. We who look back to the desolation wrought and the blazing glory which enshrines the epoch in which they acted, can scarcely conceive the wonderful advancement that has crowned our Southland from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. They mastered themselves and sustained the prin- ciples they struggled to maintain and they have achieved a still greater glory in establishing a firm moral character on their descend- ants. It is seen in all the avenues of trade and the productive achieve- ments of the country and the strength of the government under which they live. They are its support in conflict or in peace, and they live to adorn the present with their examples. LITTLE JOE LEWIS’ FAREWELL SERMON. Little Joe Lewis was the son of Joseph Lewis, one of the pioneers who settled on the west side of Magees Creek, some miles below and south of the present site of TylertoWn, on the plantation still known as the Joe Lewis place, where Little Joe, as he was familiarly called by his friends and neighbors, was bom, and who had acquired dis- tinction as a local Baptist preacher, officiating at the old New Zion Church, in the southeastern comer of Pike County, located on or near the Pushepatapa Creek. This meeting house was one of the first erected in that section of the county by the early settlers of the Bap- tist persuasion, and was constructed, like all other early meeting houses, of small logs for the main body and subsequently enlarged by the addition of wide sheds around it, so as to give accommodation to the increasing population of whites and negro slaves adhering to the Baptist faith and living in the neighborhood. Little Joe’s father had officiated here in the early settlement of the community, and, in con- nection with the Rev. Willis J. Fortinberry, had organized and built up a Christian fellowship that has lived and flourished ever since. The war had come on in the sixties and was progressing with all its incident suffering and horrors. Nearly all the men of military age 340 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI had gone to the scenes of the conflict, leaving the very old men and boys and the women and children to struggle along as best they could, and very many of these were in great distress for reasons growing out of the war. In his childhood and boyhood Little Joe had to work hard on the farm, shell com and go to mill at Tyler’s or Conerly’s, on Dry Creek, to have it ground into meal and hominy, and sometimes to the tan- nery of Chauncey Collins, over on Collins Creek, to carry hides in payment of shoes for the family. He was a sturdy, good boy of prac- tical common sense and grew up so under pious surroundings. In his young manhood he became strongly impressed in religious duties, and though acquiring a limited education, such only as could be ac- quired in the country pay schools at that time, felt that it was his duty to enter the ministry and preach the gospel, and in a measure fill the mission inaugurated by his distinguished father, and hence officiated at New Zion during the Civil War. He announced at one of his well attended meetings that on a certain Sabbath in the future he would deliver his farewell sermon at his home church at New Zion. When the time came it was a cold, bleak, drizzly day and the shiver- ing winds were howling around the houses and moaning through the pines and were too much for those whose apparel was worn and thin from the absence of means in these awful war times to supply some- thing better. Confederate money was at par — that is, it was worth dollar for dollar of the same sort of currency and scarce in this neigh- borhood, too, and greenbacks had not circulated to any extent. Hence a small congregation appeared to listen to Little Joe’s farewell sermon. He was greatly disappointed at the small gathering as mani- fested in his remarks and as depicted on his countenance when he arose and spoke as follows: “My Dear Friends: When I last had the pleasure of appearing before a congregation in this house, I annonuced that on this day I would be here to preach my farewell sermon before taking my departure to the State of Texas, here I expect to reside in the future. “Under all the circumstances I had hoped and expected to be greeted by a large congregation, but, behold, the seats are empty! “Now, my dear friends, if I had announced that on this day I would be HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 341 here for the purpose of distributing ten thousand dollars, what scrouging! What scrouging!! What scrouging!!! “I had intended to give a discourse on a certain passage of Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians, but under the circumstances I shall content myself with a few general remarks. “In the first place, my dear, dying congregation, I desire to warn you that the salvation of your precious souls is of greater value and of greater concern to you than the acquirement of a few paltry dollars; for what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? “I feel sure that if this idea had been properly impressed on the minds of my people I would to-day stand in the presence of the largest congregation ever assembled on these grounds. My friends, I am a plain spoken man, and when I give an illustration I want it to illustrate. “Church people are not always what they ought to be and sometimes some of them are not what they appear to be. They sometimes remind me of the great and grand forests. We go out and into them and view and admire the beautiful foliage, the symmetrical poplars and stately oaks. They all appear to be sound, but lo, when the axman comes to cut into them he finds many of them doty and filled with worms, and some of them hollow at the butt. “I shall not expect you to be in a very pious mood on this day, as the shiv- ering winds are rumbling about us and bringing the cold damp of death from the mountains in the far off North where our soldiers are standing guard in defense of our country. “I wish I could see the effect of a spiritual uprising, so that we could feel the flow of God’s love and mercy in our hearts. I always felt that God was a merciful and loving God, and that he would one day lift our benighted souls into a realization of His desires, but it seems to me now that He has forgotten or withdrawn the care He has previously bestowed upon us, as I see so few here to-day who seem concerned about which way the contest ends. “I am a lover of the country which gave me birth and the privilege of wor- shiping the Lord according to my idea of it, and I desire to impress upon you the full import of the duties you should perform. I am at a loss to understand why I should thus become the innocent victim of the devil’s schemes to rob a people of its inheritance. “We are at a stage of life when all the virtue that is in us should be mani- fested in the true Christian spirit. It is so important to us that all of us should join in the refreshing services of a day when our souls can be free to exert themselves. I always love to meet my people on the Sabbath when the cares of the workshop, the store and the farm can be laid aside and we can come together and fulfill the mission of our lives in the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I shall live to remember the saddest day of my life when it became necessary for me to depart from them. Oh, my people, where are the loved ones gone now? What sacrifices you are called upon to make, and yet deny yourselves the blessings of the Maker! 342 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI “If God has given the people a chance to become the children of righteous- ness and they prefer the ways of the devil instead, it is all right with me and I will depart in peace. “If Paul, when he spoke to the Romans, had flickered in the least the devil would have given him due compensation; but Paul was a man of power and great thought, who could give the devil his dues and at the same time give the Lord His dues; but here, in my home church, where I have labored long and listened to the wails of suffering and sorrow and the sacrifices of the women of our land in the trying ordeals which beset our country, I am confronted with the person of the Devil, who has been promulgating his desires in the midst of my people ! I at least desired a full congregation so that a voice from heaven might hover over them upon my departure and give them a special blessing, but lo, the seats are empty where once the fond father and the pious mothers, brothers and sisters sang the songs of the blessed Redeemer. If it is the will of Him who sent me to preach to them, to go to a distant land and there unfurl His banner, I shall not tarry here with those who have thus forgotten me and disobeyed His will. Away over yonder in the sunlight of His glory I shall be found in that day when the angels call us hence. “This occasion, my dear, dying congregation, reminds me of a song which was always a harvest of joy and so refreshing that I am constrained to call it up now: Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly; While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high. “My dear, dying congregation, I had almost said my dead congregation! “In the morning of the resurrection I shall be glad to greet my people if they can come to the throne of grace and get forgiveness for the shortcomings of this occasion, but if they do not, there will be wailing! There will be wail- ing! There will be wailing and wailing! “I admonish you to-day that in the quiet hours of the night you repair to your secret closets and there ask God to give you love and happiness and sal- vation. It will stay the torrent of human disasters and torment that afflict the wicked. The evils which beset us is the stumbling block on the road to the heavenly mansion, and it is this which must be removed if you ever expect to get to the land of everlasting life, hope and happiness, and if you don’t do it there will be stumbling and falling, falling and falling! “Oh, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, cruci- fied among you? “Oh, New Zions, ‘Are ye so foolish?’ “Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “ ‘Have ye suffered so many things in vain?’ HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 343 “ ‘And let us not be weary in well doing,’ saith Paul to the Galatians, written from Rome. “ ‘For behold the day cometh that shall bum as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall bum them up,’ saith Malachi. “My dear, dying congregation, I shall not detain you any longer than it is necessary to illustrate by illustrating that the sinner who dies in his or her sins will be damned. He or she is destined to be plucked out from the elect and plunged down into the depths of hell, lapped in the lambent flames of an eternal damnation, in company with the devil and his angels, forever and for- ever, and forever and ever! “My dear, dying congregation, let the blood of the Lamb be the guiding star of your lives and when I have departed it will give you comfort and joy. “I am in the condition of the wolf in the fold. It is said that once a wolf got in among the sheep and the sheep put up a job on him. He became en- amored of a beautiful fat lamb and lay down by its side and became very affec- tionate toward it, but in the course of time the lamb began to smell something unusual and to feel that it was in the wrong place. It didn’t like the smell of the wolf and got up and started away. When the wolf discovered this he made a nab at the lamb and tried to catch it by the tail, but all the other sheep scrouged in on the wolf and scrouged him to death, and this is about the fix I am in to-day. It was a loving beginning, but turned out to be a bad job in the end. They seem to have smelt a wolf, and I feel that I am scrouged to death. “I shall give you another illustration, so that you may forsake your sins and come to the throne of grace. It is too much for a man to be betrayed into the fold where such treatment follows, and I shall illustrate it further by say- ing that all who shall hereafter seek the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world had better be pure in heart, wash off the scent of the wolf and be ready to receive the blessings of the fold instead of being scrouged to death before departing to the other place of residence in the eternal hereafter. “I hope these few remarks will live in the memory of my few hearers on this day and that a day will come when they shall fill their place in the history of this church and this congregation. “I am not inclined to be in a timid mood any longer. I am at a stage to speak out and act as my mind tells me, and I am going to depart from this neighborhood with the free will and consent of the people as manifested on this occasion. I expect some of them will feel hurt when I say to you that it is a sin and a shame for me to be denied their presence on this the last day of my stay among them. I desire to be emphatic. The Sabbath is the holy day of the Lord, and in the light of the great rivers of blood which are now flooding our land from the Potomac to the RioGrande, blighting homes, breaking hearts, bringing death and desolation, making thousands of widows and orphans, creating starvation, sorrow and distress everywhere, it is as little they could do to come out and let the Lord see who they are. I know He will remember them in the day of judgment, as I expect to do. 344 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI “I sincerely hope to meet you all in the land of the redeemed. God is the giver of all good and the devil is the giver of all the evils and sorrows that afflict humanity. “A sinner is a sinner, and he or she is a sinner every time he or she fails to perform the duties of life as set forth in Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Galatians. I shall not detain you any longer. It is the will of God that a day is to be given to his services and it is due to Him to perform its functions in the manner set forth in the Scriptures. “I want it understood that what I have said is intended in the warmest friendship and true Christian spirit and for the sake of your never-dying souls. “In the morning of the resurrection I shall come to the throne of God and there I shall lay my case before the Messenger who was sent to us to fulfill His mission here. I am now at a loss to know just how I shall be fitted for the place He has prepared for me, but I am going to try to do my duty as I think it should be done. “If any of this congregation feel that a wolf is in the fold I should like for them to intimate it by doing as the lamb did when it smelt the wolf, and I shall then understand that my presence is not wanted any longer. I shall feel as though I had been in' the same fix as the wolf unless I am admonished other- wise. I am not disposed to let the opportunity pass, however, to prove my fidelity and tender feelings for those whom I have served so long and for whom I have prayed so much. “Brethren, sing the Doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all Creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. “And may the blessings of God rest and abide with you all forever. Amen.” And Little Joe, big-hearted Little Joe Lewis, took up his hat and saddlebags and bid his few hearers farewell forever on this earth, leaving this in their memory as a fulfillment of his wish and prayer that it would become a part of the history of that congregation. This sermon made such an impression upon the few who were present as to cause it to be considered one of the most celebrated ever delivered in that community. It was so forceful and earnest in its delivery that most of the survivors who heard it remember its context to this day, and this fact has enabled the writer to reproduce it and incorporate it in these reminiscences of Pike County. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 345 MRS. MARTHA L. J. HOOVER. Mrs. Martha L. J. Hoover, wife of the late Rev. William Hoover, was a daughter of Alexander Thompson 3d and Dorothy Pryor Womack, and was bom in Amite County November 20, 1834. The Thompson ancestors were from Scotland. Some of them settled in New York, North Carolina and Geor- gia. Alexander Thompson, Sr., and son James, fought in the battle of King’s Mountain. He was wounded in the head. A man named Griffith was shot and he stooped to raise him up when a ball struck him in the forehead, passed over his head under the scalp and came out at the back of the neck, which prevented the hair from growing where the scar was left. Alexander Thompson 2d came to Amite County in 1818 with the Epps, Powells and Wells. They organized the Pisgah Presby- terian Church with Rev. Robt. Smiley pastor. This church is now in Summit with all its re- cords. Alexander Thompson 3d, father of Mrs. Hoover, who mar- ried Dorothy Pryor Womack, of St. Helena Parish, La., re- moved from Amite County and settled on the Tickfaw River, where he raised his family and four of his sons participated in the battle of Shiloh. D. W. Thompson, his eldest son, at the age of 15 was in the war with Mexico and fifteen years later raised a company for the Confederacy, and one of his brothers, 1 5 years of age, was a member of it. Dorothy Pryor Womack, the mother of Mrs. Hoover, was the mother of five sons: Diotician, Robert, Jefferson, William and J. P. Street Thompson, and three daughters: Martha, Virginia and Amelia. Virginia married John J. Wheat and is the mother of Judge Wheat, of Beaumont, Texas. The other daughter died in the Sacred Heart Convent, St. James Parish, La. The Womacks were from Georgia. Abraham and his brother Jacob Wo- mack, relatives of Mrs. Hoover, on the mother’s side, belonged to the Louisiana Mrs. Martha L. J. Hoover 346 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI militia in the War of 1812-15, and were present at the battle of New Orleans. Jacob was in the battle and claimed to be the man who shot General Pack- ingham from behind a bale of cotton. Mrs. Hoover was a highly intellectual woman, devoted Christian and relig- ious worker and was a great aid to her husband in his ministerial work. MASONRY. A MYSTERIOUS FIND— A MASONIC EMBLEM FOUND IN AN INDIAN MOUND IN PIKE COUNTY. The Masonic historian has found many evidences of the existence of Ma- sonry without, however, finding sufficient data to establish a clear and con- tinuous record from the time Masons first arrived at the places where such evidences are found. Much rise is therefore given to speculation and the mind of man creates fantasies which frequently are accepted by those who do not give careful study to the subject as facts. When Masons first trod the soil of our State and that of our sister Missis- sippi may never become known. From time to time there are found relics which establish clearly that some of the Craftsmen penetrated deep into the wilds of the unexplored domain — perhaps lived in peace and amity with the Indians, possibly infusing into some of these sons of the wilderness the prin- ciples and teachimgs of Masonry. We take pleasure in placing before our readers an evidence of that kind. The stone in question is in possession of Brother Brittain B. Purser, of Osyka, Miss., to whom we are indebted for the following lines descriptive thereof : brother Brittain’s letter. Among the many Masonic curios which show the antiquity, and as well the universality of Freemasonry is the carved stone represented herein. This piece of shale or soft stone was found in its present condition, carving and delineations, in a plowed up Indian mound some twenty miles east of Osyka, Pike County, Miss. It was picked up by Alex. Hughes, who at the time of finding was about nine years old, and it has been in his keeping since, until a few months ago when he gave it to the writer. Mr. Hughes is now a grown, settled man, with a son as old as he was when the stone was found. A description calling attention to the various delineations will show the correctness of the knowledge of the maker, and prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was not only a fellow-craftsman, but was in possession of the exact knowledge of all three degrees. On the obverse side of the stone are delineated two oblongs, the one smaller and within the other, the sides of the two being parallel and the angles are indi- cated each by an arc of ninety degrees. Thus in this we have the form of the Lodge, horizontals, perpendiculars and right angles. Within the two oblongs, and nearer one end, is delineated a small part of the Masonic pavement. Nearer HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 347 the other end, and within the oblongs, are delineated a square and compass, so arranged that one point of the compasses is elevated above the square, the other being concealed beneath. One leg of the square is longer than the other, indicating the carpenter’s rather than the stonemason’s square. On the reverse side are delineated the two oblongs, the angles of ninety degrees, but in the inner oblong we now see a symbol beyond the two on the obverse side, for there is delineated a human heart pierced by an arrow. The stone itself is carved to represent a closed book, and while there are no letters or characters to indicate the fact, one’s first thought on seeing the shape is of “The Book of the Law.” The clear indications of a knowledge of all three degrees would bring the making of this curio to within something less than 175 years ; the square being that of the carpenter rather than the stonemason, would indicate French ori- gin, while the arrow in place of the sword on the reverse side, and as well the finding in an Indian mound, and with no other evidences of civilization, would indicate an Indian origin. We would therefore suppose that this stone was carved by some old French brother and from him came into possession of the Indians, and was placed in the mound as a talisman. Or, possession may have passed to the Indian because of ties of blood, for in the earlier days of this section of country matrimonial as well as fraternal and commercial treaties were made between the French and Indians. Of this, however, we are certain, deep down in the heart of some resident or visitor to this district, in the earlier days when the undying principles of the and in his handiwork we see the signs of his advancement from darkness unto light, and though his heart may now be stilled by the touch of man’s last and best frien d, Death, yet across the gulf, adown the years comes a message from him to us, for in the imperishable stone he has given us the signs of his deliverance from the bondage of darkness, and we may well believe that with all the breth- ren who have gone before this way he is now resting from his labors in the celestial Lodge above, where the G. A. O. T. U. presides. Brittain B. Purser. Osyka, Miss., September 8, 1902. Brother Purser is a young, highly intelligent and progressive Mason, a scion of noble ancestry. He is a son of the lamented Rev. D. I. Purser, who sacrificed his life in the discharge of his sacred calling during the epidemic which visited our city in the autumn of 1897. When and how this stone came into an Indian mound, among arrows and other evidences of Indian origin, may never be explained. We place this fragment of historical evidence on record for the benefit of future explorers. — Square and Compass. It was the good fortune of the editor of the Enterprise to see this curiosity and decipher its well illustrated emblems. The cuts given in this article are about one-half the size of the original stone. 348 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Mrs. L. W. Conerly, nee Ida M. Farmer. Mrs. Conerly is a daughter of Zachary T. Farmer and Mary J. Byars, of 'Sharon, Madison County, Miss., and was married on the 4th of May, 1909. Her father was a member of the Second Missouri Light Artillery, King’s Bat- talion, Armstrong’s Brigade of Cavalry, Jackson’s Division, and surrendered with Forrest at Gainesville, Ala., 1865. She had two uncles, Henry Clay and Franklin Pierce Farmer, in the Confederate army, both killed during the Civil War. Her grandfather Farmer was a Confederate soldier also. Her grand- father, Philip Byars, was a member of Company H, Ninth Mississippi Volun- teers, and was killed at the battle of Franklin, Tenn., November 30, 1864, and was buried on the battlefield. Mrs. Conerly was born January 3, 1870, at Sharon. Mrs. Eloise Chisholm Holding Quitman Guards’ Banner 350 HISTORY OP PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI SEQUEL TO THE QUITMAN GUARDS BANNER. At a reunion of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment in Summit, in 1876, William Frank McGehee Was appointed custodian by mem- bers of the Quitman Guards, and kept it in his possession for twenty years. Having removed to Texas, he returned the flag to Capt. S. A. Matthews, the first captain of the company, who led it to Virginia, in 1861, and after his death his widow kept it in her possession until April W. Frank McGehee Quitfnan Guards 21 , 1906, when it was returned to the survivors of the Quitman Guards by the granddaughter of Captain Matthews, Miss Norma Dunn, the fourteen-year-old daugh- ter of Hollis G. Dunn and his wife, Mamie Matthews, of Summit, at a reunion in the town of Holmesville, and was received by Capt. John Holmes, the last and surviving captain of the company, the writer acting as spokesman for Captain Holmes. It was decided to have this banner framed between two large glasses Lieut. Van C. Coney of the Quitman Guards Served with distinction through the Civil War He was severely wounded in the Battle of Sharpsburg, Md., Sept. 17th, 1862 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 351 and a record of it and of the company written, to be attached to it and to be placed in the Hall of Fame at Jackson, and the writer was appointed its last custodian and historian to do this work, and to convey the banner to Jackson and deposit the same with the Director of Archives and History. After preliminary addresses delivered by Capt. S. C. Walker, of the Brent Rifles, and the writer, Rev. I. H. Anding was called on and spoke as follows: Survivors of the Quitman Guards, Ladies and Gentlemen: The eloquent addresses to which we have just listened, followed by the strains of music to the air, “Home, Sweet Home,” rendered so beautifully by the band, stirs my soul. Were I a poet I should feel constrained to compose a lyric inspired by the scenes which sur- round us and the occasion which calls us together. Memories of the past come trooping before our mental vision. Well do I recall, though younger in years than you veterans, an April day, forty-five years ago, next Saturday, when a dear brother, strong and intel- lectual, gentle and brave, em- braced our mother and kissed us all good-bye and went away in response to his country’s call to the Virginia fields, where on the 2 1 st of August, 1864, he fell in the bloody fight at Weldon Junction. Some of your comrades fell in that fierce conflict, to their valor. To-day our surroundings are inviting; nature smiles propitiously upon us, the skies bend lovingly over us. On this April morning the breezes gently fan Thomas M. Barr In original uniform of Quitman Guards, 1861. Mr. Barr is a son of Joseph Barr, and was born on Magee’s Creek, near China Grove. He was wounded in the battle of Sharpsburg, Md., Sept. 17th, 1862, and was detailed and appointed Postoffice Inspector for the Con- federacy, which position he filled during the remainder of the war. He is now a citizen of Kansas City, Mo. We leave a tribute of praise 352 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI our brows, the leaves of these grand old oaks dance and rustle to the breeze; the grass gives us a carpet of velvet green ; the flowers charm us with fragrance and loveliness; the birds carol their praises to their Maker; the waters of our valleys go murmuring and sparkling to the sea. This is a beautiful world in which we live. Were it given to me to choose an orb for a permanent abode, I think it would be this earth arrayed in its sinless beauty, with the friends and companions I have known in other days and those I now know, to walk by my side. “Sentiment,” you say; yes, there is beauty, too, in sentiment, that kind of sentiment which denotes fixed opinions nurtured by feelings that are pure, strong, noble and good. The occasion of this hour is full of that sort of sentiment, and to me it is beautiful. We have after nearly a half century, the opportunity of look- ing upon a relic that recalls the long ago — a relic which tells us in silent speech of the loving hands and hearts that gave it, as a memento of their patriotic fervor and constant devo- tion to their country’s cause and to the boys who were to wear the gray. It is my delightful privilege to introduce one who will recommit this sacred relic to the survivors of as gallant a company of Southern braves as ever raised the battle cry or marched to death or victory — the gallant Quitman Guards. The one who is to present this flag to you today is fittingly selected, since she is the granddaughter of your first captain, who led you forth in answer to country’s call — Samuel A. Mat- thews — who, a few years ago, at his home in Summit, Miss., surrounded by loved ones and friends, fell into the dreamless sleep. She is also the granddaughter of Mathew A. Dunn, one of the bravest of the brave, who fell on Franklin’s bloody field. Survivors of the Quitman Guards, Ladies and Gentlemen : Allow me to present one who is a special favorite of mine, and I know she must be to you and to all who know her, the daughter of our most excellent citizen of Summit, Mr. and Mrs. Hollis G. Dunn. I present with pleasure Miss Norma Dunn: George W. Root Quitman Guards, (E), 16th Mississippi One of the gallant young men from the State of Connecticut Wounded through both knees in the seven days battles before Richmond, Va., and disabled Now a resident of St. Helena Parish, La. HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 353 Miss Norma Dunn SPEECH OF MISS NORMA DUNN RETURNING BANNER TO QUITMAN GUARDS! The occasion we celebrate today is in honor of the Holmesville Quitman Guards, a few survivors of whom are present today to do honor to the memory of the 107 who left for the field of carnage forty-five years ago. K; In 1859 the Quitman Guards were organized as a home military company, by Capt. Preston Brent, with Chauncey P. Conerly, Samuel A. Matthews, Wm. J. Lamkin, John Holmes, Luke W. Conerly, H. Eugene Weathersby, Henry S. Bonney, William Garner, A. P. Sparkman, Senaca McNeil Bain and others as menbers at that time. In i860, the Ladies of Holmesville, and surrounding country, some of whom I can mention: Madams J. T. Lamkin, S. A. Matthews, Dr. Jesse Wallace, H. S. Bonney J. C. Williams, H. M. Quin, Dr. D. H. Quin, H. F. Bridges, Dr. George Nicholson 23 354 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI Owen Conerly, Preston Brent, Wm. Ellzey and Jackson Coney, made up by subscription $250, and purchased a silk banner, and appointed Rachel E. Coney, who named Emma Ellzey and Fanny Wicker as maids of honor to make the presentation. The three named Thomas R. Stockdale as their escort, and on this very spot, where we stand today, Rachel E. Coney presented the banner and it was received on the part of the Quitman Guards by the Hon. H. Eugene Weathersby, who was an honored member. Of those who were Charles E. Hartwell Quitman Guards, Co. E, 16th Mississippi One of the young boys who joined as a recruit, serving in the sanguinary conflicts in Virginia from the Wilderness May 6th, 1864, until the fall of Petersburg and Richmond in 1865 members at that time and present at the presentation of the banner, we can only recall the names of Capt. John Holmes, Luke W. Conerly, Dr. A. P. Sparkman, Dr. W. J. Lamkin and Wm. E. Brent, who are living today. So much for 1859 and i860. In 1861, forty-five years ago today, after a call of President Davis for troops, the Quitman Guards were reorganized with 107 members and elected S. A. Matthews, Captain; James M. Nelson, 1st Lieutenant; Thomas R. Stockdale, 2d Lieutenant, and Senaca McNeil Bain, 3d Lieutenant. Thus formed, they left Magnolia on the 26th day of April, and were mus- tered into service on the 27th day of May, 1861, at Corinth, Miss., as Company Dr. R. T. Hart Quitman Guards Wounded in Virginia Subsequently appointed Assistant Surgeon in the Western or Tennessee Army HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI 355 E, 1 6th Mississippi Regiment. This company was sent to Virginia and formed a part of the Army of Northern Virginia, remaining with Lee’s army from 1861 to 1865, and participated in the battles of Manassas, Petersburg, Gettys- burg, Spottsyl vania, Sharpsburg, Weldon Railroad and all of the great battles of that country. This scene to you, noble survivors of that heroic band, must recall the halcyon days of the long ago, when on this village green your steps were blithe, your hearts were glad, and your eyes spoke love to eyes of those who call you brave and true, and to whom you tenderly referred as your “sweethearts pretty girls.” Now five and forty years ago, a voice from the past tells of the brave heroic deeds of those who fell upon the firing line, and of those who, after the storm of strife had passed, returned to the ordinary pursuits of life to fulfill their mission and then go over to meet their brothers on fame’s eternal camping ground. Let us here place the chaplet of praise to the memory of every one of them, and permit me to make personal reference to one whose memory you sacredly cherish, and whose name you will pronounce with a thrill of pride to your posterity, the truest type of Southern blood, and the very impersonation of dauntless courage. I refer to the gentle, the generous, the tried and true, the gallant, the intrepid Frank McGehee. Should a monu- ment ever be erected on this spot to the memory of the gallant braves of the Quitman Guards, let the name of “Shanks,” as he was lovingly called by his comrades, stand out in bold relief, the synomyn of Southern manhood, and the highest type of the Confederate soldier; this single reference is made, not to detract from others just as noble and brave, but to do honor to one who for twenty years was the custodian of this flag and who represented the chivalric spirit of the Quitman Guards. And now as a direct descendant of him who led you as your first captain under the bugle call to arms in the great civil strife — Capt. S. A. Matthews — it is my happy privilege through the esteemed honor, you, the survivors of the Quitman Guards have conferred on me, to recommit this banner to your sacred care and keeping. It tells its own story. Time, with its corroding touch, has dimmed its material luster, but not its in- herent glory. It speaks emblematically today of Southern chivalry as crys- talized in the hearts of the many fair young daughters of our noble old county of Pike. In its fold, as in your hearts, are enshrined the memories of mothers, sisters, sweethearts, whose faith in your gallantry has been your inspiration on many a hard fought field. Pathetically, though triumphantly, it tells of those ever living principles for which our dear Southland poured out its most precious blood. Though our flag went down in defeat these principles can never die. Silently this flag symbolizes them today, as when our fathers donned the gray. To you, Capt. John Holmes, the worthy survivor of the comrades who honored you as their leader and followed at your command into the thickest of the fight, I commit this sacred relic, the grandest and most characteristic symbol of that liberty for which our fathers and your brothers gave their lives; keep it, and guard it for the sake of those who first gave it to you. Care 356 HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI for it for the sake of those who followed its bearer, preserve it for the sake of those principles it silently, but emphatically, represents. In the words of another “Lift up your boy on your shoulder high, And show him the faded shred, Those bars would be red as the sunset sky If death could have dyed them red.” Off with your hats as the flag goes by, Uncover the youngest head, Teach him to hold it holy and high For the sake of the sacred dead.” And now, may you honored sir — and few but faithful who survive with you and share these reminiscences of a deathless past, together with all of us who love our new South, our country and its flags, may it not be ours to hear again the beat of drum which calls to mortal combat, or feel the chilling shadow of the storm cloud of war, but when at last we strike our tents from the old camp ground of this life, may we go over as loyal soldiers to the great Captain of our salvation, to drink from the springs of everlasting peace and to hear from His sacred lips the glad “Well done!” Miss Dunn was replied to by the writer in a short appropriate address in behalf of Captain Holmes, to whom the banner was return- ed, during which a crown of flowers was placed on her head by Miss Fredirica Bongard, and she was adopted as the daughter of the survivors of the Quitman Guards, and, in the language of the Magnolia News, “Thus bringing to a sublime ending in a most befitting Way one of the most noted historical events of Pike County.” The good man into whose hands this relic was again placed has since passed and gone where the echoes of war shall not be heard and now sleeps the dreamless sleep in the cemetery at Magnolia beside his own beloved Alvira, who in the very midst of the storm of the great conflict gave her heart and hand to him; and Lieutenant John Q. Travis, too, the handless veteran, who stood by his side, succeeded to the command of the last remnant of the old guards, only to cross over the river in a few weeks after. Illustrations PAGE Alford Bridge over Bogue Chitto River 12 Barr, Thos. M 351 Bonney, Nelson P 288 Boyd, Capt. A. A 194 Brent, Col. Preston 197 Chisholm, Mrs. Eloise 349 Collins, Hon. Frederick W 264 Conerly, Mrs. A. L 74 Conerly, Buxton R 230 Conerly, Chauncey P 202 Conerly, Mrs. L. W 348 Conerly, Owen 73 Coney, Lieut. Van. C 350 Connally, Capt. Thos. J 190 Dick, Isaac C 51 Duncan, Lieut. -Col. James Hehderson 236 Dunn, Miss Norma 353 Ellis, Ezekiel Park 62 Geo. Smith’s Water Mill and Dam Over Kirkland’s Creek 82 Harris, Gen. Nathaniel H 229 Hart, Dr. R. T 354 Hartwell, Charles E 354 Holmes, Capt. John 173 Hoover, Capt. Kit 207 Hoover, Martha L. J 345 Hoover Iron Bridge 224 Iron Bridge, Scene on Bogue Chitto River 36 Lamkin, Hon. J. T 202 Lamkin, Dr. Wm. J 176 Lamkin, Mrs. W. J 138 Lampton, Benjamin 257 358 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Matthews, Capt. Samuel A 172 McGehee, W. Frank 350 McNair, Captain 196 Miller, Mrs. Joe 138 Peter Sandifer in Bear Fight Scene on McGee’s Creek, 1820 64 Portrait of Author Frontispiece Prewitt, Ansel H 155 Root, Geo. W 352 Sparkman, Dr. A. P 297 The Bonnie Blue Flag opp. 147 Travis, Lieut. John Q 187 Tyler, Wm. G 83 View on F. W. Collin’s Farm 265 Contents CHAPTER I. A Veteran of 1812 Act Creating Territory Bacot, Laban Bogue Chitto River, The Bones of Soldier of War of 1812 interred in Chalmette Cemetery Carroll, General Claiborne, Governor Cleveland, David Commissioners to Fix Seat of Justice. Convention, Constitutional Constitutional Convention, 1832 County Officers, List of Courts, Where Held Dedication Formation of Territorial Government, 1798 Gov. Winthrop Sargent Harvey, Michael Hernando DeSoto Holmes, Governor Holmes, Major Andrew Hunter Holmesville Survey Holmesville, Incorporation of Home Life Introduction Marion County, December 9, 1811 Marion County, Division of, December 9, 1815 McNabb, J. Y M. DeSalle Military Duty Mississippi, Admission as State New County, Law Creating Origin of Mississippi Pike County, Creation of, 1815 ’Possum and Coon Hunters Seat of Territorial Government Warren, John Williams, Governor PAGE 23 31 32 16 26 24 14 31 32 27 14 5 11 26 12 10 10 14 15 26 32 7 11 13 25 10 31 26 1 25 9 10 34 13 12 26 360 CONTENTS CHAPTER II. PAGE Alfred, Edwin 30 Bacot, Laban, Bom 47 Bacot, Laban, Elected Sheriff 1817 47 Barnes, John 37 Barr, Joseph 41 Bogue Chitto Church, The 44 Burglary Statute 48 Catching, Joseph 52 Cothem, William 44 Crawford, Rev. Jesse 45 Early Settlers 35 Ellzey, John 39 Felder, Peter 37-41 First Bom Son 38 First Sheriff’s Office 47 Fortinberry, William 39 Gatlin, Colonel James 46 George III 54 Grist Mill, A 37 Little, Margaret 38 Magee, Jeremiah and Sire 49 Martin, Josiah 49 McCollough, Alexander 42 McCollough, William 35 McEwin, Mathew 42 McMorris Family 50 Otopasas, The 35 Pecan Tree, A 35 Quin, Daniel 37 Reeves, John 45 Reeves, Lazarus 44 Sandell, Daniel 36 Sartin, John 39 Sartin, Major 39 Simmons, William 41 Simmons, Willis 41 Smith, Jeremiah 36 Sparkman, Reddick T 56 Taylor, John 35 Thomas, Captain West ley 52 Tumipseed, Dr. 44 Walker, John 42 CONTENTS 361 PAGE Warren, John 35 Washington, On the Death of 53 Whipping Post, The 48 “Widow Phillips” 48 CHAPTER III. Andrews, James 92 Bearden, Jeremiah 79 Boon, William 66 Bracey, Harrison 68 Bullock, Joel 68 Burkhalter, Daniel 66 China Grove 58 Craft, James 78 Conerly, Owen and Luke 58 Connally, Thomas J 72 Craft, John 78 Collins, Chauncey 84 Darbun Creek 67 Dillon, Richard 87 Ellis, Stephen 59 Ellis, Ezekiel Parke 61 First Postoffice 62 Fort Mims 60 Gartman, Bartholomew 75 Great Land Excitement 93 Grubbs, Gilbert 75 Hall, Armistead S7 Harvey, Michael 70 Holmes, Elisha 66 Jones, Benjamin 69 Lamkin, William 75 Lamptons, The 90 Lawrence, John 86 Lewis, Quincy 76 Ligon, Colonel William B 76 Martin, Wiley 86 May, Joseph 92 McAlpin, Dr 76 O’Brian, Daniel 86 Owen, Jacob 81 Pacific-Atlantic Hurricane 63 Parker, Joseph 79 362 CONTENTS PAGE Payne, Nelson 85 'Possum for Sally 72 Pushmataha, General 60 Ratliff, Richard 68 Ratliff, George, (slave) 79 Raiford, Needham B 88 Ravencraft, William 71 Sartins Church 59 Smith, Charles 80 Smith, George, Sr . 87 Sneed, John 75 Stalling, John 81 Stovall, Ralph 58 Thompson, Parish 59 Tylertown 81 Tyler, William G 83 When the Stars Fell 91 Youngblood, Benjamin 90 CHAPTER IV. Allen, Gabriel 100 Bain, Senaca McNeil 127 Balloon Incident 131 Bickham, Mrs. Elizabeth 117 Bond, Henry , 99 Bonney, Henry S 128 Brumfield, John 105 Carr, Frank 121 Coney, William 129 Cothern, William 99 Ellzey, William 128 Finch’s Dog 128 First Masonic Lodge 112 First Methodist Camp Meeting 106 Gray, Sherod 95 Hart, John 94 Hoover, Judge Christian 99 In the Forties 115 Johnson, William R 120 Kaigler, John • 98 Lamkin, John T 120 Leake, Walter 107 CONTENTS 363 PAGE Leggett, William 105 Lewis, Judge Lemuel 129 Lichtensteins, The 116 McNair, E 110 Mitchell, Marmaduke 131 Must Take a Ducking 133 Nelson, Dr. James M 123 New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad, The 124 Packwood, Dudley W 121 Pike’s Legislators 107 Pound, Daniel W 106 Quin, Colonel Peter 100 Salem Baptist Church 107 Seat of Government at Columbia 107 Sibley Incident 102 Silver Creek Church 97 Sincerity Lodge, F. & A. M., No. 214 123 Stuart, Oscar James E 120 Still Creek 97 Stockdale, Professor 120 Stone, William A Ill Wingoes, The 118 CHAPTER V. Abolition Emissaries 149 Bacot, Levi 136 Black Abolition Party 145 Banner Association 137 Banner Presentation, i860 137-142 Beauregard, General, and Fort Sumter 158 Bonny Blue Flag, The 147 Brunette, Rene H 152 Buchanan, James 157 Burkhalter, Flem, Was Up to the Game 154 Cain, General William 145 Coffin, Levi, the Slave Thief 169 Coney, Miss Rachel E 137 Davis, Jefferson 158 Election of Lincoln -and Hamlin 146 First Fandango, The 153 First Settlers of Summit 151, 153 Fall Election, i860 146 364 CONTENTS PAGE Forbade Importation of Slaves 144 Four Tickets in the Field 146 Garland, William H I53 Grading of the Railroad 155 Greeley, Horace 159 Hard to Escape History 162 Lincoln’s Call for 75,000 Men 161 Maryland Invaded and Subjugated 159 Massachusetts the First to Legalize Slavery, in 1641 169 Miller, Captain Joseph H 157 Miss Coney’s Address 141 New England Troops Furnished to Rob the South 170 New England the Fomenters of Secession 144, 163, 166 New York in 1859 and i860 168 Political Excitement 143 Prewitt, Ansel H 155 Quitman Guards, 1859 1.37 Secession Convention 148 Secession of South Carolina Secession of Mississippi 147 Slave Traders and Kidnapers 144 State of Maryland, The 15S Some Notes on Secession 163 T reachery of United States Government 159 Weathersby, Hugh Eugene 140, 142, 150 Wingo, Green, Hung 153 Year i860, The 145 CHAPTER VI. All of Pike’s Men in the Field 221 Artisans of Pike County 214 Ball, Lieutenant Sampson 224 Banks Driven Across Potomac 216 Battle of Bull Run 175 Battle of Winchester, Virginia 216 Bogue Chitto Guards 190 Bain, Col. Seneca McNeil 178 Brent Rifles 197 Brown, Captain, Killed 216 Captain James Conerly’s Company M. M 211 Capture of Jefferson Davis 226 CONTENTS 365 Cold Harbor Colonel Wingfield’s Militia Confederate Prisoners Conover Conspiracy Conquered Banner, The Conscription Act Cross Keys Dahlgreen Rifles Desperate Encounters Dick, Ike C., Wounded Dixie Guards Enemy’s Great Army Fall of Fort Sumter First Battle of Manassas Fremont and Shields General Lee’s Army Great Problem Grierson’s Raid Homespun Dress Holmesville Guards Hoover, Capt. Kit How Fort Gregg Was Defended. Jackson, Stonewall Land of Desolation, A Lincoln Assassinated Lincoln’s Perfidy McNair Rifles Nash’s Company President Davis’ Call for Troops Quin, Col. Wm. Monroe Quitman Guards Rhodes’ Cavalry Seeds of Grief Shiloh Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment . Southern Cross is Furled Stockdale’s Cavalry Summit Rifles Surratt, Mrs., Hung Travis, John Quincy Union Prisoners Wirz, Captain, Hanged PAGE . . . 216 . . . 210 . . . 225 227 . . . 237 212 . . . 186 . . . 191 . . . 223 . . . 217 . . . 207 . . . 219 . . . 211 . . . 175 . . . 216 . . . 217 . . . 214 . . . 223 . . . 215 . . . 201 . . . 207 . . . 230 . . . 213 . . . 225 . . . 226 ... 220 ... 193 ... 200 ... 172 . . . 201 ... 172 . . . 209 . . . 237 . . . 217 . . . 174 . . . 237 . . . 203 . . . 183 . . . 226 ... 1S1 226-228 . . . 227 36G CONTENTS CHAPTER VII. PAGE Alcorn, James L 256 Ames, General Adelbert 254 Burris Magee Trial 281 Cotton in 1865 241 Clinton Riots 266 Cold-blooded Sentiment, A 248 Collins, Fred W 262-266 Conditions of the South in 1865 242 Coushatta 269 Clark, Governor Charles 251 Danger That Threatened, The 246 DeCline, Colonel 268 Death Roll of Armies 272 Election in 1871 258 Fate of Mrs. Lecour and Daughter 268 Galloway, Bishop 273 Grant Parish, Louisiana 268 Head, Joseph 255 Hurst, D. W 284 Ku Klux Klan, The 248 Long-haired Goat, The 286 Miscegenation 246 Negro Outrage 267 Negro Troops at Holmesville 247 Newspapers 288 Otkin, Charles H 278 Peabody Public School 278 Quin, Judge H. M 280 Roane, W. H 258 Rowland, Hon. Dunbar 253 Sharkey, William L 252 State Expenditures 258 Terrible Vandalism 259 When the Armies Were Disbanded 247 Young, Charles B 254 CHAPTER VIII. Ames Impeached 305 Bridges, Hugh Q 302 Buried the Hatchet 311 Collins, F. W 298 CONTENTS 367 PAGE Cordova Impeached 304 Davis, A. K., Removed 304 Death of William H. Roane 305 Election of 1875 294-298 Felder, R. H 298 Fired on by Negroes 303 Firing of Columbus 298 Garland, William H., Jr 297 In Louisiana 291 Laying of Comer Stone of New Court House 307 Legislative Investigation 304 Letter from General Featherston 306 Magnolia Election . ... 302 Magnolia Herald, The 299 Negro Camp Meetings 293 New Orleans Democrat 305 No Loud Crowing Cocks 300 Origin of “Bulldozer” 292, 294 Patton, Charles L 303 Redmond & Barrett 303 Removal of the Court House 295 Results of Election 299 Reunion of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment 306 Sparkman, Dr. A. P 297 Stupidity of the Nineteenth Century 314 Travis, J. Q 302 United States Cavalry at McComb 303 White League, The 292 CHAPTER IX. Activity of White Leaguers and Bulldozers 329 Ames, ex-Govemor Adelbert 317 Apprehension of the People 323 Barrett, Fred 322 Church, Rev. H. M 322 County Convention 319 Congressional Convention 319 Debt of Mississippi 317 Gains & Swazey 324 Grant Must Call Off His Dogs 323 Grant Would Invade Arkansas 329 Haven, Bishop 322 368 CONTENTS PAGE His Fraudulency 331 Hoover, Mrs. Martha L. J 345 Jackson, Colonel Mose 324 Little Joe Lewis 339 Lynch, John R 321 Magnolia Herald, The 322 Masonic Emblem 346 Nomination of Presidential Candidates 320 One Weber 324 Organization of Clubs 319-320 Outrage in Lawrence 326 Packwood, Bridges and Conerly 327 Population of Pike County 331 Rate of Taxation 318 Sequel to Quitman Guards Banner 350 Sheridan, Phil. A 323 Stone, John M 318 Torch Light Procession 328 Tylertown Club 325 Wild Jim Barnes 332 Date Due CARREL NO, hi r» w r, - i i'l vi tr\ t Form 335— 40M -6-39— S Duke D00404139 S76.269 C747P 376773 Gonerly ^g-Co unty Ml s a 1 « .q i . ISSUED TO 976.269 C747P 376773