USA > Mississippi > Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II > Part 1
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ITO ROWLAND
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NEW STATE CAPITOL .. (See Vol. I p. 356.)
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
MISSISSIPPI HISTORY 8354.
Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons
PLANNED AND EDITED BY DUNBAR ROWLAND, LL. D.
DIRECTOR MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY; MEMBER AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
MADISON, WIS. SELWYN A. BRANT 1907
$
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COPYRIGHT, 1907. BY .
THE SOUTHERN HISTORICAL PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
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976.2-R79 1301 Wibrary: Che fleto Besh @imes. V. 2
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Labauve, Felix, was born at Vanziers, France, Nov. 16, 1809. His father died when he was a child, and he was sent by his mother, who was poor, to her brothers at Camden, S. C., to be reared by them. He became a clerk in their store; came to Mis- sissippi in 1835; carried on a mercantile business among the In- dians in DeSoto county ; moved to Hernando in 1838; became a lawyer and an ardent Democrat; was one of the editors of the Phoenix in 1841-42; was elected to the legislature in 1843 and to the State senate in 1845. He served as a county official for two years ; was an ardent secessionist; and while too old to be a regu- lar soldier, was in the Confederate service part of the time. On one occasion he captured, single handed, four of the enemy. He served in the legislature in 1866, and was the State commissioner to the Paris exposition in 1877. He never married and when he died, at an advanced age, his will gave $5,000 to Miss Bertha Pon- sin, of France, his only relative living; generously remembered a number of widows; gave some property for the building of a Catholic church; and gave the rest of his estate for the creation of scholarships in the University of Mississippi to bear his name.
Ladner, a post-hamlet in the southeastern part of Pearl River county, situated on the Wolf river, about 15 miles distant from Poplarville, the county seat. Population in 1900, 50.
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Lafayette County was established February 9, 1836, and was named in honor of the distinguished friend of the American Re- public, the Marquis de Lafayette. It is one of the dozen counties carved from the Chickasaw Indian lands in northern Mississippi during that year, after the Chickasaws, in 1832, had surrendered all their remaining lands by the Treaty of Pontotoc. The original act defines its boundaries as follows: "Beginning at the point where the line between townships 11 and 12 intersects the basis meridian, to the center of township 6; thence west, through the center of township 6, according to the sectional lines, to the center of range 5 west ; thence south, through the center of range 5 west, according to the sectional lines, to the northern boundary line of Yalobusha county, to the point where the line between townships 11 and 12 intersects the eastern boundary line of Yalobusha county, and thence east with the said township line to the beginning." (See Marshall county for present boundary between Lafayette and 2-1I 17
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Marshall.) The total area is about 673 square miles. Two of the earliest settlements in the county were at Eaton and Wyatt-both of which are now extinct. Eaton was about fifteen miles west of the present town of Oxford, on the Tallahatchie river, where there was a ferry enabling the settlers of parts of Panola and Lafayette counties to cross the river, on their way to and from Oxford. The panic of 1837 destroyed the incipient town. Dr. Corbin was a prominent planter of the neighborhood in the early 30's. Wyatt was located about 13 miles from Oxford, on the supposed head of navigation of the Tallahatchie river. It was first settled about the time of the Chickasaw cession, and was once the shipping point for a large section of country, and boats plied between it and New Orleans. The Brooks gin, manufactured here, was widely used in northern Mississippi. Here dwelt for a time the celebrated Dr. Robert Watt, called the best physician in Northern Mississippi ; Thos. H. Allen, A. Gillis, Andrew Peterson, Maj. Alston, Dr. R. O. Carter and Dr. Edw. McMucken. The town decayed rapidly after the panic of 1837. Lafayette county is bounded on the north by the county of Marshall, the Tallahatchie river forming part of the dividing line; on the east, by Union and Pontotoc counties; on the south by Calhoun and Yalobusha counties and on the west by Panola county. The most important town and the county seat is the thriving city of Oxford, built on a beautiful ridge near the center of the county. It contained a population of 1,825, in 1900, an increase of nearly 300 over the census of 1890; in 1906, the popula- tion of Oxford was estimated at 2,000. It is noted as the seat of the State University and the home of many families of wealth and culture. It received its name from the English university town of the same name, in anticipation of its subsequent selection as the seat of the State's chief institution of learning. The University was located here by Act of the Legislature in 1840, and during the last ten years, has advanced materially in the thoroughness and scope of its work, as well as in point of attendance. There was also located in Oxford (until 1904), the Union Female College, incor- porated in 1838 as the Oxford Female Academy, and, in 1854, re- incorporated and placed under the auspices of the Cumberland Presbyterian church. This was the second institution of learning chartered within the limits of the Chickasaw cession, and ranked as the oldest female school, in the State, of unbroken history. There are 82 white schools and 57 colored schools in the county. Besides Oxford, the towns of Abbeville, Taylor and Springdale are railroad towns of importance. The county is watered by the Tallahatchie and Yocona rivers and their numerous tributaries. The Illinois Central R. R., crosses the central part of the county from north to south and gives the region excellent transportation facilities. The prosperous town of Water Valley, in Yalobusha county, is the market and shipping point for the southern part of the county. The general character of the soil is good and the region produces cotton, corn, oats, sorghum, and all kinds of grasses. A good deal of attention has been paid to the cultivation of fruits and this industry
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has been much encouraged by the liberal policy of the Illinois Central Railway Company. Apples, pears, peaches, figs and small fruits are raised and shipped to the large northern markets. There is a good deal of valuable timber left in the county, much of it hardwood, and industries to utilize its great resources in this respect will, no doubt, come in time. Much attention is being paid to stock raising, for which the region is well adapted. There is little manu- facturing done in the county as yet and its wealth lies in its live stock and the products of its soil.
The twelfth census for 1900 gives the following statistics for Lafayette county : Number of farms, 3,871 ; acres in farms, 346,743 ; acres improved, 127,915; value of the land exclusive of buildings, $1,880,120; value of live stock, $696,649; value of all products not fed to stock, $1,419,478. The number of manufacturing establish- ments was 71; capital invested, $139,115 ; wages paid, $17,140; cost of materials, $64,183, and total value of products, $138,552. The population of the county in 1900, consisted of 12,378 whites ; 9,732 colored, a total of 22,110 and 1,557 more than in the year 1890. The total population in 1906, is estimated at 25,000. The total assessed valuation of real and personal property in the county in 1905 was $2,820,216 and in 1906 it was $3,325,560, showing an increase during the year of $505,344.
Lafayette Springs, an incorporated post-town on the eastern border of Lafayette county, about 15 miles east of Oxford, the nearest rail- road and banking town. It has two churches and an academy. Population in 1900, 124 ; population in 1906, estimated at 200. The town is prosperous and growing.
Lafayette's Visit. During the celebrated visit of Gen. Lafay- ette to America in 1824-5, he made a hurried tour of the south- western States in the spring of 1825. His voyage up the Mississippi river on the steamer Natchez has been minutely recorded in the journal of his faithful secretary, A. Levasseur. Of his visit to Natchez, the only town in the State of Mississippi which he visited, he has this to say: "On Monday, the 18th of April, some distant discharges of cannon, which we heard at dawn, announced our approach to a city. Some minutes afterwards, the first rays of the sun gilding the shores of the Mississippi, which, in this place, rose a hundred and fifty feet above the surface of the water, showed us the tops of the houses in Natchez. Our steamboat stopped a little while previous to arriving opposite the town, and we went on shore at Bacon's landing, where the citizens, with a calash and four horses, and an escort of cavalry and volunteer infantry, were waiting for the general. . . . In proportion as we advanced, the escort increased. It consisted of citizens on horseback, mili- tia on foot, ladies in carriages, and nearly the whole population, who came in a crowd to see their beloved and long expected guest. Two addresses were made to the general; one by the president of the committee of arrangement, on entering the city : the other by the mayor, on one of the most elevated spots on the banks of the Mississippi, within view of the town and the river, its source of
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prosperity. At the moment we were preparing to enter our hotel, we observed a long procession of children of both sexes approaching us. They were led by Col. Marshall, who requested of the general for them, permission to shake hands with him. The general willingly complied.
"The inhabitants of Natchez neglected nothing which could contribute to the pleasure of their guest during the twenty-four hours he remained with them. The public dinner concluded with toasts, 'To the Nation's Guest-The Triumph of Yorktown- France fighting for the liberty of the world-The victory of New Orleans'-in fact to all glorious and patriotic American recollec- tions."
On leaving Natchez "the committee of New Orleans were joined by two gentlemen from Natchez, as representatives of the state of Mississippi, near the person of General Lafayette."
La Grange was once a thriving little town in the northern part of Choctaw county, about 11/2 miles south of the Big Black river. It was selected as the county seat in 1811, after Choctaw county had been divided to assist in the formation of Montgomery county, because Greensboro, the first county seat, was too far from the center of the county, and the court house there, moreover, had been destroyed by fire. It was not, however, suffered to remain the county seat for long. Choctaw county was again divided in 1874 by the Legislature, which was then Republican, to form the new county of Webster. Two months earlier, the court house at La Grange had been burned-it was rumored by incendiaries-who favored a division of the county to create a Republican county out of part of it. For these reasons, the county seat was again moved-this time to Chester, and La Grange dwindled away, and is now little more than a postoffice site. Its population in 1900, was only 39.
Capt. J. B. Dunn, F. A. Critz, S. R. Boyd, J. P. Mullen, Capt. R. F. Holloway, D. B. Archer, and J. W. Pinson, lawyers; Drs. A. R. Boyd, and J. W. Robinson, physicians ; and Seward, Boyd & Co., Nolen & Bridges, J. M. Petty, G. W. Gunter and Allen Philly, merchants, were the leading citizens during the prosperous days of La Grange.
Lake, a post-village in the eastern part of Scott county, on the Alabama & Vicksburg R. R., 54 miles east of Jackson, and 10 miles east of Forest, the county seat. It has a money order postoffice, four churches, two seminaries, a bank which was established in 1905, two saw mills, one of which is the largest in the county, good hotels and livery stable. Its population in 1906, was estimated at 500.
Lake City, a postoffice of Yazoo county, situated on Wolf lake, 8 miles northwest of Yazoo City. It has several stores, a church and good schools. Its population is about 50).
Lake Como, a little village in the southwestern part of Jasper county, 14 miles southwest of Paulding, the county seat, and 1 mile east of Tallahoma creek. Bayspring, 4 miles to the west, on
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the Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City R. R., is the nearest railroad, banking and telegraph station. Population in 1900, 50.
Lake Cormorant, a post-hamlet in the western part of De Soto county, situated at the junction of the main line of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. R., and its Riverside division, 15 miles north- west of Hernando, the county seat, and nearest banking town. Population in 1900, 52 ; the population in 1906, was estimated at 100.
Lakeshore, a post-village of Hancock county, situated on the Gulf coast, and a station on the Louisville & Nashville R. R., 7 miles southwest of Bay St. Louis, the county seat. Population in 1900, 50.
Lake View, a post-hamlet of De Soto county, situated on Horn Lake, and a station on the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. R., 18 miles northwest of Hernando, the county seat.
Lake, William A., was born in Maryland in 1808. He was ad- mitted to the bar, and was a member of the legislature in his native State; he removed to Vicksburg. Miss., in 1834, where he attained prominence as a lawyer, and was elected to the State sen- ate of 1848, and to the United States congress in 1855-57; he represented Warren county in the legislature, 1859-61; and in 1861 was a candidate for the Confederate States congress, and was killed in a duel by his opponent, Chalmers.
Lamar, an extinct town of Benton (formerly Marshall) county. It was located on the stage road between Holly Springs and La- grange, Tenn. Its site is now a cultivated field. (See Benton county). It gave its name to the present incorporated town, situated 2 miles east on the Illinois Central R. R. The present town of Lamar is a prosperous little station, with a church and a good school. Its population in 1900, was 20.
Lamar County was the last on the roll of Mississippi counties to be established, and was created March 10, 1904 from the second judicial district of Marion county and the northern part of Pearl River county. It has an undulating surface of 540 square miles. It received its name in honor of Justice L. Q. C. Lamar, and the early history of the region composing its territory has been else- where recounted under the titles of "Marion County," and "Pearl River County." The original act, amending the previous act of February 19, 1904, defined its boundaries as follows: "Commenc- ing at the northwest corner of township 5, range 16 west of Saint Stephen's Meridian, thence running east along the township line to the northeast corner of township 5, north, range 15 west ; thence along the range line to the southeast corner of township 5 north, range 15 west ; thence east along the township line to the northeast corner of township 4 north, range 14 west ; thence south along the range line to a point one mile north of the 31st parallel of latitude ; thence west to the line between ranges 15 and 16 west; thence south along the range line to the 31st parallel of latitude; thence west along said 31st parallel to the line between ranges 16 and 17; thence along said line to the place of beginning. And that part of Pearl River county contiguous to said above described territory, circumscribed by line run as follows: Beginning at the point where
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the line between sections 33 and 34, township 1 north, range 15 west, intersects the 31st parallel of north latitude, and running east along said 31st parallel to a point where the line between sections 2 and 3, township 1 south, range 15 west, intersects said 31st parallel ; thence south along line between sections 2 and 3 to corner of sections 2, 3, 10 and 11, township 1 south, range 15 west ; thence east along line between first and second tiers of sections south of said 31st parallel to the corner common to sections 5, 6, 7 and 8, township 1 south, range 14 west; thence north along line between sections 5 and 6 to said 31st parallel ; thence east to a point where a line drawn centrally north and south through section 32, town- ship 1 north, range 14 west, intersects said 31st parallel; thence north 1 mile to the line between Pearl River and Marion counties ; thence west along said line separating said counties to the point where it intersects the line between sections 33 and 34, township 1 north, range 15 west; thence south along section line to point of beginning." The act further declares that Purvis shall be the seat of justice, and authorized the governor to appoint three com- missioners from Pearl River county and also three commissioners from the second judicial district of Marion county, to organize the county, and to appoint the usual county officers to hold until their successors shall be elected and qualified. Lamar county was at- tached to the second Supreme Court district, the sixth Congressional district, and the second Chancery, Circuit Court, and Railroad Com- missioner's Districts, and the fourth Senatorial District. The county assumed its share of the debts of Marion and Pearl River counties, and received its share of the funds in the treasuries of the two counties. Purvis, the county seat, is a lumbering town of 564 people (census of 1900), and an estimated population of 1,500 in 1906, on the line of the New Orleans & North Eastern R. R. It is a thriving place and growing at a rapid rate. Besides the rail- road above mentioned, a branch of the Gulf & Ship Island R. R., traverses the new county from east to west, and the Mississippi Central R. R., crosses the northern part of the county from east to west. Lamar is located in the long leaf pine region of the State, and the resources, climatic conditions, and general topography have been described elsewhere. Artesian water has been found at Sum- rall and Lumberton. The total assessed valuation of real and personal property of Lamar county in 1905 was $3,683,826 and in 1906 it was $3,882,029, showing an increase of $198,203 during the year.
Lamar, Lucius Q. C., was a descendant of a French family that came to Virginia before 1663, and was represented subsequently in Maryland, whence, after several generations, John Lamar, born in 1769, who married his cousin, Rebecca Lamar, moved to Georgia, and established the Lamar homestead in Putnam county, dying in 1833. He was a devout Methodist, as were his descend- ants. One of his sons, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, established a State Rights paper at Columbus, Ga., went to Texas in 1835 and was conspicuous in the revolution, founded the educational system
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of that State, was United States minister to southern republics in 1857-58, and died in 1859. He was also a poet of no ordinary abil- ity. Another, and the eldest son of the Georgia pioneer, was Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who began practice at Milledgeville in 1818, compiled one volume of the statutes, became a partner of Judge Crawford, was elevated to the circuit bench in 1830, and was famed as a judge, when he died, July 4, 1834. His wife was Sarah Bird, whose father was of a Maryland family, and whose mother was a daughter of Col. Williamson, a famous Georgia patriot of the Revolution. Another of the colonel's daughters was the wife of Gov. John Clarke, and another was the mother of Justice John A. Campbell, of the United States supreme court. The eldest son of Judge Lamar and his wife, Sarah, was Lucius Quintus Cincin- natus, born at the old homestead in Putnam county, Ga., Sept. 17, 1825. Most of his childhood years were passed at Milledgeville and his father's village home at Scottsboro. He was a frail lad, small for his age, quiet and retiring, a great lover of books, with which he was surrounded, and considered rather slow mentally than quick. He loved to be alone, cultivating the powers of ab- straction and concentration, and without in the least deserving it, gained a reputation for ,moroseness. After his father's death he attended the Georgia Conference manual training school, in which the boys were put to farming. When the school became Emory college, under the presidency of A. B. Longstreet, he continued as a pupil, and was graduated in 1845. Within that time, Longstreet was a notable participant in the proceedings of the general con- ference of the Methodist church at New York which resulted in the separation sectionally, on the question of permitting the clergy to be slaveholders. After 1845 he studied law at Macon, with Absalom H. Chappell, an old line Whig; was a short time his partner, and then moved to Columbus, Ga. July 15, 1847, he mar- ried Virginia L., daughter of Judge Longstreet. When the latter assumed the presidency of the University of Mississippi in 1849, Lamar followed, and began the practice of law at Oxford in 1850, also taking an assistant professorship in mathematics under Albert T. Bledsoe, 1850-52. In the great political campaign of 1851 he was a state rights champion, supporting Jefferson Davis, and met the famous Senator Foote in joint debate at Oxford. Though but 26 years of age, he seems to have won enthusiastic praise. But in this period he thought more of devoting his life to the church than to the State. After two years that were more collegiate than juridicial, he returned to Covington, Ga., practiced his profession, and was elected to the legislature in the political revulsion of 1853. He moved to Macon in 1854; made a visit to Mississippi, bring- ing his negro to add to the plantation force of Judge Longstreet ; was a candidate for nomination to congress from Georgia in 1855, but was defeated; and in October of that year finally made his home in Mississippi, purchasing a plantation he called "Solitude," on the Tallahatchee river, and forming a law partnership with
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Christopher H. Mott and James L. Autrey, which continued until 1861.
In 1857 Lamar had his choice between candidacy for Congress to succeed Daniel B. Wright, and the chair of metaphysics in the university. He chose the political path, and though opposed on the ground of his relationship by marriage to Howell Cobb, who was distinguished in Georgia as Henry S. Foote was in Missis- sippi, he was nominated by the Democratic convention at Holly Springs on the 60th ballot. The main political issue then was the admission of Kansas and the policy there of Robert J. Walker. James L. Alcorn was nominated by the Whigs, and there was an exciting joint canvass, resulting in Lamar's election. He made his first speech in congress Jan. 13, 1858. In the course of the furious struggle over Kansas admission there was a resort to physical prowess early one February morning, at the close of an all-night session, in which Barksdale, of Mississippi, was conspic- uous, and "even Lamar of Mississippi and Parson Owen Lovejoy had a little set-to in the course of the passing gust," a correspond- ent wrote. But "he was a peacemaker rather than a peacebreaker." In some disgust with politics, Lamar was disposed to return to the University. Chancellor Barnard wrote to him that though the sectional battle for control of the senate was over, the North hav- ing an incontestible majority, yet the country needed in congress "men of genuine, unselfish patriotism, of spotless probity and un- bending integrity of principle," like himself. Reelected in 1859 without opposition, he participated with great eloquence in the debates of the famous session of 1859-60. At this time he wrote to Chancellor Barnard: "The sectional war rages with unabated violence. No one started out with more of honest indignation than I felt. But I begin to hope that there exists a mutual mis- understanding between the two sections, brought about by ultra party leaders and deluded fanatics. I think I can see, through all the rancor and madness of this struggle, the slow evolution of right principles. What is now the greatest need is some one man, one true man, who will present the whole controversy in its true light; who, rising above the passions and prejudices of the times, will speak to both sections in a spirit at once tolerant, just, gener- ous, humane and national." In the spring of 1860 he was a dele- gate to the Charleston convention, opposed the withdrawal of the Southern Democrats, and signed with Mr. Davis an address call- ing on them to meet again at Baltimore. "There is so little of unity," he wrote at this time, "so much of discord, jealousies and distrust, between the most patriotic of our men, that I am op- pressed with emotions of the profoundest and most hopeless sad- ness. I endured, in beholding its exhibition at Charleston (and that, too, in the face of a compact and hostile sectional organiza- tion), a mental torture that allowed me no relief except in the thought that it could not be otherwise." In June he accepted the chair of ethics and metaphysics in the University, but he was active in the campaign of 1860, and was particularly effective in restrain-
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