USA > Mississippi > Lowndes County > Columbus > A history of Columbus, Mississippi, during the 19th century > Part 3
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It is also probable that these agents not only turned over the money to the board of trustees but that they also empowered them to make deeds or lease-hold titles for the lots which had been leased. It is certainly true, that the original deeds or lease-hold titles were signed by the trustees of the Franklin Academy, and that the money arising from the leases, was collected by them. Another fact is also true, that these original deeds contain the words, "RENEWABLE FOREVER," as an addition to the term of lease of "NINETY- NINE YEARS," contained in the Act.
However this irregularity in extending the term of lease may have occurred, the validity of the deeds containing this extension, has been ratified by legislative acts, both of the State (Act of 1830) and general government, (Act of Congress 1857.)
The State Act of 1830 not only ratified the past action of the trustees of the Franklin Academy but continued their authority to collect and control the sixteenth section school money and to insert " RENEWABLE FOREVER" in their future deeds.
Another fact connected with this 16th section lease-hold property in the town of Columbus, is that from the time of leasing in 1821 to 1839, it was not considered subject to taxa- tion of any kind and that from 1821 to 1839, a period of eight- teen years, no taxes of any kind were collected, although during that period Lowndes county had been organized and the town of Columbus selected as the county seat. This
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exemption was recognized by the municipal, county and state governments.
In the year 1839, the town of Columbus, finding itself in need of money for municipal purposes, (notably to purchase a fire engine) applied by a petition from the mayor and board of selectmen to the State Legislature, to grant them the power to levy a tax on these exempted school lots for this purpose. In accordance with the petition which was incorporated in the Act, the Legislature of 1839 authorized the mayor and selectmen to collect a municipal tax of 1-4 of 1 per cent. from year to year.
This right to tax lease-hold school property was not submitted to quietly by the property owners, and in 1844 the Act of 1839 was repealed, but in 1846 it was reenacted with the authority to tax extended to the State and County as well and in 1857 an act declared lease-hold property subject to taxation like any other property. This act was sustained by a decision of the Supreme Court of Mississippi in 1898,in the case of Street and others versus City of Columbus. The attorneys were Hon. J. A. Orr for plaintiff and Col. Wm. Baldwin for the city. For a verification of these statements and facts, the reader is referred to this decision of the supreme court.
The amount of lease arising from the lots in the 16th section in Columbus, at one time, reached an approximate of $6,000, but has been reduced by forfeitures and releasing to the present amount of $2,398.54. For thirty years back the trustees of the Franklin Academy have maintained the policy of not allowing the leases to fall below this amount. In all forfeitures, their agent is instructed to bid the lease due, as the lowest bid to be received.
The last instance of a reduction was that in the property now owned by Col. T. J. O'Neil many years previous. Mr. A. R. Wolfington reduced the lease on his lot, now owned by Mr. Blanche Weaver, by moving a two-story residence back across the 16th section line, which ran through the lot, and after the reduction moved the house back again.
Keeler's Almanac for 1850 contains this item, "The school fund amounts to between $2,500 and $3,000 annually, under the supervision of a board of trustees elected every two years by the resident voters of the township."
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CHAPTER IV. EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF COLUMBUS.
The following names of the earliest inhabitants of Colum- bus were taken from the Public Records of the State, Keeler's History of Columbus, in his Almanac of 1850, Rev. George Shaeffer's History of Columbus, published in The Columbus Index when Gen. J. H. Sharp was editor, Lowry's History of Mississippi, (large edition 1891) and from family records.
BEFORE 1821.
Thomas Thomas, Spirus Roach, Thomas Sampson, Wil- liam Vizer, William Poor, Silas McBee, Thos. Townsend, Greene Bailey, Dr. B. C. Barry, Silas Brown, Richard Barry, Hancock Chisholm, William Connover, William Fernandes, Robert D. Haden, William Leech, Gideon Lincecum, William Cocke, Bartlett Sims, Martin Sims, Ovid P. Brown, William L. Moore, Edward Kewen.
As the history of Columbus is necessarily contained in the lives and deeds of these earliest pioneers, it may be deemed best to give a short sketch of the most prominent. They are taken somewhat according to the date of their settlement.
Thomas Thomas, or Thomas Moore, as some historians call him, is entitled to the honor of being the first settler in Columbus. The hard features and peculiar manners of that rugged pioneer, Spirus Roach, were the occasion of that Indian name, Shuk-ha-tah Toma-ha, or Opossum Town. Silas McBee first suggested the euphonius and historic name Columbus. He left the town at an early date and settled on the bank of the creek, which now bears his name.
Judge Thomas O. Sampson settled in Columbus in 1818. In 1821 he was the charter worshipful master of Columbus lodge No. 5. He was perhaps the earliest judge and clerk of the Probate court of Lowndes County. He moved to his farm on the Military road, thirteen miles from Columbus, and died there. He had two daughters. The elder married James Henry, a citizen of Columbus. Mr. Henry built the cottage on College Street known as the Womelsdorff cottage. His son, Robert Henry, was born there and now lives in Pick- ens County, Ala., eleven miles from Columbus, on the upper
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Tuscaloosa road. His younger daughter married Hon. M. M. Rowan, whose son, Mr. Frank Rowan still resides at the old Sampson homestead.
Hon. Robert D. Haden came from Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 1819 and opened a store near the center of the square on Main Street opposite the Gilmer hotel. He was a member of the commissioners that surveyed the town of Columbus in 1821 and a charter officer of Columbus Lodge No. 5. He represented Monroe County in the State Legislature in 1826 before Lowndes County was organized. He was for several terms judge and clerk of the probate court in Lowndes County, and was afterwards receiver in the land offices. He was an original officer in the Columbus Riflemen. He belonged to the very first society of the Methodist church formed in Colum- bus and worshipped with them in the Franklin Academy. He assisted in the building of the first church in Columbus in 1831-2 and was a working, faithful, consistent member to the date of his removal to Texas in 1885. He died in Texas, past eighty years of age and totally blind. His first wife was a daughter of Hamilton McGowan, a farmer in the southern part of Lowndes County. By this wife he had two children, Dr. John M. Haden and Miss Sophie Haden. Dr. John M. Haden read medicine in the office of Dr. Dabney Lipscomb, graduated in the medical department of the University of Louisiana, and was appointed assistant surgeon in the United States Army. He served on the western frontier at different posts from Oregon to El Paso, Texas, at which place he was on duty when the war broke out in 1861. He with Major, afterwards Gen. Longstreet, resigned their positions and ac- cepted service in the Confederate army. He was made sur- geon and appointed medical director of the army of Louisiana and Mississippi, with headquarters at New Orleans. After the capture of New Orleans he was made medical director of the Trans-Mississippi department. After the war he settled in Galveston, Texas, and died suddenly on the steps of a hotel in Philadelphia, where he had gone to enter his two sons in Jefferson Medical College. These two sons are the oldest grand-children of the subject of this sketch. The oldest daughter of Robert D. Haden married Mr Williamson Glover, a wealthy planter in the canebrake region, Greene
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County, Alabama. Her step-grand-daughter, Mrs. Ledyard Vaughan, now resides in Columbus. Judge Haden's second wife was the widow of Dr. Bartlett Hunt, who at the time of her marriage had two children, Bartlett C. Hunt and Cerynthia Hunt. Miss Cerynthia Hunt married W. C. Mills, and her daughter, Miss Minnie Mills, has at this time charge of the Palmer Orphanage in Columbus. Judge Haden's son by his second marriage moved to Texas, and became a prominent physician in that State. His third wife, Miss Mary Eldridge, of North Alabama, by whom he had two children, James and Virginia, moved with him to Texas, where they now reside.
Hon. Ovid P. Brown was a South Carolinian and moved to Columbus in 1819. He lived first in a log house on the bluff where Thomas Thomas, the first inhabitant settled in 1817, and where Spirus Roach kept the first tavern, now known as the Eckford place. His wife was Lucinda Sims, step-daughter to William Cocke, who married her mother Keziah Sims, and whom history states was the first person who died in Columbus (doubtful). This log house on this historic spot, was for several years a rendezvous for the Sims, Cocke, and Brown families. In 1824 Ovid P. Brown moved to a farm on Military road on Black creek, now known as the Gaston place. He resided there until 1832, when he re- turned to Columbus and built a residence on the southwest corner of the square on which Mrs. Ann Franklin now lives, which was his home until his death. He was for many years clerk of the Circuit court of Lowndes county. He joined the very first organization of the Methodist church in Columbus in 1822, worshiped in the Franklin Academy, and afterwards assisted in building a church in 1832. He had a large family of children. His oldest son, Stephen A. Brown, was born in Columbus, in 1823, and moved with his father to his farm on Black Creek, near which he received his earliest edu- cation in a country log school house, with dirt floor, puncheon seats, dirt chimney, and doors made of split boards hung with wooden hinges. His first teachers were Martin Sims, Mr. McCrary, Capt. Abram Botters, and a Mr. Frazier. He re- turned to Columbus in 1832 and resumed his education under Rev. David Wright, then principal of Franklin Academy. This is the first authentic record of Lowndes county school teachers,
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and of a principal of the Franklin Academy. He finished his education at La Grange, Ala. Judge S. A. Brown lived his whole life in Columbus, Miss., and filled many places of local honor and usefulness, both in church and state. He had a special taste for history and historic records. To him the city, and the Methodist church especially, are indebted for many valuable and accurately kept records. Mr. Ovid P. Brown and Mrs. Fannie Beale represent their grand-father in Columbus at this time. Judge O. P. Brown's second daughter, Miss Mary Bettie Brown, also resides in Columbus, which has been her home for 69 years.
Maj. Richard Barry arrived in Columbus in 1819, where he began life as a hotel keeper. H's first location in the town is a subject of much dispute by his early friends. Some locate it at the southeast corner of Main and Market streets, now occupied by Osborne & Pope's drug store; others, the site of the Gilmer hotel; still others place him at the southwest corner of the same square, where Mrs. O'Malley now lives. The probabilities are in favor of the site of the Gilmer hotel. Maj. Barry had several brothers and sisters who came with him to Columbus, viz: Dr. B. C. Barry, who married the sister of Col. C. H. Abert, and a brother, who was the father of Mrs. Clarissa Barry Shaeffer, wife of the Rev. Geo. Shaeffer, and Mrs. Nancy Barry Brooks, wife of Col. Madison Brooks, of Noxubee county. His sisters married Dr. B. C. Hunt, of Columbus, and Mr. Sullivan, of Monroe County, Miss. Maj. Richard Barry was a member of the survey commission in 1821. His business of hotel keeping, being a most lucrative one, and success in land speculation made him a rich man in the early history of Columbus. He settled farms on the east and west sides of the Tombigbee, and in 1834 built the Barry mansion at the south end of Market Street. His oldest child, a son, W. S. Barry, was born in Columbus. He was educated at Yale College, studied law, and soon after his majority was elected to the State legislature and speaker of the house. He was a member of the United States Congress, President of the Mississippi Secession Convention, and in the Civil War was Colonel of the 35th Mississippi regiment. He was wound- ed in the shoulder at the battle of Altoona, Ga., and from the effect of this, and a constitutional disease he died in Columbus.
RESIDENCE OF B. A. WEAVER.
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He married Miss Sallie Fearn, of Huntsville, Ala., and left an only son, Hon. W. S. Barry, a wealthy planter in Leflore county, Miss.
Maj. Richard Barry's oldest daughter married Dr. B. W. Benson, who was Secretary of State under one of the early governors. Her second husband was Mr. Ricks, a wealthy planter in Madison county, Miss. His second daughter mar- ried Dr. R. F. Matthews, of Columbus, their only daughter Mrs. Sully Bradford, with her children, representing at this time the ancient and honored Barry family. His third daughter, Mrs. Mary Frierson, wife of Rev. S. A. Frierson, who resided in Starkville, Miss., leaves several families as representatives in that county. Miss Juliette Barry married Col. Bradford, father of T. B. Bradford, late husband of Mrs. Sully Bradford mentioned above, thus making her family double representatives of their grandfather. Miss Patty Barry married Col. Geo. Abert, now a resident of this city. His daughter and family reside in Richmond, Va. Maj. Richard Barry was an elder in the Presbyterian church from the date of its organization in Columbus in 1832. Dr. B. C. Barry was the first State Senator from Monroe county. He died young and was buried in the graveyard on the Tombigbee bluff at the northwest corner of Capt. W. W. Humphries' square. Dr. Hunt was also buried at this place.
Hon. William Cocke moved from Kentucky after he had received distinguished honors from that State. He had been United States Senator and held other honorable positions. He was the father of Hon. Stephen Cocke by his first wife. He was a member of the survey commission in 1821 and represented Monroe county in the State legislature in 1822. He moved to Mississippi about 1820. His second wife, whom he married in Columbus, was Miss Keziah Sims. He had no children by this wife. He lived a quiet and useful life and died in Columbus about 1824. His son, Hon. Stephen Cocke, was a prominent lawyer and politician from Monroe county. Rev. Martin Sims was an interpreter for the govern- ment and the Mayhew mission to the Choctaw Indians. He died in Columbus at the advanced age of 85 years. Benjamin
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F. Sims was the first sheriff of Monroe county. The descend- ants of William Sims live in Aberdeen, Miss.
William Leech was a member of the commission in 1821, and the father of Capt. Elbert C. Leech, of Columbus, and Ephraim Leech, of East Lowndes, to whom mention was made in the second chapter of this history. Capt. E. C. Leech lived in Columbus from his boyhood. The Tombigbee River was the scene of his labors, being a most successful pilot and steamboat captain on that stream. He acquired a handsome fortune, built several houses in Columbus, where he resided until a few months before his death. He married Miss Eliza Bartee, and died without issue. The wife of William Leech was buried in the Tombigbee graveyard.
Col. Thomas Townsend came to Columbus in 1819 and was employed on the survey in 1821. He engaged in merchan- dise and acquired a large fortune. He moved from Lowndes county and settled on his plantation is south Monroe. His son, Major William P. Townsend, was a gallant officer in the Mexican war and distinguished himself in the capture of Monterey. He married Miss Jennings, daughter of Artemus Jennings, and settled in Texas, where he died and left several children.
JUDGE B. F. BECKWITH.
Sir Hercules De Malebesd was a Saxon. He owned lands in Eng- land of which he took possession and married Lady Bruce Beckwith. He then took the name of Lord Hercules De Malebesd Beckwith. He had one daughter who married Kent, of the Castle of Kent, and four sons, two of whom remained in England and two came to America. One of them settled in Virginia and the other in Connecticut.
Benjamin Franklin Beckwith, the subject of this sketch, was a descendant of the one who settled in Connecticut. He was born Feb- ruary 1, 1810, in Abbeville District, South Carolina. His father died while he was quite young, leaving his mother with two small children, Benjamin and Mary. His mother subsequently married again. Benjamin did not approve of his stepfather's conduct and ran away from home. This was in 1819. He invested all the money he had in a little Indian pony and joined a company that was going on a pros- pecting tour. There were not many roads, only what were called "bridle paths"through the wilderness. They slept at night in the woods without tents in the open air by pine-knot fires. He stopped at Tuscaloosa and liked the country so much that in a short time he, with the help of friends, brought his mother and sisters to Tuscaloosa, Ala, There he assisted one of his step-sisters to set type for the first newspaper that was ever published in Tuscaloosa. It was called The Argus.
Benjamin also helped to plant the large oak trees through the mid- dle of the streets of Tuscaloosa, some of them still living after eighty
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1185613
Many names are omitted from special mention on account of the paucity of facts and incidents in their personal history. The physical and mental characteristics of those whose lives are sketched, deserve more than a passing notice. Some of them are known to the readers of these chapters and they have marked the peculiar angularity of their features and their square, firm set, and muscular frames, all indicating the early lives they led and that they had not been reared in king's houses. They were calm, quiet, silent men. Their words were few, their actions measured, with an entire absence of nervous irritability or boisterous expressions. They could easily be considered the associates of the "Stoic of the Wilder- ness," and lived in times when words meant deeds, and acts involved success, perhaps life itself. Though far away from the restrictions of law and the customs of civilized society, subjected to every kind of temptation, none of them were drunkards or gamblers or libertines. Their code of morals was equal to the most advanced standard of ethics and in their daily lives, they exemplified the great truths and inherent power of the Christian religion. They established Masonry with all its bonds of fraternal association. They squared
years. He lived several years in and around Tuscaloosa and then with his mother, sister and uncle, Abner Nash, moved to Columbus, Miss. There was no town then, nothing but a ferry across the river and one or two small houses. He often told about killing a deer on what is now known as "Bradford Square." It was then a dense wood. There were only one or two families living in Columbus at that time.
Benjamin Beckwith had but few school advantages. He used to work in the day and study at night by a pine-knot fire. On March 17, 1829, at the age of nineteen he was married to Miss Sarah Cox, a girl of seventeen.
Benjamin Beckwith and Sarah Cox had eight children, all of whom grew to maturity and married except one, Robert Beckwith, who died during the Confederate war at Chattanooga, Tenn. Benjamin mar- ried again, a widow, Mrs. Martha Bryant, who had one daughter (now Mrs. John A. Snell, of Columbus, Miss.) He had one daughter by his second wife, Blanch Eugenia Beckwith, now Mrs. William S. Mustin, of Columbus, Miss. He held the office of Judge of Police Court and after that he was always called Judge Beckwith.
Benjamin Beckwith accumulated a nice property and lived to a good old age. He passed away on January 9th, 1891, within a few days of eighty-one years. His children are all dead except two daugh- ters, one by his first wife, Mrs. Ella Hatch, and one by his last, Mrs. Blanch Mustin.
This country was full of Indians when he first came and he traded with them and learned their language and often amused his children when young by talking Indian to them.
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their actions by the square of virtue, and lived in the presence of the All Seeing Eye. They erected churches and became themselves deacons and stewards and elders therein. They built school houses and taught their children that education was the foundation of intelligent citizenship and a life of usefulness and success. Their whole lives testified to the fact that they were nature's noblemen and after God's best pattern of honest men and Christian gentlemen. They de- serve the highest niche in Columbus' history, and an abiding place in the memory of her citizens. Let her seven thousand people bow as a tribute of respect and honor to these, the earliest founders of their beautiful city.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BECKWITH.
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CHAPTER V.
1820 TO 1830-GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.
Several very important events occurred early during the decade from 1820 to 1830, which largely influenced the increase in population and material development of Columbus. The first was the arrival of the U. S. mail, which took place in 1821, Gideon Lincecum being the first postmaster. The first mail was opened in a small frame house on the spot on which the beautiful home of the Elks now stands. This post office was the first frame building erected in Columbus. The next event was the arrival of the steamboat, the Cotton Plant, Capt. Chandler.
The third was the location of the State Capitol at Jackson and the establishment of a post road by the State from Jackson to Columbus (Riley). And last but not least, the erection of Moore's saw and grist mill on the Luxapalila, a mile and a half east of the town. A good idea of the town of Columbus at this time may be obtained from a graphic description made by Rev. Geo. Shaeffer in a newspaper article written in 1872, entitled "Columbus in 1822 by its oldest inhabitant." This sketch is commended to the attention of several of our fine artists, such as Miss Ella Sherrod and Miss Ruth Kennebrew, as a subject for a full page illustration in a future history of Mississippi. The description reads as follows:
"As may be supposed, Columbus was a small place when my eyes first beheld it in 1822. It contained about 150 in- habitants. Main Street presented quite a different appearance from at present; only a few scattering houses. On the south side at the west end, there was a large house composed of four rooms in each story, with a cross passage through the center each direction; this stood on the point of the hill. It was occupied by the venerable Judge Cocke, who called it "the big pile of logs." The next house, going east, was a one storied store about 20 by 30, a frame, kept by Judge Haden; it stood about opposite the postoffice. The next was a small two story frame store on the corner opposite the hotel, occupied by John B. Raser. Between that and the
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corner of Main and Market Streets, there was quite a hollow; the first house from Raser's was a log blacksmith shop in the hollow about half way the square. The next house was a small tailor shop. The next was a one story frame, standing sidewise to the street, about 50 feet long, occupied by Capt. C. Adams as a store; this house stood about where Knapp's shop stands. The next house was an old carpenter's shop on the Gross corner. There was a carpenter's shop on the corner occupied by Humphries and Hudson (now Beard's) ; from thence east and south was covered with pines and small bushes. On the north side of Main Street, west end, there was a one story store kept by Capt. Kewen. The next build- ing was a small retail whiskey shop; the next Barry's tavern, a two story house of pretty large dimension, a frame, but unfinished; it stood on the corner where the Gilmer hotel is kept. On the opposite corner where The Index office is kept, stood a small two story framed house occupied below as Dr. Barry's shop and above as a masonic lodge. From these, going east was no building, until after crossing quite 'a deep hollow, you arrived at a long one story house, occupied in part by Major William Dowsing as a tavern, and in the west end as a small retail store; this house was on Blair's corner. Market street was not built upon. The balance of the village was composed of a few small log cabins scattered among the bushes. The Franklin Academy was a small frame house 30 by 40, not ceiled nor plastered; this was the preaching place for all denominations; the Methodist was the only organized church at that time, composed of a very few members."
The establishment of the U. S. mail service and the navi- gation of the Tombigbee River by steamboats were events of incalculable importance to the town. The early settlers could now communicate with their families and neighbors in the states from which they came, giving information of their health and physical surroundings and the assurance that the rigors and deprivations of frontier life were fast passing away. They could hurry the imigrants that were awaiting their reports of their new Mississippi homes with the encouraging facts of a healthy climate and fertile and well watered lands. Weekly steamboats brought provisions,
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