USA > Mississippi > Biographical and historical memoirs of Mississippi, embracing an authentic and comprehensive account of the chief events in the history of the state and a record of the lives of many of the most worthy and illustrious families and individuals, Vol. II > Part 53
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Further appropriations have been made as follows: In 1886, $59,875.50; in 1888, $45,- 177.50; in 1890, $50,000. Large additions have been made to the buildings. The dormi- tory is a massive brick structure, three stories and a mansard high, one hundred and seventy- five feet front, and running back one hundred and fifty feet. It has a large and well arranged, well lighted and ventilated diningroom, capacious kitchen for instruction in cookery, washing- room, room for soapmaking, boilerroom, ironingroom, bathroom, waterclosets, seventy- six well-built and ventilated rooms for sleeping, and a parlor. Connected with this building by a covered passage is the new chapel building, which is three stories high, well and strongly built, which has a large assembly room, president's office, secretary's office, eight recitation rooms, chemical and physical laboratories and storage rooms, all arranged with full regard to convenience, health and efficient work.
In 1878 President Jones resigned to accept the presidency of Emory and Henry college, and Charles H. Cocke, of Columbus, was elected to succeed him. In March, 1890, President Cocke resigned, and the duties of his office were temporarily discharged to Miss M. J. S. Callaway, mistress of mathematics. In June, 1890, Prof. Arthur H. Beals, of Paducah, Ky., was elected president for one year. In June, 1891, he was not a candidate for re-election. The office has not, at this time, been filled. The faculty comprises twenty members besides the president.
The Cool Springs academy, of Cool Springs, in Union county, was incorporated in 1884.
The Buena Vista Normal college, of Chickasaw county, was chartered in 1885. It was very prosperous for a time under J. S. and L. T. Dickey, of Kentucky. In 1887-8 the attendance of pupils was three hundred and two, and the faculty numbered nine. Music and art were taught. It was patronized from seven states, and from thirty-nine counties in Mississippi. In 1889, however, it had retrograded, and the faculty was reduced to four. Profs. W. S. Burks, of Texas, and W. M. Morrison, of Virginia, then leased the property, and organized a new faculty. In 1891 Rev. E. A. Smith and Prof. R. L. McDonnold took charge. The standard has been raised under every new administration, and this school has few equals in the state.
The Phoenix high school, of Yazoo county, was established in 1885, with R. W. Jones as principal, and one assistant. M. I. Bass became principal in 1888. There are two buildings of moderate cost, also an endowment income of about $125 per annum, and a rental of $300 from school lands. The attendance is about one hundred.
The Pass Christian institute for girls, under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal church, was incorporated in 1885. Its president was and is the Rev. H. C. Mayer. Attend- ance about sixty, drawn from four states. Music, phonography, typewriting, telegraphy and dressmaking are taught, in addition to the usual studies. There are seven teachers and four lecturers, in addition to the president; among the latter, Bishop Thompson. This school is beautifully located on the Mississippi sound. It has a library of about four hundred volumes.
The Liberty Male and Female college, of Amite county, was incorporated in 1886; founded by J. R. Edmunds, with two assistants. The attendance is about one hundred. There are seven departments-the model, normal, business, music, art, preparatory and col- legiate. The present faculty are J. H. Patterorn, principal, and four assistants. Property valued at $15,000.
In 1886 were also incorporated the following schools: The Durant academy, of Holmes county; the Gibson high school, at Rienzi, Alcorn county; the Knoxville White Male and Female academy, at Knoxville, Franklin county.
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In 1887 the Scooba high school, of Kemper county, was established; F. E. Porter, prin- cipal, with two assistants. The attendance of the first year was fifty five. Music is taught. There is a good building with four rooms. Incorporated in 1888. At the same time the Fairview White Male and Female institute was flourishing at Binnsville, in Kemper county, and was incorporated in 1888. The same year witnessed, also, these incorporations: The Mount Carmel normal college, of Covington county; the Jefferson High School association, of Carroll county; the Tombigbee normal institute at Fulton, Itawamba county; the Phila- delphia high school of Neshoba county; the Deasonville high school, of Yazoo county; the Providence Male and Female college, at Nettleton, Lee county; the Newton Male and Female college, of Newton county; and the Centre high school of De Soto county.
The Houlka high school, of Chickasaw county, was established in this year; Rev. E. A. Smith, principal, until June, 1891. Incorporated in 1890, its growth has been slow, but steady; and it has more advanced students, and a higher moral tone, than many institutions of far greater pretentions.
Banner college, located at Banner, in Calhoun county, was established in 1887, and incorporated in 1888. Cortez P. Gilmer, M. A., of University of Mississippi, was president, with four assistants. There was a collegiate course, and one of commerce. Music was taught also. Attendance about one hundred and seventy-five.
The Mississippi normal high school, of Troy, in Pontotoc county, orginated in 1888, from the removal of the Mississippi normal college to Houston. A school was continued at Troy, under the name above given, and under the management of B. M. Bell.
The Lexington normal school was established at Lexington, in Holmes county, by Prof. Dickey; was formerly of the Buena Vista normal college in 1888-9. It has been a flourishing school.
The Meridian normal college, located at Poplar Springs, in Lauderdale county, two miles from Meridian, was established in 1888 by W. E. Johnson and Rev. R. F. Johnson, with seven members of the faculty. The first session enrolled one hundred pupils. There is a philosophical apparatus, and a library of about one thousand volumes.
The St. Aloysius Commercial college was established October 16, 1879, by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, of Vicksburg, Miss. The present building is a large three-story brick structure at Grove and First North streets, and the corner-stone was laid in the month of June, 1878, by Rev. Father McManus, and was completed at a cost of about $18,000. It comprises eight classrooms, and various other room accommodations for two hundred and fifty pupils, and the school, at the present time, has all the pupils it can accommodate. They have primary, scientific and commercial courses, and also teach modern languages. This admirably conducted educational institution is under the charge of Brother Charles, who was one of the original brothers who assisted in arranging the course. The establishment was chartered in 1882, and is acknowledged to be one of the finest institutions in the state, if not in the South. It is devoted to the education of boys and young men, and many of the graduates have reflected great credit upon its management.
Millsaps college, established by the two conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Mississippi, was incorporated in 1890. The munificence of Maj. R. W. Millsaps, of Jackson, who contributed $50,000 to the institution, on condition that the church should bestow a similar sum, and the zeal and influence of Bishop C. B. Galloway, who canvassed the state and procured subscriptions wherewith to meet the offer of Major Millsaps, have equipped this infant college with more than $100,000 of endowment. Efforts are still mak- ing by those gentlemen, on the same terms, to add $50,000 more. The people of the city of
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Jackson, by subscription, have donated property and money to the extent of abont $40,000, for site and buildings, to induce the location of the college in their midst, and this has been done. It is expected to have the new institution at active work by the fall of 1892.
In addition to the institutions already mentioned, the following were incorporated in 1890: The Castalian Springs graded institute, the Goodman high school, the Ebenezer high school, and the Pickens high school, all of Holmes county; Harper's Baptist college, near Gloster, in Amite county; the Hickory White Male and Female institute, of Hickory, in Newton county; the Pleasant Hill high school, of Jasper county; the Hebron high school, of Lawrence county; the Cedar Bluff high school, of Clay county; the Bellefountaine Male and Female high school, of Webster county; the Shannon graded institute, and the Saltillo high school, of Lee county; the Louisville normal school, and the Winston normal high school, at Plattsville, both of Winston county; the Waynesboro normal institnte and college, of Wayne county, and old Myrtle normal college.
Also at this time (1890) the following schools not yet mentioned were flourishing. Of these, some are schools of many years' standing, but the exact dates of the foundation of them are not obtainable. The Lumberton high school, of Marion county; the McBride school, of Jefferson county; the Cascilla Male and Female high school, of Tallahatchie county; the Capital Commercial college, of Wyatt and Sharp, at Jackson; the Rural Hill high school, of Winston county; the Decatur college, of Newton county; the French Camps academy, con- ducted for now many years by the Rev. James A. Mecklin, with great success, in Choctaw county, and the Central Mississippi institute for girls, also at French Camps, conducted by J. A. Sanderson.
It only remains to say that it is not claimed that this chapter and the corresponding chapter in Volume I exhaust the subject of education in Mississippi. Scores of schools of great merit have probably been left without mention. The labor of a lifetime even would have been insufficient for the accumulation of material for an exhaustive history, for the reasons: first, that all record and memory of many are lost, and secondly, that the schools change so constantly that a chapter complete to-day would be incomplete to-morrow.
It is claimed that these two chapters come far nearer to a complete history than any ever before given.
V
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.
CHAPTER XII.
RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI.
THE HE record of the Protestant Episcopal church in Mississippi, of which we are asked to write an historical sketch, goes back to the Spanish domination, when what is now the state of Mississippi formed part of the Natchez district of the province of west Florida.
The Rev. Adam Cloud, a Virginian by birth, settled on St. Catherine's creek, in Adams county, in 1792. Though all public worship not under control of the Roman curia was still interdicted by the Spanish government, he baptized the children and buried the dead of the Protestant families in his neighborhood, preaching also an occasional sermon and ministering as best he could to their spiritual needs. At the end of three years, however, he was arrested, put in irons and sent to New Orleans, to be tried for preaching, baptizing and mar- rying people contrary to the laws of the existing government. After long delay Governor Carondelet submitted to him two alternatives. Either to be sent to Spain to be tried by an ecclesiastical court, under the specified allegations, or to leave forever the Spanish dominions. Too familiar with the history of the Spanish inquisition to risk himself before one of its courts on a charge of heretical preaching, he chose the latter alternative, and spent the next twenty years of his life in South Carolina and Georgia. In 1816 he returned to Mississippi and settled in Jefferson county. In 1820 he organized the parish of Christ church, at Church Hill, in that county, of which he remained rector for many years.
Mr. Cloud was followed by the Rev. James A. Fox, the Rev. James Pilmore and other devoted missionaries, and congregations were established and churches erected wherever an opening was afforded.
On the 17th of May, 1826, the first convention of the Protestant Episcopal church in the state of Mississippi met in Trinity church, Natchez. There were present of the clergy the Rev. Albert A. Muller, rector of that parish; the Rev. James Pilmore, rector of Christ church, Church Hill; the Rev. James A. Fox, of St. Paul's, Woodville, and the Rev. John W. Cloud, of St. John's, Port Gibson. The Rev. Adam Cloud, residing then in Jefferson county, was not present.
The lay delegates to this primary convention were John I. Griffith, Joseph Dunbar, Levin R. Marshall, Robert Moore, A. P. Merrill, M. D., and Col. Henry W. Huntingdon, of Natchez; Gen. John Ioor, Judge Randolph and Judge Prosser, from Woodville; Hon. Joshua G. Clarke, chancellor of the state, and J. W. Foote, from Port Gibson, and Col. James G. Wood and Dr. S. G. Cloud, from Christ church, Jefferson county. As no other congrega- tions are mentioned in the journal of this convention, or in that of the one succeeding, it is
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proper to conclude that the only then existing parishes were those of Natchez, Church Hill, Woodville and Port Gibson.
We have seen, however, that the Rev. Adam Cloud had been actively at work in this frontier territory since 1820, and that the work had also been prosecuted by other devoted mis- sionaries of the church for some years prior to this movement for a diocesan organization. In the proceedings of this convention we read that the Rev. Mr. Pilmore arrived in Mississippi in 1822, and finding several families in Natchez and the vicinity attached to the communion of the Episcopal church, organized a congregation. Steps were at once taken for the erection of a church, which was commenced in May, 1822, upon a large and expensive scale and completed in 1825. The number of communicants reported for this parish, then as now, numerically the strongest in the diocese, was thirty-five.
The Rev. James A. Fox, the minister of St. Paul's, Woodville, reports to the convention that he began his ministerial duties in this state in August, 1823, at the village of Pinckney- ville, in Wilkinson county, and soon after visited Woodville, in the same county, and held divine service. At Woodville he found a considerable number of families attached to the church, and by the spring of 1825 a very neat frame building had been erected, which stands to-day, unaltered as to its identity, a monument to the honesty and thoroughness of the workmen of sixty years ago. In May, 1825, the Rev. Mr. Fox, who, after Mr. Cloud, seems to have been the pioneer in the work of the diocese, visited Port Gibson, in Claiborne county, where a parish was organized under the name of St. John's (changed many years after to St. James; for what reason does not appear), which was represented in the primary conven- tion of the diocese. He visited also Jefferson county "for the purpose of inquiring into the state of a society of the Episcopalians formerly established in the neighborhood of Green- ville." He found their number much diminished by deaths and removals; yet Christ church of Church Hill, in Jefferson county, was represented in the first convention and still remains in union with the council.
In striking contrast to the methods adopted in the latter days, and elsewhere, these four feeble parishes, the strongest of them numbering thirty-five communicants, proceeded to organize the diocese of Mississippi, and to elect "two clerical and two lay delegates, who may represent this diocese (sic) in the general convention of the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States of America, to be held in Philadelphia in November next." The gentle- men elected, says the journal, were "the Rev. Albert A. Muller and the Rev. James A. Fox, of the clergy, and Levin Covington and J. W. Foote, Esqs., of the laity." They also adopted a constitution and canons for the government of the church in the "diocese of Mis- sissippi," and set forth a declaration of conformity to the constitution and canons of the Prot- estant Episcopal church in the United States of America. Having done this the convention adjourned to meet again in Trinity church, Natchez, on the 2d of May, 1827.
The president of this first convention of the diocese was the Rev. Albert A. Muller, and the secretary the Rev. James Pilmore. In his closing address to the convention the presi- dent said: "But a few years have passed away since in this place the lawless savages of the forest held their feasts of revelry and meditated their hostile plans of revenge and murder, and now a Christian people stand in their places devising suitable means for the advance- ment of that gospel which has brought 'peace on earth and good will toward men.' May we not then in regard to this opening of our church, adopt the forcible and appropriate lan. guage of the Psalmist, 'Thou, O God, hast brought a vine out of Egypt; Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. And may we not hope that its fruit may cover the hills, and its limbs be like the goodly cedar, whose boughs shall extend to the sea, and its branches unto the river.' "
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The brief space allotted to this sketch will not suffer us to follow very closely the growth of the vine planted in a faith so sublime and a hope so heroic. We pass on to the year 1832, when the dioceses of Alabama and Mississippi, and the clergy and churches in the state of Louisiana, were anthorized to associate and join in the election of a bishop. A convention was accordingly held in Christ church, New Orleans, on the 4th and 5th days of March, 1835, which resulted in the election of the Rev. Francis L. Hawks, D.D., rector of St. Thomas' church, New York, as bishop of the southwestern diocese. Dr. Hawks, however, declined his election and the project fell through.
In 1838 we find the Rt .- Rev. Leonidas Polk, missionary bishop of Arkansas, exercis- ing Episcopal jurisdiction in the diocese of Mississippi by authority of the general conven- tion, an arrangement which continued in force until the spring of 1841, when Bishop Polk, having been elected to the episcopate of Louisiana, the Rt .- Rev. James H. Otey, bishop of Tennessee, was by the convention of that year chosen provisional bishop of Mississippi. Bishop Otey sustained this relation to the diocese until the election of Bishop Green, although in the meantime more than one attempt was made by the brave and struggling diocese to elect a bishop of her own. In his address to the convention of 1844, Bishop Otey strongly urged the election of a diocesan for Mississippi. He tells the convention that " eight years ago there was not more than one regular settler and officiating minister in the diocese." In the journal of 1844 we find seventeen names on the clergy list and the num- ber of parishes increased to twenty. In accordance with this urgent desire and recom- mendation of the provisional bishop, the convention proceeded to an election, and the Rev. Francis L. Hawks, D. D., rector of Holly Springs, Miss., was chosen. The general conven- tion, however, failed to confirm the election of Dr. Hawks, and Bishop Otey resumed charge of the diocese.
The twenty-third annual convention met in Natchez May 17, 1849. Bishop Otey having again resigned the office of provisional bishop, requesting to be relieved for reasons of increasing infirmity as well as accumulated labor, the convention proceeded, on Saturday, May 19, to the election of a bishop, which resulted in the unanimous choice of the Rev. Will- iam Mercer Green, D. D., of the diocese of North Carolina, who also was by agreement to become rector of Trinity church, Natchez. The Rev. Dr. Green accepted his election, and was consecrated on Sunday the 24th of February, 1850, being the festival of St. Matthias. The Rt .- Rev. James H. Otey, late provisional bishop, was the consecrator. He was assisted by Bishops Polk, Cobb and Freeman, all of whom had at some time performed Episcopal offices in the diocese. The journal of the first convention over which Bishop Green pre- sided shows a clergy list of seventeen names and a roll of twenty-four parishes.
" The Rt .- Rev. William Mercer Green, D. D., LL.D., the first bishop of Mississippi, was sixty and six years in the ministry of Christ and His church. He was thirty-seven years in the episcopate, and in spite of the burden and weight of age, and the remonstrance of friends and sudden illness falling oft upon him, and perils of travel and inclement seasons, and of exposure, he pressed on with a resolute and heroic courage, fondly hoping to die in the very act of duty. He was born May 2, 1798. He died the 13th of February, 1887, in the midst of his kindred and friends, and in the shadow of the great university he helped to found. He was buried in the capitol of his own diocese, by his successor in office, his clergy and his people, the triumphant song of the church filling all that quiet grove in which we laid him. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * Let us look for a moment at the period of his episcopate. He was consecrated in Feb- ruary, 1850. Then followed eleven years, which we may call day, in which a man ought
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to work. Then came the war four years. Following these, ten years during which the whole state lay prostrate and bleeding at every pore. When these ten years were ended and the night, the long night, was fairly over, our bishop was now in the seventy- eighth year of his age. He was never a strong man, and seventy-eight years are a heavy load to bear. But to his honor be it remembered ever that, even at his age, he held the diocese together during a crisis that threatened the very life of many of our Southern churches; and who does not know that there are conditions when merely to maintain life and organization a force is needed that, under favorable auspices, would manifest itself in a decided and rapid onward movement. It is interesting to note that during the war his aged and venerable form was familiar to both armies, that he was enabled to do what perhaps no other man in the state could have done. He visited both within and without the lines of the contending forces. He held up his Episcopal banneret, and he held it full high advanced, and the stars and the stripes and the stars and the bars willingly made way for it. Again and again he passed through the lines of the besieging and the besieged upon a mission against which there is no law.
"Our bishop was a gentle man and his had been in the main a gentle and a calm life, and yet he had, like others, his periods of storm. He had known sorrow and become acquainted with grief. Of these trials he rarely spoke. Now and then upon a long and tire- some journey, meditating as men will at such times, he would lift the veil and suffer you to glance for a moment at the tracks of blood that he had left behind him, and upon the dark arena which had been the scene of his fiercest battles. But these times were rare. For the most part he took into his council aud innermost cabinet only the Almighty Comforter and Lord of Life, who has the balm of Gilead for our wounds, a lethe and a grave for our painful memories, and an immortal crown for our reward."*
So writes one who, better able than any other for the task, delivered before the council of 1887 the most beautiful and touchiug memorial it was ever our fortune to hear. "His life had been in the main a gentle and a calm life," he tells us, and yet into this life had fallen the bloody rain of a cruel and fratricidal war, followed by the fiery trials of a period ten times more cruel, "which tried men's souls" as war itself has never tried them! But founded upon a rock, the church of which he was the chief pastor in this diocese came out purified and exalted, with not so much as even the smell of burning upon her garments.
During the period of the war between the states, the diocese of Mississippi, following the tradition of the Catholic church in all ages, united with her sister dioceses of the South in a convention which formed that branch of the Holy Catholic church, known for four brief years as the Protestant Episcopal church in the Confederate States of America. Upon the cessation of hostilities and the return of the state to the Federal Union, the dio- cese of Mississippi in common with the other Southern dioceses, resumed her connection with the general convention of the church in the United States.
During Bishop Green's administration the church continued steadily to advance as she became known, though hindered as we have seen by events of unusual character and far- reaching consequence. The Bishop, never a strong man physically, had to contend with difficulties in the discharge of his episcopal functions which are now hardly credible. Nights and days of anxious waiting upon the river bank for the arrival of an uncertain steamer, long journeys by land over well nigh impassable roads and across creeks and rivers swollen often by sudden freshet, and frequent exposure to inclement weather made the annual visitation of his diocese a serious task for one who when he entered upon it had already passed the meridian of life.
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