Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. II, Part 55

Author: Rowland, Dunbar, 1864-1937, ed
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Atlanta, Southern Historical Publishing Association
Number of Pages: 1032

USA > Mississippi > Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. II > Part 55

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Prairie Point, a post-hamlet of Noxubee county, 10 miles east of Macon, the county seat and nearest railroad and banking town. Population in 1900, 75.

Pray, P. Rutilius R., a native of the State of Maine, college- educated and with some experience as a teacher in Winchester county, N. Y., came to Mississippi in the early days of the State, and made his home at Pearlington, near the seaboard, where he engaged in the practice of law. He served in the legislature as representative of Hancock county, in 1827-29, and was honored

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with a place on the judiciary committee with Sharkey and Quit- man. In 1832 he was president of the constitutional convention, and by the following legislature he was selected to make a digest of the laws of the State. Influenced by the Napoleonic code of Louisiana he endeavored to work into his code of Mississippi, in conformity with the revolutionary spirit of that day, some inde- pendence of the traditions of the "common law" inherited from old England.

He reported to the January session, 1835, that he had relied much on the aid he had expected "to derive from the dissertations of those distinguished jurists, who have introduced such magnifi- cent improvements into recent legislation, and to whom justice seems fully to have unveiled her mysteries ;" but he would not be ready to report until a year later. His work was submitted to the session of January, 1836.

The senate committee reported on the code in 1838 that "it has some circumstances attached to it calculated to recommend it favorably." The laws were written in "a concise and comprehen- sive style which evinces great clearness of perception and legal acquirement in its author." The principal innovations proposed by the code were its chief recommendation to the committee ; namely, the abolishment of some old forms of pleading that be- longed to a bygone and barbarous age. The session of 1838 was partly given to the consideration of the code.

In January, 1839, the Pray code had not yet been adopted, and it never was. Gov. McNutt vigorously observed that many ob- jections were made to it by people who had never read it. "Some are so wedded to black letter books and the unwritten or common law as to be unable to believe that any improvement can be made. We live in an age which contradicts all such assumptions.

It has been too long the custom to look for the law in the opinions of jurists. The legislative will, expressed in accord- ance with the constitution, is the only law recognized in a free government. The present is a most auspicious time for the adop- tion of an entire new code of laws. Fully one half of our popu- lation have recently emigrated to the State. . The spirit of the age is opposed to hanging, branding, cropping, whipping and the pillory. The revisor has wisely recommended that murder and arson, in the first degree, and treason, alone, should be capitally punished, and that executions should take place in the prison or prison yard, in the presence of certain offi- cers."

In November, 1837, Pray was elected to the High court, as the supreme court of the State was then called, and he held this office until his death, at the age of 45 years, at Bay St. Louis, Dec. 11, 1839.

Prentiss. The town of Prentiss was laid off in 1856, and was lo- cated in Bolivar county, opposite the town of Napoleon in Arkan- sas. As it was burned early in 1863 by the Federal forces. it was in existence for only about seven years. The town was designed

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to be the county site of Bolivar county, and a large brick court house and jail were built at once, and it grew to be a place of about two hundred inhabitants, with a good hotel and a newspaper, the "Bolivar Times." The great river has long since absorbed the site of the town.

Prentiss, a post-town, formely of Lawrence county, situated in the east-central part, on the Mississippi Central R. R., about 15 miles from Monticello, the county seat. It is a thriving town and has been selected as the county seat of the recently organized coun- ty of Jefferson Davis. There are several stores located here, also a bank, the Bank of Blountville, established in 1902.

Prentiss County was created at the same time as Alcorn county, April 15, 1870, during the administration of Governor Alcorn, and received its name in honor of Sargent Smith Prentiss, the gifted statesman, jurist and silver tongued orator of Mississippi. The county has a land surface of 420 square miles. Its territory was principally taken from that of old Tishomingo county, one of the numerous counties formed in 1836 from the Chickasaw cession of 1832 (q. v.). This county lies in the so called rotten limestone or black prairie belt, well up in the northeastern corner of the State, and is bounded on the north by Alcorn county, on the east by Tishomingo county, on the south by Itawamba and Lee coun- ties and on the west by Union and Tippah counties. In compliance with the act which created the new county, Governor Alcorn ap- pointed the following county officers: Board of Supervisors, John R. Moore, President, J. M. Moore, Alonzo Bowdry, Joseph Rodg- ers, M. L. Martin ; Henry C. Fields, Sheriff ; W. H. Walton, clerk of the Chancery Court and of the Board of Supervisors. J. M. Stone became the first State Senator for the county, and Hugh M. Street, elected Speaker of the House, (1873-1874) was the first Representative in the lower House of the Legislature. By the year 1850 the region comprising this county had become thickly settled with an excellent class of emigrants from Virginia, Georgia, and northern Alabama. The old village of Carrollville, (q. v.) founded in 1834, in what was then Tishomingo county, was once a thriving trade center for southeastern Tishomingo county. When the Mobile & Ohio R. R. was completed to Baldwyn, two miles away, the latter town absorbed its business and population. Hon. Wm. M. Cox now lives on the old site of Carrollville. During the early days before the railroad, all shipments were made to and from Memphis over 100 miles away by wagon, and later, to and from Eastport on the Tennessee river. With the railroad has come a shifting of trade centers, as well as increased population and wealth. The act creating the county established the county seat at Booneville (pop. 1,250), near the center of the county. It is on the Mobile & Ohio R. R., and is the largest town in the county and the center of the most important vegetable and fruit growing region in this part of the State. The county about is rich and fertile and the town is growing at a rapid rate. It contains a box factory, 2 brick & tile factories, a wood working plant, 2 gins, 2

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grist-mills, an electric light plant, a bottling works, a carding fac- tory and some other small enterprises. It is located on the highest point on the M. & O. R. R., 513 feet above tidewater and has a mild and salubrious climate. A courthouse was built in 1872 at a cost of about $15,000, but was condemned in 1904 and the contract let for a $35,000 up-to-date building which is still in course of con- struction. There are no other large towns in the county, the more important being Marietta in the southeastern part (pop. 100), Manila, Altitude, Daltonville, Burtons, Antioch, Elma, all off the railroad, and Thrasher, Wheeler, and Racket on the railroad. The only railroad in the county is the Mobile & Ohio, which runs through the center from north to south. The region is watered by the numerous creeks which form the head waters of the Tom- bigbee, flowing south, and by the branches of the Tuscumbia river, flowing north. In 1900 there were 74,436 acres of improved lands, or about one-third of its area; the remaining two-thirds is well timbered with oaks of various kinds, hickory, elm, beech, walnut, poplar, ash, gum and pine. The surface of the county is level, undulating and hilly, and the soil is rich and fertile on the bottoms, good on the uplands and poor on the steep hills. It produces corn, cotton, oats, wheat, sorghum, peas, potatoes and an abundance of vegetables and fruits, both large and small. Some limestone is found and large beds of marl have also been discovered and used for fertilizing purposes. The prairie region forms a good stock country and the industry has assumed large proportions during the last few years. Manufactures are still in their infancy, but the proximity of the county to the coal and iron of Alabama, should ultimately render it an important manufacturing region.

The following statistics, taken from the twelfth United States census for 1900, relate to farms, manufactures and population :-- Number of farms 2,591, acreage in farms 222,236, acres improved 74,436, value of land exclusive of buildings $929,970, value of build- ings $321,270, value of live stock $477,040, total value of products not fed to stock $863,305. Number of manufacturing establish- ments 50, capital invested $94,570, wages paid $23,830, cost of ma- terials $80,435, total value of products $178,602. The population in 1900 was whites 12,657, colored 3,131, total 15,788, increase of 2,109 over the year 1890. As there has been a steady increase in population it was estimated at 18,000 in 1906. Land values have increased at a rapid rate and farm lands have more than doubled in the last 5 years. Artisian water has been found in various parts of the county, and the region is one of the healthiest in the State. The total assessed valuation of real and personal property in Pren- tiss county in 1905 was $1,961,805 and in 1906 it was $2,610,330, which shows an increase of $648,525 during the year.

Prentiss, Seargent Smith, was born at Portland, Maine, Sep- tember 30, 1808. His father, William Prentiss, was a prosperous ship-master, a man of energy, intelligence and adventure, who had braved perils of sea-storm, shipwreck, pirates and the British enemy. The grandfather, Samuel Prentiss, a native of

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Massachusetts, was a graduate of Harvard college. The father of Samuel was Rev. Joshua Prentiss, a minister at Holliston, Mass. The pioneer of the family in America was Henry Prentice, a grave Puritan, who came over from England some time before 1640. His eldest daughter, Mary, married the great-grandfather of John Hancock.

When Seargent was an infant he was attacked by an almost fatal illness, followed by paralysis. This was mainly cured by massage and plunges in cold water, daily, for several years, by the devoted mother, but one limb she was unable to save from withering, and throughout life he was a cripple, requiring the help of a cane to walk about or stand before an audience. With this one exception he was physically perfect, though short of stature. The beauty of his face, the vigor of his body, enhanced the charm and power of his words. In speaking he lisped slightly, but this was not considered a defect.

Captain Prentiss was ruined by Jefferson's embargo and the war of 1812-15. He removed his family to the town of Gorham, and became a farmer. There the boy came under the influence of his mother's father, Maj. George Lewis, Hon. George Thacher, a cousin of the latter, and other old school Federalists, and im- bibed the intense national spirit and something of "lordliness" characteristic of that school of politics. Seargent was compelled to live in and about the house as a child, photographing in his wonderful mind nearly every word of the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress, books which are, to the unpoisoned spirit of a boy, full of the spirit of the noblest chivalry. On crutches, or drawn in a little cart or sled by an elder brother, he attended village school. He had a great passion for shooting and fishing, and loved to loiter along the brook and through the forests. Determining to go to college, he prepared at Gorham academy, and there read the Arabian Nights and Don Quixote. He was then twelve or thirteen years, fearless, impulsive and daring. He shirked the weekly declamation as long as possible, and then convulsed the master and school with a witty improvised poem. In the fall of 1824, at the age of fifteen years, he entered Bowdoin college, in the second year class. As a student he was brilliant; he read om- niverously and rapidly, apparently not stopping to turn the leaves, and was constantly resorting to Walter Scott and Shakespeare. A year after he entered college his father died, and as soon as his college course was completed, Seargent began the study of law with Josiah Pierce, of Gorham.

It was very common in his day for young men of New England to go to the South and Southwest, though their first impulse was to the Ohio. "Searge," as his mother called him, started out to make his fortune in these new worlds in 1827, going to Buffalo, thence by boat to Sandusky, and by stage across Ohio to Cincin- nati. Bellamy Storer took him in charge and found him a place in the office of Judge Wright. He sought to open a school and support himself while he continued his reading of law, but being

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advised that he would find a more open field, and perhaps secure the more desirable situation of tutor at some great plantation, at the Natchez, he suddenly decided to go South. One of his new friends advanced him the necessary money, two gentlemen and their families, from Natchez, urged him to accompany them, and he went down the river with letters of introduction to the great people at the famous Mississippi port. He came with the inten- tion of returning North in a year or two, and for some time con- tinued in that intention. He reached Natchez November 2, 1827, was greeted cordially, and within two or three weeks was engaged as tutor of the five children of the widow of William B. Shields, in whose plantation home was one of the best law libraries of the State, which she put at his service. In July, 1828, he had paid his debts, and had $15 left, and sorrowfully left the Shields home to take charge of a school about eight miles from Natchez. But

teaching disgusted him, he could not easily adapt himself to the conditions created by slavery, and was often on the verge of start- ing back to Maine. Yet the prospect of financial success was too alluring. He gave up his school in February, 1829, and, having money enough to support himself a few months, entered the law office of Robert J. Walker at Natchez, who promised to back him in this venture into a career as a lawyer. He was admitted to the bar at Monticello in June, and became the law partner of Gen. Felix Huston. Then his financial safety was assured. He began the practice and soon had opportunity to make speeches in the presence of brilliant lawyers, that they had never heard equalled in vigor of argument, brilliancy of expression and flowing humor. Though a young man he already showed that stoutness of build that was a characteristic, though his height was only five feet six. Stout as he was, his head was large for the body. His fore- head was wide, high and almost semi-circular in outline, as in the portraits of Shakespeare.

While at Natchez, he continued unsettled in mind about where he should make his home, wavering between the opportunities of New Orleans and the memories that drew him back to Maine. But in January, 1832, he decided to remain for a time in Missis- sippi and to make his home in the town of Vicksburg, then a rap- idly growing place. He had already been there, in the midst of a small-pox epidemic, and by a two hours' argument secured the repeal of an oppressive quarantine regulation. This scourge was followed by the cholera and his first year's experience was under great difficulties. But he busied himself by a campaign against Jackson's reelection, and enjoyed a visit in November with Wash- ington Irving. Early in 1833 he was at Washington, D. C., to argue a case in the supreme court, and met Jackson, whom he considered "about as fit to be president of the United States as I am." (Letter to his sister.) He was too poor financially to make a visit home, and "could have sat down and cried about it." Re- turning to Natchez, he formed a partnership with John I. Guion, his life-long, and devoted friend.

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The temptations to which such a man as Prentiss was exposed, coming as he did, and whence he did, were like those experienced now by a visitor to the tropics. Not that the people he left were any better, but there was a great change of conditions, and power- ful restraints were withdrawn. Intoxication, gambling, duelling, frivolous skepticism of anything truer than "today we drink and tomorrow we die," were so prevalent as to obscure the solid ele- ments of society that were building the State. Prentiss yielded, very largely, to reckless habits, though he kept his purity of thought and expression, and throughout his life was religious in the highest sense.

October 5, 1833, he fought a duel with Henry S. Foote, on the Louisiana shore, at sunrise, at ten steps distance. Not long after- ward a second duel took place. In both Foote was slightly wounded. Bailie Peyton told the story that in the second duel, when Prentiss' pistol had snapped, and Foote's bullet had whistled over his head, the crowd being so dense that there was barely room for the passage of the balls, Prentiss called to a small boy climbing a sapling for a better view, "My son, you had better take care; General Foote is shooting rather wild." These two duels were his only ones in a land where duels were "as plenty as black- berries." Afterward, in his last visit to Cincinnati, a would-be friend alluded to Foote as a "dog," whereupon Prentiss instantly retorted: "If he is a dog, sir, he is our dog, and you shall not abuse him in my presence." In 1835 when he heard that Gen. Felix Huston was sick with small-pox, he went to him at once, and remained with him, despite the loathsome virulence of the disease, until the general was out of danger. A boyhood vaccina- tion saved him from anything worse than a slight attack.

At the beginning of the year 1834 he was in the full tide of success as a lawyer. He had little time now for those letters to his mother, sisters and brothers, in which his nature is revealed. He was confident in 1834 that he could make at least $3,000 a year, and he had been solicited to become a candidate for con- gress. In August he was chosen to deliver an oration at the State capitol in memory of Gen. Lafayette. In the summer of 1835, he sailed from New York with a party of Mississippians. On the voyage he was in his element, overwhelming his friends with eloquent observations and reciting poem after poem on every topic that came up, from the masters of English verse, whose words were printed in his memory. After a visit to his old home, he returned to Vicksburg, where in his absence, had occurred the famous uprising against the Blacklegs. He was a member of the legislature in December, 1835, and, with his Whig colleagues, endeavored to reëlect Poindexter to the senate. With very dif- ferent weapons he fought the great prestige of Jackson as ear- nestly as Poindexter did. It was related by Judge Wilkinson that at one of Prentiss' meetings, a man invaded the audience bearing. a banner inscribed "Hurrah for Jackson." Prentiss, without a pause in his indictment of Democracy, went on to say, "In short,

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fellow citizens, you have now before you the sum and substance of all the arguments of the party, 'Hurrah for Jackson.'"

He favored locating the New Orleans & Nashville road east of Pearl river, and showed an interest in the development of the whole State that was not agreeable to some of his friends at Vicks- burg. Another great Whig, A. L. Bingaman, suffered for the same reason at Natchez. Prentiss was tired of lawmaking at the close of the session, also of law, and asked his younger brother to come on and succeed him in the practice. He was then 28 years of age. In the spring of 1836 he visited Cincinnati and various Kentucky points. In the same year he joined with others in the purchase of an interest in the "Commons" of Vicksburg, lending his legal ability to the effort to dispossess the city. He expected to become wealthy from the speculation. It was a time of the wildest speculation all over the United States and Vicksburg was a focus of greatest intensity. In the following year the collapse came. A general panic and failure of credit pervaded the coun- try and laid its hand on the markets in Europe. Mississippi cot- ton that sold for 19 cents in December, 1836, brought only 91/2 in the following April. In the legislature of 1837 he denounced the spirit of the argument of Adam L. Bingaman, on the question of seating the alleged representatives from new counties. "It is a fearful monster, which has, for the last two or three years, trav- ersed the United States with the stride of a drunken and in- furiated giant, trampling down constitutions and laws and setting governments at defiance. In the city of Baltimore, in its frantic mood, it demolished the edifices of the citizens. In Charleston, a convent fell a prey to its wayward humor. It is no stranger within our own State-and maddened by a southern sun, its foot- steps have been marked with blood. It is the principle of moboc- racy, the incarnate fiend of anarchy." In this speech he fearlessly challenged the Whig leadership of Bingaman. The speech, of three hours, established his reputation throughout the State. De- spite his declaration that the course he opposed would "infuse into the legislation of the State a poison which no medicine can cure," his opposition was ineffectual. On the refusal of the senate to recognize the house after this, the legislature adjourned, and Pren- tiss resigned. In the following summer, while on another visit to Maine, he was nominated for congress by the Whigs of Mis- sissippi, and he returned and went into a campaign declaring for the reorganization of a United States bank. This campaign made him "the pride, the delight, and the chosen standard bearer of his party in the State."

No one attempted to meet him but McNutt, who dared to allude to Prentiss' dissipated habits. Prentiss retorted that the gover- nor could not make any sober accusation against him, for he had been drunk ten years, not upon the rich wines of the Rhine, the Rhone, the Saone or the Guadalquiver ; not with his friends around . the genial and generous board, but in the secret seclusion of a dirty little backroom and on corn whiskey. "Why, fellow citi-

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zens, as the governor of the State, he refused to sign the gallon law until he had tested, by experiment, that a gallon would do him all day." He continued in a brilliant, rollicking tirade of ridicule that drove his opponent from the stand. There were two elections in 1837, in the last of which, supposed to be for the regu- lar term, he was elected. The seat was contested on the claim that congress had recognized the first election as for the full term.

His contest was the contest of two great national parties for control. In defense of his title he spoke for two days and part of a third, in the presence of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Dan- iel Webster, Preston, White, and Crittenden, and when the young orator noted the mystic signs of approval passing between such hearers he was intoxicated with delight, and at the sime time as- tonished; for the greatest charm of this speech, as of all his great efforts, was his unfeigned sincerity and absolute surrender to the effort to convince. Webster said "Nobody could equal it." George Winchester wrote from Natchez, "I feel a glow of triumph; it runs warm through my veins and animates and enlivens me like a shout of victory." Only a skeleton of this great effort is pre- served; the professional reporters could not follow it. He made a second speech on the same subject, replying to the courtly Legaré, of South Carolina. This effort surpassed the first and had an audience even more brilliant. Hardly a vestige of it is pre- served. The final vote of the house, for partisan reasons, was a tie, and Speaker Polk cast his vote against Prentiss. Henry Clay laughingly pointed his finger at the latter, saying, "Now go home, d-n you, where you ought to be," a jest that was afterward dis- torted into an insult to the Speaker. Before he went home Pren- tiss was entertained at dinner by Webster, Clay and other Whigs in congress, at which the godlike Webster, late at night, was in- spired to the most wonderful utterances ever heard by his friends.

Prentiss issued an address to the people and made another cam- paign. His first address was at Vicksburg, the meeting presided over by William L. Sharkey; next at Natchez. He declared, "All is lost save honor," denied that the coming election was valid, promised that if reelected he would take his seat under the pre- vious election, a promise that was kept. This campaign was the most dramatic event of his career. Old Democrats heard him, with tears running down their cheeks. Many who had never bolted their ticket voted for him, and Prentiss and Word were triumph- antly elected. In congress he did not find much opportunity for distinction except in helping defeat the sub-treasury measure of the administration. After adjournment in 1838, he went to Port- land, Me., and was invited to speak at Faneuil Hall, Boston, at a reception to Daniel Webster. He followed Edward Everett, Dan- iel Webster, and several others, and spoke late in the night. Ever- ett wrote-"He took possession of the audience from the first sentence and carried them along with unabated interest, I think for above an hour. . Sitting by Mr. Webster, I asked him if he ever heard anything like it; he answered, 'Never, except from

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Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. II, Part 55

Author: Rowland, Dunbar, 1864-1937, ed Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Atlanta, Southern Historical Publishing Association Number of Pages: 1032

Author: Rowland, Dunbar, 1864-1937, ed
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Atlanta, Southern Historical Publishing Association
Number of Pages: 1032