USA > Mississippi > Pike County > Pike county. Mississippi, 1789-1876: pioneer families and Confederate soldiers, reconstruction and redemption > Part 13
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Pike County was not without its share of these sneaking abolition . emissaries, going from plantation to plantation, secretly among the negroes, endeavoring to incite them to insurrection against their masters and families. This writer knows whereof he speaks on this matter in so far as Pike County was concerned. There was no more cruel and murderous intent perpretrated on a people than that at- tempted by Northern emissaries here in 1860; and it became neces- sary for the manhood of the South to be on the alert. On his father's estate on Topisaw the writer caught one of these scoundrels among the negroes trying to persuade them to rise and massacre his widowed mother and her children, which they refused to consider; and the same villian attempted the same thing on the plantations of Judge
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James B. Quin, Hardy Thompson, Christian Hoover and others. This is localizing evidence and facts in a small radius. Put it thus over the entire South, where there were four millions of negro slaves, equal in number to the whites, what was there under these circum- stances for the Southern people to expect? With twenty millions of white people in the Northern States, turned to be their enemies, send- ing their murderous emissaries among these four million slaves to incite them to massacre the four millions of whites in the South, thus placing the four million Southern whites at the mercy of the twenty million Northern whites and the four million negroes in their midst, what can be said against the South seceding and Southern manhood asserting itself for its own preservation? What constituted a greater incentive to manly and heroic effort to beat back the foe?
The Southern people were true Americans, and were not moulded from that class of the human race to stand idle and inactive while an insolent foe marched in among them to cut their throats or rob them of all the rights of freemen under a government which their fathers had given their best blood and brains to establish.
In 1859 H. E. Weathersby, the brilliant young lawyer previously mentioned, was elected to the State Legislature, and J. B. Crisman was elected to represent the counties of Pike and Laurence in the State Senate. They were gentlemen eminently qualified for these responsible positions. They were both men of ability and reflected honor upon the constituency they represented in these days of political commotion.
H. Eugene Weathersby was a young man born and raised in Amite County, and was educated at Centenary College in Louisiana. He was one of the class with Judge Thomas C. W. Ellis, of the Civil Dis- trict Court of New Orleans, and a bosom friend. He was tall, handsome, talented, chivalrous and brave; and he had entered the practice of law in Holmesville at a period of life when noble aspira- tions fill the soul, and a laudable ambition urges one to seek the highest place among men; and it was at a time when trained and brilliant lawyers, in the floodtide of success, occupied the bar in South Missis- sippi, many of whose names have already been mentioned in these pages, and whose fame will go down to the ages. He became a part-
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ner with Hugh Murray Quin, a native of Pike County, and Thomas R. Stockdale, recently of the State of Pennsylvania, in the practice of law, and was the chosen orator of the day at the 4th of July celebra- tion in 1860, the occasion of the presentation of the banner to the Quitman Guards. It was fitting that this should be the greatest celebration in Pike County, and it was fitting too that the gallant, the good, the chivalrous Weathersby should occupy such a conspicu- ous place in connection with the event, as it was the last for many years to come, and the young man who stood there the object of so much admiration, with his hands raised to high heaven, prophetically deplor- ing the signs of the coming storm, became a sacrifice upon the altar of a principle he loved so well.
At the fall election in 1860 Robert Bacot was succeeded by the election of Louis C. Bickham as sheriff.
Louis Bickham was the son of Thomas Bickham, of Louisiana. His mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Bickham, becoming a widow by the death of her husband, became a resident of Holmesville and a conspicuous factor in its higher social life. She was a woman of queenly bearing, tender-hearted and kind, and delighted in the entertainment and happiness of young people. Her children, like herself, were all hand- some and proud.
Louis C. Bickham married Margaret, one of the beautiful twin daughters of B. B. Lindsey, the noted millwright and mechanic. Her twin sister was named Jennie, whose first husband's name was Mcclendon. They were so nearly alike that even intimate friends were sometimes puzzled to tell which was Margaret or which was Jennie, when met separately. Louis Bickham's grandfather was Maj. Benjamin Bickham, who emigrated from South Carolina in 18II, in company with Benjamin Youngblood, the father of Joseph Youngblood, and John Brumfield, the father of Jesse and Isaac Brumfield, and settled in Washington Parish, Louisiana.
Louis Bickham was a man of delicate mould, handsome and friendly, but he was brave and fearless in the discharge of the duties of sheriff.
Among the original settlers of Summit and business men were William H. Garland, one of the original promoters of the building of
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the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad, as previously mentioned in the organization of that great enterprise.
Louis Alcus and Isaac Lichenstein became merchants there, also Hatch Hiller, James and Clint Atkinson, J. B. Wilson and John Cotton, J. D. Jacobowsky and Jake Hart, Sol. Hyman, Henry Lotterhos, John W. Huffman, dentist; Lemuel J. Quin, Ed. Mogan, I. Moiese, Henry Lotterhos, D. C. Packer, John D. Farnham, Algenon Sidney Mitchell, Isaac C. Dick, William McNulty, Sam Hyman, Louis and Isaac Scherck, Ben Hilburn, Rene H. Brunette, the Cunninghams, Boyds and Godbolts and James H. Wingfield.
Rene H. Brunette, previously mentioned as one of the original settlers of the town of Summit in 1856, was from the city of New Orleans, La. His wife was Susan Jane Thompson. They had four sons, Rene H., Jr., William M., Birkett Thompson and Frank.
At the commencement of the Civil War Rene, Jr., and William joined Charlie Drew's battalion of infantry, made up of some of the best young men of the city of New Orleans, which was immediately sent to Richmond, Va., with other forces to meet the invasion of the peninsula. They became engaged in a skirmish fight with the enemy near Newport News, July 5, 1861, at which time Charlie Drew was killed and it became a noted historical fact that he was the first field officer on the Confederate side to become a martyr to the cause of Southern independence.
In accordance with the terms of their enlistment the battalion . was disbanded and the men given their discharge at Yorktown, in 1862, and Fenner's battery was formed from members of the battalion, and the two Brunette brothers from Summit became members of it when it was organized at Jackson, Miss., under orders, in May, 1862. William Brunette was killed at the battle of New Hope, Ga., May 24, 1864. Frank was too young to become an active soldier during the war. The family returned to New Orleans in 1866, where they engaged in merchandising. The elder son, Rene H., Jr., at this writing is over seventy years of age, in good health, active and strong and of superb memory connected with events of the Civil War. He married Miss Alice Shamwell, of New Orleans, and has one living son, Willam A. Brunette, of Gulfport.
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The Reynolds family, also pioneer settlers of Summit, from New Orleans, returned to that city some years after the close of the war. One of the daughters of this family became the wife of Mr. Soule, of Soule's College.
Col. William H. Garland, one of the promoters of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad, and founder of the town of Sum- mit, was a widower from New Orleans with the following children: Lizzie, wife of Dr. James M. Ferguson, of Stockdale's Cavalry; David and William H., Jr., when he married the widow O'Callahan, with the following children: Baldwin (known as Bun), Harold and Mollie. Colonel Garland and his wife, Mrs. O'Callahan, were the parents of Sidney and Bettie Garland.
In 1859, while Robert Bacot was sheriff, Ralf Summers, a negro slave belonging to Jack Summers, the tanner, was killed by Green Wingo, a slave of Asa Wingo, for which the latter was hung after trial by jury in the circuit court. This killing occurred on the public road near the plantation of Andrew Kaigler, across the river from Holmes- ville.
Ralph Gibson, Capt. Westly Thomas and William Carr, who lived on Leatherwood, were members of Jefferson Davis' celebrated Ist Mississippi Regiment in the War with Mexico, noted for excellent services, crowning the American arms with success by the heroic efforts and gallantry of its illustrious colonel and his men.
William Sparkman, Joseph Page, Elijah Page, Felix Campbell, . John and Josh Bishop and their father were the principal carpenters and builders in Holmesville.
William Sparkman was a fine violinist and furnished the music for the balls in Holmesville during his time when the California House was famous for these occasions.
Holmesville was the scene of many a happy gathering. An inland resort, the gay and the chivalrous came from near and far; distant States often lent their charmers, and there was no rural town or county that could boast of more attractive and lovable women.
One of the first fandangoes the writer visited while in his tender teens was at the residence of Joseph Luter, on the farm where he settled
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and lived on Varnal Creek. It was often the case that boys or young men from towns would attend these country dances, and they some- times indulged in the habit of poking fun at the country lads and lasses. It was a fashion for them to wear fine red-top boots in attendance at these balls. The country girls were taught to dance all the fandango figures, "Virginia reels," "fisher's hornpipe," "heel and toe," "side shuffle," the "backstep" and "pigeon wing."
On this occasion, Flem Burkhalter, with his inimitable bow and fiddle and the magic pat of his foot, "filled the orchestra." The country boys fixed up a job-one of the relics of Pindar Ridge, in Washington Parish-on a youngster with red-top boots and a stand- ing collar An old Virginia reel was arranged and partners chosen. One of the handsomest and best fandango dancing girls was robed in a homespun dress and kept in the background until the time came for the red-top boots to sidle out bantering for a vis-a-vee. Flem Burk- halter was "up to the game" and he laid his head down on his fiddle and went to work. A lithe, smiling figure tripped out in front of the red-top boots, her head leaning coquettishly to one side, a twinkle in her eyes, a happy smile upon her cheeks, with her homespun dress slightly tucked above the ankles. The knight of the red-top boots was amazed, he hesitated for a moment, but hands clapped, a shout went up. Flem Burkhalter came down vigorously with his bow, his foot went up and down, red-top boots took in the situation, and he proved to be a "clipper" in the art; but there was a match for him in the homespun dress. All the other dancers rested back on one foot in line, with their hands folded in front of them, eyes riveted on the performers. Flem Burkhalter sailed out from one tune to another for half an hour, and then plunged into Fisher's hornpipe. Red-top boots figured with the tune, and so did the figure in the homespun dress. The smile that lit her pretty cheeks was there yet, calm and beautiful, the head leaned from one side to the other, and there was not an error in the motion of the well-shaped, flexible limbs. She was one of "Flem Buck's" pupils; he knew the power of her endur- ance, and he fiddled to break down her opponent; but "red-top" was game; he was loath to yield to the pineywoods' smiling gazelle; great
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drops of fluid formed on his chivalric brow, his collar went limp, his linen was dripping. The nimble gazelle sidled him around; she wouldn't swing; it was a test of endurance, but red-top boots had to succumb, and he bent his obedience to his matchless conqueress in heroic fashion, and from that hour on, after she had donned her gayest attire, they were the charming leaders; took the first place at the magnificent supper prepared, wound up the fandango happy-hearted, and went their way rejoicing. The actress in this famous contest was Miss Louisa Burkhalter, an aunt of the wife of Irvin A. Quin.
The first man to receive a license to teach school in Pike County was W. D. Clarke, in the forties. One of his pupils, in the person of Hon. Henry S. Brum- field, still survives. In 1902, when these notes were compiled, Prof. Clarke was still living at the ripe old age of eighty-one, in the city of Springfield, Ill., and had recently written a beautiful letter to his pupil of the long ago.
The grading of the railroad was completed to Magnolia in 1856. The land upon which the town was built belonged to Ansel H. Prewett, and was laid off in town lots and sold to the settlers.
ANSEL H. PREWETT The founder of Magnolia. Appointed Sheriff of Pike County by Governor Alcorn in 1870
Ansel H. Prewett was a son of Elisha Prewett and Ann Huckabee, pioneers from Georgia. His first wife was Julia Ann Raborn, and they were the parents of the following children: Sarah Ann, who first married Wesley Powell, and then Howell Dickey, second husband; Wm. Harrison Prewett, who married Polly Ann Vaughn; James Smiley Prewett, who married Elizabeth Vaughn: Martha Ann, who married Newton Nash; Elisha Taylor, who married Sally Harris,
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Naomi Eviline, who married David Vaughn; Mary Ann, who married Cornelius T. Zachary.
His second wife was Miss Lucinda Barron, and they had an adopted daughter, Ann Elizabeth, who married Erasmus Nash.
Magnolia is ninety-eight miles from New Orleans, and is located on a gentle, undulating elevation sloping eastward with the little. Tangipahoa flowing past its eastern border, and Ballards Creek, since called Minnehaha, marking its western boundary, emptying into the Little Tangipahoa below the town. The following are numbered as the original settlers of the town: Nick Sinnot, S. R. Jones, Capt. Robert L. Carter, W. H. Joiner, W. H. B. Croswell, Joseph Evans, Abraham Hiller, Bennett Carter, Evan McLennan, L. Gourny, Prof. Vincent, E. H. Pezant, Ira Cockerham, Dr. Hart, Dr. Snyder, Dr. T. J. Everett, Samuel Murray Sandell, John Carter, Henry Hall, Jasper Coney, Dr. J. H. Laney, Mr. Nurse, George Clarke, Mrs. Lagrue (Widow Marshall), Mrs. H. H. Hadden, Rev. W. H. Roane, Mrs. Emiline Coney, widow of Jackson Coney, and Eugene M. Bee, who was the first depot agent.
The Central House, erected by Dr. Clark and kept by Henry Gottig, was built in 1858.
Capt. Joseph H. Miller, the husband of Miss Rachel Coney, was a son of Ebenezer T. Miller and Miss Lucinda Davis, of Morgan County, Illinois. He came South in 1858 and located in New Orleans. At the breaking out of the war he joined the Washington Artillery and . subsequently was stationed at Camp Moore as a drill master and assisted in organizing the 11th Louisiana, Colonel Marks, and went to the front as Captain of Company A. While in service he was wounded, and being thus disabled he was sent back to Mississippi as a recruiting officer, stationed at Holly Springs and Jackson, Miss. In the meantime he became acquainted with Miss Rachel E. Coney at Magnolia and married her in that town. At the close of the war he settled there and engaged in the mercantile business. He died February, 1874. He possessed a Washington Artillery pin with his name inscribed thereon, dated September 6, 1860, presented by S. H. to J. H. M., which is an heirloom of his family.
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In order to ascertain what command Capt. J. H. Miller and Capt. A. LeBlanc belonged to during the Civil War, the writer addressed a letter to General John McGrath, of Baton Rouge, La., and received the following reply:
Mr. L. W. Conerly, Griswold, Miss.
BATON ROUGE, LA., July 31, 1908.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
Yours of the 25th instant to hand, and in answer will say that I knew Capt. Miller and Lieut. Alex LeBlanc both. LeBlanc was second lieutenant of a company made up in Baton Rouge, but locally known as the Point Coupee Volunteers. The reason for the name was that the Pointe Coupee furnished the money to equip the company, which was officered as follows: Wiley Barrow, Captain; Thompson J. Bird, First Lieutenant; C. D. Favrot, Second Lieuten- ant; and Alexander LeBlanc, Junior Second Lieutenant. The Eleventh Regi- ment was broken up in 1862, and the non-commissioned officers and men, after the formation of two companies of sharp shooters known as Austin's Bat- talion, were divided between the Thirteenth and Twentieth Regiments and the officers sent on provost and conscript duty. Under this arrangement, LeBlanc was sent to Magnolia, or that vicinity. I did not know much of Capt. Miller.
There are no records of Confederates in Louisiana except a few old rolls in Memorial Hall.
Regards to yourself and family.
Yours truly, JOHN MCGRATH, Per M.
NOTE .- Alex. LeBlanc, above mentioned, married Miss Jodie Coney, sister to Mrs. Joe Miller.
James Buchanan was President of the United States in 1860, and upon the assumption of her individual sovereignty, South Carolina demanded of the Federal Government a return to her the possession of Forts Moultrie and Sumpter, which were parts of her domain conditionally held by the United States Government, with a garrison in Fort Moultrie under Maj. Robert Anderson The secession of South Carolina and Mississippi was closely followed by Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas and Louisiana. A pro- visional government was formed and named the Confederate States of America. Virginia held back for some time in the interest of peace,
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and called a convention of States to meet in Washington for the pur- pose of trying to adjust the difficulties, but all her efforts were scorned by the Northern States, there being twenty represented.
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, who had served the United States conspicuously in the war with Mexico and as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, and as United States Senator from Missis- sippi, a man of great ability and unblemished character, a gallant soldier and wise statesman, was chosen President of the Confederate States, with the provisional capital located at Montgomery, Ala., and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, was chosen Vice-President.
The State of Maryland was handicapped and practically subju- gated by an early invasion by Federal troops. The State had not seceded, but her people were in sympathy with her sister States of the South, and their enthusiasm, particularly in the city of Baltimore, was kindled to a high degree. The Secretary of War, by proclama- tion, had called on the States for their quota of troops to be used in the war about to be inaugurated for the coercion of the seceded States, and it was learned that troops from the West were to come through Maryland. On the 19th of April, 1861, a body of them landed at the depot in Baltimore and their further progress disputed. The soldiers were attacked with stones and many of them injured, when they fired on the citizens, killing a few and wounding others. This move- ment of the troops was in open violation of the United States Constitu- tion; a provision incorporated in the States' Constitutions, to move . troops through a State without the knowledge and consent of its Governor.
On the IIth of April, 1861, General Beauregard demanded of Major Anderson the surrender of Fort Sumpter, which he held, after secretly leaving Fort Moultrie, in violation of an agreement pending negotiations for a peaceful settlement, by order of his government, which he declined to do. In a second communication to General Beauregard, he offered to do so provided he should not receive before that time controlling instructions from his government or additional supplies. As it was known by General Beauregard that these con- trolling instructions had already been issued and the supplies expected
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every moment, and that the naval forces had already arrived off the harbor, and were prevented from coming in by a gale, there being no other recourse to prevent a conflict with the combined forces of the fleet and the guns of Fort Sumpter, General Beauregard notified Major Anderson, on the 12th of April, at 3:20-A. M., that he would open fire on his batteries in one hour from that time, which he pro- ceeded to do. After a bombardment of over thirty hours the fort was partially destroyed and set on fire by shells and Major Anderson surrendered on the 13th.
The persistent and stereotyped rant of Northern demagogues and Southern haters about "firing on the flag" will not be considered by impartial students seeking the truth of history, as it is an undeniable fact of record that after Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the most cunning treachery was practiced in the negotiations for the evacu- ation of these forts, and every principle of honor violated by gov- ernment authorities, in communications with the commissioners rep- resenting South Carolina and the recently organized Confederate Government.
Horace Greeley, who was considered the best authority from a black Republican point of view, and who was considered fair and honorable, said: "Whether the bombardment and reduction of Fort Sumpter shall or shall not be justified by posterity, it is clear that the Confederacy had no alternative but its dissolution."
On the 5th of May following the scenes enacted in the city of Balti- . more were followed up, and a body of United States troops were quartered at the relay House under General Butler, who subse- quently took possession of Federal Hill and consummated the military possession of Baltimore, disarmed the people and placed that city under martial law. The police commissioners were arrested and the city marshal, George P. Kane, who had rendered effective service in preserving the peace, was sent to Fort McHenry by General Banks who succeeded Butler, and thus the State of Maryland was subjugated and wronged by the Federal Government at Washington in spite of the protests of her Governor and her people. A touching record of facts relating to the gross usurpations of Abraham Lincoln's govern-
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ment in direct violations of the oath of office he had taken may be properly inserted here from the pen of Jefferson Davis, in his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government:
"Henceforth the story of Maryland is sad to the last degree, only relieved by the gallant men who left their homes to fight the battles of State rights when Maryland no longer furnished them a field on which they could maintain the rights their fathers left them. This was a fate doubly sad to the sons of the heroic men who, under the designation of 'Maryland Line', did so much in our revolutionary struggle to secure the independence of the States; of men who, at a later day, fought the battle of North Point; of the people of a land which had furnished so many heroes and statesmen, and gave the great Chief Justice Taney to the Supreme Court of the United States."
During these eventful times Pike County had but one military organization, the Quitman Guards. The excitement produced by the aggressive acts of Abraham Lincoln after his inauguration on the 4th of March, 1861, was keenly felt and aroused the Southern people to a sense of the great danger threatening them. Lincoln could not be regarded by them as anything else but a revolutionist, heading the abolition party, by whom he was elected, and who had for long years been menacing the institutions of the South, not only in their incendiary efforts to raise insurrections among the negroes in the South against the whites, but the actual invasion of the State of Virginia by abolition filibusters, under the leadership of John Brown, who, after his capture and execution at Charlestown, was made a saint in the songs and prayers of his abolition followers and sympathizers throughout the North.
Many of the young men of Pike County immediately rseponded to the call of President Davis for troops to protect Pensacola; among them being James Bridges and Joe Quin, students at Holmesville, and Hugh Q. Bridges, Wm. J. Lamkin and Wm. Clint Barnes, and Alexander Mouton Bickham, students at Oxford, who joined the University Greys attached to the 11th Mississippi Regiment.
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