USA > Mississippi > Pike County > Pike county. Mississippi, 1789-1876: pioneer families and Confederate soldiers, reconstruction and redemption > Part 7
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John Sartin, Jr., son of John Sartin, Sr., and Margaret Barnes, married Seleta Craft, daughter of John Craft, from Tennessee, and lived on what is known as the old Salty place, originally settled by Owen Elliott, on Canada Branch, one of the head tributaries of Magees Creek. He established a tannery on Tilton Creek in Marion County, which was used in the interest of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Their son, William Sartin, served in Pierce's cavalry company from Marion under Colonel Peyton and General Woods.
John Craft, Sr., had two brothers, James and Major. James mar- ried Ebiline Thompson, a sister of Parham, Sr., and Parish, Sr.
Major Craft married Nancey Hamilton, sister to John Craft's wife, and Mrs. Bearden. Major Craft was the father of Dr. Sidney M. Craft, who lived in Hinds County, near or at Jackson.
James had two sons, Hugh and Jack, and five daughters.
James M. Buckley married "Nug," the mother of Gov. A. H. Longino's wife. Hugh Craft killed Quince Cooper, who was pursuing him with a drawn knife around a house, and Hugh shot him to death with a Colt's repeater. It was clearly a justifiable homicide, and nothing was done about it.
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Melie Manning and Nancey Deer were married in South Carolina and came to Pike in 1839 and settled on Ravencraft Creek. Their son John married Elizabeth Sandifer, and they were the parents of Joseph M., John W., Moses Moak and Westly J. Manning.
Joseph Parker and his wife, Mila Deer, came from Barnwell Dis- trict, South Carolina, and settled on Varnal. Their children were William, Sarah and Nancey.
Jeremiah Bearden came from Tennessee and married Rachael Hamilton. He was one of the original settlers of Holmesville, and, in company with Reddick Sparkman, built the first hotel there. It was subsequently known as the Johnson Hotel, kept by William Johnson, who married widow Richmond, a daughter of Reddick Sparkman. The children of Jeremiah Bearden and Rachael Hamilton were Jack, and Nancey who married John Barnes, father of Pink and Clinton C. Barnes, and afterward married Matthew McEwen; Delilah, wife of Judge H. M. Quin, and Angeline, wife of Robert Ligon. These girls were twins. Jeremiah Bearden subsequently settled on Topi- saw and died there. His wife lived to be very old and died in 1870.
George Ratliff, a slave of Richard Ratlift, purchased his freedom from the Ratliff estate. He was a fine mechanic and hired his time from his master. He was a mulatto, a good man and was well thought of by the whites. He married a slave woman of his own race and was honored with a splendid dinner given by the white people of Magees Creek. He settled a farm on Darbun and was the founder of George- town, located on the head of Darbun in the northeast corner of the county.
Other noted slaves on Magees Creek were Austin Bracey, Daniel and Griffin Ratliff, Prime Ball, Mose Conerly, Rans Lewis, Harry and Ike Conerly. The latter was a preacher, a teamster, and managed the log-cart for his master's mill. He sang his songs and preached to his oxen and prayed for them and his people. To him life as a slave was sweeter and happier than it was when emancipation endowed him with citizenship, and forced upon him the responsibility of providing for himself and family. And old Aunt Becca, his master's cook. The Writer remembers when in his tender childhood he went to grandpa's
CHICE
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
and Aunt "Becca" took him upon her knees in the kitchen and caressed him and gave him the best there was in the pot and fed him with the little "niggers" under the massive shade trees with buttermilk and potlicker and bread.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and other Northern writers have given to the world the darkest picture of an institution for which the Southern people were not responsible, but brought to them by the slave specu- lators of the New England States.
Charles Smith and his wife, Nelly Hickenbottom, came from South Carolina in 18II and settled on Magees Creek, west side, below China Grove, near Peter Sandifer. Their children were Elias, who married Mary Gartman; Zachariah, Pharo, Joseph and Charles.
Bill Finny settled on Kirklands Creek in the neighborhood of the Magees. According to tradition nearly all new settlements have had their Bill Finny. Whether this is a myth or whether the story of Pike's Bill Finny went abroad is not known. It is a fact, however, according to tradition from the original settlers of Magees Creek, that there was a William Finny who settled on Kirklands Creek. It is related of this man that he had an aversion to work and failed to produce corn to bread his family, and his neighbors got tired of pro- viding it for him, and held a meeting to determine what should be done with him without violating the statutes. It wouldn't do to hang him or shoot him or knock him on the head with a pine knot. After long parleying it was determined to bury him alive. There was no law "agin" that. So they made a box and put it in a cart and went after Bill. They found him stretched out on the gallery. as usual. They informed him of the decision of the court and he offered no objection nor made any resistance, and they picked him up and laid him in the box in the cart and proceeded to a distant burying ground. On the way they met a neighbor who enquired what was the matter. "Nothing, we are only going to bury Bill Finny."
"What! Is Bill dead?"
"No; we are going to bury him alive."
"For what?"
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"Because he has no corn to make bread for his family, wont raise any and we are tired of furnishing it."
"Don't do that, men; I'll let him have some corn."
Bill lazily turned his eyes in the direction of his sympathetic friend and asked:
"Is it shelled?"
"No, it is not; you will have to shell it."
"Then drive on the cart," said Bill.
And they drove it on and dumped him out in the graveyard and left him there.
John Stalling settled near the confluence of Kirklands and Magees Creeks. He came from South Carolina. His wife was Nancey Dillon. When he settled there no salt could be had nearer than Natchez, a distance of a hundred miles. He walked to Natchez by such paths as he could find, did little jobs of work to pay for it and packed it home on his shoulder. They had one daughter, who married John Williams. Their son, James Stalling, married Sally Pearson, and they were the parents of Winnie, who married Eli Brock; Jane, who mar- ried Calvin Simmons; Eliza, who married James Simmons; Margaret, who married E. C. Holmes; Nancy, who married W. J. Holmes. Their other sons were John, Jeff and Willie.
Jacob Owen was born in South Carolina in 1780 and his wife, Mary Googe, in 1784. They settled on Dry Creek between 1800 and 1805. They moved from South Carolina on horseback. He built a small grist mill on Dry Creek, but on account of scarcity of water he afterwards went lower down and built another mill, which subse- quently fell into the hands of Boardman and Tyler.
Tylertown was first known as the Magee Settlement. Cullen Conerly went there in 1850 and became the owner of the quarter section lying due north of the Thornhill tract, and bought out the Garland Hart store and established a postoffice which was called Conerly's postoffice, and the place bore that name for many years. He erected a mill about a half mile below the Owens or Tyler mill and farmed on his plantation. This he sold to Ephriam Rushing, and his mercantile interest was sold to Benjamin Lampton, who had mar- 6
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
ried his sister, Mary J. Conerly, the widow of Jabez Lewis, and here Benjamin Lampton laid the foundation of the mercantile business of Tylertown, and which, through the business tact of his sons, has grown to such large proportions and become famous in Pike County and in Laurence and Marion.
GEORGE SMITH'S WATER MILL AND DAM OVER KIRKLANDS CREEK, SOUTHEAST PIKE COUNTY Mr. Smith is standing on the framework of the dam, and members of his family are in the mill building. Mr. Smith is a Confederate Veteran of Co. E, 16th Miss., Harris' Brigade, A. N. V.
Clarkston Dillon settled on Bogue Chitto. Clara Dillon married George Smith, Sr. She and Willis, Theopholis and Laurence were children of Richard Dillon.
Tylertown has always been considered a part of Magees Creek, though the village as now located is on Dry Creek, which empties into Magees Creek a short distance below. Its first settlement dates back to the emigration of the Magees and Thornhills. William Thorn- hill and his wife, Liddy Breland, came from South Carolina and settled
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
here. They had a son, Elisha, who was born in South Carolina in 1799. His wife was Mary Carr. Their children were William B., Hillary B., Elizabeth, Isham, John M., Brian, Mary Ann, James W., Millie Ann and Susan Ann.
Tylertown is located on a tract of land originally acquired by J. Thornhill September 20, 1816.
By custom the place got to be called Tyler- town, and the postoffice was changed to that name in honor of W. G. Tyler.
William G. Tyler came from Boston, Mass., and was an artillery soldier under Gen. Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and 1815 against the hostile Creeks and their British allies, and participated in the battle of New Orleans (Chalmette) in 1815, which settled the fate of the English arms in America. He was a can-
noneer and delighted in artillery practice. He WM. G. TYLER Tylertown was a splendid blacksmith, and moulded the small mortars used to fire salutes on public occasions. His wife was Mary Connally, daughter of Price Connally, a blacksmith from Georgia, and Mary Corker, whom he married in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. They raised five children, William Thaddeus Tyler, who married Mollie Quin, daughter of Judge James B. Quin and Narcissa Smith; Lizzie, who married Newton Ball; Safrona, who mar- ried Mark R. Conerly; Fanny, who married Frank Mclain; Sarah, who married John Alford.
Callen Conerly and his wife, Levisa Lewis, were the parents of Owen, Jr., No. 2, who married Teletha Warner. Owen was color- bearer of the 33d Mississippi Regiment of Featherstone's Brigade, and was killed in the desperate assault on the enemies' works at the battle of Franklin, Tenn. John M., William M., Mary Ann (Polly), Rebecca, Eliza, Cathorine and Martha. John M. Conerly's first wife was Jane Lampton, daughter of William Lampton, of Kentucky, and sister to Benjamin, James and Frank. William M. Conerly married Sarah, daughter of Harris Harvey. Polly married John Colquhoun; Rebecca
أبسط العرب
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
married Loftlin Colquhoun; Cathorine (Kitty), W. H. H. Brumfield, and Martha, Needham Holmes.
Chauncey Collins was from Salisberry, Conn .; born in 1810, he came to Mississippi in 1840 and married Amelia, daughter of Elias Woodruff and Ailsey Collins, of Columbia, Marion County, in 1842. He settled on a little stream emptying into Magees Creek southeast of Tylertown and a little below the junction of Dry Creek with that stream. It acquired the name of Collins Creek from him. Here he established a tannery and shoe shop, and lived the rest of his life. He had been a clock merchant for some years. He kept his hides in tan vats for two years and made the most lasting shoe to be had. Everybody almost in the country patronized him when they could
obtain his goods He was a highly intelligent man, a fine historian and conversationalist. His wife had two brothers-William, who went to Florida, and Seth Woodruft, who went to DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. His children were Caroline Victoria, who married Daniel Tate; Julia E., who married J. A. Morris; Frederick W., Warren N. Seth W., George H., Chauncey and Wesley.
Elias Woodruff was from Newark, N. J., whose father, Seth Wood- ruff, was one of three brothers who came from England to New Jersey. Seth Woodruff removed to New Albany, Ind. He was a Baptist preacher and probate judge, and baptized the first person ever bap. tised in the Ohio River up to that time and at that point.
The Woodrufis of New York State and New Jersey are descendants of the above-mentioned three brothers.
Elias Woodruff wandered from New Jersey and came to the newly constituted Mississippi Territory. For many years he was considered by his people as a lost member of the family, as they could not hear from him. At length means were provided and a brother was sent to search for him. After long months of overland travel, without a single clue, except that Elias had gone to the Mississippi Territory, working his way through the deep forests, by ways and paths, his brother found him in Pike on his little pine-woods farm where he had settled below China Grove, on Magees Creek, with his wife, Ailsey Collins, and one little daughter, Mary.
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
After long persuasion, he induced them to return with him to Newark, N. J., where little Mary died, after which, becoming dissatis- fied they returned to their old home in Pike and raised a large family of sons and daughters, among them Amelia, the wife of Chauncey Collins, and Lucetta (who married W. G. Evans, Sr.), the mother of Hon. W. G. Evans, of Gulfport, ex-State Senator. Lucetta died while this son was an infant, and like many other Southern children in the past, owed much of the care given him to a good old black mammy; and W. G. Evans has worked his way up to a high and honorable posi- tion among his fellowmen. Ailsey Collins, his maternal grandmother, the wife of Elias Woodruff, was a pious, good woman, a member of the Methodist Church at China Grove in the days when the magnifi- cent eloquence and influence of Stephen Ellis united the early settlers of that section of Magees Creek, in the establishment of a church that has been kept up for eighty years, and the influence of which has been sown broadcast over the land.
Elias Woodruff was a soldier in Jackson's army, serving in the battle of Chalmette, New Orleans, La., in 1815, and his widow drew a pension from the government up to the time of her death.
Mrs. Mary Woodruff, surviving widow of Seth Woodruff, of Louisi- ana, is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her maiden name was Mary S. Ritch and she is a lineal descendant of John Ford, one of the signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Her brother, Thomas L. Ritch, of Charlotte, N. C., served during the civil war on the staff of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, the famous Confederate cavalry general of the Army of Northern Virginia, under Gen. R. E. Lee.
Western Williams, son of Moses Williams and Eliza Woodruff Williams, of Mansfield, La., was a Confederate soldier and was in the siege of Vicksburg. After the war he emigrated to Texas and mar- ried Miss Maggie Houston, daughter of General Sam Houston, of Texas. Their daughter, Miss Madge Williams, the granddaughter of Sam Houston, by popular selection, christened the United States battle-ship Texas, when it was placed in commission some years ago.
Nelson Payne ran away from his parents in Tennessee and followed General Carroll's command in their long march to New Orleans, and
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Was with them in the battle of Chalmette. He was too young to be enlisted, but remained with the command until its return through Pike County, where he stopped and made it his home. He subsequently married a daughter of Benjamin Morgan, with whom he had the fol- lowing children: Wm. Mac, Thomas W., Nelson R., Wm. Lafayette, Ann and S. C. Payne, who married John Kirby, who was the father of John H. Kirby, now known as the saw-mill king of Texas; also Mary A. C., the wife of Jack Craft.
Nelson Payne, being left a widower, he subsequently married Jemima Owens, with whom he had the following children: Albert G. C., Louis J. and J. B. Payne and L. C., who married Ben Morgan ; Morgana, who married Westley Sartin; Laura J., who married Marion Branton; Alice, who married Jesse Harvey, and R. E., who married Tom Harvey.
Price Connally and Mary Corker were the parents of Thomas J. Connally (Tallyboly), who married Sally McNabb; George, Crosby, Jackson and Rebecca.
Wiley Martin married Laura Quin, daughter of William Quin, who was murdered while asleep in camp on a trip to Covington with William Catching, in Washington Parish, by a negro who was hung for the crime in Franklinton, La., in the early fifties.
Matthew Brown married Mary, daughter of William Sandifer.
John Laurence, who lived on Union Creek, married Polly Bardwell.
In 1846 Owen Conerly, son of Owen Conerly, Sr., of China Grove, raised a military company of the young men of Magees Creek and sur- rounding communities for service in the Mexican War, then being prosecuted by the United States Government. He was chosen its captain and tendered its services to the Government, but before the company could reach the army the war closed and the volunteers disbanded. Their names have not been preserved as they should have been. Simeon Bullock for one is known to have been a member of this company.
J. Daniel O'Brien was a native of Ireland and came to Canada with his parents when a boy. He served in the Mexican War with Vir- ginia troops and afterwards went to North Carolina and married Mary
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Conklinton, and then emigrated to Pike County and settled on Magees Creek below Tylertown in the early fifties. Sally Dillon married Wm. Thomas O'Brien, Katie Rushing married James S. O'Brien, and after her death he married her sister, Eveline Dillon.
Armistead Hall and his wife, Rachael O'Quin, came from South Carolina in 1816 and located in the Jake Owens' neighborhood on Dry Creek. Their children were Ezekiel Hall, who married Bertha Sandifer; John, who married Martha Prewett; Armistead, Nancy B., Thomas David Forest's first wife; Gracia, who married Abraham Lazar; Jane and Harriet, twins, who married James Thornhill and Leroy Breland respectively; William Hall, brother to Ezekiel Hall, married a daughter of Jake Owens; Patsey Hall married David O'Quin, and Barsheba, Daniel O'Quin.
Richard Dillon was born in Ireland and came to South Carolina prior to the Revolutionary War and joined the colonists in the war with Great Britain. He was captured and made a prisoner of war, taken back to England and compelled to work in a copper shop until the close of the war when he was liberated and returned to South Carolina, and with his wife came to Mississippi and settled on Bogue Chitto, at what is known as Dillon's Bridge, or Dillontown. They were the parents of Clarkson, Laurence, Willie and Theopolis.
George Smith, Sr., and his wife, Clara Dillon, settled near Dillon's Bridge on the Bogue Chitto in 1817. Their son, Dort Smith, married Lucretia Dykes, whose father came from Georgia and settled on the Tangipahoa. George Smith, Sr., had a negro slave woman named Rebecca, who recently died at the age of ninety-five. She was a mother at fifteen and nursed Dort Smith at his infancy. A ferry- boat was used at Dillontown for many years. In 1873 the citizens in the community built a bridge, and they rebuilt it after it was washed down by a flood in the river.
G. L. Barnes, a great grandson of John Barnes, who came from Georgia in 1798, lives near this place. His father and his grandfather were named William.
Jasper Smith, son of George Smith, Sr., and Clara Dillon, married Mary Holmes, daughter of William Holmes.
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Dr. N. C. Smith married Daniel Smith's daughter, Melissa.
Densmore Smith married Nancy and Eliza Smith respectively, and Pernissa, Jeremiah Smith.
Dort Smith built his mill over Magees Creek in 1860.
Jeremiah Smith, brother of George, moved from South Carolina before the others came, bringing his little belongings in a cart.
Richard Dillon married Henry Magees' widow, daughter of Eph- riam Rushing.
Henry and Fleet Magee were brothers.
Richard Magee, a faithful negro slave of Henry Magees', was born on Pushepatapa eighty-nine years ago, and was living when these notes were taken in 1902.
William G. Tyler owned a faithful negro slave named Dick who was noted for his great strength and obedience to his master. Dick was a powerful man and worked at the mill and cut logs. He could cut more logs in a day than any two negroes in the country. It is related of him that some years after emancipation, and he became separated from his master by force of circumstances, he was discharged by an employer because he made $15.00 in one week cutting stock logs with an axe at 10 cents a log. It was too much money for a negro to earn in six days cutting stock logs, was the reason given for his discharge.
Needham Raiford came from North Carolina. His first wife belonged to the Penn family of Louisiana. He was a Methodist minister and filled the pulpit during his lifetime at China Grove. He acquired considerable wealth as a cotton planter, in land, slaves and stock, and employed Joseph Barr, who was an experienced farmer and manager. His plantation is located a short distance south of China Grove Church. He became the owner of the entire landed estate of Owen Conerly, Sr., about 1850, at administrator's sale, including the plantation and Ralph Stovall mill property. He was fond of hunting, and on one of his trips to North Carolina he procured some long-eared blue speckled deer hounds. They were slow trailers, but whenever they got a smell at a deer's track it was almost certain to become somebody's venison. They stuck to their game for days,
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
and even weeks. On one occasion they started a deer on Magees Creek, chased it up the Darbun, around by the Waterholes Church in Marion and back, and then out on Pearl River in the neighborhood of the Lenoir's, above Columbia, then back to its former lair on Magees Creek and was captured. In his young boyhood the writer helped to capture several of these animals after they had been chased for days by Raiford's hounds, run into creeks by fresh dogs entering the chase.
N. B. Raiford's first wife brought him no issue, and during the early sixties, having been left a widower, he married Miss Emma Summers, of Smith County. With her a son was born. The father died, and then the child, and the mother became possessed of the bulk of the estate. She afterwards became the wife of A. S. Bishop. She was a lady of the sweetest and most charming manners; a lovely hostess at the splendid plantation mansion on Magees Creek. She belonged to that class of young women in the early sixties possessing those virtues which commanded the chivalrous attentions of Missis- sippi's best young men.
Owen Conerly's mill on the Gordon place was erected in 1852-53. Jeremiah Fields, Thomas and James Barnett, John Colquhoun and Lane Wreatherford were the millwrights employed. This mill was sold to his brother James and his farm was traded to James A. Fer- guson for mercantile and town property in Holmesville. While own- ing this mill one of his little boys, Robert, six years old, was killed by a stock log rolling over him and crushing him to death while out in the woods with the negro driver of the log-cart (Harry). The log was lying on the side of a steep hill, supported by a small hickory grub, and it was supposed the little fellow got on the log, and rocking, gave it a start.
The children raised by Owen Conerly and Ann Louisa Stephens were Chauncey Porter (Dr.), Luke W., Mary Ann, Buxton R., Owen F., Thomas B., Samuel L. and Edward S. Conerly. There were others that died early, Lula and Cecelia.
When Ralph Stovall owned the mill he built over Magees Creek below China Grove he hauled lumber to Covington, La., a distance of sixty-five miles, on wagons to supply customers there.
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HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Schools have been maintained at China Grove and at Sart is almost continuously since the settlement of that section. Amo 1g the teachers who served in the community were Joseph Smith, P. t. rick McAlpin, Charles and Joseph Bancroft. These were pay schools supported by parents of the children. There was no public school system in the State. All the schools were supported by tuition fees given the teachers. There was a public school fund which the law provided should be distributed in proportion to attendance of each child, which was paid to the parents of the pupils, but so small as io count but little.
THE LAMPTONS.
In 1740, Samuel and William Lampton came to Virginia from England. They were there when the revolution began and were ardent colonial patriots. In the meantime the Earl of Durham died, and their younger brother remained in England. Samuel Lampton, wl o died in Virginia, should have succeeded to the earldom. William Lampton moved to Kentucky. One of his descendants, Willia n Lampton, came to Mississippi and settled in Marion County near China Grove. He was the father of Benjamin Lampton, James and Frank Lampton, and the first wife of John M. Conerly, Elizabet 1, Sarah and Lucy. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), President Jof- ferson Davis, Henry Watterson, of the Courier-Journal, and other distinguished men can trace their lineage back to Samuel Lampton, who ought to have been Earl of Durham. It is said there was : n estate of over $75,000,000 due the heirs of the Earl after his death. . Benjamin Lampton and his wife, Mary Jane Conerly, were the parents of Walter M., Lucius L., Thadeus B., Iddo W., Edward, Mollie and Cora.
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