Natchez Area Family History Book

Description

Description of Natchez flag, general history of Adams County, Mississippi, general overveiw of Natchez history, overview of businesses, organizations, churches as well as local residents bios. Many photos.

Sujets

• Histoire
• State
• South
• United States
• History
• Local
• Natchez
• Volume

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781618584939
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Police Department, 1904- Seated (L-R): Police Chief Ryan, Sergeant Ramsey, Corporal Hastening. Standing (L-R): Lee Monham, Thomas Flippo, Louis Atkins. Johnny Robinson, Bill Spencer, Willie Done, Archie Relford, Willie Paine, Doct Wadley, Henry Gilmore, Roland Haley, Dolly Brunsfield, Archie Jestere, Fred Dish, John Steve .

St. Joseph Drum Corp, ca. 1940 (L-R): Sallie Junkan Ballard, Mary Sanguinetti Whitam, Helen Korndoffer Howe, Mary Magdeline Middleton, Gloria Simmons Vasser, Sister Mary Junkin, Sara Blewett McGehee, Ann Burns Garrity .

1938-St. Joseph Catholic High School Pep Squad in front of the school, corner of Commerce and State Sts .

Unidentified policeman and H. P. Darsey
Natchez
A REA F AMILY H ISTORY B OOK
T URNER P UBLISHING C OMPANY
Publishers of America s History
Book Commitee Chairman: Rosey Dow
Publishing Consultant: Keith Steele
Book Designer: Elizabeth Sikes
Copyright MMIV Natchez Historical Society
All rights reserved.
Publishing Rights: Turner Publishing Company
Library of Congress Catalog No.: 2004101996
ISBN: 978-1-56311-960-6
Limited Edition, First Printing 2004 A.D.
Additional copies may be purchased from the Natchez Historical Society.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced by any means, mechanical or electronic, without the prior written consent of the Natchez Historical Society and Turner Publishing Company. This publication was produced using available information. The Publisher regrets it cannot assume responsibility for errors or omissions.

Parade the day the bridge opened, 1940
Contents
Acknowledgements
City of Natchez Flag
General History of Adams County, Mississippi
General Overview of Natchez History
Businesses and Organizations
Churches
Family Histories
Index
The Mississippi at Natchez
This River is in us-
its gravid emptiness, its motion-,
and we dream ourselves in it-
drop of spring rain catching light s array . . .
Close beside it,
we are stirred, we are calmed,
in its moving eternity, in its silent answer
to nature s convulsions . . .
Peter Buttross, Jr.
Natchez Poet
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Joseph V. Frank, Mimi Miller, Walter Tipton, and the office of Mayor Hank Smith for their cooperation and support during this project. Many thanks also to the various businesses, churches, schools and organizations in Natchez for their hard work in putting together their histories to make this volume more complete. And very much special thanks to the hundreds of family members who dug through old photos, chased down forgotten facts and put together these fascinating family histories for future generations. Without community effort this work would never have happened.
F AMILY H ISTORY B OOK C OMMITTEE
Beverly Aldridge Shirley Booth Candace Bundgard Carolyn Cole Rosey Dow, chairman Betty McGehee Barbara Haigh Joan McLemore Helen Rayne Polly Scott Ella Young
City of Natchez Flag

The City of Natchez flag was adopted in 1994. It has a length that is one-half times its width. The field is divided diagonally, red over blue, and is separated by a white convex wave. It is surrounded by a yellow border. In the canton of the red field, a yellow sun-disc proudly displays Natchez in stylistic cursive script.
The colors of the flag recall the French, Spanish, English, United States of America and Confederate States of occupation. The convex wave represents the river that has played such a major part in Natchez history and prosperity. The sun-disc symbolizes the Native Americans that inhabited the area and gave their name to the city. The colors are representative of the golden wealth of the city, the red blood of her people who make Natchez such a vibrant place, and the blue representing the spirit of unity in her people, making a brighter future through civic pride.
History of Adams County Mississippi
Overview of Natchez History
Native Americans
The city of Natchez was named for the Natchez Indians who were living in scattered villages when Europeans first explored the area. Many scholars believe the Natchez Indians to have been the last surviving vestige of an earlier and more advanced group called the Mississippian Culture that began about A.D. 1000 and reached its zenith not long before the onset of European exploration in North America. The Mississippian Culture flourished along the banks of the Mississippi River, and contact with the Indian cultures of Mexico may have sparked their cultural achievements. The people worshipped the sun and built large ceremonial mounds. The two largest surviving mounds of the Mississippian Culture are Monk s Mound in Cahokia, Illinois, and Emerald Mound near Natchez.
Hernando de Soto probably met the Natchez Indians when he explored the Mississippi River in the early 1540s. The Natchez Indians were a matrilineal society with distinct social classes. The monarch was the Great Sun and a member of the Sun class, or royal family. The sister of the Great Sun was more important than his wife, and the first nephew born to a sister of the Great Sun was heir to the throne. The classes beneath the Sun class were the Nobles and the Honored People. Commoners were called Stinkards. Each class married the class below, with the Stinkards marrying into the Sun class. Only sons of women born into the Sun class, however, could become the Great Sun. Although peaceful people, the Natchez practiced ritualistic human sacrifice.
The Natchez depended on agriculture. During the prehistoric period, their territory extended from the vicinity of Vicksburg, Mississippi to the Homochitto River south of Natchez. By the time of European exploration the majority of the Natchez Indians lived in and around the present city of Natchez. Population decline due to European diseases was probably the reason for the shrinking of their territory. Historical documents reveal that the Natchez Indians were living in nine village areas near the present town of Natchez, but archeologists have identified and studied only seven of these. The main village at this time was the Grand Village, located within the city limits of Natchez. National Historic Landmark sites in the Natchez area associated with the Natchez Indians and their ancestors include the Grand Village, Emerald Mound, and the Anna Site.
Three Indian cultures, the Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, were dominant at the time of European settlement in what is today the state of Mississippi. Linking these Indian nations was a footpath that extended through Chickasaw and Choctaw territory to the territory of the Natchez. This footpath became known as the Natchez Trace.
European Exploration
European exploration of Mississippi began with Hernando de Soto who entered northeast Mississippi in late 1540, crossed the Mississippi River in 1541, and returned to the Mississippi River somewhere north of Natchez where he died in 1542. In 1682 Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, conducted an expedition that brought the French to the Lower Mississippi Valley where they encountered the Natchez Indians.
In 1700, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d Iberville, visited the Natchez Indians. About the same time, Jesuit priests established a mission in the country of the Natchez. In 1714, Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, governor of Louisiana, established a trading post on the Mississippi River not far from the villages of the Natchez.
French Colonial Period
The opening of a trading post at Natchez probably spurred the construction of a fort in 1716. Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur? Bienville, brother of Iberville, built Fort Rosalie and named it in honor of the wife of the Minister of Marine, le Comte de Pontchartrain. The establishment of the fort in 1716 marked the beginning of permanent European settlement in Natchez and the town s official birth. The fort stood just south of the future site of historic home Rosalie. For defense, the French located the fort on top of a hill near the edge of a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. For farming, it was on the edge of an elevated strip of extremely rich soil, well watered, and blessed with a mild climate. The Natchez tribes had already cleared much of the land, and they taught the French their farming techniques.
Fort Rosalie stood on a high bluff, but the support structures, which included a church and rectory, houses and warehouses, were on a terrace between the bluff and the Mississippi River which is now known as Natchez-under-the Hill. As the population grew, the French divided the province into nine districts. One of these was the Natchez District with Fort Rosalie as its center of government. During the early French period, settlers produced tobacco and wheat, and small quantities of indigo, silk, rice, cotton, pitch, tar, and dressed timber. Fur trading was also an important part of the Natchez District economy.
As the population of the Natchez region grew, so did the hostility between the French and the Natchez Indians. In 1729, the Natchez Indians revolted. In 1731, the French destroyed the Natchez Indians as a nation. The French sold the conquered Natchez Indians as slaves, but some Natchez escaped and found refuge among other Indian nations, including the Chickasaw and the Cherokee. Natchez Indians were among the Cherokees who marched on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. The Natchez still maintain their identity in parts of Oklahoma and the Carolinas.
After the massacre at Fort Rosalie the economy became depressed, and the French soon lost interest in the Natchez settlement. Nonetheless, they established a provisional fort southwest of the original Fort Rosalie and built a new fort on the site of the original one. For 30 years a garrison of approximately 50 men at the fort made up the French occupation.
English Colonial Period
In 1763, England defeated France in the French and Indian War. The Treaty of Paris ceded to Great Britain all French territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, so the