Research Trip to Attala and Holmes Counties - Part 2

When I first posted here about my research trip for the book I am writing about Tillman Branch, we were talking to the postmaster in the post office after photographing a beautiful and old mural above the service counter there. When I told the postmaster that I was looking for information and locations of former nightclubs and "juke joints" around Durant, he quickly informed me that I should talk to a local man named Sonny McCrory. He explained that I would find McCrory just a few doors down at his auto repair shop, but since it was around noon, I might find him at lunch further down Highway 51 south at Mile-A-Way/Caffey's, a local eatery. So off we went to search for McCrory. We stopped first at the auto shop and found out from an employee that he was, indeed, at Caffey's, as the local's call the restaurant, having lunch. Since we needed to eat lunch, too, we drove down to the restaurant. Based simply on the number of vehicles in the parking lot, Caffey's appeared to be the most popular place in town. Although we had just missed McCrory, a regular, according to the manager, we decided to eat lunch before heading back to his auto shop. As it turned out, the decision to have lunch at Caffey's was an excellent one. The restaurant offered a variety of items on its menu, as well as a hot buffet lunch each day that included a small salad bar, iced tea or a soft drink, and hot rolls, and dessert. After finishing off a piece of homemade cake with made-from-scratch caramel icing, we made an on-the-spot decision to eat there again the next day. 

Shortly after leaving Caffey's, we were back at Sonny McCrory's auto repair shop, a business that he operates with the help of his son. McCrory, an older man who is not in good health, was friendly and welcoming. After a series of introductions that included some brief details about the book, my maiden name, my father's given name, the names of my grandparents, and the names of a series of aunts and uncles, McCrory was ready to talk to me. I proceeded with the interview by asking McCrory to confirm information I had that said over a dozen nightclubs existed in Durant during the early-mid years of the twentieth century. McCrory's quick reply was "Heck, at one time, there were 26 of them!" And he continued by telling me the names and owners of some of these clubs, including "The Blind Pig," "The Green Lantern," "The Rainbow Garden," "Club 11," "Club 12," "The Mile-A-Way," (the site of the present restaurant), and "The Blue Flame Cafe." The latter, he added, was owned by Tillman Branch, and was located east of the railroad tracks on Highway 12, the highway that goes to Kosciusko. McCrory lived in the area during the time these clubs were operating, and he was willing to share some valuable insight in how pervasive the sale of illegal liquor and bootlegging was in Holmes County during that particular time. Before our conversation ended, I had discovered McCrory and I are distant cousins. As we were ending our conversation, his receptionist volunteered that one of her cousins is married to one of my brothers! Suddenly, I'm thinking about how much else I don't know about some of my relatives! When I finish the book I am writing, it sounds as if I need to make a few additions to my family tree.....it seems to be growing branches and twigs at an extraordinary rate of speed. 

Source: Private Photo Collection

Highway Marker in Downtown Durant, Mississippi
Halfway between Kosciusko and  Lexington
Holmes County, Mississippi

After thanking Sonny McCrory for his time and for the wealth of information he conveyed and telling him I hoped to see him next year when the book is published, we drove over to Lexington, the county seat of Holmes County. The fifteen mile or so drive was a pleasant one, and I admired the dark green, kudzu covered hills, and the pastoral scenic countryside along the way. There was
wasn't a moment to stop and wander or to take photos along Highway 12, however, since the time McCrory's interview took was unplanned, and I already had an appointment scheduled to meet up with Mrs. Eloise Alderman in Lexington that same afternoon. I had been referred to Mrs. Alderman, who prefers to be called simply "Eloise," by the town's librarian, Laura Gilmore Lawson. If you have been following my blog posts about this research trip, you won't be surprised to hear that Laura is a cousin of mine. Our connection is closer than some of the other cousins I have met along the way, since Laura's aunt is one of my mother's first cousins. I forgot to mention that Eloise went to high school with my mother, and no, Eloise and I are not cousins, at least as far as my mother or Eloise know.

According to Laura and some other folks I talked to before the trip, Eloise is one of the town's unofficial historians and is known for the extensive scrapbooks she keeps that contain local news clippings. Eloise's scrapbooks document decades of county activities that detail the lives of local residents, and her collection is truly a genealogist's gold mine.  If you have ancestors with Holmes County roots, you may want to talk to Eloise. Prior to the trip, Eloise had already told me that her clippings do not include information about any of the county's illegal activities that involved liquor, gambling, etc., so she is unable to help me directly with that subject matter.  But during our phone conversations prior to leaving on this trip, Eloise had told me that she knew several older men in town who actually knew Tillman. She continued by saying the men were willing to talk to me when I got to town, and she was available to make the introductions. So we met Eloise, and she generously offered to direct us to the locations where I interviewed the men that afternoon. Through this series of interviews, I gained much valuable knowledge and insight in the life and business activities of Tillman, information that I will later incorporate into the book. I thanked Eloise for her help, and we made tentative plans to meet again next year after the book comes out. According to Eloise, some of her friends have already told her they want to purchase copies of the book when it is published, and I thanked her for telling them about it. 

As we made our way out of Lexington, I stopped to take a few photos that are relevant to the book. First, I photographed the historic Holmes County Courthouse that serves as the county's center of justice. Although the original courthouse has been rebuilt several times throughout the years, the current brick structure is old and is an absolutely amazing piece of architecture. Located at the center of the town square, the courthouse, with its large clock tower, is still the focal point of downtown Lexington. 

Source: Private Photo Collection (2013)

Holmes County Courthouse
On The Square
Lexington, Mississippi

Just a few blocks down the hill and off the square sits the old Holmes County Jail. Replaced by a newer facility a number of years ago, the now-abandoned structure is a sad reminder of the decades of civil unrest that plagued so many places in the south throughout the 1950's and 1960's. This particular photo is especially important to the book, since it is where the young black man who shot and killed Tillman Branch was taken after his arrest on Easter Sunday 1963.

Source: Private Photo Collection (2013)

Old Holmes County Jail
Lexington, Mississippi

I could not visit Lexington, of course, without seeing my aunt and uncle, my mother's only sibling and his wife, who live just off the square in a house where they have lived for over 50 years. My uncle and my mother grew up in the Coxburg community of Holmes County, near Lexington, where their parents grew up and where many of our younger cousins still live. We had a lovely, but brief, visit with the two of them, and left after declining their sweet invitation to accompany them to a church supper at their church in Coxburg. Although we already had dinner plans for the evening, our decision to decline the invitation was further complicated by the the aroma of fried chicken and freshly baked bread coming from my aunt's kitchen! 

As we traveled away from Lexington on Highway 17, headed for Interstate 55 South, we passed The Little Red Schoolhouse, a historic landmark near Richland, Mississippi, known as the birthplace of the Order of the Eastern Star. The organization was founded by Dr. Robert Morris, a Boston-born teacher who lived and taught in Oxford, Mississippi. Dr. Morris was a member of the Fraternal Order of Freemasons, and while teaching in Oxford, he had earned the title of Master Mason. Dr. Morris was soon recruited by some Holmes County citizens and educators to teach at the newly established Mount Sylvan Academy in Richland, Mississippi, in the now-historic small brick building known in later years as The Little Red Schoolhouse.

Source: Private Photo Collection (2013)

The Little Red Schoolhouse
The Birthplace of the Order of the Eastern Star
Richland, Mississippi

And it was during his time in Richland that Dr. Morris founded the Order of the Eastern Star, an organization for women only, since female membership in the Masonic Order was prohibited. From its humble beginnings in rural Holmes County, the Order of the Eastern Star grew and multiplied, and currently there are chapters of the Order throughout the world.

Source: Private Photo Collection (2013)

Historic Marker
Richland (Holmes County) Mississippi

As we entered Interstate Highway 55 somewhere south of Canton and north of Gluckstadt, a former German farming village and now a burgeoning portion of affluent and ever-expanding Madison County, Mississippi, I noticed something I have seen before in the Mississippi Delta - small ponds, about an acre or so in size. For decades now, farmers throughout the Delta have transitioned lands depleted by more than a century of cotton and soybean farming into catfish farms. Now a large money-making part of the state's economy, raising catfish in small ponds, is a newer form of agriculture known as "aquaculture."  But these ponds in Madison County did not appear to be true catfish ponds. There were no automatic feeding devices on the sides of the ponds, and, at a glance, they appeared to be more shallow than catfish ponds in the Mississippi Delta region.  I also noticed a piece of machinery sitting in some of the ponds, a device that looked much like the apparatus used to harvest crawfish in ponds that I have seen in the past in south Louisiana and in coastal areas of Texas. Perhaps this portion of the South, once known as the land of cotton, is evolving into the land of catfish and crawfish. 

Before we knew it, we were in heavy traffic created by the bustling suburban sprawl along I-55 that indicated we were almost to our next destination.

To be continued......

Mississippi Research Trip to Attala and Holmes Counties - Part I

Late last month, we made a trip to Attala and Holmes County, Mississippi, to conduct some interviews and on-site research for the book I am writing about Tillman Branch. The trip was a successful one, and I had the opportunity to meet up with some folks I already knew (including a few relatives) and to make the acquaintance of others I had never met. Most of the roads we traveled, with the exception of a few country lanes, were familiar to me, since my family spent many weekends visiting relatives in these counties during my growing up years. The hilly, wooded countryside is still just as green and lush as in years past, and the open fields filled with horses, cows, and newly baled hay, showcase the spectacular labor of many farmers who still own land passed down through several generations. We saw a number of trucks laden with logs, an indication that raising and selling timber is still among the money-making crops in this area.

We spent our first two nights of the trip in Kosciusko at the Maple Terrace Inn, a stately Queen Anne mansion, now a delightful bed and breakfast owned by a local optometrist and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Routt. It was a repeat visit for us, since we had the pleasure of staying at the inn a few years ago.  Located on a residential street, and quite near the Attala County Library, the five bedroom house was built before the turn of the century by one of the town's early postmasters. Local legend says the house has its own resident ghost, believed by many townspeople to be that of a former owner, Frank Olive.

Our stay at the Maple Terrace Inn was a comfortable one that included a real southern breakfast, including biscuits and grits, prepared each morning by a lovely woman named Pamela.  Our visit to Kosciusko included a trip to the library to visit Ann Breedlove, the library's research genealogist and a long-time acquaintance of mine, and a drive around the quaint, brightly painted town square. Kosciusko has been designated a "Main Street U.S.A." city and was included a few years ago on a list entitled "Best 100 Small Towns to Live" in the U. S. The architecture of Kosciusko's residences, courthouse, and its old churches, along with its location on the Natchez Trace Parkway, maintained by the National Park Service, make Kosciusko a must-see Mississippi historic destination. Our trip would not have been complete without a meal at a highly-recommended local eatery across from the courthouse named Rib Alley and getting a photo of the Attala County Courthouse, one of Mississippi's beautiful, historic structures.

Attala County Courthouse
Kosciusko, Mississippi

Our next stop after leaving Kosciusko was the town of Goodman, Mississippi, where Tillman Branch owned two business establishments, his second family lived, and where his children attended high school.  As we traveled out of Kosciusko on Highway 14, we passed by the community of Newport, where numerous members of the Branch family, including three sets of my paternal great-grandparents, grandparents, and my father lived during the past 150 plus years. Tillman Branch, a first cousin, once removed, of my paternal grandfather, Clark Commander Branch, was born and raised in the Newport community, and later lived there with his first wife and their four children. Just down the road from Newport is Seneasha Church and Cemetery, where Tillman Branch and his parents, Edward Tillman Branch and Artissa ("Nettie") Ousley Branch are buried. Other deceased Branch family members are also buried in Seneasha Cemetery, along with many allied family members having surnames of Ables, Burrell, Mabry, and Ousley.

After crossing the Attala-Holmes County line, near Big Black River, a dark, meandering river that empties into the Mississippi near Vicksburg, we arrived in the small town of Goodman. In the early 1900's, Goodman was the center of trade for residents of the nearby rural Attala County communities of Newport, Sallis, Shrock, and others. The First Methodist Church in Goodman, Mississippi, was where my paternal grandmother's funeral was held in 1991, and Hillcrest Cemetery, north of town, just off U.S. Highway 51, is where dozens of my Branch and Porter ancestors and their descendants are buried. While we were in town, we placed some fall silk flowers in the urn between my grandparents' headstones.

Grave Site of My Paternal Grandparents
Clark Commander Branch and Lelia Porter Branch,
Hillcrest Cemetery
Goodman, Mississippi

Our next stop was the Goodman Library, where I had an appointment to meet Mrs. Jennette Moore, the librarian. We arrived a few minutes early, so we passed the time driving around the residential streets near the library, looking for the old home where my great-aunt Stella Branch Young and her husband Woodard Young, lived until they died. My great-grandmother, Claudia Baldridge Branch, Stella's mother, lived in a small cypress house situated next-door to the Young residence. Based on family information, Claudia Baldridge Branch's house had been "imported" from the "country" setting where she previously lived, and set up next to the house belonging to her daughter and son-in-law. Aunt Stella's husband was a disabled World War I veteran, and many local residents still remember him and my Aunt Stella, who worked for the Goodman school cafeteria for over 20 years.

After Mrs. Moore arrived at the library, we met each other in person for the first time, and had a pleasant time getting acquainted. We also discussed plans for an open meeting with local residents later in the week, a meeting that Mrs. Moore had sent for publication in Lexington's Holmes County Herald and had advertised with flyers that she placed in local business establishments. The meeting's purpose was to draw in local people who might provide me with information about Tillman Branch, his life and his death, and who might provide old photos of the Goodman and Newport areas. Just before noon that same day, we visited the Senior Citizen Center where I talked to some older residents who knew Tillman Branch in the 1950's and early 1960's before he died. On Friday, I returned for the event, where Mrs. Moore introduced me to the former librarian, Mrs. Bobbie Nance. As it turned out, Mrs. Nance is a distant cousin of mine, one who is related through the husband of another paternal great aunt, Ezma Branch McDaniel.  For someone like me, with deep roots in Attala and Holmes Counties, I don't find this unusual at all. In fact, I was quite pleased to meet another cousin!

At Goodman Library
September 20, 2013

We left Goodman around noon, headed north to the railroad town of Durant, Mississippi, where I planned to take a photo of an old mural in the post office there, before driving over to Lexington, the county seat. As a matter of courtesy, I introduced myself to the Postmaster, explaining that I am writing a book and would like to include a snapshot in the book of the unique mural above the postal window. He was very friendly and quite helpful and readily gave me permission to photograph the beautiful, old oil-on-canvas mural that depicts farmers, highway surveyors, and railroad crews working side by side in this central Mississippi town. According to some research, he mural is the artistic work of Isidore Toberoff and was commissioned by the U. S. Treasury Section of Fine Arts. Entitled "Erosion, Reclamation and Conservation of the Soil," Toberoff completed the mural in 1942, the same year that he received a Pulitzer Prize in art.

Mural in Durant, Mississippi Post Office

Of note here is that Durant, Mississippi was named for Pierre Durant, a well-known French trapper and furrier who built a very nice house in the 1800s for his family on the banks of the Big Black River. After the treaties with the Choctaw Indians were signed, some members of Durant's family left the area with relatives who had tribal connections. Later, members of the Durant family settled in a part of what later became the state of Oklahoma. Ironically, a town in that area was also named for a Durant son, and today, Durant, Oklahoma, like Philadelphia, Mississippi, is home to many Choctaw descendants. Also, like Philadelphia, Durant, Oklahoma has a large hotel and casino, a place that is known simply as "Choctaw" to those who live in southeastern Oklahoma and adjoining areas of North Texas.

Our trip to Durant took on a different direction after I told the postmaster a little more about the book I am writing. When I told him I was interested in seeing the former locations of more than a dozen nightclubs that existed in the town before liquor became legal in Mississippi in 1966, he told me I needed to talk to a man named Sonny McCrory, who operated a business just south of the post office.

To Be Continued........

The Story of Elizabeth Walters (Taylor) Bottoms

Recently, I was contacted by a reader in Texas who shared a story with me about one of his ancestors, Elizabeth Walters. The story he related is one of romance, mystery, and intrigue, one that began in Mississippi and tragically ended in Texas years later. With my reader's permission, today's post contains Elizabeth's story.

Elizabeth Walters was born in 1814, in a part of the Mississippi Territory that later became Madison County, Alabama. She was the only daughter of eight children born to Moses Walters and Elizabeth Cawthon. Moses later moved his family to Shelby County, Alabama, and from that location, the Walters family migrated to a newly created county in Mississippi known as Attala.

According to my reader, while living in Attala County, Elizabeth began a relationship with a married man whose surname was "Taylor," a man the Walters family believes may have been "William Taylor." My reader stated that records show William Taylor served in the War of 1812, under the command of General Louis Durant. Later, General Durant, for whom the town of Durant, Mississippi was named, became Taylor's father-in-law when he married the General's daughter, Syllan. My reader believes that Syllan Durant was William Taylor's wife at the time he and Elizabeth Walters maintained a relationship. Other records, my reader wrote, show that in 1831, William Taylor was registered as a white man, and his household consisted of 7 persons, including one male child over 16, and four other children under 16. The family lived in Oakchia, meaning "a place to get water," in Leflore's District of the Choctaw Nation.

In 1835, William Taylor was listed in Mississippi's Court of Claims (No. 14742, page 78) as having claimed Choctaw Lands located in the Sections 12, 13, 14, 15, and 23, and showed that he was living in a portion of newly-formed Holmes County that had previously been Yazoo County. Early Holmes County, Mississippi records show that in 1833, William Taylor served on the Board of Police of Holmes County, a governmental entity similar to the present day County Board of Supervisors.

As a result of her relationship with Mr. Taylor, Elizabeth gave birth to two children. Their first child was a son, William Jasper Taylor, born in Attala County in 1834. A second child, Lavina Taylor, was born in 1836 in Texas, shortly after Elizabeth had moved there with extended members of the Walters family. Elizabeth's descendants have found no evidence to indicate that Taylor accompanied Elizabeth and her family on their move to Texas or that he was present when Lavina was born. In fact, by 1835, Mississippi records indicate William Taylor had separated from Syllan and had sold lands that he owned. Walters family research found no further mention of William Taylor in Mississippi records and have been unable to determine where he later lived and when and where he died.

After living for three years in Texas with her family and her two small children, Elizabeth Walters (Taylor) married Zachariah W. Bottoms on December 24, 1838, in Cherokee County, Texas. Zach Bottoms was born on September 26, 1812, in Giles County, Tennessee, to William Bottoms and his wife, Ann Witt and as a young man, lived in the Old Doaksville area of the Mississippi Territory. The Walters family believes Bottoms was part Choctaw Indian and had traveled west with his father and others on the "Trail of Tears," arriving in 1831 in Nacogdoches County, Mexican Territory.

In 1836, in Nacogdoches County, Bottoms had enlisted as as a soldier in the army that secured Texas from the Mexican government. Initially, Bottoms served in Captain Mike Cosley's Company commanded by General Sam Houston, and in 1837, he served in a company commanded by Captain Jack Todd, known as Todd's Spy Company, a company that was attached to Colonel Carter's Regiment of General Rusk's Brigade. The next year, Bottoms served in companies that were commanded by Captain Hiram Stevens, Captain Daniel Wilks, and Captain J. Medford. A search of Texas land records, according to my reader, found that Bottoms purchased a tract of land in 1842 from his father-in-law, Moses Walters.

Elizabeth's marriage to Zach Bottoms produced eight children, Nancy, Anna, Smith, Mary J., William, Alexander, Lucinda, and Elizabeth, all of whom were born in Texas. Tragically, Elizabeth Walters (Taylor) Bottoms apparently died as a result of childbirth when Elizabeth was born in 1852. Although he cannot prove it, my reader believes Elizabeth's death occurred near Douglass, Texas, where she lived with her husband. Although no headstone for Elizabeth has been found, the Walters family believes it is almost certain that Elizabeth was buried in the Walters Family Cemetery. Now known as Redland Cemetery, the cemetery is located on land that was owned by Robert Walters, a son of Moses Walters.

During the late 1860's, still a widower, Zachariah Bottoms moved to Van Zandt County, Texas, and in the late 1870s, he moved again, this time to the community of Dexter, in Cooke County, Texas. According to my contact, one of Zachariah's descendants, George M. Atwood, has in his possession a copy of a letter written by Zachariah Bottoms while he was a resident of Dexter, Texas. The letter was written to Chief Peter Pitchlynn, then Chief of the Choctaw Tribe. Family records have established that sometime after the letter was written, Zachariah Bottoms moved to the Choctaw Nation in Indian Terrritory, where he died near Paul's Valley (now Paul's Valley, Oklahoma), at the home of his son-in-law, Thomas W. Seagroves.

The story of Elizabeth's early life is a fascinating one, a life in which she and William Taylor apparently defied society's conventions of the time. But her story is also one that illustrates how living in remote areas during pioneer times likely was not conventional at all.