Wilkinson County in 1835 and 1854
Two young men from the North made journeys in the South and recorded their impressions of Wilkinson County Mississippi and its environs in the mid 19th century.
John Holt Ingraham, a young man in his 20’s was a native of Maine. His book, published in two volumes in 1835 was dedicated to John A. Quitman, ex-chancellor of Mississippi and a future governor, was entitled “The South-West By a Yankee.” Ingraham eventually became a school teacher and later an Episcopal minister. He continued his interest and concern about slavery as well as his writing career, specializing in novels of adventure and later in novels with religious themes.
Ingraham devoted the first volume of his book to New Orleans. Leaving New Orleans, he traveled up-river toward Natchez, where he was most concerned with observing the region’s plantation society----its homes, crops, people and slaves.
He described Woodville as “the most important settlement south of Natchez, a beautiful village built around a square, in the center of which is a handsome courthouse. Various streets diverge from this public square and are soon lost in the forests which enclose the village.” The courthouse was “a substantial and handsome structure of brick” and “contains a superior clock.” This was the second on the site, a two-story brick structure with a high narrow cupola, a steep slate roof and rectangular shuttered windows. Completed in 1831 it replaced the original log building. Its clock was installed in 1833 at a reported cost of $400. This building was razed in 1904 and replaced by the present courthouse.
Ingraham described the neighborhood around Woodville as “one of the wealthiest and most polished in the state. Governor Poindexter resided till recently at a neat country seat a short ride from Woodville, striking only for its quiet cottage-like beauty. (Poindexter was the state’s second governor and lived at Ashwood located just south of Woodville.) Dr. Carmichael, president of the board of medical censors of this state and formerly a surgeon in the Revolutionary Army, and the late Governor Brandon reside also in the neighborhood, but still more distant in the county.” (Carmichael retired from the army in 1809 after serving at Ft. Adams and built the original part of the house at Cold Spring Plantation near Pinckneyville. Brandon lived at Columbian Springs Plantation also near Pinckneyville.)
He mentioned Woodville’s Methodist (1824), Episcopal (1823), and Baptist (1809) churches and the weekly paper “conducted with talent and editorial skill.” He noted also a market-house and gaol. And a branch of the Planters’ Bank as well as two “excellent” academies, one for boys and another for girls, near the village. The church buildings remain today and the brick white columned Baptist church is impressive. The Federal style two-story stucco bank was built in 1819. The Planters’ Bank purchased the Territorial Bank of the State of Mississippi in 1831 and moved into the existing bank building and operated until 1840. The newspaper, The Woodville Republican, began in 1824 and continues today.
Ingraham also learned that “a railroad is in contemplation, between Woodville and St. Francisville, twenty-nine miles distant on the river, which will render the communication easy and rapid to New Orleans.” This was the West Feliciana Railroad, the first interstate line in the South and the first standard gauge railroad in the US. It was initiated in 1828 and finally completed in 1842. Its 1834 office and banking house is a stuccoed columned edifice on the east side of the square and remains still today. Ingraham noted the village of Woodville (about 800 citizens) “is one of the healthiest villages in Mississippi.”
Ingraham also traveled to Pinckneyville, which he described as “merely a short street, lined by a few dwelling houses and store.” It no longer exists.
Ingraham, informed that if he rode his horse a few miles down the road he would come up on the Elysian Fields. “Are the Elysian Fields discovered in the Mississippi forests?” He pondered the Greek mythology ascribed to the Elysian Fields, “the paradise where the good dwelt after death,” and rode down the road to see for himself if “wiser heads have discovered the position nearby on the confines of Louisiana and Mississippi.” But he found a sleepy little village, “a few buildings of an ordinary kind and a post office surrounded by cotton fields and woods, which make up the sum of the celestial abode for departed heroes.” (The town was renamed Centreville and moved a mile west when the railroad came through in 1884.)
Frederick Law Olmstead, born in Connecticut in 1822, traveled South in the 1850’s and initially published three separate volumes on his journeys: “A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States with Remarks on their Economy,” 1856; “A Journey Through Texas; or A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier,” 1857; and “A Journey in the Back Country,” 1860. In 1861 these were combined into one work “The Cotton Kingdom, A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States.” Olmstead was a seasoned traveler, having journeyed extensively in America and Europe. He was intensely interested in farming and agriculture, but his primary interest in his Southern travel books was the institution of slavery. “I wish to see for myself and shall endeavor to report with candor and fidelity…the ordinary conditions of the laborers of the South, with respect to material comfort and moral and intellectual happiness.”
He described his visit to Wilkinson County, “I arrived shortly after dusk at Woodville, a well-built and pleasant court-town, with a small but pretentious hotel. Court was in session, I fancy, for the house was filled with guests of somewhat remarkable character. The landlord was inattentive, and, when followed up, inclined to be uncivil. At the ordinary—supper and breakfast alike—there were twelve men besides myself, all of them wearing black cloth coats, black cravats, and satin or embroidered waistcoats; all, too, sleek as if just from a hairdresser’s, and redolent of perfumes, which really had the best of it with the exhalations of the kitchen.
“Perhaps it was because I was not in the regulation dress that I found no one ready to converse with me, and could obtain not the slightest information about my road, even from the landlord.
“I might have left Woodville with more respect for this decorum if I had not, when shown by a servant to my room, found two beds in it, each of which proved to be furnished with soiled sheets and greasy pillows, nor was it without reiterated demands and liberal cash in hand to the servant, that I succeeded in getting them changed on the one I selected. A gentleman of embroidered waistcoat took the other bed as it was, with no apparent reluctance, soon after I had effected my own arrangements. One wash-bowl and a towel which had already been used, was expected to answer for both of us, and would have done so but that I carried a private towel in my saddle-bags.
“Another requirement of a civilized household was wanting, and its only substitute unavailable with decency.
“The bill was excessive, and the black hostler, who had left the mud of yesterday hanging all along the inside of Belshazzar’s legs, and who had put the saddle on so awkwardly that I re-sadddled him myself after he had brought him to the door, grumbled, in presence of the landlord, at the smallness of the gratuity which I saw fit to give him.”
On a more positive note Olmsted found the countryside between St. Francisville and Woodville filled with a succession of large sugar and cotton plantations. He noted especially the roadside fences covered with wild roses, sweet brier, grape vines and trumpet vines. He made special mention of the many magnolia trees in bloom which he saw, calling them “magnificent chandeliers of fragrance.” He wrote that “where the road was narrow, deep and lane-like, delightful memories of England were brought to mind.”
We remember Olmsted today for his 1857 design along with Calvert Vaux of Central Park in New York City. He has been acknowledged as the founder of American landscape architecture.
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