Mississippi
Duncan Stewart, age 46, first traveled to Woodville, Mississippi in August 1809 with his brother-in-law Lovick Ventress (wife Elizabeth Stewart) to look at possible homesteads. Duncan and Lovick purchased adjoining property outside of Woodville. Charles would later purchase a spot a few miles away.[1] Duncan’s Holly Grove is three miles from Centreville in the southeastern corner of Wilkinson County. Woodville is about 13 miles west. Duncan’s grave is located where James, his twin, was buried and is about one mile from Holly Grove. This cemetery in now known as Stewart II but has been referred to as the Ventress Place. This Ventress plantation was known as Lone Hall and has been mostly forgotten. La Grange, the better known Ventress plantation, where one of the grandest mansions built in the South, was constructed in about 1860 is west of Woodville. The La Grange land came into the Ventress family when Lovick’s son, James Alexander Ventress married Charlotte Pynchon in the 1840’s. It remains in the Ventress family today. Deeds show that Lovick Ventress purchased 610 acres in the area just west of Holly Grove (where Stewart II Cemetery is located) in December 1809. Stewart Cemetery III is located on the road between Centreville and Woodville but much closer to Woodville, and it is there that Charles Stewart established his plantation and is buried.[2]
The area had seen governance by several powers. First the French, then Britain, Spain, and lastly the United States. The area just to the south of Holly Grove, the Felicianas was even the independent Republic of West Florida for a couple months in 1810. The locals won their independence from Spain, the first colony in the Americas to do so.
In Sept 1810 a group of about 200 men (including John Hunter Johnson, Larry Moore, John Scott, Samuel Baldwin, William Barrow, John Rhea, John Mills, John Bahlinger) formed an army led by Philemon Thomas. They rode in the middle of the night down to the Spanish Garrison in Baton Rouge where they entered through a cattle entrance and captured the Spanish Fort. The West Florida Republic had a constitution, a flag with a white star on a blue background and a president, Fulwar Skipwith, for seventy four days. It was annexed to the US in December 1810. On April 12, 1812 the State of Louisiana was approved, but only 4 days later on April 16 were the Florida Parishes added.[3]
This area of southwest Mississippi was part of Spanish West Florida when Spain controlled the area. It was later known as the Natchez District and was also referred to as the Old Southwest. It consisted of land along the Mississippi River consisting of the modern Mississippi counties of Wilkinson, Adams, Jefferson, Claiborne, and Warren and much of Franklin and Amite. Though the commanding river bluffs at Natchez had been occupied almost continuously by the French since a band of Frenchmen set up a trading post at the river’s edge in 1714,[4] the earliest really permanent European settlers arrived in the area shortly after Louis XV ceded West Florida (which included the Natchez District) to the British in the early 1760’s. In 1762 Louis XV gave the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi River and the Isle of Orleans (an area east of the river which included New Orleans) to King Carlos III of Spain by secret treaty. The Treaty of Paris, 1763, ending the French and Indian War (as it is known in America) or the Seven Years War (as it was known in Europe where the English defeated the French) gave Canada and East and West Florida, and all remaining French territory east of the Mississippi River to England, and the remainder of Louisiana west of the Mississippi as well as the recently captured Havana to Spain. The British divided Florida into two portions, east and west. West Florida ran from Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas and the Mississippi River in the west to the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers in the east and from the Gulf in the south to a line where the Yazoo River entered the Mississippi as the northern boundary[5] (This would be at present day Vicksburg.) In 1764 the northern boundary of West Florida was set to the 32 degree, 28’ parallel to include Natchez making the Natchez District a part of the British colony of West Florida. The Spanish port of Pensacola became the seat of government and French Mobile, Biloxi and Natchez became British. In 1763 George Johnston became the first royal governor. He was ousted in 1767. Peter Chester became the 5th and final British royal governor in 1770.[6] The British promoted immigration. In 1775 Peter Chester, the British governor of West Florida, declared the area a refuge for loyalists.
In 1776 the Natchez District was established as a subdivision of British West Florida and the American colonies declared independence from England. For most of the Revolutionary War the Mississippi River was loosely under the control of the British.[7] In 1779 Spain declared war on England and British troops surrendered Fort Panmure (known as Fort Rosalie by the French) in Natchez to a Spanish force led by Commandant Francisco Bouligny who came from New Orleans. In 1780 Spain took Mobile under the leadership of Bernado de Gálvez and Pensacola in 1781. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 brought an end to the American Revolution and confirmed the cession of the Floridas to Spain.[8] The Mississippi River was closed to the Americans, and Spanish galleys and forts dominated the river as far north as the mouth of the Ohio.[9] The territory of the new United States extended from the Atlantic to the Mississippi (excluding New Orleans) and from British Canada to Spanish Florida. The exact boundaries between Spanish Florida and the United States were not formally set and the sovereignty of the Natchez District was disputed but stayed under Spanish control. The United States claimed the land north of the 31st parallel and Spain disputed this. It was not settled until 1795. In 1785 the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution creating Bourbon County, a huge area including Natchez, reasserting the claims to this western territory contained in the Georgia colonial charter of 1732. In 1786, John Jay as US Secretary of Foreign Affairs negotiated in Philadelphia with Don Diego de Gardoqui, the Spanish minister, to allow Atlantic merchants access to Spanish ports in exchange for keeping the Mississippi River closed. The Congress failed to ratify the treaty.[10]
The Spanish, however, ruled during the last two decades of the 18th century. In 1787 James Wilkinson in Kentucky in an effort to open trade on the Mississippi treated with Esteban Miró, Governor of Louisiana and West Florida, located in New Orleans suggesting that Kentucky would be interested in putting themselves under the protection of Spain. John Sevier of Tennessee also assured the Spanish minister in Philadelphia, Diego de Gardoqui that Tennessee settlers desired to form an alliance and treaty of commerce with Spain and put themselves under her protection. In 1788 the North Carolina General Assembly created the Mero District in Tennessee, a name supplied by Col. James Robertson, an apparent misspelled attempt to flatter the Spanish Governor of New Orleans, Miró. In 1788, Spain’s chief minister, José, Count of Floridablanca, instructed Gardoqui that the Mississippi was to remain closed but a boost in population of Spain’s North American colonies was to be encouraged by attracting to our side the inhabitants of the Ohio and Mississippi. Americans were to be induced to migrate to Louisiana and Natchez by offering free land, access to the river and religious tolerance. In 1789 Spain opened the Mississippi to trade with a fifteen percent duty and migration to Louisiana was to be encouraged, but no help was to be given to the Kentucky secessionist movement.[11] In 1791 the Spanish governor, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, engaged Scotsman Sir William Dunbar to lay out the town of Natchez.
In July 1795 a French army came within striking distance of Madrid, forcing Carlos IV to make a hasty peace with France. This set Spain against Britain, forcing Spain to make a new alliance in North America as protection against a British attack on Louisiana. The price was opening the Mississippi to Kentucky flatboats.[12] In October 1795 under Pinckney’s Treaty, the Treaty of San Lorenzo, Spain ceded its claim to lands east of the Mississippi above the 31st parallel to the United States and opened the river to trade. In 1796 Andrew Ellicott, the commissioner appointed to survey the southern boundary of the United States under the terms of the San Lorenzo treaty, traveled downstream from Pittsburgh with a large party of soldiers and scientists. Ellicott had already established the state borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, and the District of Columbia and laid out the future capital.[13] Ellicott arrived in Natchez in February 1797 and raised the American flag within sight of the Spanish fort and Governor Gayoso who had not relinquished command. (The Spanish began to evacuate the fort in February 1798.) In 1798 the United States took control of the territory and by an act of Congress, 7 April, the area became the Mississippi Territory (present day Mississippi and Alabama) and Natchez became the territorial capital. Governor Winthrop Sargent, former secretary of the Northwest Territory was installed as governor of Natchez.[14] The territory was governed by a governor, secretary and 3 judges. Natchez was incorporated in 1803 having been laid out as a town in 1791.
A Spanish surveyor (the Scotsman, Dunbar) ascertained the thirty-first degree of latitude boundary between Spanish West Florida and the United States in 1798 reporting to Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, then the governor of West Florida (Gayoso would die of yellow fever in 1799).[15] Andrew Ellicott was also in the wilderness east of the Mississippi ascertaining the thirty-first parallel for the United States (This line is about two miles south of Holly Grove plantation lands.)
There was a soaring demand for land in Mississippi, Alabama (both being the Mississippi Territory until 1817) and Tennessee for the growing of cotton resulting in the ‘Great Migration’ from 1798-1819. The first wave ended in 1812 with the war. In 1798 Natchez had 4,500 residents both white and black. By 1800 there were in Adams and Pickering (created 1799, later Jefferson) counties a population of 4,446 whites and 2,993 slaves. In 1802, the Natchez District was redivided into Adams, Jefferson, Wilkinson and Claiborne counties.[16] In 1811 there were 5 counties (including Wilkinson 1802) with a population of 31,306 (including 14,706 slaves).[17]
This part of the country was newly settled and newly a part of the US as the Mississippi Territory when the Stewarts arrived in the first decade of the 19th century. Three miles south of Duncan’s home was still Spanish West Florida. Conflicts over the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 stemmed from the Spanish cession of Louisiana to France in the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. Spain’s government argued that the Louisiana Purchase did not include the territory of West Florida. The Treaty of San Ildefonso contained a clause forbidding the French from selling any part of the ceded territories to a third party. Spain, however, could do little to prevent Napoleon’s sale. President Thomas Jefferson had sent Robert Livingston and James Monroe to Paris to acquire New Orleans and West Florida, not New Orleans and points west. Jefferson claimed that the Louisiana Purchase included West Florida. The United States maintained that the purchase included all lands east to the Perdido River (just west of Pensacola), while Spain set the eastern borders at what is present day Louisiana west of the Mississippi. In 1806 negotiation between France, Spain, and the United States for the purchase of the Floridas collapsed. Although Jefferson had gotten Congress to appropriate two million dollars for the sale, hoping to persuade Napoleon to pressure Spain into ceding the territory, both Spain and France refused. The populace of the Felicianas remained loyal to Spain until on September 26, 1810, a reconvened convention formally declared the several districts composing the Territory of West Florida to be a free and independent state. This fragment of West Florida became the first district within the Spanish empire to achieve its independence.[18] Despite American fears that Spain might retake West Florida, by October and November the Spanish government in Havana has lost the power to reassert their control. Spanish rule in Florida west of Mobile was at an end.[19] During the war with Britain, in 1813 Congress on the grounds that the Spanish-held remnant of West Florida was part of the Louisiana Purchase, authorized its seizure. In effect this meant the capturing of Mobile, which Gen James Wilkinson did in April 1813 when the Spanish commander, Cayetano Perez, surrendered.[20]
The first permanent settlement in the Felicianas (present day East and West Feliciana Parishes before they separated in 1824) in Louisiana and just south of present day Wilkinson County, Mississippi) was in 1785 at Bayou Sara (now St. Francisville, Louisiana and about 20 miles south of Woodville, Mississippi).
Centreville in eastern Wilkinson County was established as Elysian Fields in 1789 as a Spanish outpost between Mobile and Natchez. This road from Mobile came west to Ponchartrain and then north to Elysian Fields and on northwest to Natchez. The old Centreville was known also as Amite Court House and was in Amite County on the eastern edge of Wilkinson. (The new Centreville would move about a mile west to be on the railroad in 1884. This placed it in Wilkinson County.) It was noted to be a real settlement by 1802 with a large number of settlers from Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Maryland. Some came by the Old Spanish Trail and up the Amite River, then navigable. Some came over the Natchez Trace. Most came over the “Three Chopped Way” which led from Georgia through Alabama, through Liberty Mississippi. By 1810 the 96 inhabitants of Elysian Fields asked for a post route. It was established and extended from Liberty (the present county seat of Amite County, about 20 miles east of Elysian Fields) through Amite Court House or Elysian Fields to Wilkinson County Court House at Pinckneyville. The mail came every two weeks. Another post route in 1812 began at Natchez and passed through Amite Court House and went to Madisonville (on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain in present day St Tammany Parish). The town had two streets, Morrow Road on which there were three stores and Whiskey Road which boasted four saloons. The larger plantations belonged to the Germanys, the Andersons (present day Anderson Road is north of Centreville) the Thompsons, the Rogers, the Hutchinsons, and the Walls. In the period between 1781 and 1789, the Spanish in order to keep the territory Spanish, gave large grants of land to settlers.[21] Desert Pantation near Pinkneyville in western Wilkinson County was built on a Spanish land grant. How many were given in the Elysian Fields area?
An 1839 map[22] shows land plots is Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and the irregular section 22 where Holly Grove is located is noted with the name TJ Stewart. Just north of this in a line from east to west is Elysian Fields, then Centreville, then Mount Pleasant.
The settlement of Wilkinson County really began with the establishment of Fort Adams on the Mississippi River. The area had been a French mission settled by Father Antoine Davion of the Society of Foreign Missions in 1682. Father Davion was assigned to the Tunica tribe who had migrated near Fort Adams in 1706 (perhaps displacing the Houma). For many years the place was known as Davion’s Rock.
In February 1764, British Maj. Arthur Loftus led an army of 400 men up the Mississippi river from New Orleans to explore the British possessions on the east bank. They were attacked by the Tunica at Davion’s Rock and they were forced to return to New Orleans. In 1765 the British did occupy Davion’s Rock and renamed it Loftus Heights.[23]
In August 1798 Commander-in-chief of the United States Army, Brigadier General James Wilkinson (for whom the county was later named) took 400 men in thirty boats down the Mississippi, floated past Natchez, to the last curve in the Mississippi before it cut through the thirty-first parallel. The ground rose to a small hill on the east bank, known as Loftus Heights. Here the general ordered several acres of canebrake and prickly thorn to be cleared for the construction of a fort. He named it in honor of President Adams.[24] The fort was to garrison 500 troops and consisted of earthworks, a powder magazine and barracks. This was to be the port of entry on the Mississippi river to collect duties on imports and exports (until the Louisiana purchase in 1803 when New Orleans would take its place.)[25] Just a year earlier the extent of the US power on the Mississippi was five hundred miles north at Fort Massac near the mouth of the Ohio River.[26] Wilkinson completed a treaty with the Choctaw to open a thoroughfare from Fort Adams northeast in order that supplies and soldiers could safely be moved. This is the point of origin of the original Natchez Trace.[27] The town of Pinkneyville was established nearby. Meriwether Lewis was stationed at Fort Adams before going to Washington to be private secretary to President Jefferson.[28] By the end of the War of 1812 the fort was abandoned by the army.[29]
In 1800 Spain secretly ceded Louisiana to France with Talleyrand promising that the French would transform Louisiana into a wall of brass preventing further American expansion. A French army under General Charles Leclerc who was then engaged in restoring order in Saint Domingue (present day Haiti) was expected to land in Louisiana to take possession of the colony. In 1802 Juan Morales, acting intendant of Louisiana, closed the port of New Orleans to American goods, to create an opening for French traders and represented the first public evidence of the secret treaty ceding Louisiana. When James Wilkinson returned to Fort Adams in 1803, he concentrated close to 500 men at the fort ready to assault New Orleans. In February 1803 Jefferson sent James Monroe to join Robert Livingston in Paris with the goal of purchasing New Orleans. Wilkinson, kept in the dark, could only wait. In July 1803 the news reached Washington that Livingston and Monroe, had not only purchased New Orleans but the entire province of Louisiana. With LeClerc’s army in Saint Domingue decimated by disease and warfare, Napoleon’s dream of an American empire was lost. Napoleon cut his losses and to finance his plan for an invasion of Britain, he sold Louisiana. In October Jefferson selected as civil commissioner William C.C. Claiborne, Governor of Mississippi Territory, and as his military counterpart, Brigadier General James Wilkinson. On December 10, joined by Claiborne from Natchez, Wilkinson sailed from Ft. Adams with 450 regulars and 100 militia on a fleet of seventeen flatboats and two baggage barges to New Orleans where he pitched camp a week later on the outskirts of the city. On December 20, Pierre de Laussat, the designated Governor of Louisiana, turned over Louisiana to the United States.[30]
Woodville was first settled near the turn of the 19th century and was incorporated as a town in 1811. Wilkinson County had been split off from Adams County (Natchez) in 1802. In 1810 the population of Wilkinson County was about 5,000, half of which were white. The descendant of an early resident of Woodville recalled that in 1805, there were only a few houses, temporary shanties.[31] However, Woodville, as the county seat, prospered. The large brick Baptist Church was built in 1809. The large two-story Magruder home was built in 1809. The columned two-story brick branch office of the Bank of the Territory of Mississippi was built in 1817. The AM Feltus house, another large two-story home was built in 1819. The Woodville Republican was established in 1824 and today is the oldest newspaper in the state of Mississippi. The Episcopal Church was built in 1824 as was the Methodist.[32]
Schools flourished. The first institute of higher learning in Mississippi was Jefferson College, chartered in 1802 in Washington, just north of Natchez. It was also the 2nd oldest military academy in the US, behind West Point. It was never really a college but college preparatory.[33] Jefferson Davis was a student there briefly in 1818 but there is no evidence that the Stewart boys went there. In 1815 Pinckneyville Academy was incorporated and the Wilkinson County Academy[34] near Woodville a short time later. John A. Shaw of Boston was the headmaster. Jefferson Davis was a student at the Wilkinson Academy from 1818-1823. The Woodville Female Academy was organized in 1819 to be followed by Sligo Academy in 1821 and the Marion Academy in 1830.[35]
Jackson Academy, a boys’ school located about 16 miles east of Woodville was near the Ventress Place, which would make it close to Holly Grove as well. Duncan Stewart’s brother-in-law, Lovick Ventress, was one of the incorporators of the school. In 1818 the Reverend James H. Kilpatrick was the teacher and among his students were the sons of Duncan Stewart and one of the Ventress boys, either James or his older brother William. A Mr. Fox, subsequently an Episcopal priest, taught at the school in 1819-20, but eventually proved so unacceptable to the patrons of the school that they withdrew their support. The academy soon closed.[36]
The land is gently rolling and forested, interspersed with creeks and streams except nearer the Mississippi where the high ground is cut by deep ravines. One description is given by the surveyor for the line separating the Mississippi Territory from Spanish Florida. His report to Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, Governor of Spanish West Florida, depicts a rich land full of potential. He also noted “innumerable swarms of Gnats, and a variety of other Stinging and biting insects.” The party saw panthers “of a very ferocious nature,” black bears, and wolves, but it was “the thundering Crocodile, all of hideous form,” that most fascinated the group. A letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1799 described abundant pecan trees growing wild and orange trees cultivated by planters.[37]
Besides trees to produce wood products, settlers raised cattle and chickens, grew sugar, cotton, rice, and indigo.[38](although sugar and rice would not be appropriate for the Holly Grove area). After 1779 the new Spanish government paid munificent bounties of dollars per hundred pounds to stimulate the production of tobacco. When the Spanish reduced the tobacco allotment in 1790, the Natchez District experienced a severe economic crisis. Local planters turned to indigo. An insect plague devastated the Natchez indigo crop in 1792. Groping about for a safer, profitable crop, Natchez planters turned to “Nanking” or “Siamese,” also called “Creole” cotton. Eli Whitney designed a simple and easily replicated gin for removing cotton seeds in 1793, and large-scale cotton production was suddenly feasible. For a generation, from the late 1790’s through the 1820’s, the pioneer cotton planters of the Natchez District made quick fortunes.[39]
In August 1809 Duncan Stewart, age 46, first traveled to Woodville Mississippi with his brother-in-law, Lovick Ventress. In December 1809 Duncan Stewart returned home to Tennessee by way of the Natchez Trace. All the summer of 1810, he surveyed his property in Tennessee and put it up for sale. In order to be back in Mississippi for the spring planting season, the families left in the winter. Duncan sold his big home on the Little West Fork of the Red River (which is now part of Clarksville) in January of 1811 for $3,000 for the house and over a thousand acres. Records show Duncan was in Natchez on February 5, 1811.[40]
It is thought by the same author that it was possible that in 1810 Duncan, along with help from slaves cleared fields for crops and built his home, slave quarters and barns. Duncan built a small two-story home.[41]
Duncan’s brother James remained in Tennessee, having lost his wife during childbirth within the last two years. Duncan, his brother Charles, sister Jane, and another sister Elizabeth and her husband Lovick Ventress and all their families packed their belongings and probably loaded flatboats to travel to the Cumberland River, floated to the Ohio and the down the Mississippi to Natchez taking about a month, arriving on February 5, 1811. The boats would have had a shelter built in the middle and were equipped with a cooking stove that provided heat. The rivers, although fairly dangerous, were good for traveling this time of year. The most troublesome part of the trip was maneuvering the boat around the logs, debris and floating ice.[42]
“Duncan Stewart now of Mississippi Territory and at the Natchez Landing because of moving, gives power of attorney to my father James Stewart of Montgomery County” to sell and collect certain property in Montgomery Co. 5 Feb 1811.[43] Is this his brother James? Not his father? This good evidence that Duncan Stewart and his family came via Natchez, but was this overland by the Natchez Trace, or by river?
Did Duncan build a house in 1809 when he first came down, or after he brought the family in 1811?
Another historian thought it more logical to believe that the Stewarts took the Natchez Trace because it was a more direct route to their final destination in Mississippi. She notes that the trip was most likely made in the autumn, that time of year when the Trace was most passable—the streams being at their lowest and the weather pleasant. By 1809 the Trace had been greatly improved by the Federal government. In the early 1800’s treaties were negotiated with the Chickasaw and Choctaw to allow construction of a wagon road through their country. In the summer of 1802 the road with rough bridges and causeways of timbers laid crosswise and covered with earth was approaching completion. The 500 miles of road from Nashville to Natchez followed the crest of ridges having been designed to eliminate river crossings and to minimize as much as possible up and down climbs.[44]
There were two, possibly three, Natchez Traces. The first was the Indian trail. The second, the “Boatman’s Trail,” was beaten out by men from the Ohio Valley returning home from trading in Spanish Louisiana. The third was a road which was opened up by the US government to facilitate overland travel between Natchez and Nashville. The Chickasaw Trace, so named by the earliest Nashvillians, ran to the Chickasaw Nation near Tupelo. There it intersected with another trail which connected the Choctaw and Natchez tribes and appears on French maps of the 1730’s. The southern part of this trail appears on British maps of the 1770’s as the “Path to the Choctaw Nation.” Traders from Kentucky and Tennessee coming downriver on flatboats returned by these Indian trails during the years prior to Spain’s withdrawal from Natchez in 1798. With the organization of the Mississippi Territory, northbound traffic increased so rapidly as to create an urgent demand for the construction of a road to replace the Boatman’s Trail. In 1801 the many complaints of the Governor of the Mississippi Territory, and others, bore fruit. The President acting on the request of the Secretary of State and of the Postmaster General, instructed the army to clear out a road between Nashville and Natchez. The Choctaw Nation ceded 2 million acres in the Treaty of Fort Adams giving the Federal Government the right to construct the trace. The work was done under the general direction of General James Wilkinson, commander of all the American forces in the West. He ordered a survey, secured permission from the Choctaw and Chickasaw and with working parties drawn from nearby army garrisons began work even before consent and continued during the years 1802 and 1803. The road, cleared out and opened up extended from the Davidson County line, a few miles south of Nashville to Bayou Pierre, 50 miles north of Natchez. Ferries over the Duck and Tennessee rivers were provided. The Postmaster General frequently called attention to the unsatisfactory conditions of the road. In 1806 Congress appropriated $6,000 to improve the road. Specifications give a fair idea of the road: the road must be 20 feet wide; all marshy places were to be causewayed at least 10 feet wide; all streams under 40 feet in width, not fordable at their common winter tide, were to be bridged, 12 feet wide. This work was completed in 1807, but there was no provision for maintenance. The Governor of Tennessee addressed the legislature in 1811 noting the road was in very bad order.[45] This would have been the state of the Trace that the Stewarts would use, at least on return trips to Tennessee. When the road was at its height, few called it the Natchez Trace. Road from Nashville in the State of Tennessee to the Grindstone Ford of the Bayou Pierre in the Mississippi Territory was appended to the map drawn by the order of James Wilkinson. Other mapmakers used Natchez Road, Nashville Road, Mail Road or Cumberland Road. Not until the 1820’s did the term Natchez Trace come into use.[46]
Dr. Rushworth Nutt (1781-) was a traveler on the Natchez Trace in 1805 and left a journal of his travels. He traveled to Natchez on a flatboat and went ashore noting his favorable impression with the location of the town on a high bluff. He also noted the scenes of all kinds of vice. He arrived in New Orleans on 19 July 1805. He returned to Natchez “after coming by lake, river, and on foot from New Orleans,” reaching Natchez on 26 July 1805. He told of the large and valuable plantations with excellent cotton, of the superb peaches and pears which grew there, of the sweet potato which he found better than the Irish potato, and of the stock of all kinds which were raised here from the natural growth of the woods. That day it was 92 degrees. On 27 July he walked the six miles to Washington, the seat of government. On 1 August he set out from Washington for the Chickasaw nation, a distance of 300 miles along the Natchez Trace. “The country adjacent Natchez or about 20-30 miles is very broken extending from Omochetta to the biopier..” (Homochitto River and Bayou Pierre.) The land remained hilly for two days. “After crossing the Indian line, which was this side of Smith’s,” (Smith’s Stand established 1802 on the Claiborne-Hinds County line.) the route showed thin stands of hickory and oak; pine was common and in some places had taken over but in many places the country was sufficiently barren to be called a prairie. He crossed but a few streams. “No hills …forbid passage of a wagon from Natchez to the nation.” Doctor Nutt first reached the Choctaw Nation and was well received by the agent but had to sleep in the open and cook his own food. The dividing line between the Choctaw and Chickasaw was noosacheea, a large creek, today called Line Creek in Clay County. The Chickasaw agency was 270 miles from Natchez, 100 miles from Florence, Alabama and 265 miles from Nashville. He wrote of the Indians and their customs. Dr. Nutt left the agency house on 7 September and set out for Nashville. He passed through good farming country, the land slightly undulating with fine, black soil and some hickory and oak stands. The land continued to rise until about 8 miles from Big Town which extended for about 15 miles north-south on the prairie. He noted the houses of the town were shabby and far apart. On the ninth day he climbed to the top of a high hill and descended to the other side. He found low ground until he reached Bier-Creek. There was a large settlement of Chickasaw on both sides of the creek and they seemed prosperous and industrious as they had many cattle and well-kept cornfields. They had settled there for the purpose of supplying travelers with meat and grain. Bier Creek was 12 miles from the Tennessee River. On the morning of the 10th day he reached the Tennessee River where General George Colbert lived. He was a half-breed and conducted the ferry at Mussel Shoals. On the 12th day he found much iron ore for ten miles this side of Little Buffaloe River. He crossed the Little and Big Buffaloe and thought these rivers could afford water sufficient for mills. He crossed Little and Big Swan. He crossed the Duck River 90 miles from the Tennessee and 50 miles to Nashville. On the 14th day he reached Franklin. He reached Nashville, a town of about 400 houses.[47]
Since the Stewarts lived in Montgomery County, the water route would have been fairly direct since they were living on the Red River which ran into the Cumberland at Clarksville, thence to the Ohio and on to the Mississippi to land in Natchez or Fort Adams. Elysian Fields, three miles from the final destination of the Stewarts, was on a road built in the late 1700’s to connect Natchez and Mobile. They might have been able to easier bring cattle, horses and household furnishings if they traveled overland.
As we know Duncan had married in 1797 while living in Tennessee. He and Penelope had six children, most born in Tennessee: 1. Elizabeth b. c. 1797/98,[48] 2. Tignal Jones, b. 20 April, 1800, 3. William (Birthdate unknown but probably at this time; there is no grave in Mississippi so it is supposed he died before they made the move. Saunders says he died in infancy.), 4. Catherine Mary, b. 3 Oct. 1804, 5. James Alexander, b. 14 July 1811, 6. Charles Duncan, b. 1815. (Chuck Speed gives Charles’ birthdate as 1813 in Tennessee but Charles’ tombstone at Innis, LA. has his birth as 1815.) If the family arrived February 1811 then Duncan had three young children on the trip and Penelope was pregnant. Both James Alexander and Charles Duncan would therefore be born at Holly Grove. In a census report in 1880 TJ Stewart, James Alexander’s son lists his fathers birthplace as Mississippi,[49] which would agree with the above timetable.
Charles Stewart (buried Stewart III with the dates: 5-26-1773 to 3-15-1835) is given a Jan. 16, 1761 birthdate by Chuck Speed. Speed also states buried Ventress Place, one mile north of the old Stewart Plantation. Stewart II is one mile west. Stewart III is 4-5 miles north west. Bryon Saunders gives his birth date as 1771. We do know that he married April 11, 1798 Polly Jones, Duncan’s sister-in-law and Penelope’s sister. He had five children: Penelope, Tignal, Duncan, Charles and Jeanette. The cemetery Stewart III has been badly damaged and a stone does read “son of Charles and Mary Stewart, born April, died Aug.” All his Children were born in Tennessee before he and Polly made the trip to Mississippi (the last child was born in 1809). The son of Charles and Mary Stewart buried in Wilkinson County may be the son of Charles and “Polly” (a nickname for Mary) but may have been the son of his second wife Mary Johnson Fort.
Elizabeth Stewart was 35 years old when she married Lovick Ventress in Tennessee in 1804. They had three children, all born in Tennessee: William Charles Ventress b. c. 1804; James Alexander Ventress, b. 12 Feb 1805; and Elizabeth Ventress b. c. 1807 and Lovick Ventress had a daughter, Mary Ventress, born before his 1804 marriage to Elizabeth Stewart. The children would have been young on the trip ages 4 to 7 and Mary somewhat older. Ventress is noted to have died in Tennessee in 1822 and was buried next to his first wife at their Sycamore Creek Farm. Did he have any other older children who accompanied them to Mississippi?
Bryon Saunders also lists Jane Stewart on the trip. Chuck Speed does not have a sister of Duncan named Jane, but there is a Jannett, b. 1765 married to Capt John (Jack) Stewart. Saunders gives this sister the name of Jane. The Woodville Republican gives 19 May 1826 as the date of death of Janette C. Stewart, wife of the late Capt. John Stewart. John Stewart, a die hard Scott and former British army officer became well known in Wilkinson County for on the English king’s birthday each year he always appeared in full regiments much to the disgust of the patriots of Woodville….on one occasion narrowly escaping violence at their hands.[50] We read in the Woodville Republican on 2 December 1826 that William and Nolan Stewart (the eldest sons of James Stewart, brother to Duncan) were named as executors of Capt. John Stewart’s estate. And 14 April 1827 furniture purchased by William W. Yerby of the deceased Capt John Stewart’s estate is to be sold.[51] Pulaski Cage in 1836 is presenting final accounts of the estate of John Stewart.[52] This would seem late for the estate of Capt. John (Jack) Stewart who had died in about 1826.
There is a letter by JA Ventress (25 Mar 1910) noting that Mrs. Lucy H. Hallums of Wattsville, Robertson County Tennessee, an old lady, remembered that “Pa’s Uncle James” married Jeanette Stewart, the daughter of Capt. Jock Stewart by his first wife on 25 December 1808 at the residence of Lovick Ventress in Tennessee. Jeanette was born in Scotland. Her mother died when she was 6 weeks old and left also a son (who went to sea and was never heard from again). The daughter lived with Lovick Ventress from age 10 or 12 until she married his brother James. Jock Stewart did marry Jeannette Stewart, sister to Duncan. When did they marry? In Tennessee like Duncan’s sister Elizabeth to Lovick Ventress? Or did they travel separately to Tennessee and Mississippi and marry in Mississippi?
James Stewart, the twin brother left behind, did not come to Mississippi until 1818 when he was in ill health and thought he was dying. Saunders states he did not go to Mississippi in 1810 when the rest of the family did because his wife has died in childbirth within the last two years. The child must have died also since the dates of birth of his children by Chuck Speed has the youngest born in 1804. His wife was Catharine Knowlan (Knowland), (b. 1792, Bladen County, NC). Speed has her being buried at Stewart II but that would not seem to be the case. Some of his children did come to Mississippi. His eldest son Willaim (b. 1793 in Bladen County, NC) died 15 Sept. 1835 in Woodville and is buried in Wilkinson County. The second son Nolan (b. 16 May 1796 in Bladen County, NC.) died in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana on 11 April 1854 and was buried in the old vault at the Skipworth Place in East Baton Rouge Parish. These boys would have been adults when their father came to Mississippi. Nolan probably married into a Louisiana family after arriving as did several of Duncan’s descendants. A third son James McDougal (b. c. 1798 in Montgomery County, Tennessee) and a daughter Jannett (b. c. 1798 in Montgomery County) would also have been adults. Speed says Jannett died in 1824 in Tennessee. The last two daughters would have been teenagers: Robina E. (b. 1802, Montgomery County, Tennessee) and Mary Catherine (b. 1804 in Montgomery County). Robina apparently did come to Mississippi and married John Whitaker and is buried Stewart II. (The tombstone reads Robena E. Rogers Whitaker, wife of John Whitaker, b. c. 1805, d. 3-18-1840). Woodville Republican obits include Regina E. Whitaker who died March 18, 1840. Speed says James Stewart married a second time to Jane. Was this in Tennessee? What happened to her?
Saunders states that Duncan’s nephew, Walter Stewart, was left behind in Tennessee.
Walter was the son of Duncan’s older half brother, Patrick (b. Scotland, d. 14 Dec, 1777 in Wilmington, NC.) Patrick had a son Walter who did accompany the Stewarts to Tennessee. Speed says Walter married Jane Buckner in Stewart County. Speed also states Walter died in Natchez but Speed confuses him with another Walter Stewart of Natchez. Walter did accompany the rest of the family to the Natchez District. Deeds show Walter had land near Holly Grove in Wilkinson County and his estate was being divided and settled in 1835.[53] In the Woodville Republican we read in November (19th) 1835 that Thos. AG Batchelor (the father of Albert who will later marry Cornelia Stewart, the daughter of James Alexander Stewart) is the administrator of the estate of Walter Stewart. Speed notes Walter had two children: Pauline Stuart who married Ayres P. Merrill and James D. Stuart who married Mary (b. 1804 in SC.) A descendant Capt Madison Bachelor of Vicksburg was a great, great, grandson of Patrick.[54] Speed has the two children of Walter Stewart wrong but Madison Batchelor was descended from Walter. James Madison Bachelor (1841-1905) died in Vicksburg and was the son of Margaret Stewart (1819-1843) and grandson of Walter and great-grandson of Patrick. Walter did have two children but his wife is not known. These two children married in Wilkinson Co. The daughter, Margaret, married Thomas AG Batchelor and Charles M. Stewart married in 1835 Mary Graves.
When the various Stewart family members came to Wilkinson County is still somewhat confusing. A list of inhabitants of Wilkinson Co. in 1816 included Duncan Stewart and John, James, Charles, and Walter Stewart (also a Temple Stewart?). Lovick Ventress was listed. There is a David Bailey (as well as James). Could this be the David Bailey mentioned with the Stewarts in NC and possibly the husband of Duncan Stewart’s half sister Janet. There are several Whites (HG, Lucy, Andrew, Robert). Could any of these be related to the husband of Duncan’s other half sister? And /or related to the Whites who ultimately would own Holly Grove? Duncan Stewart and Charles, his brother, and Walter, his nephew, we know. Duncan’s brother, James, we think is still in Tennessee in 1816 but came in 1818. John is apparently the husband of Jeanette Stewart.
[1]Duncan
Stewart by Bryon Saunders, 1997, p. 28.
[3] A
manuscript by William McClendon, 2017, in my possession.
[4] Natchez,
The Houses and History of the Jewel of the Mississippi, text by Hugh Howard,
2003.
[5] Robert
V. Hayne, Western KY U. in Miss. History Now.
[6] Robert
V. Hayne
[7] An
Artist in Treason by Andro Lilnklater, 2009. p. 76
[8] Atlantic
Loyalties, Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810. by Andrew McMichael,
2008.
[9] An
Artist in Treason, p. 78
[10] An
Artist in Treason,
[11] An
Artist in Treason
[12] An
Artist in Treason, p. 155.
[13] An
Artist in Treason, p. 159
[14] An
Artist in Treason, p. 177
[15] An
Artist in Treason, p. 189
[16]
Mississippi-Louisiana Border country by Marie T. Logan, 1970, p. 18.
[17] MS
Historical Society, Great Migration by Charles Lowery, prof. at MS State.
[18] An
Artist in Treason, p. 284.
[19]
Atlantic Loyalties.
[21] Centreville
History on a city/county map bhh southern Engineering GPP, Inc.
[22] Hanging
in the kitchen at Hope Farm, Natchez. 2013. Delineation of the States of MS, LA
and AL between New Orleans and Mobile, 1839
[23] The
Woodville Republican, Oct 14, 2010, p. 9.
[24] An
Artist in Treason, p 177.
[25]
Wikipedia
[26] An
Artist in Treason, p. 177
[27] A Brief
History of Woodville by John South Lewis of the Woodville Republican in the The
Journal of Wilkinson County History, Vol. I.
[28]
Wikipedia
[29] The
Woodville Republican, Oct. 14, 2010.
[30] An
Artist in Treason, p. 197-200
[31] Duncan
Stewart, by Saunders. P. 30.
[32]
Wilkinson County Guide and Map, Woodville Civic Club, 1976.
[33] The
school closed in 1964.
[34]
Jefferson Davis, The Man and His Hour, William C. Davis, p. 15.
[35] Take a
glimpse into our past by John South Lewis. P. vi.
[36] Lynda
Crist. #22 “First Academies,” Woodville
republican, July 19,1924; AR Kilpatrick to JFH Claiborne, May 2, 1877,
Claiborne Coll., Miss. Archives; Holder, Winans autobiography, 292-293.
[37]
Atlantic Loyalties, pp. 26-27.
[38]
Atlantic Loyalties, p. 28.
[39] Classic
Natchez, History, Homes, and Gardens by Randolph Delehanty and Van Jones
Martin. 1996, p. 19.
[40] Duncan
Stewart by Bryan Saunders, pp. 28-29.
[41]
Saunders
[42] Duncan
Stewart, by Saunders, pp. 28-29.
[43] Red
River Settlers: records of the settlers of Northern Montgomery…by Edythe John
Rucker Whitley. P. 72. p. 505 Will Book
1797-1810, Montgomery Co.
[44] Lynda
Crist thesis on James Alexander Ventress
[45] The
Natchez Trace, Indian Trail to Parkway by Dawson A. Phelps, Tennessee
Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXI, Sept. 1962, No. 3. P. 3-7.
[46] Phelps,
p. 16-17.
[47]
Mississippi-Louisiana Border Country: A History of Rodney, Miss., St. Joseph,
La., and Environs by Marie T. Logan, 1970. pp. 25-40
[48] From
her tombstone, Tanglewild, W. Feliciana Parish
[49]
Rootsweb, Descendants in America of the Stewarts of Ledcreich.
[50] Duncan
Stewart by Saunders. P. 31.
[51]
Woodville Republican
[54] 1891
reference Stewart Clan Magazine, Vol. XIV, #2, Beatrice, Neb. Aug 1936.
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