The Second and Third Generations
The first of Duncan Stewart’s sons to marry was Tignal Jones, his eldest son. “Married at Sligo, on Thursday evening the 16th, [June 1825] by the Rev. James A. Fox, Mr. Tignal Jones Stewart to Miss Sally Ann Randolph, eldest daughter of Judge Randolph.”[1] Sligo was the name of the plantation of John Sims south of Woodville. The Randolph plantation Elmwood, was also south of Woodville Was this wedding at the home of the bride as was usually the case? Jones Stewart (as he was usually referred to) and his bride Sarah Ann Yates Randolph, the daughter of the Federal District Judge of Mississippi, who lived just south of Woodville would make their home at Holly Grove with Tignal Jones’ widowed mother, Penelope, and with the younger brothers, James Alexander, age 14 and Charles age 10. The Stewart daughters had married earlier: Elizabeth (Eliza) at age 20 in 1818 to Col. WS Hamilton, a lawyer from St. Francisville; Catherine Mary at age 16 in 1820 to Henry Cage. Harry and Catherine Cage may have also lived at Holly Grove. Their children were born in 1822, 1825 and 1827. The youngest child, a daughter, Penelope, died in 1824 and Catherine died in 1828. Judge Cage did not remarry so it seems possible that the two young boys, Duncan Stewart Cage and Albert Gallatin Cage, may well have lived at Holly Grove with their grandmother.
Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s first child was born 31 August 1826 and named Sarah Jones. Penelope followed on 14 November 1828.[2]
Tignal Jones’ younger brother James Alexander married Sarah Ann’s younger sister, Juliana, 23 February 1832 and I think they also lived at Holly Grove. James was 21, Juliana 18. Their first child was named Penelope, born 25 Jan 1835; followed by Duncan B., born 7 Oct 1836 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi where the family was summering; Catherine Eliza, 26 September 1839; Tignal Jones; Rosa, 1842;[3] Henry Martin, 6 Mar 1845;[4] Cornelia, 1845; and Ida, 1847.
Duncan Stewart’s youngest son Charles married in the late 1840’s (His first child was born in 1851.) He lived in Pointe Coupee Parish but when he went there is not known. He would have been in his 30’s when he married and may have continued to live at Holly Grove after he was of age.
If all these family members did live at Holly Grove the house was full but by that time it was a big house.
The Randolph girls were educated by Lucy Audubon when she was teaching in West Felliciana Parish, and at some point Juliana (and perhaps her sisters) was sent to the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans for instruction.[5]
Jones and James Alexander (Charles was probably too young) were in part educated at the Jackson Academy, a boys school located about 16 miles east of Woodville near the Ventress Place, which would make it close to Holly Grove as well. Jackson Academy’s location eventually became the Redwood plantation, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove.
An act establishing Jackson Academy was passed 27 Dec. 1814. The academy was named after General Jackson. Superintendence Daniel Williams, sen. James Stewart, Samuel Riley, Lovick Vintress, John Davis, Samuel Norwood, Francis Richards, William Bryan, John Nismith, board of Trustees.[6] 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.[7]
Jackson Academy was one of the first schools in Mississippi. Jefferson College was established in 1802 but did not open until 1810. Madison near Port Gibson was established in 1809, then Jackson Academy in 1814. In 1815 three academies were established nearby, Pinckneyville and Williamson near Woodville, and Amite. Shieldsboro Academy in Pass Christian was established in 1818. Elizabeth Female Academy in Washington, Natchez Academy, Pearl Hill in Jefferson Co. and the Wilkinson Female Academy were established in 1819.[8]
While the Stewarts’ cousin, James Alexander Ventress (b. 1805), who lived next door at Lone Hall Plantation was educated in Europe and his stay there is extensively documented, not much is known of the higher education of the Stewart boys. We do know that James Alexander did attend schools in Nashville, Tennessee (possibly the University of Nashville, created in 1826 from Cumberland University and later to become Montgomery Bell Academy, Peabody College and part of Vanderbilt University) and Troy, NY.[9] (The Rensselaer School was established in 1824 in Troy by Stephen Van Rensselaer “in the application of science to the common purposes of life.” It would become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.) James A. Stewart was born in 1811 and married in 1832. Therefore his schooling away from Mississippi would probably be after 1825. One document states James attended Cumberland College in Nashville, Tennessee[10] so he may have gone there before 1826 when it became the University of Nashville.
Certainly Holly Grove was a busy place with marriages and children but there was sadness as well. Catherine Cage’s oldest child died: Penelope Jones Cage (b. September 5, 1822, died Aug 12, 1824, aged 1 yr. 11 mos. 17 days) and was the first person buried at Holly Grove. Catherine had two more children: Duncan Cage (b. c. 1825) and Albert Gallatin (b. 20 June 1827) before following her first born to the cemetery at Holly Grove 12 February 1829.
Duncan’s wife Penelope died aged 64 years on February 23, 1843 and was buried at Holly Grove.
But marriages would start again. Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s oldest daughter Sarah Jones wed William Johnston Fort of St. Francisville, 17 Dec 1846[11] and moved to West Feliciana Parish and the Fort’s home, Catalpa. The widow of William Fort, Mary Johnston Fort had married Charles Stewart, brother to Duncan, in 1820 and lived with her young son, William Johnston Fort, in Wilkinson County where the boy would grow up not far from Holly Grove. Sarah’s sister, Penelope, married two years later, 27 April 1848[12] to Charles Lewis Mathews of Greenwood (now Butler-Greenwood) Plantation, very near to Catalpa in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander’s daughter Penelope Jones Stewart married in 1854 into the planter aristocracy of West Feliciana, Jacob Bowman Stirling, grandson of Alexander Stirling of Egypt Pantation. “Maried on the 15th [June 1854], at the residence of James A. Stewart, Esq., by the Rev. WW Lord, J. Bowman Sterling, Esq., to Miss Penelope J. Stewart.[13] Their young daughter, Mary, would be buried at Holly Grove in 1857.
James Alexander and Juliana’s eldest son Duncan made a propitious marriage in January 1861 when he married Caroline McGehee of Bolling Green Plantation, Wilkinson County. Caroline was the daughter of Judge Edward McGehee of Wilkinson County, one of its most prominent and wealthiest citizens. Duncan’s sister, Catherine, had already married Caroline’s brother, J. Burruss McGehee in June 1859. These two siblings would also make their homes in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander and Juliana’s son, Tignal J. (b. 1839) married Mary Hayward in 1871 and they lived in New Orleans.
James and Juliana’s daughter, Rosa (b. 1842) married first St. Clair Sutherland of Maryland (related to the Knickerbocker family of New York) before 1883. They lived in Washington DC. She then married Capt. Hiram Sharp of Alabama before 1889 and they lived at Holly Grove in the latter part of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. They would be the last of the Stewarts to live at Holly Grove and both would be buried there, she, the last, in 1928.
James and Juliana’s son Henry, at age 21 in 1866, drowned, in the Mississippi trying to rescue a lady passenger from a burning boat. He was a soldier in the 38th MS. regiment, twice wounded, distinguished for his bravery and coolness. It was said he always kept his gun loaded. When ordered to shoot a prisoner, he replied he did not keep his gun loaded to shoot unarmed men.[14] His grave marker is in Grace Churchyard: Henry Martin Stewart, Mar 6, 1845-Dec 27, 1866. The monument is shared with his cousin, Jones Stewart Fort of Catalpa, and is one of the grandest in Grace Cemetery.
James and Juliana’s daughter Cornelia (b. 1845) married a physician, Albert Batchelor, on 3 Dec 1876 and lived in Pointe Coupee Parish. Albert Agrippa Batchelor (1845-1905)[15] was the son of Thomas A. Batchelor and Victoria Gayden Wren of Beech Grove Plantation in Amite County, Mississippi.
James and Juliana’s daughter Ida (b. 1847) married Lenox W. Simpson (b. Maryland 1857) of Washington, DC, a nephew of the celebrated jurist, Lenox of Washington.
Duncan’s son, Tignal Jones Stewart (b. 1800) would die in 1855 and be buried at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann, his widow would live on until 1892 before joining him in the Holly Grove Cemetery. Although she did live in 1891 at age 82 with her daughter Sallie Fort at Catalpa in West Feliciana and she would die there in January 1892.[16] Tignal Jones brother James Alexander would die at age 72, in 1883, living longer than his siblings and parents. His wife, Juliana, would not join him in the Holly Grove Cemetery until 1898 when she died, age 84.
Although we see the Stewarts marrying into the Feliciana aristocracy, Wilkinson County was very much a part of the plantation economy all along the Mississippi. Scattered around Wilkinson County during the flush times of its heyday were perhaps 160 plantations considered worthy of the name. A few were very grand, many relatively humble; virtually all flourished or failed by the number of 500-pound cotton bales piled up for downriver shipment each fall.[17] Bowling Green, the home of the McGehees was a fine Federal house with a double height columned portico. La Grange built on the eve of the War Between the States was magnificent indeed. Alexander Ventress, the son of Duncan Stewart’s sister, Elizabeth who married Lovick Ventress, had engaged the famous Philadelphia architect, Samuel Sloan to build the home.[18]
Woodville, in the 1830’s had become urbane, encompassing an ultrafashionable French coffeehouse, the Café de Woodville, two newspapers, (including the still-publishing Woodville Republican), as well as banks, blacksmiths, livery stables, stores, saloons, hotels, an Episcopal church with a pipe organ, and the beginnings of a railroad.[19]
Mississippi grew as well. In 1839 the population was 91,865 whites, 991 free persons of color and 133,431 slaves.[20]
We do not at present have a great deal of information of the daily life at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann married Jones Stewart in 1825 and by 1833 had two girls, ages seven and five. Sarah Randolph Stewart received a letter, 17 May[21] 1833 from Elizabeth Leatherbury Randolph, her step-mother in Natchez. (Sarah’s mother had died in 1825. Sarah’s step-mother, Elizabeth Randolph [widowed when Peter Randolph died in 1832] married Thomas Butler Percy in Natchez, 4 June 1833 at Trinity Church.) The letter is addressed to Sarah at Centreville, Amite County.[22] The letter mentions gifts to Sarah and her children and Elizabeth’s recent acquisition of a German piano at auction for $250.
A letter (undated) survives from T. Jones Stewart in Columbia County, Georgia, to his wife Sarah Ann of his activities in attending to the settlement of her father’s estate, of his plan to visit her uncle Randolph[23] and his family, and of young ladies in the area who had captivated Hampden (this would be Sarah’s brother, John Hampden Randolph who married in 1837 so this letter predates that event.).[24] We do know from other sources that Sarah’s grandfather, Peter Randolph (b. 1750) died in 1812 in Jackson County, Georgia and left a will in Clarke County, Georgia in 1804.[25]
There are four letters, 1833-1834 from Cornelia Virginia Randolph (Sarah Ann’s 14 year old sister) at Beech Grove to Sarah Ann in which she mentioned some aspects of her life as a boarding school student.[26] Beech Grove is the plantation in West Feliciana Parish where Lucy Audubon taught although at an earlier date. She had left there in January 1830.[27] Sarah Ann along with her sisters, Juliana and Augusta, had gone to school at Beech Woods in Feliciana Parish to Lucy Audubon in 1823 when Sarah was 14.
The Woodville Republican reported that James A. Stewart had six hounds to run off in the direction of Fort Adams in 1834. A liberal reward was offered.[28] This is one of a few references that James A. Stewart might live elsewhere than Holly Grove since Ft. Adams is some 20 miles west of Woodville.
Cornelia Randolph, now 17, wrote three letters in 1836 to her sister, Sarah Ann addressed to Woodville. She wrote from Louisville Kentucky, then Guyandotte Virginia, and NY talking about eating ice cream, enjoying illuminated gardens, listening to music, a trip to Saratoga from New Orleans by way of Louisville Kentucky and White Sulphur Springs Virginia (after the Civil War this would be West Virginia). In the letters she mentions family members and James Ventress (Her older sister Augusta had married William CS Ventress in 1828. James Alexander Ventress was his brother, aged 31 at the time. These Ventress boys were first cousins of Sarah Ann’s husband Tignal Jones.) who were with her on at least part of the trip.[29]
James Alexander and Juliana’s son Duncan was born in early October 1836 in Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi gulf coast where the family was summering.[30]
At some point James A. Stewart purchased a house in Mississippi City as he gave it to his wife in December 1867.[31] Mississippi City was originally the county seat for Harrison Co. (1841-1902). In 1841 it was in contention with Oxford for the location of the University of Mississippi. The Louisville and Nashville RR came through in 1869-70.
These travels suggest of the wealth and sophistication of the Randolph and Stewart families.
Another sign of the wealth of the family is the Bible that has descended in the family.[32] The Bible is a Harpers Illuminated Bible of 1846, printed by Harper and Bros. NYC. It was the publishing event of the 1800’s, the most heavily illustrated Bible ever printed with 1600 detailed illustrations. It is also the first known example of using electrotype technology to reproduce original woodcut engravings. It was published in 54 parts between 1843 and 1846. The Stewart Bible is embossed with the names of “T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart.”
In 1837 Cornellia Randolph wrote again to her sister Sarah Ann at Holly Grove. She wrote on the 6th and later on the 27th of August from Shieldsborough, Hancock County, Mississippi about social activities, clothes, family and friends, and the spread of yellow fever in New Orleans. Hancock County is on the Gulf of Mexico and near to New Orleans and was a Gulf Coast watering spot. Apparently the Randolphs are summering elsewhere than their Mississippi plantation again that summer.[33]
From James Alexander Ventress’ biographer we learn that he was invited in the 15 years after 1833 to his cousins, the Stewarts, to dinner, a fish-fry, and a shooting match.[34]
A big storm caused “great loss and injury” in Natchez in the spring of 1840. A large meeting of the citizens of Wilkinson County convened at the courthouse in Woodville on May 12, 1840 for the purpose of expressing the deep sympathy felt by this county. A committee appointed to collect funds included among others, Messrs. E. McGehee, James A Stewart,…AM Feltus…Moses Liddell…Gen WL Brandon, Col. Robt. Semple…..[35]
The Woodville Republican reported in September 1840 the delegates to the Democratic and Whig Conventions in Jackson. MF DeGraffenreid, Duncan Stewart’s niece’s husband, was a Democratic delegate.[36] The Democrats in Wilkinson County were certainly outnumbered by the Whigs with their delegates being 133 to 19 Democrats. Among the Whig delegates were AM Feltus, HM Farish, E. McGehee, CA Thornton, JA Stewart, H. Connell, JH Randolph, M. Liddell, John W. Burrus from Woodville; RT Semple from Pinckneyville; Harry Cage, JA Ventress, AG Cage, P Cage and Charles D. Stewart from Mount Pleasant.[37] Mount Pleasant is the closest community to Holly Grove in Wilkinson County as Centreville at that time was in Amite County. However this does not explain why JA Stewart is a delegate for Woodville. Was he not living at Holly Grove at this time as was previously thought? Charles D. Stewart, age 25, still appears to be living at Holly Grove at this time
On June 23, 1842 there is a letter to Sarah Ann from her sister, Augusta, now married to William Ventress (m.1828), about family and personal matters. She mentioned Florence, William, Peter, and Jim (her children).[38] William Ventress is a cousin of Sarah Ann’s husband, Jones Stewart.
In 1843 a mule had strayed from the plantation of James A. Stewart, according to the Woodville Republican.[39]
In 1843 T. Jones Stewart was listed as elected to office in the Wilkinson County Agricultural Society along with JW Burruss, CA Thornton, Harry Cage, AM Feltus, JA Ventress, Edward McGehee, Pulaski Cage, Hugh Connell, AG Cage and others.[40] Receiving awards in the county’s first agricultural fair in 1843 were some of the same names: T. Jones Stewart and associated relatives and in-laws: Dr. Currier, Judge H. Cage, JW Burrus, Major JL Trask, J. Alexander Ventress, Dr. Redhead, Mrs. E. Feltus, and CA Thornton.[41] The Hon. TJ Stewart was absent as president of the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Mechanical Association’s fair in May 1846. But duly elected to office were TJ Stewart, AG Cage, W. Burruss, and JD Stewart among others. Ladies awarded were Mrs. McGehee, Mrs. Currier and others.[42]
The Woodville Republican reported the full grown English peas of this season on 8 March 1845 from the plantation of JA Stewart.
In November 1846 the Agricultural Society reported on the cotton crop in Wilkinson County: T. Jones Stewart with 700 acres made 115 (is this bales?), James A. Stewart with 450 acres made 140. other associated family listed were AG Cage, JD Stewart, JW Burruss, E. McGehee, James L. Trask, CC Cage and AM Feltus. Of the 75 producers listed, T. Jones Stewart has the 5th largest acreage.[43]
There are three letters (19 July, 5 August, and 27 December 1846) from Cornelia Randolph Thornton, (who married in 1839, Charles Augustine Thornton) to Sarah Ann from Hopemore, Bayou Goula and St. Francisville. These talk of family and personal matters and a mention of Hamden’s family (This would be their brother, John Hampden who had married Emily Jane Liddell in 1837 and who would ultimately have eleven children to populate his palatial mansion, Nottoway, on the Mississippi near White Castle, Louisiana.) [44] Hamden at that time lived at Bayou Goula, very near the later Nottoway.
In 1846 (15 August) Augusta Randolph Ventress is at the “coast” although her letter to her sister, Sarah Ann, at Woodville is postmarked from Donaldsonville on the Mississippi in Ascension Parish, Louisiana near her home.[45]
The Mexican War drew to a fever pitch in Wilkinson County in 1846. The Woodville Republican noted, “Although Wilkinson county has no Militia at all, as a nucleus around which to gather the brave and patriotic spirits that are burning to fly to the Rio Grande, still the people have moved and nobly too, by public meetings, resolutions and subscriptions, and the immediate enrollment of about sixty noble fellows who love their country ‘s fame better than the peace and quiet of home…The man who will not support his country in the time of her need is unworthy of the protection she has given him and should be sent out of it as were the Tories formerly. Hurrah for Uncle Sam, right or wrong!” A public meeting was held at the courthouse for the purpose of discussing the warlike relations of the United States and Mexico. Gen. WL Brandon was recommended to command such forces as may be raised from this section of the state. A committee was formed to collect together the yagers (a hunting rifle) in the county. Jas. B. Stewart ( James A.?) was part of the committee.[46] Maj. Gen. WL Brandon appointed JD Stewart (son of William, son of James, twin to Duncan) Division Quarter Master of the 1st Division, MM to rank as major.[47] A list of volunteers was published 20 June 1846 in the Woodville Republican. Among these were JD Stewart, BM Cage, AG Cage (Albert Gallatin Cage, son of Judge Harry Cage and Catherine Stewart, daughter to Duncan), WL Cage (William Lyall Cage was the son of Pulaski Cage and Mary Ventress) and IG Gayden (his sister Elvira married Albert G. Cage). In November the Woodville Republican reported on 3 deaths in Mexico of local volunteers.[48] And in another issue of the paper more dead and wounded at Monterey were reported. James D. Stewart was requested by Col. Mays to raise a company of Mounted Rangers for Hays’ Texas Regiment.[49]
In June 1847 plans were being made to welcome home the volunteers back from Mexico. The committee to receive the volunteers consisted of JA Ventress, T. Jones Stewart, CC Cage, JA Stewart, E. McGehee and others. A barbecue was planned. JA Stewart along with many others was on the barbecue arrangement committee.[50] Among those published in the local paper as mustering out: BM Cage, 12 June 1847, New Orleans; WL Cage, 13 Oct. ’46, Camp Allen; James D. Stewart, 24 Feb ’47, Monterey; W. Stewart, fifer, 24 Sept ’46, Matamoros; Transferred: AG Cage, to Col. Hay’s Texas Rangers.[51]
A ball was held in Woodville in honor of General Taylor on the evening of his arrival on the 15th Feb 1848. Among the managers were JD Stewart (grandson of James, twin to Duncan) and Carnot Posey (whose sister married Pulaski Cage’s son).[52]
T. Jones Stewart did get involved in politics like his father. In 1843 Whig leaders, including James Alexander Ventress and his cousin T. Jones Stewart, were urged by the press to get out the vote, guard against election shenanigans, and see to the rejection of the repudiators[53] (a reference to an important issue of the day, the repudiation of the Mississippi bank bonds.) In April 1844 the Wilkinson County Clay Club met in the courthouse. T. Jones Stewart was selected as president. The Hon. Edward McGehee was one of the vice presidents. For distribution to the different precincts in the county: Mt. Pleasant, AG Cage and Dr. Redhead.[54] On the 24 August 1844, “This being the regular day for the monthly meeting of the Clay Club of Wilkinson County, the town was alive with the citizens of the country pouring in at an early hour of the day to participate in the patriotic efforts.” TJ Stewart, president, was noted to be present.[55] In 1844 at the Whig meeting in Jackson T. Jones Stewart was named for the second time as a Whig elector, serving also as president of the Wilkinson Clay Club (Henry Clay).[56] In 1845 James Alexander Ventress and Cooper, former Whig senator and representative, were endorsed by the Wilkinson Democrats. The same meeting endorsed Jones Stewart, noting that he was a sincere worker for local needs. He had been nominated for the house by the local Whig caucus a week earlier.[57] In July 1845 we read in the Woodville Republican that James A. Ventress is running for senator and T. Jones Stewart for representative.[58] In August we read that WL Cage among others is supporting WL Smith.[59] Jones Stewart was named in September for the senate by the Whig meeting reversing their former decision.[60] Ventress lost in November. He was out for the first time in a decade. His cousin, Jones Stewart, had 468 votes to Ventress’ 357.[61] And Stewart was named to Ventress’ favorite committees: education and public buildings.[62] Stewart ran for senate again in 1847 as a Whig; Ventress ran for the house as a Democrat. The Natchez Courier forecast that Stewart, “an honorable, high-toned, intellectual gentleman” would be returned to the senate. The Woodville Republican reported in August 1847, “The Free Trader runs up the name of our fellow citizen, Douglas H. Cooper, as a candidate for state senator from this senatorial district, composed of Adams, Wilkinson and Franklin counties. It will be remembered that a Whig meeting in Natchez nominated T. Jones Stewart, ‘of ours’, for the same office. So the contest bids fair to be between two of our own citizens.”[63] The Whigs won again and Stewart not his cousin went to Jackson.[64] Although the Democrats had a majority in the state legislature, the Whigs were still strong in Wilkinson County. They returned Jones Stewart to the Senate in 1849 and his kinsman James D. Stewart in the house.[65] (James D. Stewart would be James Duncan Stewart [b. 1824, Wilkinson Co.] the third child of William Stewart, the son of James Stewart who was twin to Duncan Stewart of Holly Grove.) Jones Stewart served in the state legislature in Jackson as well as state senator. He was the founder of a bill to protect the rights of married women to hold property and real estate.[66] The 1839 Act for the Protection and Preservation of the Rights of Women gave women the ability to possess property separate from their husband.[67] A letter dated 26 January 1846, Sarah Ann, Tignal Jones’s wife, wrote from Holly Grove to her husband in Jackson, Mississippi. She mentioned visiting his brother James Ventress (he had Ventress cousins), plans for a trip to the coast, and regret that his session would be lengthy.[68]
Other letters to T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi, from his wife Sarah Ann on 15 January and 7 February 1848, are about family and personal matters. She also mentions agricultural matters and a visit to Judge Cage (the widower of Catherine Stewart, T. Jones’s sister).[69]
In November 1850 an open letter was sent to the Hon Jefferson Davis [US Senator from Mississippi] from a very large number of men, citizens of Wilkinson County, showing their support for his course in the recent struggle between the Northern Might and the Southern Right. The first signature printed in the paper is that of T. Jones Stewart. Other family members signing were his first cousin, JA Ventress, Charles C. Cage, George W. Cage, Pulaski Cage, Wm. L. Cage, Wm. J. Feltus, and HJ Feltus.[70] JA Stewart is not among the signatories. In January 1851 T. Jones Stewart is a part of a committee forming a “Southern Rights Association.” Another family member is WJ Feltus.[71]
Delegates to the Democratic State Convention in Jackson on 2 May included T. Jones Stewart from the Mount Pleasant precinct. James A. Ventress was chairman and CC Cage was a delegate from Woodville and William L. Cage from Percy’s Creek.[72]
From one source we learn that Tignal Jones Stewart is a polished gentleman and fond of field sports and hunting.[73]
Cornelia Randolph Thornton’s daughters, Cornelia Virginia (b. 1842) and Anna Maria (b. Feb 1840) are living at Holly Grove with their aunt, Sarah Ann Stewart, and going to school when they write in 8 letters (1850-1852) to their uncle, T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi. They mention visits from their father.[74] Their mother had died in 1849 at age 30. (She was buried with her parents at the Randolph Cemetery south of Woodville.) Were the two younger Thornton children, John and Sarah also at Holly Grove but not writing at their young ages? The 1850 census has Charles Thornton living alone in Rapides Parish and his children (? number) with their aunt in Mississippi.
There is an undated letter to Sarah Ann Stewart at Woodville from Phoebe Vail Randolph, Sarah’s sister in law, from Troy, NY.[75] Phoebe is the wife of Sarah’s older brother Algernon Sidney who died in 1837.
Holly Grove remained a cotton plantation. Cotton prices rose sharply in 1849 and 1850, after the low prices of a decade, and they would continue to rise throughout the 1850’s (except for a slight fall in 1851).[76] The 1850’s would therefore probably be a prosperous time at Holly Grove. In 1859 Mississippi was the leading cotton producer in the nation.
In July 1850 several citizens called for a meeting at the courthouse in Woodville for August. James A. Stewart, CG[77] Cage and James A. Ventress were among them.[78]
Col. T. Jones Stewart, Col. RA Stewart,[79] and three others, members of the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County, met on the 19th day of April, 1851. The meeting was adjourned to meet at Cold Springs in the Lower Homochitto Precinct on the 3rd Saturday (the 17th) of May. Col. John S. Holt, Jr. was invited to address the association.[80] On Saturday, the 31st of May the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County met. The following gentlemen were appointed as delegates to the State Convention to be held in Jackson: T. Jones Stewart, and 18 others.[81]
The 22 July 1851 Woodville Republican reported at a meeting of Adams County “Southern Rights Association,” held in Natchez, a resolution was passed to endorse Hon TJ Stewart of Wilkinson County, for the State Senate. In the same paper at the Union meeting held on Saturday last, Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was nominated for the Convention and Mr. John H. Sims was nominated for the legislature.
On 19 August 1851 the Woodville Republican reported that Cols. Stewart and Gordon will speak tomorrow at Sinkum Sank.
T. Jones Stewart as guardian is selling land purchased by his Uncle Charles Stewart to benefit Charles’ grandson Charles E. Stewart in October 1851.[82] Charles E. Stewart’s father had died in 1833 and his grandfather in 1835.
The Democrats of Wilkinson County met in June 1853 to nominate a candidate for the lower house of the state legislature. Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was called to the chair. Col. George H. Gordon was chosen. T. Jones Stewart was one of several delegates appointed to the Monticello Convention.[83]
Jas. A. Stewart was one of three commissioners (along with WC Connell and Jas. Dunckley) for building two bridges across the branches of the Bayou Sara, about three miles west of Woodville on the Fort Adams road in March 1855.[84]
But T. Jones Stewart would die in 1855. “Died at his residence in this county, on the 20th [March], T. Jones Stewart, in the 55th year of his age. Few men have been more intimately associated with the public and political history of this portion of the State of Mississippi, for the past quarter century. Warmly devoted to the doctrine of States Rights, he knew no party in politics which did not cherish this, as one of their cardinal principles.”[85]
The 1860 census of Wilkinson County[86] tells us some about the fortunes of the family and their relatives. The census shows 2,779 white people, 22 free colored and 13,132 slaves. A list of the largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County lists 41 names. James Alexander Stewart with 235 is one of the larger of this group (Five others are listed as having more. Elgee and Chambers, 501, JC Jenkins, 368, FH Hook, 325, LL Fabers, 280, and TC Patrick, 260). Ventress’ sister in law, Sarah Ann Stewart, Tignal’s widow, is listed with 111. Another Stewart, CE, had 120. Even James Alexander Ventress, Duncan’s nephew, who built his grand home, La Grange, about this time, is listed as having 222 slaves—less than James Alexander and certainly less than the combined slaves of James and Sarah at Holly Grove—346. The McGehee family into which two of James Alexander’s children had recently married, was estimated by one source to have 736 slaves.[87] The census lists Edward, the patriarch, with 146; George T., his son, had 73; CG had 129 and E. had 120. The McGehee family did have plantations in Louisiana as well, where the Stewart in-laws were living at this time.
We don’t know much about the war years at Holly Grove. Many of the children had married and left. The 1860 census has James Alexander and Juliana at Holly Grove with 6 of their children: Duncan, age 23; T. Jones, age 19; Henry M., age 15; Rosa, age 17, Cornelia, age 12; Ida, age 10. T. Jones’ widow Sarah Ann Stewart is listed at another location in the census. James Alexander’s son, Duncan’s wife was pregnant at her father’s plantation when Bolling Green Plantation was burned in 1864. James Alexander’s daughter, Catherine’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee was in the Louisiana Calvary. T. Jones would serve in the Confederacy as well as Henry who would drown in the Mississippi in 1866.
T. Jones Stewart was dead. His grandchildren were too young to serve. His son in laws were not too old but apparently did not serve. We do not have any evidence that Charles Mathews (age 37 in 1861) served, and William J. Fort, age 43, died in 1862.
James Alexander Stewart was age 50 in 1861. He did have sons who served. Tignal Jones served in the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. Duncan served in the Confederacy as well as Henry.
Penelope Jones Stewart’s husband, Jacob Bowman Stirling, age 36 in 1861, was a planter in Washington County, Mississippi. We do not have any record of his service. Caroline’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee, served in Co. C of the Louisiana Calvary. They lived in West Feliciana Parish. Cornelia’s future husband, Albert Batchelor was a private in Co. E, 2nd Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, Johnson’s Division, Jackson’s Corp, Army of Northern Virginia, July 1862-July 1863; then a Drillmaster, Enterprise, Mississippi, 1864.
Charles Duncan Stewart was age 46 in 1861 was a planter in Pointe Coupee but there is no evidence that he served. His son was too young.
The Cage boys had moved to Terrebonne Parish but both served the Confederacy. Duncan Cage moved to Terrebonne Parish about 1855. He was a sugar planter. When the war of secession came, he raised a company of infantry which became a part of the 26th Louisiana. He was made Lt. Col. and later colonel. He served as Colonel of a regiment (the 26th) of Louisiana troops just before they were captured at the siege of Vicksburg. He was taken sick and not permitted to be in command and therefore was not captured.[88] He was later on the staff of Gen. E. Kirby Smith.[89] Albert Cage, his brothr, served as a captain.
Eliza Stewart Hamilton had three sons who served the Confederacy, Douglas Montrose Hamilton and William Belhaven Hamilton. Jones Stewart Hamilton enlisted in the first company that left Wilkinson County to go to Virginia, where he was 1st Lt. in Co. K, 16th Ms.[90] In 1862 Jones S. Hamilton was Adj. Gen. State of MS. He was ordered back to Jackson and reported to Governor John H. Pettus organizing and mustering in companies for the Confederacy. In 1863 he was elected State Senator for Wilkinson, Adams and Amite Counties. He resigned as Adj. Gen. In 1864 he was made Lt. Col. commanding a battalion of cavalry, later attached to the regiment commanded by Frank Powers. One source lists him as a Lt. Col. in Scott’s Cavalry.[91] Col. Jones S. Hamilton had in Dec 1863 a sufficient number of companies to form the battalion of cavalry, which he had been authorized to raise, by special authority from the War Department, to operate on the Mississippi—between Natchez and Baton Rouge.[92] Hamilton was paroled 19 May 1865.
He was a member of the Mississippi Peace Commission that traveled to Washington in 1865 to meet with Andrew Johnson.
Cotton was probably grown at Holly Grove after the War. The Federal government and northern capitalists were aware that restoration of cotton production was critical to the financial recovery of the nation. By 1870 sharecroppers, small farmers and plantation owners were producing more cotton than in 1860.[93] We do have records of Sarah Stewart contracting with former slaves to grow cotton. From 1803 until 1937 America was the world’s leading cotton exporter.[94]
We do note that Sarah Stewart’s granddaughter, Sallie Fort’s youngest daughter, Anna Key Fort, born in 1861, spent most of her childhood at Hollygrove.[95] Anna’s father died in 1862 so her mother may have needed the help of Sarah Stewart. Since James and Juliana’s children were mostly grown, the house was quieter in the late 60’s and 70’s than it had been in a long time.
Was there some discord or was it just to settle up matters? James A. Stewart petitioned in court to divide the estate with his sister-in-law Sarah A. Stewart and her children, Sallie J. Fort and Penelopie Mathews in October 1876. The petition notes that Penelope Stewart had died in 1843 leaving five legal heirs: James A. Stewart, T. Jones Stewart (now deceased), Charles D. Stewart, Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage. The petition further notes the estate was never divided and was held by the heirs.
It is on the survey to divide the property that we first find the name Holly Grove given to the plantation (1877) though undoubtedly the name was being used earlier. In this survey is a tenant of the Stewarts, William Veal. It is William Veal who is the butler in the fictionalized version of the McGehee family and the burning of their home, Bowling Green, in So Red the Rose, by Stark Young. The butler was said to be in real life a slave of the Stewarts. It was Duncan Stewarts grandson’s wife who was the pregnant daughter of Judge McGehee who was present when Bowling Green was burned.
T. Jones Stewart in his lifetime purchased the undivided interest of Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage which he left to his wife Sarah Ann Stewart, widow, and children Sallie J. Fort and Penelope Mathews. Therefore this portion of the family has 3/5 of the estate. James A. Stewart has 2/5 of the estate having purchased 1/5 from his brother Charles Stewart.
The tract was surveyed (2,367 57/100 acres) and divided. It consisted of parts of sections 21-26 and 31-36. A plot of the plantation shows it running from the Amite County line in the east to the Ventress and Whitaker lands in the west. The Woodville-Clinton Road near bisects it from north to south and the Jackson Road branching off south of the house. The dwelling is noted in arable lot #3 (374.24 acres, valued with improvements at $1666),[96] and an area marked quarters lies to the east of the house between the house and the Woodville-Clinton Road. Also of note is a gin tract.[97] This is 27 acres on which there is a gin house, steam engine, mill and gin, the value not including the engine, boiler and gin stand but including the press is $272.30.[98]
How this division of the property changed things we do not know. In 1879, Sarah and her daughters sell to James all of arable lot 5---334 acres. Sarah still has an interest in 1883 when she sues for damages done by the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Memphis railroad which was run through the area in 1882. She notes corn and cotton growing on the tract. It was a contentious affair going to a jury trial with the verdict being set aside.[99]
A list of unclaimed letters remaining in the Woodville Post Office, Nov. 1, 1878 included JA Stewart.[100]
A list of the regular jurors for the April term 1879 of the circuit court include James Stewart.[101]
Jas. Stewart was a grand juror for the third district, 1880.[102]
James died in 1883 at the home of his son in law J. Burruss McGehee.[103] As early as 1874 James was giving money and land to his children from Laurel Hill.[104] He died intestate and in the division of his estate it is noted he was living at the home place. Perhaps his sister-in-law had already gone to live with her daughter. Sarah Ann died at the home of her daughter in 1892 in West Feliciana Parish.[105] James is buried at Holly Grove.
The settling of the estate notes he possessed a plantation and personal property: notes, money, accounts, stock, $12,000. The 1883 petition also notes his widow Juliana is now living in Washington, D.C. (this would be with her daughter Ida Simpson) and his heirs include seven children: Duncan Stewart, T. Jones Stewart, Catherine E. McGehee, wife of JB McGehee, Penelope J. Sterling, Cornelia R. Batchelor, wife of AA Batchelor, Ida Simpson, wife of Lennox Simpson, and Rosa Sutherland. It is further noted that Juliana, Penelope Stirling, and Duncan Stewart received from the intestate in his life time advancement to an amount greater that any distributor’s share. And T. Jones Stewart had transferred his interest to his sister Rosa Sutherland.[106]
In a filing December 1883 the residence of all the heirs is listed: Juliana is now with Ida Simpson in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, Rosa Sutherland is in Washington, D.C., Duncan and Catherine E. McGehee are both in Laurel Hill in West Feliciana Parish (They had married siblings.), Cornelia Batchelor lived at Smithland, Point Coupee Parish, and T. Jones Stewart lived in New Orleans.
It is of interest to note how much James Alexander Stewart had given his children during his lifetime, but to count against their inheritance. Penelope Stirling had received $16,000, Duncan $18,000, Catherine McGehee $10,000, Ida Simpson $10,000, Rosa Sutherland $700, Jones $7,920.30 and his wife Juliana $41,400. The administrator states there is $20,000 in the estate with the land only valued at $3,600. The heirs ask to be made equal and Juliana asks for 160 acres including “the dwelling house in which her said husband lived at the time of his death.” It is further noted in the pre death gifts, one in 1859 to Penelope Sterling: $10,000 and three Negroes, Jo and his wife Irene and their son Levy, valued at $2,600. Those were better times. In February 1863, Duncan received title to seven Negroes, value $6,800. The son Henry Stewart is not mentioned. He died in 1866. In 1867 Juliana received 112 shares of the City Railroad stock of New Orleans, $22,000 and received a house and lot, fixtures, furniture at Mississippi City, value $9,000. In 1872 Cornelia and Ida received each $7,500 and ¼ of Highland Plantation in Point Coupee Parish valued at $2,500. Also in 1872, Jones received ½ of Highland Plantation, value $5,000. In 1881, James’ daughter Penelope Stirling was noted to have received her full share of his property of every description and had no further claim. In 1884 the 1277.3 acres was divided into eight shares with Rosa Sutherland receiving two shares.[107]
Charles Fort and his wife are living at Holly Grove with their children in the 80’s and 90’s. Maybe Juliana comes back since she asked for the house and some acreage. Who is in the mansion house? The mansion house is in the section belonging to Sarah Stewart, Charles’ grandmother. Is there another house on the plantation? Penelope Stirling conveys a portion to Rosa Sutherland in 1884 of her undivided interest in the estate. Cornelia conveys 145 acres to Rosa the same year. Rosa may also have moved back by this time. Ida is now living in Pittsburg. In 1886 Rosa Sutherland conveys ½ interest in several tracts of about 400 acres plus tools and cattle to HT Sharp. He starts mortgaging the land in 1886, 87 and 88. Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp for in 1889 they are mortgaging it together. Of note, in 1889 Mrs. SA Stewart, Mrs. Rosa Sharp, and Mrs. Catherine McGehee purchase 32 acres. But the land starts to be sold off. T. Jones Stewart sells 141 acres to AJ Norwood in 1889.
Sarah Stewart takes the railroad to court for damages to her crops in 1883 so as to suggest she is farming at that time. She and her daughters appear to have the house tract in the division of the estate of Penelope Stewart petitioned by James A. Stewart in 1876. In 1892 Sarah Stewart dies at her daughters in West Feliciana. Rosa Sutherland is definitely back living in Wilkinson Co. in 1886, perhaps by 1884. Where is she living? She does own the east part of section 25 of 57.5 acres. This could be the mansion tract. But she also at the time of her death in 1928 has a residence in the town of Centreville. Is she living there? She and her husband are farming portions of the Holly Grove Plantation from 1886 until near the time of her death, perhaps as late as 1920 although they had sold off a substantial portion in 1913.
Charles Mathews Fort of Catalpa, great grandson of Duncan, was a student at VMI, Class of 1874, but he left early (Oct 1871) to return home, and his mother, Sally Fort sent him to Holly Grove to help his grandmother, Sarah Stewart at Holly Grove. Sally had his older brother William Johnson Fort, Jr. at Catalpa. Charles M. Fort probably came in 1873 at age 21 to Holly Grove. There is a notation elsewhere that the laid by his cotton crop in 1871 (Holly Grove or Catalpa?).
Charles Fort married Sarah Wall in 1885. The Walls owned land west of the Ventress Place but the family first came to the area with a Spanish land grant of 1795 to Richland Plantation in the western part of the present county. Charles lived at Holly Grove until he died in 1914. Sarah Wall Fort died in 1897, a few days after the birth of Jones Stewart Fort, her 6th child. The home was sold after Charles died and the contents distributed in the family.[108] Anna Key Fort Pipes organized the dispersal of the contents of Holly Grove after her brother, Charles’ death.
From 1889 until 1917 Rosa and her husband Hiram Sharp mortgage the land almost every year to apparently have money to run the farm. This is in several tracts totaling 752 acres and consists of Lots 3,4,5,7 and 8 of the estate of James A. Stewart. The mortgages are usually satisfied in a year or two. On one note we note they are producing cotton, cotton seed, corn, oats, and potatoes. It is also noted they have a 1/3 interest in a gin at Whitaker Station. In 1913 they sell 530 acres to CJ Bear. 1917 is the last year that they jointly borrow money. In 1920 Rosa takes a loan by herself and sells an oil and gas lease and is termed a widow.
Rosa Stewart Sharp died 13 January 1928 leaving a will.[109] She was living in a house in Centreville.
In 1892 Sarah Ann Randolph Stewart died at age 83 in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Fort, with whom she lived. She is buried next to her husband at Holly Grove.
In 1894 Penelope Mathews conveys to her sister, Sally Fort, lot 2, 950 acres and lot 1, 949 acres, is warranted by Sally Fort to Penelope Mathews. In 1897 Penelope Mathews sells lot 1 to JA Redhead.[110]
In 1898 Juliana dies and is buried beside her husband, James Alexander at Holly Grove. Now Duncan’s widow, Penelope, their two sons who lived at Holly Grove and their wives are all buried together near the homeplace. Also Duncan’s daughter, Catherine and her husband Harry Cage are buried in the cemetery.
Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp and returns to live at Holly Grove. On September 10, 1907, evidence that the boll weevil had crossed the Mississippi River appeared in a cotton field six miles south of Natchez. By the fall of 1909, infestation covered the southwestern third of the state, and it took about six acres of land to produce a single bale of cotton.[111] We know that Southern cotton farming was devastated in 1910. We note in a filing to divide the Redhead estate, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove, that the boll weevil had made cotton not profitable.[112] In 1916 Cornelia conveys to Rosa S. Sharp 57.5 acres, the east part of section 25, where Rosa Sharp lives, plus 107 aces of section 22.[113] Charles Fort died 1914 and maybe Rosa is now living in the mansion house.
Not only will Holly Grove no longer be a cotton plantation, but the Stewart presence is coming to an end at Holly Grove. Sallie Fort Butler (daughter of Sarah Stewart Fort) sells to the White brothers in 1914, and in 1924 Rosa S. Sharp sells to FE White the 57.5 acres of section 25 she owns. Is she selling the mansion house and moving to a residence in Centreville? I believe that the mansion house is in the 482 acres sold by Sallie Fort Butler to the White brothers in 1914. I think Charles Fort lived in the mansion house until he died in 1914 and the house tract was then sold to the Whites.
Rosa dies in 1928 and is buried along with her husband Hiram Sharp (death date not known but Rosa is a widow by 1920) at Holly Grove, the last of the Stewarts to live and to be buried there.
The White family lives at Holly Grove until the 1950’s when it is sold to Charles Dudley.
In the 1960’s Georgie Perkins Williamson and her husband Floyd purchase Holly Grove
Georgie was related to the Stewarts through the marriages of Cornelia Stewart to Albert Batchelor and also with the marriage of Albert Gallatin Cage to Elvira Scott Gayden.
The Walter Propst family lived at Holly Grove in the 1970’s before abandoning it. Dr. Marvin Stuckey purchased the property, 110 acres, in 1988 and began a restoration and rebuilding of the house. He sold the property to Landon and Connie Anderson in 2005.
[1]
Woodville Republican, June 1825.
[2] Chuck
Speed lists 3 more children on his website but seems to have them confused with
Duncan’s children. I have found no other evidence of any more children than the
two girls.
[3] Holly
Grove Cemetery
[4]
Tombstone Grace Churchyard, Henry Martin Stewart, 6 Mar 1845-27 Dec 1866.
[5] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891.
[6] Statues
of MS Territory, The Constitution of the US, Edward Turner
[7] 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.
[8]
Encyclopedia of MS Hx, Vol 1, Dunbar Rowland
[9] Memoirs
of MS, part 2, 1891.
[10]
American Historical Magazine, Univ. Press, Vol. 8, 1902. Originally written by
Dr. Morgan Brown in 1826 and states James is now at Cumberland College.
[11]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[12]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[13] WR, 20
June 1854.
[14] ibid,
Vol II, p. 835.
[15]
lib.lsu.edu/special/guides/Natchez
[16]
gravestone
[17] Madness
and the Mississippi Bonds, A Tale of Old Woodville by Robert Bruce Smith, 2004.
p. 10.
[18]
Madness, pp. 10-12.
[19]
Madness, p. 14.
[20]
Woodville Republican, 5 Dec 1840.
[21] Or
March
[22] Old
Centreville was in Amite County and originally was known at Elysian Fields. It
was moved to its present location to be on the railroad in the 1880’s.
[23] It is
not clear who this is. Sarah’s father Peter had no brothers but this could have
been a great uncle.
[24]
Manuscripts Department, Library of the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Southern Historical Collection, #1998-z, Randolph and Yates Family Papers.
[25]
Rootsweb
[26] UNC
papers
[27] Lucy
Audubon, p. 213.
[28]
Woodville Republican, 1 Mar 1834.
[29] UNC
papers
[30] Memoirs
of Ms, Bio and Hx. part 2
[31] Deed
records of Joe Brian, p. 111.
[32]
Provenance: T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart (Holly Grove Plantation) as it is
embossed on the leather binding to Penelope Stewart and Charles Mathews (Butler
Greenwood Plantation), to Sallie Mathews and James Alexander Ventress, to her
niece Anne Mathews Lawrason and Edward Butler, to Charles Mathews Butler and
Katherine Pipes, to Anne Butler.
[33] UNC
papers
[34] Lynda
Crist, p. 249.
[35]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1840.
[36]
Woodville Republican, 19 Sept 1840.
[37]
Woodville Republican, 26 Sept 1840.
[38] UNC
papers
[39]
Woodville Republican, 13 May 1843.
[40]
Woodville Republican, 10 June 1843.
[41]
Woodville Republican, 11 Nov 1843.
[42]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1846.
[43]
Woodville Republican, 14 Nov 1846.
[44] UNC
papers
[45] UNC
papers
[46]
Woodville Republican, 9 May 1846.
[47]
Woodville Republican, 6 June 1846.
[48]
Woodville Republican, 7 Nov 1846.
[49]
Woodville Republican, 21 Nov 1846.
[50]
Woodville Republican, 12 June 1847.
[51]
Woodville Republican, 14 Aug 1847.
[52] WR 12
Feb 1848.
[53] Lynda
Crist, p. 137.
[54]
Woodville Republican, 13 Apr 1844.
[55]
Woodville Republican, 24 Aug 1844.
[56] Lynda
Crist, p. 145
[57] Lynda
Crist, p. 147
[58]
Woodville Republican, 5 July 1845.
[59]
Woodville Republican, 23 Aug 1845.
[60] Lynda
Crist, p. 148
[61] Lynda
Crist, p. 150
[62] Lynda
Crist, p. 150-51
[63]
Woodville Republican, 7 Aug 1847.
[64] Lynda
Crist, p. 154-55
[65] Lynda
Crist, p. 166
[66] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2. 1891.
[67]
Independent Minds and Shared Community, Married Women’s Wills in Amite Co. MS,
1840-1919, Jennifer M. Payne, Masters Thesis, Rice Univ. 1996.
[68] UNC
papers
[69] UNC
papers
[70] WR, 19
Nov 1850.
[71] WR, 28
Jan 1851.
[72] WR, 19
April 1853.
[73] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891
[74] UNC
papers
[75] UNC
papers
[76] Port
Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 17.
[77]
Probably CC Cage.
[78] WR, 16
July 1850.
[79] ?
relation
[80] WR, 29
Apr 1851.
[81] WR, 3
June 1851.
[82] WR, 14
Oct 1851.
[83] WR, 21
June 1853.
[84] WR, 20
Mar. 1855
[85]
Woodville Republican, 3 April 1855.
[86]
Rootsweb largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County 1860.
[87] The
Burning of Bowling Green, p. 8.
[88]
files.usgwarchives.net
[89]
Confederate Col. a biographical register by Bruce Allardice gives the
following: Grivot Guards early 1862; Lt. Col. 26th La. 3 Apr 1862;
Col. 10 Nov 1862; resign 30 Dec 1862 due
to ill health; VADC to Gen. Kirby Smith 1863; Col. and judge military court of
the TMD 9 Mar 1864, appt. never confirmed; 1865 elected state representative;
speaker of the house, 1865-67.
[90] MS
Contemporary Bio. Ed. Dunbar Rowland, p. 311-312. 1907. The information in this and the next 4
paragraphs.
[91] Lists
of Officers and privates who volunteered in CSA from Wilkinson Co. compiled by
WC Miller, 19 May 1903.
[92]
Woodville Republican, 19 Dec 1863.
[93] MS Hx
Now, cotton and the Civil War, Eugene R. Dattel
[94] Dattel
[95]
Pipesfamily.com
[96]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[97]
Abstracts for Charles Dudley, Vol. I, p. 151.
[98]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[99]
Abstracts, vol. I, p. 187
[100]
WR, 16 Nov 1878.
[102]
WR, 11 Sept 1880.
[103]
Obit, Woodville Republican, 1 Sept 1883
[104]
Joe Brian abstracts of the settlement of Jas A. Stewart estate.
[105]
tombstone
[106]
Abstracts, vol II, p. 434.
[107]
Abstracts, Vol II, p. 445.
[108]
Personal communication, 2016, Jim Titley, Dallas.
[109]
Abstracts of deed in the possession of Joe Brian.
[110]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 203.
[111]
Port Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 21.
[112]
Abstracts Vol I. P. 259.
[113]
Abstracts, Vol III, p. 834.
The Second and Third Generations
The first of Duncan Stewart’s sons to marry was Tignal Jones, his eldest son. “Married at Sligo, on Thursday evening the 16th, [June 1825] by the Rev. James A. Fox, Mr. Tignal Jones Stewart to Miss Sally Ann Randolph, eldest daughter of Judge Randolph.”[1] Sligo was the name of the plantation of John Sims south of Woodville. The Randolph plantation Elmwood, was also south of Woodville Was this wedding at the home of the bride as was usually the case? Jones Stewart (as he was usually referred to) and his bride Sarah Ann Yates Randolph, the daughter of the Federal District Judge of Mississippi, who lived just south of Woodville would make their home at Holly Grove with Tignal Jones’ widowed mother, Penelope, and with the younger brothers, James Alexander, age 14 and Charles age 10. The Stewart daughters had married earlier: Elizabeth (Eliza) at age 20 in 1818 to Col. WS Hamilton, a lawyer from St. Francisville; Catherine Mary at age 16 in 1820 to Henry Cage. Harry and Catherine Cage may have also lived at Holly Grove. Their children were born in 1822, 1825 and 1827. The youngest child, a daughter, Penelope, died in 1824 and Catherine died in 1828. Judge Cage did not remarry so it seems possible that the two young boys, Duncan Stewart Cage and Albert Gallatin Cage, may well have lived at Holly Grove with their grandmother.
Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s first child was born 31 August 1826 and named Sarah Jones. Penelope followed on 14 November 1828.[2]
Tignal Jones’ younger brother James Alexander married Sarah Ann’s younger sister, Juliana, 23 February 1832 and I think they also lived at Holly Grove. James was 21, Juliana 18. Their first child was named Penelope, born 25 Jan 1835; followed by Duncan B., born 7 Oct 1836 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi where the family was summering; Catherine Eliza, 26 September 1839; Tignal Jones; Rosa, 1842;[3] Henry Martin, 6 Mar 1845;[4] Cornelia, 1845; and Ida, 1847.
Duncan Stewart’s youngest son Charles married in the late 1840’s (His first child was born in 1851.) He lived in Pointe Coupee Parish but when he went there is not known. He would have been in his 30’s when he married and may have continued to live at Holly Grove after he was of age.
If all these family members did live at Holly Grove the house was full but by that time it was a big house.
The Randolph girls were educated by Lucy Audubon when she was teaching in West Felliciana Parish, and at some point Juliana (and perhaps her sisters) was sent to the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans for instruction.[5]
Jones and James Alexander (Charles was probably too young) were in part educated at the Jackson Academy, a boys school located about 16 miles east of Woodville near the Ventress Place, which would make it close to Holly Grove as well. Jackson Academy’s location eventually became the Redwood plantation, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove.
An act establishing Jackson Academy was passed 27 Dec. 1814. The academy was named after General Jackson. Superintendence Daniel Williams, sen. James Stewart, Samuel Riley, Lovick Vintress, John Davis, Samuel Norwood, Francis Richards, William Bryan, John Nismith, board of Trustees.[6] 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.[7]
Jackson Academy was one of the first schools in Mississippi. Jefferson College was established in 1802 but did not open until 1810. Madison near Port Gibson was established in 1809, then Jackson Academy in 1814. In 1815 three academies were established nearby, Pinckneyville and Williamson near Woodville, and Amite. Shieldsboro Academy in Pass Christian was established in 1818. Elizabeth Female Academy in Washington, Natchez Academy, Pearl Hill in Jefferson Co. and the Wilkinson Female Academy were established in 1819.[8]
While the Stewarts’ cousin, James Alexander Ventress (b. 1805), who lived next door at Lone Hall Plantation was educated in Europe and his stay there is extensively documented, not much is known of the higher education of the Stewart boys. We do know that James Alexander did attend schools in Nashville, Tennessee (possibly the University of Nashville, created in 1826 from Cumberland University and later to become Montgomery Bell Academy, Peabody College and part of Vanderbilt University) and Troy, NY.[9] (The Rensselaer School was established in 1824 in Troy by Stephen Van Rensselaer “in the application of science to the common purposes of life.” It would become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.) James A. Stewart was born in 1811 and married in 1832. Therefore his schooling away from Mississippi would probably be after 1825. One document states James attended Cumberland College in Nashville, Tennessee[10] so he may have gone there before 1826 when it became the University of Nashville.
Certainly Holly Grove was a busy place with marriages and children but there was sadness as well. Catherine Cage’s oldest child died: Penelope Jones Cage (b. September 5, 1822, died Aug 12, 1824, aged 1 yr. 11 mos. 17 days) and was the first person buried at Holly Grove. Catherine had two more children: Duncan Cage (b. c. 1825) and Albert Gallatin (b. 20 June 1827) before following her first born to the cemetery at Holly Grove 12 February 1829.
Duncan’s wife Penelope died aged 64 years on February 23, 1843 and was buried at Holly Grove.
But marriages would start again. Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s oldest daughter Sarah Jones wed William Johnston Fort of St. Francisville, 17 Dec 1846[11] and moved to West Feliciana Parish and the Fort’s home, Catalpa. The widow of William Fort, Mary Johnston Fort had married Charles Stewart, brother to Duncan, in 1820 and lived with her young son, William Johnston Fort, in Wilkinson County where the boy would grow up not far from Holly Grove. Sarah’s sister, Penelope, married two years later, 27 April 1848[12] to Charles Lewis Mathews of Greenwood (now Butler-Greenwood) Plantation, very near to Catalpa in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander’s daughter Penelope Jones Stewart married in 1854 into the planter aristocracy of West Feliciana, Jacob Bowman Stirling, grandson of Alexander Stirling of Egypt Pantation. “Maried on the 15th [June 1854], at the residence of James A. Stewart, Esq., by the Rev. WW Lord, J. Bowman Sterling, Esq., to Miss Penelope J. Stewart.[13] Their young daughter, Mary, would be buried at Holly Grove in 1857.
James Alexander and Juliana’s eldest son Duncan made a propitious marriage in January 1861 when he married Caroline McGehee of Bolling Green Plantation, Wilkinson County. Caroline was the daughter of Judge Edward McGehee of Wilkinson County, one of its most prominent and wealthiest citizens. Duncan’s sister, Catherine, had already married Caroline’s brother, J. Burruss McGehee in June 1859. These two siblings would also make their homes in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander and Juliana’s son, Tignal J. (b. 1839) married Mary Hayward in 1871 and they lived in New Orleans.
James and Juliana’s daughter, Rosa (b. 1842) married first St. Clair Sutherland of Maryland (related to the Knickerbocker family of New York) before 1883. They lived in Washington DC. She then married Capt. Hiram Sharp of Alabama before 1889 and they lived at Holly Grove in the latter part of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. They would be the last of the Stewarts to live at Holly Grove and both would be buried there, she, the last, in 1928.
James and Juliana’s son Henry, at age 21 in 1866, drowned, in the Mississippi trying to rescue a lady passenger from a burning boat. He was a soldier in the 38th MS. regiment, twice wounded, distinguished for his bravery and coolness. It was said he always kept his gun loaded. When ordered to shoot a prisoner, he replied he did not keep his gun loaded to shoot unarmed men.[14] His grave marker is in Grace Churchyard: Henry Martin Stewart, Mar 6, 1845-Dec 27, 1866. The monument is shared with his cousin, Jones Stewart Fort of Catalpa, and is one of the grandest in Grace Cemetery.
James and Juliana’s daughter Cornelia (b. 1845) married a physician, Albert Batchelor, on 3 Dec 1876 and lived in Pointe Coupee Parish. Albert Agrippa Batchelor (1845-1905)[15] was the son of Thomas A. Batchelor and Victoria Gayden Wren of Beech Grove Plantation in Amite County, Mississippi.
James and Juliana’s daughter Ida (b. 1847) married Lenox W. Simpson (b. Maryland 1857) of Washington, DC, a nephew of the celebrated jurist, Lenox of Washington.
Duncan’s son, Tignal Jones Stewart (b. 1800) would die in 1855 and be buried at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann, his widow would live on until 1892 before joining him in the Holly Grove Cemetery. Although she did live in 1891 at age 82 with her daughter Sallie Fort at Catalpa in West Feliciana and she would die there in January 1892.[16] Tignal Jones brother James Alexander would die at age 72, in 1883, living longer than his siblings and parents. His wife, Juliana, would not join him in the Holly Grove Cemetery until 1898 when she died, age 84.
Although we see the Stewarts marrying into the Feliciana aristocracy, Wilkinson County was very much a part of the plantation economy all along the Mississippi. Scattered around Wilkinson County during the flush times of its heyday were perhaps 160 plantations considered worthy of the name. A few were very grand, many relatively humble; virtually all flourished or failed by the number of 500-pound cotton bales piled up for downriver shipment each fall.[17] Bowling Green, the home of the McGehees was a fine Federal house with a double height columned portico. La Grange built on the eve of the War Between the States was magnificent indeed. Alexander Ventress, the son of Duncan Stewart’s sister, Elizabeth who married Lovick Ventress, had engaged the famous Philadelphia architect, Samuel Sloan to build the home.[18]
Woodville, in the 1830’s had become urbane, encompassing an ultrafashionable French coffeehouse, the Café de Woodville, two newspapers, (including the still-publishing Woodville Republican), as well as banks, blacksmiths, livery stables, stores, saloons, hotels, an Episcopal church with a pipe organ, and the beginnings of a railroad.[19]
Mississippi grew as well. In 1839 the population was 91,865 whites, 991 free persons of color and 133,431 slaves.[20]
We do not at present have a great deal of information of the daily life at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann married Jones Stewart in 1825 and by 1833 had two girls, ages seven and five. Sarah Randolph Stewart received a letter, 17 May[21] 1833 from Elizabeth Leatherbury Randolph, her step-mother in Natchez. (Sarah’s mother had died in 1825. Sarah’s step-mother, Elizabeth Randolph [widowed when Peter Randolph died in 1832] married Thomas Butler Percy in Natchez, 4 June 1833 at Trinity Church.) The letter is addressed to Sarah at Centreville, Amite County.[22] The letter mentions gifts to Sarah and her children and Elizabeth’s recent acquisition of a German piano at auction for $250.
A letter (undated) survives from T. Jones Stewart in Columbia County, Georgia, to his wife Sarah Ann of his activities in attending to the settlement of her father’s estate, of his plan to visit her uncle Randolph[23] and his family, and of young ladies in the area who had captivated Hampden (this would be Sarah’s brother, John Hampden Randolph who married in 1837 so this letter predates that event.).[24] We do know from other sources that Sarah’s grandfather, Peter Randolph (b. 1750) died in 1812 in Jackson County, Georgia and left a will in Clarke County, Georgia in 1804.[25]
There are four letters, 1833-1834 from Cornelia Virginia Randolph (Sarah Ann’s 14 year old sister) at Beech Grove to Sarah Ann in which she mentioned some aspects of her life as a boarding school student.[26] Beech Grove is the plantation in West Feliciana Parish where Lucy Audubon taught although at an earlier date. She had left there in January 1830.[27] Sarah Ann along with her sisters, Juliana and Augusta, had gone to school at Beech Woods in Feliciana Parish to Lucy Audubon in 1823 when Sarah was 14.
The Woodville Republican reported that James A. Stewart had six hounds to run off in the direction of Fort Adams in 1834. A liberal reward was offered.[28] This is one of a few references that James A. Stewart might live elsewhere than Holly Grove since Ft. Adams is some 20 miles west of Woodville.
Cornelia Randolph, now 17, wrote three letters in 1836 to her sister, Sarah Ann addressed to Woodville. She wrote from Louisville Kentucky, then Guyandotte Virginia, and NY talking about eating ice cream, enjoying illuminated gardens, listening to music, a trip to Saratoga from New Orleans by way of Louisville Kentucky and White Sulphur Springs Virginia (after the Civil War this would be West Virginia). In the letters she mentions family members and James Ventress (Her older sister Augusta had married William CS Ventress in 1828. James Alexander Ventress was his brother, aged 31 at the time. These Ventress boys were first cousins of Sarah Ann’s husband Tignal Jones.) who were with her on at least part of the trip.[29]
James Alexander and Juliana’s son Duncan was born in early October 1836 in Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi gulf coast where the family was summering.[30]
At some point James A. Stewart purchased a house in Mississippi City as he gave it to his wife in December 1867.[31] Mississippi City was originally the county seat for Harrison Co. (1841-1902). In 1841 it was in contention with Oxford for the location of the University of Mississippi. The Louisville and Nashville RR came through in 1869-70.
These travels suggest of the wealth and sophistication of the Randolph and Stewart families.
Another sign of the wealth of the family is the Bible that has descended in the family.[32] The Bible is a Harpers Illuminated Bible of 1846, printed by Harper and Bros. NYC. It was the publishing event of the 1800’s, the most heavily illustrated Bible ever printed with 1600 detailed illustrations. It is also the first known example of using electrotype technology to reproduce original woodcut engravings. It was published in 54 parts between 1843 and 1846. The Stewart Bible is embossed with the names of “T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart.”
In 1837 Cornellia Randolph wrote again to her sister Sarah Ann at Holly Grove. She wrote on the 6th and later on the 27th of August from Shieldsborough, Hancock County, Mississippi about social activities, clothes, family and friends, and the spread of yellow fever in New Orleans. Hancock County is on the Gulf of Mexico and near to New Orleans and was a Gulf Coast watering spot. Apparently the Randolphs are summering elsewhere than their Mississippi plantation again that summer.[33]
From James Alexander Ventress’ biographer we learn that he was invited in the 15 years after 1833 to his cousins, the Stewarts, to dinner, a fish-fry, and a shooting match.[34]
A big storm caused “great loss and injury” in Natchez in the spring of 1840. A large meeting of the citizens of Wilkinson County convened at the courthouse in Woodville on May 12, 1840 for the purpose of expressing the deep sympathy felt by this county. A committee appointed to collect funds included among others, Messrs. E. McGehee, James A Stewart,…AM Feltus…Moses Liddell…Gen WL Brandon, Col. Robt. Semple…..[35]
The Woodville Republican reported in September 1840 the delegates to the Democratic and Whig Conventions in Jackson. MF DeGraffenreid, Duncan Stewart’s niece’s husband, was a Democratic delegate.[36] The Democrats in Wilkinson County were certainly outnumbered by the Whigs with their delegates being 133 to 19 Democrats. Among the Whig delegates were AM Feltus, HM Farish, E. McGehee, CA Thornton, JA Stewart, H. Connell, JH Randolph, M. Liddell, John W. Burrus from Woodville; RT Semple from Pinckneyville; Harry Cage, JA Ventress, AG Cage, P Cage and Charles D. Stewart from Mount Pleasant.[37] Mount Pleasant is the closest community to Holly Grove in Wilkinson County as Centreville at that time was in Amite County. However this does not explain why JA Stewart is a delegate for Woodville. Was he not living at Holly Grove at this time as was previously thought? Charles D. Stewart, age 25, still appears to be living at Holly Grove at this time
On June 23, 1842 there is a letter to Sarah Ann from her sister, Augusta, now married to William Ventress (m.1828), about family and personal matters. She mentioned Florence, William, Peter, and Jim (her children).[38] William Ventress is a cousin of Sarah Ann’s husband, Jones Stewart.
In 1843 a mule had strayed from the plantation of James A. Stewart, according to the Woodville Republican.[39]
In 1843 T. Jones Stewart was listed as elected to office in the Wilkinson County Agricultural Society along with JW Burruss, CA Thornton, Harry Cage, AM Feltus, JA Ventress, Edward McGehee, Pulaski Cage, Hugh Connell, AG Cage and others.[40] Receiving awards in the county’s first agricultural fair in 1843 were some of the same names: T. Jones Stewart and associated relatives and in-laws: Dr. Currier, Judge H. Cage, JW Burrus, Major JL Trask, J. Alexander Ventress, Dr. Redhead, Mrs. E. Feltus, and CA Thornton.[41] The Hon. TJ Stewart was absent as president of the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Mechanical Association’s fair in May 1846. But duly elected to office were TJ Stewart, AG Cage, W. Burruss, and JD Stewart among others. Ladies awarded were Mrs. McGehee, Mrs. Currier and others.[42]
The Woodville Republican reported the full grown English peas of this season on 8 March 1845 from the plantation of JA Stewart.
In November 1846 the Agricultural Society reported on the cotton crop in Wilkinson County: T. Jones Stewart with 700 acres made 115 (is this bales?), James A. Stewart with 450 acres made 140. other associated family listed were AG Cage, JD Stewart, JW Burruss, E. McGehee, James L. Trask, CC Cage and AM Feltus. Of the 75 producers listed, T. Jones Stewart has the 5th largest acreage.[43]
There are three letters (19 July, 5 August, and 27 December 1846) from Cornelia Randolph Thornton, (who married in 1839, Charles Augustine Thornton) to Sarah Ann from Hopemore, Bayou Goula and St. Francisville. These talk of family and personal matters and a mention of Hamden’s family (This would be their brother, John Hampden who had married Emily Jane Liddell in 1837 and who would ultimately have eleven children to populate his palatial mansion, Nottoway, on the Mississippi near White Castle, Louisiana.) [44] Hamden at that time lived at Bayou Goula, very near the later Nottoway.
In 1846 (15 August) Augusta Randolph Ventress is at the “coast” although her letter to her sister, Sarah Ann, at Woodville is postmarked from Donaldsonville on the Mississippi in Ascension Parish, Louisiana near her home.[45]
The Mexican War drew to a fever pitch in Wilkinson County in 1846. The Woodville Republican noted, “Although Wilkinson county has no Militia at all, as a nucleus around which to gather the brave and patriotic spirits that are burning to fly to the Rio Grande, still the people have moved and nobly too, by public meetings, resolutions and subscriptions, and the immediate enrollment of about sixty noble fellows who love their country ‘s fame better than the peace and quiet of home…The man who will not support his country in the time of her need is unworthy of the protection she has given him and should be sent out of it as were the Tories formerly. Hurrah for Uncle Sam, right or wrong!” A public meeting was held at the courthouse for the purpose of discussing the warlike relations of the United States and Mexico. Gen. WL Brandon was recommended to command such forces as may be raised from this section of the state. A committee was formed to collect together the yagers (a hunting rifle) in the county. Jas. B. Stewart ( James A.?) was part of the committee.[46] Maj. Gen. WL Brandon appointed JD Stewart (son of William, son of James, twin to Duncan) Division Quarter Master of the 1st Division, MM to rank as major.[47] A list of volunteers was published 20 June 1846 in the Woodville Republican. Among these were JD Stewart, BM Cage, AG Cage (Albert Gallatin Cage, son of Judge Harry Cage and Catherine Stewart, daughter to Duncan), WL Cage (William Lyall Cage was the son of Pulaski Cage and Mary Ventress) and IG Gayden (his sister Elvira married Albert G. Cage). In November the Woodville Republican reported on 3 deaths in Mexico of local volunteers.[48] And in another issue of the paper more dead and wounded at Monterey were reported. James D. Stewart was requested by Col. Mays to raise a company of Mounted Rangers for Hays’ Texas Regiment.[49]
In June 1847 plans were being made to welcome home the volunteers back from Mexico. The committee to receive the volunteers consisted of JA Ventress, T. Jones Stewart, CC Cage, JA Stewart, E. McGehee and others. A barbecue was planned. JA Stewart along with many others was on the barbecue arrangement committee.[50] Among those published in the local paper as mustering out: BM Cage, 12 June 1847, New Orleans; WL Cage, 13 Oct. ’46, Camp Allen; James D. Stewart, 24 Feb ’47, Monterey; W. Stewart, fifer, 24 Sept ’46, Matamoros; Transferred: AG Cage, to Col. Hay’s Texas Rangers.[51]
A ball was held in Woodville in honor of General Taylor on the evening of his arrival on the 15th Feb 1848. Among the managers were JD Stewart (grandson of James, twin to Duncan) and Carnot Posey (whose sister married Pulaski Cage’s son).[52]
T. Jones Stewart did get involved in politics like his father. In 1843 Whig leaders, including James Alexander Ventress and his cousin T. Jones Stewart, were urged by the press to get out the vote, guard against election shenanigans, and see to the rejection of the repudiators[53] (a reference to an important issue of the day, the repudiation of the Mississippi bank bonds.) In April 1844 the Wilkinson County Clay Club met in the courthouse. T. Jones Stewart was selected as president. The Hon. Edward McGehee was one of the vice presidents. For distribution to the different precincts in the county: Mt. Pleasant, AG Cage and Dr. Redhead.[54] On the 24 August 1844, “This being the regular day for the monthly meeting of the Clay Club of Wilkinson County, the town was alive with the citizens of the country pouring in at an early hour of the day to participate in the patriotic efforts.” TJ Stewart, president, was noted to be present.[55] In 1844 at the Whig meeting in Jackson T. Jones Stewart was named for the second time as a Whig elector, serving also as president of the Wilkinson Clay Club (Henry Clay).[56] In 1845 James Alexander Ventress and Cooper, former Whig senator and representative, were endorsed by the Wilkinson Democrats. The same meeting endorsed Jones Stewart, noting that he was a sincere worker for local needs. He had been nominated for the house by the local Whig caucus a week earlier.[57] In July 1845 we read in the Woodville Republican that James A. Ventress is running for senator and T. Jones Stewart for representative.[58] In August we read that WL Cage among others is supporting WL Smith.[59] Jones Stewart was named in September for the senate by the Whig meeting reversing their former decision.[60] Ventress lost in November. He was out for the first time in a decade. His cousin, Jones Stewart, had 468 votes to Ventress’ 357.[61] And Stewart was named to Ventress’ favorite committees: education and public buildings.[62] Stewart ran for senate again in 1847 as a Whig; Ventress ran for the house as a Democrat. The Natchez Courier forecast that Stewart, “an honorable, high-toned, intellectual gentleman” would be returned to the senate. The Woodville Republican reported in August 1847, “The Free Trader runs up the name of our fellow citizen, Douglas H. Cooper, as a candidate for state senator from this senatorial district, composed of Adams, Wilkinson and Franklin counties. It will be remembered that a Whig meeting in Natchez nominated T. Jones Stewart, ‘of ours’, for the same office. So the contest bids fair to be between two of our own citizens.”[63] The Whigs won again and Stewart not his cousin went to Jackson.[64] Although the Democrats had a majority in the state legislature, the Whigs were still strong in Wilkinson County. They returned Jones Stewart to the Senate in 1849 and his kinsman James D. Stewart in the house.[65] (James D. Stewart would be James Duncan Stewart [b. 1824, Wilkinson Co.] the third child of William Stewart, the son of James Stewart who was twin to Duncan Stewart of Holly Grove.) Jones Stewart served in the state legislature in Jackson as well as state senator. He was the founder of a bill to protect the rights of married women to hold property and real estate.[66] The 1839 Act for the Protection and Preservation of the Rights of Women gave women the ability to possess property separate from their husband.[67] A letter dated 26 January 1846, Sarah Ann, Tignal Jones’s wife, wrote from Holly Grove to her husband in Jackson, Mississippi. She mentioned visiting his brother James Ventress (he had Ventress cousins), plans for a trip to the coast, and regret that his session would be lengthy.[68]
Other letters to T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi, from his wife Sarah Ann on 15 January and 7 February 1848, are about family and personal matters. She also mentions agricultural matters and a visit to Judge Cage (the widower of Catherine Stewart, T. Jones’s sister).[69]
In November 1850 an open letter was sent to the Hon Jefferson Davis [US Senator from Mississippi] from a very large number of men, citizens of Wilkinson County, showing their support for his course in the recent struggle between the Northern Might and the Southern Right. The first signature printed in the paper is that of T. Jones Stewart. Other family members signing were his first cousin, JA Ventress, Charles C. Cage, George W. Cage, Pulaski Cage, Wm. L. Cage, Wm. J. Feltus, and HJ Feltus.[70] JA Stewart is not among the signatories. In January 1851 T. Jones Stewart is a part of a committee forming a “Southern Rights Association.” Another family member is WJ Feltus.[71]
Delegates to the Democratic State Convention in Jackson on 2 May included T. Jones Stewart from the Mount Pleasant precinct. James A. Ventress was chairman and CC Cage was a delegate from Woodville and William L. Cage from Percy’s Creek.[72]
From one source we learn that Tignal Jones Stewart is a polished gentleman and fond of field sports and hunting.[73]
Cornelia Randolph Thornton’s daughters, Cornelia Virginia (b. 1842) and Anna Maria (b. Feb 1840) are living at Holly Grove with their aunt, Sarah Ann Stewart, and going to school when they write in 8 letters (1850-1852) to their uncle, T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi. They mention visits from their father.[74] Their mother had died in 1849 at age 30. (She was buried with her parents at the Randolph Cemetery south of Woodville.) Were the two younger Thornton children, John and Sarah also at Holly Grove but not writing at their young ages? The 1850 census has Charles Thornton living alone in Rapides Parish and his children (? number) with their aunt in Mississippi.
There is an undated letter to Sarah Ann Stewart at Woodville from Phoebe Vail Randolph, Sarah’s sister in law, from Troy, NY.[75] Phoebe is the wife of Sarah’s older brother Algernon Sidney who died in 1837.
Holly Grove remained a cotton plantation. Cotton prices rose sharply in 1849 and 1850, after the low prices of a decade, and they would continue to rise throughout the 1850’s (except for a slight fall in 1851).[76] The 1850’s would therefore probably be a prosperous time at Holly Grove. In 1859 Mississippi was the leading cotton producer in the nation.
In July 1850 several citizens called for a meeting at the courthouse in Woodville for August. James A. Stewart, CG[77] Cage and James A. Ventress were among them.[78]
Col. T. Jones Stewart, Col. RA Stewart,[79] and three others, members of the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County, met on the 19th day of April, 1851. The meeting was adjourned to meet at Cold Springs in the Lower Homochitto Precinct on the 3rd Saturday (the 17th) of May. Col. John S. Holt, Jr. was invited to address the association.[80] On Saturday, the 31st of May the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County met. The following gentlemen were appointed as delegates to the State Convention to be held in Jackson: T. Jones Stewart, and 18 others.[81]
The 22 July 1851 Woodville Republican reported at a meeting of Adams County “Southern Rights Association,” held in Natchez, a resolution was passed to endorse Hon TJ Stewart of Wilkinson County, for the State Senate. In the same paper at the Union meeting held on Saturday last, Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was nominated for the Convention and Mr. John H. Sims was nominated for the legislature.
On 19 August 1851 the Woodville Republican reported that Cols. Stewart and Gordon will speak tomorrow at Sinkum Sank.
T. Jones Stewart as guardian is selling land purchased by his Uncle Charles Stewart to benefit Charles’ grandson Charles E. Stewart in October 1851.[82] Charles E. Stewart’s father had died in 1833 and his grandfather in 1835.
The Democrats of Wilkinson County met in June 1853 to nominate a candidate for the lower house of the state legislature. Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was called to the chair. Col. George H. Gordon was chosen. T. Jones Stewart was one of several delegates appointed to the Monticello Convention.[83]
Jas. A. Stewart was one of three commissioners (along with WC Connell and Jas. Dunckley) for building two bridges across the branches of the Bayou Sara, about three miles west of Woodville on the Fort Adams road in March 1855.[84]
But T. Jones Stewart would die in 1855. “Died at his residence in this county, on the 20th [March], T. Jones Stewart, in the 55th year of his age. Few men have been more intimately associated with the public and political history of this portion of the State of Mississippi, for the past quarter century. Warmly devoted to the doctrine of States Rights, he knew no party in politics which did not cherish this, as one of their cardinal principles.”[85]
The 1860 census of Wilkinson County[86] tells us some about the fortunes of the family and their relatives. The census shows 2,779 white people, 22 free colored and 13,132 slaves. A list of the largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County lists 41 names. James Alexander Stewart with 235 is one of the larger of this group (Five others are listed as having more. Elgee and Chambers, 501, JC Jenkins, 368, FH Hook, 325, LL Fabers, 280, and TC Patrick, 260). Ventress’ sister in law, Sarah Ann Stewart, Tignal’s widow, is listed with 111. Another Stewart, CE, had 120. Even James Alexander Ventress, Duncan’s nephew, who built his grand home, La Grange, about this time, is listed as having 222 slaves—less than James Alexander and certainly less than the combined slaves of James and Sarah at Holly Grove—346. The McGehee family into which two of James Alexander’s children had recently married, was estimated by one source to have 736 slaves.[87] The census lists Edward, the patriarch, with 146; George T., his son, had 73; CG had 129 and E. had 120. The McGehee family did have plantations in Louisiana as well, where the Stewart in-laws were living at this time.
We don’t know much about the war years at Holly Grove. Many of the children had married and left. The 1860 census has James Alexander and Juliana at Holly Grove with 6 of their children: Duncan, age 23; T. Jones, age 19; Henry M., age 15; Rosa, age 17, Cornelia, age 12; Ida, age 10. T. Jones’ widow Sarah Ann Stewart is listed at another location in the census. James Alexander’s son, Duncan’s wife was pregnant at her father’s plantation when Bolling Green Plantation was burned in 1864. James Alexander’s daughter, Catherine’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee was in the Louisiana Calvary. T. Jones would serve in the Confederacy as well as Henry who would drown in the Mississippi in 1866.
T. Jones Stewart was dead. His grandchildren were too young to serve. His son in laws were not too old but apparently did not serve. We do not have any evidence that Charles Mathews (age 37 in 1861) served, and William J. Fort, age 43, died in 1862.
James Alexander Stewart was age 50 in 1861. He did have sons who served. Tignal Jones served in the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. Duncan served in the Confederacy as well as Henry.
Penelope Jones Stewart’s husband, Jacob Bowman Stirling, age 36 in 1861, was a planter in Washington County, Mississippi. We do not have any record of his service. Caroline’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee, served in Co. C of the Louisiana Calvary. They lived in West Feliciana Parish. Cornelia’s future husband, Albert Batchelor was a private in Co. E, 2nd Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, Johnson’s Division, Jackson’s Corp, Army of Northern Virginia, July 1862-July 1863; then a Drillmaster, Enterprise, Mississippi, 1864.
Charles Duncan Stewart was age 46 in 1861 was a planter in Pointe Coupee but there is no evidence that he served. His son was too young.
The Cage boys had moved to Terrebonne Parish but both served the Confederacy. Duncan Cage moved to Terrebonne Parish about 1855. He was a sugar planter. When the war of secession came, he raised a company of infantry which became a part of the 26th Louisiana. He was made Lt. Col. and later colonel. He served as Colonel of a regiment (the 26th) of Louisiana troops just before they were captured at the siege of Vicksburg. He was taken sick and not permitted to be in command and therefore was not captured.[88] He was later on the staff of Gen. E. Kirby Smith.[89] Albert Cage, his brothr, served as a captain.
Eliza Stewart Hamilton had three sons who served the Confederacy, Douglas Montrose Hamilton and William Belhaven Hamilton. Jones Stewart Hamilton enlisted in the first company that left Wilkinson County to go to Virginia, where he was 1st Lt. in Co. K, 16th Ms.[90] In 1862 Jones S. Hamilton was Adj. Gen. State of MS. He was ordered back to Jackson and reported to Governor John H. Pettus organizing and mustering in companies for the Confederacy. In 1863 he was elected State Senator for Wilkinson, Adams and Amite Counties. He resigned as Adj. Gen. In 1864 he was made Lt. Col. commanding a battalion of cavalry, later attached to the regiment commanded by Frank Powers. One source lists him as a Lt. Col. in Scott’s Cavalry.[91] Col. Jones S. Hamilton had in Dec 1863 a sufficient number of companies to form the battalion of cavalry, which he had been authorized to raise, by special authority from the War Department, to operate on the Mississippi—between Natchez and Baton Rouge.[92] Hamilton was paroled 19 May 1865.
He was a member of the Mississippi Peace Commission that traveled to Washington in 1865 to meet with Andrew Johnson.
Cotton was probably grown at Holly Grove after the War. The Federal government and northern capitalists were aware that restoration of cotton production was critical to the financial recovery of the nation. By 1870 sharecroppers, small farmers and plantation owners were producing more cotton than in 1860.[93] We do have records of Sarah Stewart contracting with former slaves to grow cotton. From 1803 until 1937 America was the world’s leading cotton exporter.[94]
We do note that Sarah Stewart’s granddaughter, Sallie Fort’s youngest daughter, Anna Key Fort, born in 1861, spent most of her childhood at Hollygrove.[95] Anna’s father died in 1862 so her mother may have needed the help of Sarah Stewart. Since James and Juliana’s children were mostly grown, the house was quieter in the late 60’s and 70’s than it had been in a long time.
Was there some discord or was it just to settle up matters? James A. Stewart petitioned in court to divide the estate with his sister-in-law Sarah A. Stewart and her children, Sallie J. Fort and Penelopie Mathews in October 1876. The petition notes that Penelope Stewart had died in 1843 leaving five legal heirs: James A. Stewart, T. Jones Stewart (now deceased), Charles D. Stewart, Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage. The petition further notes the estate was never divided and was held by the heirs.
It is on the survey to divide the property that we first find the name Holly Grove given to the plantation (1877) though undoubtedly the name was being used earlier. In this survey is a tenant of the Stewarts, William Veal. It is William Veal who is the butler in the fictionalized version of the McGehee family and the burning of their home, Bowling Green, in So Red the Rose, by Stark Young. The butler was said to be in real life a slave of the Stewarts. It was Duncan Stewarts grandson’s wife who was the pregnant daughter of Judge McGehee who was present when Bowling Green was burned.
T. Jones Stewart in his lifetime purchased the undivided interest of Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage which he left to his wife Sarah Ann Stewart, widow, and children Sallie J. Fort and Penelope Mathews. Therefore this portion of the family has 3/5 of the estate. James A. Stewart has 2/5 of the estate having purchased 1/5 from his brother Charles Stewart.
The tract was surveyed (2,367 57/100 acres) and divided. It consisted of parts of sections 21-26 and 31-36. A plot of the plantation shows it running from the Amite County line in the east to the Ventress and Whitaker lands in the west. The Woodville-Clinton Road near bisects it from north to south and the Jackson Road branching off south of the house. The dwelling is noted in arable lot #3 (374.24 acres, valued with improvements at $1666),[96] and an area marked quarters lies to the east of the house between the house and the Woodville-Clinton Road. Also of note is a gin tract.[97] This is 27 acres on which there is a gin house, steam engine, mill and gin, the value not including the engine, boiler and gin stand but including the press is $272.30.[98]
How this division of the property changed things we do not know. In 1879, Sarah and her daughters sell to James all of arable lot 5---334 acres. Sarah still has an interest in 1883 when she sues for damages done by the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Memphis railroad which was run through the area in 1882. She notes corn and cotton growing on the tract. It was a contentious affair going to a jury trial with the verdict being set aside.[99]
A list of unclaimed letters remaining in the Woodville Post Office, Nov. 1, 1878 included JA Stewart.[100]
A list of the regular jurors for the April term 1879 of the circuit court include James Stewart.[101]
Jas. Stewart was a grand juror for the third district, 1880.[102]
James died in 1883 at the home of his son in law J. Burruss McGehee.[103] As early as 1874 James was giving money and land to his children from Laurel Hill.[104] He died intestate and in the division of his estate it is noted he was living at the home place. Perhaps his sister-in-law had already gone to live with her daughter. Sarah Ann died at the home of her daughter in 1892 in West Feliciana Parish.[105] James is buried at Holly Grove.
The settling of the estate notes he possessed a plantation and personal property: notes, money, accounts, stock, $12,000. The 1883 petition also notes his widow Juliana is now living in Washington, D.C. (this would be with her daughter Ida Simpson) and his heirs include seven children: Duncan Stewart, T. Jones Stewart, Catherine E. McGehee, wife of JB McGehee, Penelope J. Sterling, Cornelia R. Batchelor, wife of AA Batchelor, Ida Simpson, wife of Lennox Simpson, and Rosa Sutherland. It is further noted that Juliana, Penelope Stirling, and Duncan Stewart received from the intestate in his life time advancement to an amount greater that any distributor’s share. And T. Jones Stewart had transferred his interest to his sister Rosa Sutherland.[106]
In a filing December 1883 the residence of all the heirs is listed: Juliana is now with Ida Simpson in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, Rosa Sutherland is in Washington, D.C., Duncan and Catherine E. McGehee are both in Laurel Hill in West Feliciana Parish (They had married siblings.), Cornelia Batchelor lived at Smithland, Point Coupee Parish, and T. Jones Stewart lived in New Orleans.
It is of interest to note how much James Alexander Stewart had given his children during his lifetime, but to count against their inheritance. Penelope Stirling had received $16,000, Duncan $18,000, Catherine McGehee $10,000, Ida Simpson $10,000, Rosa Sutherland $700, Jones $7,920.30 and his wife Juliana $41,400. The administrator states there is $20,000 in the estate with the land only valued at $3,600. The heirs ask to be made equal and Juliana asks for 160 acres including “the dwelling house in which her said husband lived at the time of his death.” It is further noted in the pre death gifts, one in 1859 to Penelope Sterling: $10,000 and three Negroes, Jo and his wife Irene and their son Levy, valued at $2,600. Those were better times. In February 1863, Duncan received title to seven Negroes, value $6,800. The son Henry Stewart is not mentioned. He died in 1866. In 1867 Juliana received 112 shares of the City Railroad stock of New Orleans, $22,000 and received a house and lot, fixtures, furniture at Mississippi City, value $9,000. In 1872 Cornelia and Ida received each $7,500 and ¼ of Highland Plantation in Point Coupee Parish valued at $2,500. Also in 1872, Jones received ½ of Highland Plantation, value $5,000. In 1881, James’ daughter Penelope Stirling was noted to have received her full share of his property of every description and had no further claim. In 1884 the 1277.3 acres was divided into eight shares with Rosa Sutherland receiving two shares.[107]
Charles Fort and his wife are living at Holly Grove with their children in the 80’s and 90’s. Maybe Juliana comes back since she asked for the house and some acreage. Who is in the mansion house? The mansion house is in the section belonging to Sarah Stewart, Charles’ grandmother. Is there another house on the plantation? Penelope Stirling conveys a portion to Rosa Sutherland in 1884 of her undivided interest in the estate. Cornelia conveys 145 acres to Rosa the same year. Rosa may also have moved back by this time. Ida is now living in Pittsburg. In 1886 Rosa Sutherland conveys ½ interest in several tracts of about 400 acres plus tools and cattle to HT Sharp. He starts mortgaging the land in 1886, 87 and 88. Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp for in 1889 they are mortgaging it together. Of note, in 1889 Mrs. SA Stewart, Mrs. Rosa Sharp, and Mrs. Catherine McGehee purchase 32 acres. But the land starts to be sold off. T. Jones Stewart sells 141 acres to AJ Norwood in 1889.
Sarah Stewart takes the railroad to court for damages to her crops in 1883 so as to suggest she is farming at that time. She and her daughters appear to have the house tract in the division of the estate of Penelope Stewart petitioned by James A. Stewart in 1876. In 1892 Sarah Stewart dies at her daughters in West Feliciana. Rosa Sutherland is definitely back living in Wilkinson Co. in 1886, perhaps by 1884. Where is she living? She does own the east part of section 25 of 57.5 acres. This could be the mansion tract. But she also at the time of her death in 1928 has a residence in the town of Centreville. Is she living there? She and her husband are farming portions of the Holly Grove Plantation from 1886 until near the time of her death, perhaps as late as 1920 although they had sold off a substantial portion in 1913.
Charles Mathews Fort of Catalpa, great grandson of Duncan, was a student at VMI, Class of 1874, but he left early (Oct 1871) to return home, and his mother, Sally Fort sent him to Holly Grove to help his grandmother, Sarah Stewart at Holly Grove. Sally had his older brother William Johnson Fort, Jr. at Catalpa. Charles M. Fort probably came in 1873 at age 21 to Holly Grove. There is a notation elsewhere that the laid by his cotton crop in 1871 (Holly Grove or Catalpa?).
Charles Fort married Sarah Wall in 1885. The Walls owned land west of the Ventress Place but the family first came to the area with a Spanish land grant of 1795 to Richland Plantation in the western part of the present county. Charles lived at Holly Grove until he died in 1914. Sarah Wall Fort died in 1897, a few days after the birth of Jones Stewart Fort, her 6th child. The home was sold after Charles died and the contents distributed in the family.[108] Anna Key Fort Pipes organized the dispersal of the contents of Holly Grove after her brother, Charles’ death.
From 1889 until 1917 Rosa and her husband Hiram Sharp mortgage the land almost every year to apparently have money to run the farm. This is in several tracts totaling 752 acres and consists of Lots 3,4,5,7 and 8 of the estate of James A. Stewart. The mortgages are usually satisfied in a year or two. On one note we note they are producing cotton, cotton seed, corn, oats, and potatoes. It is also noted they have a 1/3 interest in a gin at Whitaker Station. In 1913 they sell 530 acres to CJ Bear. 1917 is the last year that they jointly borrow money. In 1920 Rosa takes a loan by herself and sells an oil and gas lease and is termed a widow.
Rosa Stewart Sharp died 13 January 1928 leaving a will.[109] She was living in a house in Centreville.
In 1892 Sarah Ann Randolph Stewart died at age 83 in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Fort, with whom she lived. She is buried next to her husband at Holly Grove.
In 1894 Penelope Mathews conveys to her sister, Sally Fort, lot 2, 950 acres and lot 1, 949 acres, is warranted by Sally Fort to Penelope Mathews. In 1897 Penelope Mathews sells lot 1 to JA Redhead.[110]
In 1898 Juliana dies and is buried beside her husband, James Alexander at Holly Grove. Now Duncan’s widow, Penelope, their two sons who lived at Holly Grove and their wives are all buried together near the homeplace. Also Duncan’s daughter, Catherine and her husband Harry Cage are buried in the cemetery.
Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp and returns to live at Holly Grove. On September 10, 1907, evidence that the boll weevil had crossed the Mississippi River appeared in a cotton field six miles south of Natchez. By the fall of 1909, infestation covered the southwestern third of the state, and it took about six acres of land to produce a single bale of cotton.[111] We know that Southern cotton farming was devastated in 1910. We note in a filing to divide the Redhead estate, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove, that the boll weevil had made cotton not profitable.[112] In 1916 Cornelia conveys to Rosa S. Sharp 57.5 acres, the east part of section 25, where Rosa Sharp lives, plus 107 aces of section 22.[113] Charles Fort died 1914 and maybe Rosa is now living in the mansion house.
Not only will Holly Grove no longer be a cotton plantation, but the Stewart presence is coming to an end at Holly Grove. Sallie Fort Butler (daughter of Sarah Stewart Fort) sells to the White brothers in 1914, and in 1924 Rosa S. Sharp sells to FE White the 57.5 acres of section 25 she owns. Is she selling the mansion house and moving to a residence in Centreville? I believe that the mansion house is in the 482 acres sold by Sallie Fort Butler to the White brothers in 1914. I think Charles Fort lived in the mansion house until he died in 1914 and the house tract was then sold to the Whites.
Rosa dies in 1928 and is buried along with her husband Hiram Sharp (death date not known but Rosa is a widow by 1920) at Holly Grove, the last of the Stewarts to live and to be buried there.
The White family lives at Holly Grove until the 1950’s when it is sold to Charles Dudley.
In the 1960’s Georgie Perkins Williamson and her husband Floyd purchase Holly Grove
Georgie was related to the Stewarts through the marriages of Cornelia Stewart to Albert Batchelor and also with the marriage of Albert Gallatin Cage to Elvira Scott Gayden.
The Walter Propst family lived at Holly Grove in the 1970’s before abandoning it. Dr. Marvin Stuckey purchased the property, 110 acres, in 1988 and began a restoration and rebuilding of the house. He sold the property to Landon and Connie Anderson in 2005.
[1]
Woodville Republican, June 1825.
[2] Chuck
Speed lists 3 more children on his website but seems to have them confused with
Duncan’s children. I have found no other evidence of any more children than the
two girls.
[3] Holly
Grove Cemetery
[4]
Tombstone Grace Churchyard, Henry Martin Stewart, 6 Mar 1845-27 Dec 1866.
[5] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891.
[6] Statues
of MS Territory, The Constitution of the US, Edward Turner
[7] 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.
[8]
Encyclopedia of MS Hx, Vol 1, Dunbar Rowland
[9] Memoirs
of MS, part 2, 1891.
[10]
American Historical Magazine, Univ. Press, Vol. 8, 1902. Originally written by
Dr. Morgan Brown in 1826 and states James is now at Cumberland College.
[11]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[12]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[13] WR, 20
June 1854.
[14] ibid,
Vol II, p. 835.
[15]
lib.lsu.edu/special/guides/Natchez
[16]
gravestone
[17] Madness
and the Mississippi Bonds, A Tale of Old Woodville by Robert Bruce Smith, 2004.
p. 10.
[18]
Madness, pp. 10-12.
[19]
Madness, p. 14.
[20]
Woodville Republican, 5 Dec 1840.
[21] Or
March
[22] Old
Centreville was in Amite County and originally was known at Elysian Fields. It
was moved to its present location to be on the railroad in the 1880’s.
[23] It is
not clear who this is. Sarah’s father Peter had no brothers but this could have
been a great uncle.
[24]
Manuscripts Department, Library of the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Southern Historical Collection, #1998-z, Randolph and Yates Family Papers.
[25]
Rootsweb
[26] UNC
papers
[27] Lucy
Audubon, p. 213.
[28]
Woodville Republican, 1 Mar 1834.
[29] UNC
papers
[30] Memoirs
of Ms, Bio and Hx. part 2
[31] Deed
records of Joe Brian, p. 111.
[32]
Provenance: T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart (Holly Grove Plantation) as it is
embossed on the leather binding to Penelope Stewart and Charles Mathews (Butler
Greenwood Plantation), to Sallie Mathews and James Alexander Ventress, to her
niece Anne Mathews Lawrason and Edward Butler, to Charles Mathews Butler and
Katherine Pipes, to Anne Butler.
[33] UNC
papers
[34] Lynda
Crist, p. 249.
[35]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1840.
[36]
Woodville Republican, 19 Sept 1840.
[37]
Woodville Republican, 26 Sept 1840.
[38] UNC
papers
[39]
Woodville Republican, 13 May 1843.
[40]
Woodville Republican, 10 June 1843.
[41]
Woodville Republican, 11 Nov 1843.
[42]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1846.
[43]
Woodville Republican, 14 Nov 1846.
[44] UNC
papers
[45] UNC
papers
[46]
Woodville Republican, 9 May 1846.
[47]
Woodville Republican, 6 June 1846.
[48]
Woodville Republican, 7 Nov 1846.
[49]
Woodville Republican, 21 Nov 1846.
[50]
Woodville Republican, 12 June 1847.
[51]
Woodville Republican, 14 Aug 1847.
[52] WR 12
Feb 1848.
[53] Lynda
Crist, p. 137.
[54]
Woodville Republican, 13 Apr 1844.
[55]
Woodville Republican, 24 Aug 1844.
[56] Lynda
Crist, p. 145
[57] Lynda
Crist, p. 147
[58]
Woodville Republican, 5 July 1845.
[59]
Woodville Republican, 23 Aug 1845.
[60] Lynda
Crist, p. 148
[61] Lynda
Crist, p. 150
[62] Lynda
Crist, p. 150-51
[63]
Woodville Republican, 7 Aug 1847.
[64] Lynda
Crist, p. 154-55
[65] Lynda
Crist, p. 166
[66] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2. 1891.
[67]
Independent Minds and Shared Community, Married Women’s Wills in Amite Co. MS,
1840-1919, Jennifer M. Payne, Masters Thesis, Rice Univ. 1996.
[68] UNC
papers
[69] UNC
papers
[70] WR, 19
Nov 1850.
[71] WR, 28
Jan 1851.
[72] WR, 19
April 1853.
[73] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891
[74] UNC
papers
[75] UNC
papers
[76] Port
Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 17.
[77]
Probably CC Cage.
[78] WR, 16
July 1850.
[79] ?
relation
[80] WR, 29
Apr 1851.
[81] WR, 3
June 1851.
[82] WR, 14
Oct 1851.
[83] WR, 21
June 1853.
[84] WR, 20
Mar. 1855
[85]
Woodville Republican, 3 April 1855.
[86]
Rootsweb largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County 1860.
[87] The
Burning of Bowling Green, p. 8.
[88]
files.usgwarchives.net
[89]
Confederate Col. a biographical register by Bruce Allardice gives the
following: Grivot Guards early 1862; Lt. Col. 26th La. 3 Apr 1862;
Col. 10 Nov 1862; resign 30 Dec 1862 due
to ill health; VADC to Gen. Kirby Smith 1863; Col. and judge military court of
the TMD 9 Mar 1864, appt. never confirmed; 1865 elected state representative;
speaker of the house, 1865-67.
[90] MS
Contemporary Bio. Ed. Dunbar Rowland, p. 311-312. 1907. The information in this and the next 4
paragraphs.
[91] Lists
of Officers and privates who volunteered in CSA from Wilkinson Co. compiled by
WC Miller, 19 May 1903.
[92]
Woodville Republican, 19 Dec 1863.
[93] MS Hx
Now, cotton and the Civil War, Eugene R. Dattel
[94] Dattel
[95]
Pipesfamily.com
[96]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[97]
Abstracts for Charles Dudley, Vol. I, p. 151.
[98]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[99]
Abstracts, vol. I, p. 187
[100]
WR, 16 Nov 1878.
[102]
WR, 11 Sept 1880.
[103]
Obit, Woodville Republican, 1 Sept 1883
[104]
Joe Brian abstracts of the settlement of Jas A. Stewart estate.
[105]
tombstone
[106]
Abstracts, vol II, p. 434.
[107]
Abstracts, Vol II, p. 445.
[108]
Personal communication, 2016, Jim Titley, Dallas.
[109]
Abstracts of deed in the possession of Joe Brian.
[110]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 203.
[111]
Port Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 21.
[112]
Abstracts Vol I. P. 259.
[113]
Abstracts, Vol III, p. 834.
The Second and Third Generations
The first of Duncan Stewart’s sons to marry was Tignal Jones, his eldest son. “Married at Sligo, on Thursday evening the 16th, [June 1825] by the Rev. James A. Fox, Mr. Tignal Jones Stewart to Miss Sally Ann Randolph, eldest daughter of Judge Randolph.”[1] Sligo was the name of the plantation of John Sims south of Woodville. The Randolph plantation Elmwood, was also south of Woodville Was this wedding at the home of the bride as was usually the case? Jones Stewart (as he was usually referred to) and his bride Sarah Ann Yates Randolph, the daughter of the Federal District Judge of Mississippi, who lived just south of Woodville would make their home at Holly Grove with Tignal Jones’ widowed mother, Penelope, and with the younger brothers, James Alexander, age 14 and Charles age 10. The Stewart daughters had married earlier: Elizabeth (Eliza) at age 20 in 1818 to Col. WS Hamilton, a lawyer from St. Francisville; Catherine Mary at age 16 in 1820 to Henry Cage. Harry and Catherine Cage may have also lived at Holly Grove. Their children were born in 1822, 1825 and 1827. The youngest child, a daughter, Penelope, died in 1824 and Catherine died in 1828. Judge Cage did not remarry so it seems possible that the two young boys, Duncan Stewart Cage and Albert Gallatin Cage, may well have lived at Holly Grove with their grandmother.
Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s first child was born 31 August 1826 and named Sarah Jones. Penelope followed on 14 November 1828.[2]
Tignal Jones’ younger brother James Alexander married Sarah Ann’s younger sister, Juliana, 23 February 1832 and I think they also lived at Holly Grove. James was 21, Juliana 18. Their first child was named Penelope, born 25 Jan 1835; followed by Duncan B., born 7 Oct 1836 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi where the family was summering; Catherine Eliza, 26 September 1839; Tignal Jones; Rosa, 1842;[3] Henry Martin, 6 Mar 1845;[4] Cornelia, 1845; and Ida, 1847.
Duncan Stewart’s youngest son Charles married in the late 1840’s (His first child was born in 1851.) He lived in Pointe Coupee Parish but when he went there is not known. He would have been in his 30’s when he married and may have continued to live at Holly Grove after he was of age.
If all these family members did live at Holly Grove the house was full but by that time it was a big house.
The Randolph girls were educated by Lucy Audubon when she was teaching in West Felliciana Parish, and at some point Juliana (and perhaps her sisters) was sent to the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans for instruction.[5]
Jones and James Alexander (Charles was probably too young) were in part educated at the Jackson Academy, a boys school located about 16 miles east of Woodville near the Ventress Place, which would make it close to Holly Grove as well. Jackson Academy’s location eventually became the Redwood plantation, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove.
An act establishing Jackson Academy was passed 27 Dec. 1814. The academy was named after General Jackson. Superintendence Daniel Williams, sen. James Stewart, Samuel Riley, Lovick Vintress, John Davis, Samuel Norwood, Francis Richards, William Bryan, John Nismith, board of Trustees.[6] 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.[7]
Jackson Academy was one of the first schools in Mississippi. Jefferson College was established in 1802 but did not open until 1810. Madison near Port Gibson was established in 1809, then Jackson Academy in 1814. In 1815 three academies were established nearby, Pinckneyville and Williamson near Woodville, and Amite. Shieldsboro Academy in Pass Christian was established in 1818. Elizabeth Female Academy in Washington, Natchez Academy, Pearl Hill in Jefferson Co. and the Wilkinson Female Academy were established in 1819.[8]
While the Stewarts’ cousin, James Alexander Ventress (b. 1805), who lived next door at Lone Hall Plantation was educated in Europe and his stay there is extensively documented, not much is known of the higher education of the Stewart boys. We do know that James Alexander did attend schools in Nashville, Tennessee (possibly the University of Nashville, created in 1826 from Cumberland University and later to become Montgomery Bell Academy, Peabody College and part of Vanderbilt University) and Troy, NY.[9] (The Rensselaer School was established in 1824 in Troy by Stephen Van Rensselaer “in the application of science to the common purposes of life.” It would become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.) James A. Stewart was born in 1811 and married in 1832. Therefore his schooling away from Mississippi would probably be after 1825. One document states James attended Cumberland College in Nashville, Tennessee[10] so he may have gone there before 1826 when it became the University of Nashville.
Certainly Holly Grove was a busy place with marriages and children but there was sadness as well. Catherine Cage’s oldest child died: Penelope Jones Cage (b. September 5, 1822, died Aug 12, 1824, aged 1 yr. 11 mos. 17 days) and was the first person buried at Holly Grove. Catherine had two more children: Duncan Cage (b. c. 1825) and Albert Gallatin (b. 20 June 1827) before following her first born to the cemetery at Holly Grove 12 February 1829.
Duncan’s wife Penelope died aged 64 years on February 23, 1843 and was buried at Holly Grove.
But marriages would start again. Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s oldest daughter Sarah Jones wed William Johnston Fort of St. Francisville, 17 Dec 1846[11] and moved to West Feliciana Parish and the Fort’s home, Catalpa. The widow of William Fort, Mary Johnston Fort had married Charles Stewart, brother to Duncan, in 1820 and lived with her young son, William Johnston Fort, in Wilkinson County where the boy would grow up not far from Holly Grove. Sarah’s sister, Penelope, married two years later, 27 April 1848[12] to Charles Lewis Mathews of Greenwood (now Butler-Greenwood) Plantation, very near to Catalpa in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander’s daughter Penelope Jones Stewart married in 1854 into the planter aristocracy of West Feliciana, Jacob Bowman Stirling, grandson of Alexander Stirling of Egypt Pantation. “Maried on the 15th [June 1854], at the residence of James A. Stewart, Esq., by the Rev. WW Lord, J. Bowman Sterling, Esq., to Miss Penelope J. Stewart.[13] Their young daughter, Mary, would be buried at Holly Grove in 1857.
James Alexander and Juliana’s eldest son Duncan made a propitious marriage in January 1861 when he married Caroline McGehee of Bolling Green Plantation, Wilkinson County. Caroline was the daughter of Judge Edward McGehee of Wilkinson County, one of its most prominent and wealthiest citizens. Duncan’s sister, Catherine, had already married Caroline’s brother, J. Burruss McGehee in June 1859. These two siblings would also make their homes in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander and Juliana’s son, Tignal J. (b. 1839) married Mary Hayward in 1871 and they lived in New Orleans.
James and Juliana’s daughter, Rosa (b. 1842) married first St. Clair Sutherland of Maryland (related to the Knickerbocker family of New York) before 1883. They lived in Washington DC. She then married Capt. Hiram Sharp of Alabama before 1889 and they lived at Holly Grove in the latter part of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. They would be the last of the Stewarts to live at Holly Grove and both would be buried there, she, the last, in 1928.
James and Juliana’s son Henry, at age 21 in 1866, drowned, in the Mississippi trying to rescue a lady passenger from a burning boat. He was a soldier in the 38th MS. regiment, twice wounded, distinguished for his bravery and coolness. It was said he always kept his gun loaded. When ordered to shoot a prisoner, he replied he did not keep his gun loaded to shoot unarmed men.[14] His grave marker is in Grace Churchyard: Henry Martin Stewart, Mar 6, 1845-Dec 27, 1866. The monument is shared with his cousin, Jones Stewart Fort of Catalpa, and is one of the grandest in Grace Cemetery.
James and Juliana’s daughter Cornelia (b. 1845) married a physician, Albert Batchelor, on 3 Dec 1876 and lived in Pointe Coupee Parish. Albert Agrippa Batchelor (1845-1905)[15] was the son of Thomas A. Batchelor and Victoria Gayden Wren of Beech Grove Plantation in Amite County, Mississippi.
James and Juliana’s daughter Ida (b. 1847) married Lenox W. Simpson (b. Maryland 1857) of Washington, DC, a nephew of the celebrated jurist, Lenox of Washington.
Duncan’s son, Tignal Jones Stewart (b. 1800) would die in 1855 and be buried at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann, his widow would live on until 1892 before joining him in the Holly Grove Cemetery. Although she did live in 1891 at age 82 with her daughter Sallie Fort at Catalpa in West Feliciana and she would die there in January 1892.[16] Tignal Jones brother James Alexander would die at age 72, in 1883, living longer than his siblings and parents. His wife, Juliana, would not join him in the Holly Grove Cemetery until 1898 when she died, age 84.
Although we see the Stewarts marrying into the Feliciana aristocracy, Wilkinson County was very much a part of the plantation economy all along the Mississippi. Scattered around Wilkinson County during the flush times of its heyday were perhaps 160 plantations considered worthy of the name. A few were very grand, many relatively humble; virtually all flourished or failed by the number of 500-pound cotton bales piled up for downriver shipment each fall.[17] Bowling Green, the home of the McGehees was a fine Federal house with a double height columned portico. La Grange built on the eve of the War Between the States was magnificent indeed. Alexander Ventress, the son of Duncan Stewart’s sister, Elizabeth who married Lovick Ventress, had engaged the famous Philadelphia architect, Samuel Sloan to build the home.[18]
Woodville, in the 1830’s had become urbane, encompassing an ultrafashionable French coffeehouse, the Café de Woodville, two newspapers, (including the still-publishing Woodville Republican), as well as banks, blacksmiths, livery stables, stores, saloons, hotels, an Episcopal church with a pipe organ, and the beginnings of a railroad.[19]
Mississippi grew as well. In 1839 the population was 91,865 whites, 991 free persons of color and 133,431 slaves.[20]
We do not at present have a great deal of information of the daily life at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann married Jones Stewart in 1825 and by 1833 had two girls, ages seven and five. Sarah Randolph Stewart received a letter, 17 May[21] 1833 from Elizabeth Leatherbury Randolph, her step-mother in Natchez. (Sarah’s mother had died in 1825. Sarah’s step-mother, Elizabeth Randolph [widowed when Peter Randolph died in 1832] married Thomas Butler Percy in Natchez, 4 June 1833 at Trinity Church.) The letter is addressed to Sarah at Centreville, Amite County.[22] The letter mentions gifts to Sarah and her children and Elizabeth’s recent acquisition of a German piano at auction for $250.
A letter (undated) survives from T. Jones Stewart in Columbia County, Georgia, to his wife Sarah Ann of his activities in attending to the settlement of her father’s estate, of his plan to visit her uncle Randolph[23] and his family, and of young ladies in the area who had captivated Hampden (this would be Sarah’s brother, John Hampden Randolph who married in 1837 so this letter predates that event.).[24] We do know from other sources that Sarah’s grandfather, Peter Randolph (b. 1750) died in 1812 in Jackson County, Georgia and left a will in Clarke County, Georgia in 1804.[25]
There are four letters, 1833-1834 from Cornelia Virginia Randolph (Sarah Ann’s 14 year old sister) at Beech Grove to Sarah Ann in which she mentioned some aspects of her life as a boarding school student.[26] Beech Grove is the plantation in West Feliciana Parish where Lucy Audubon taught although at an earlier date. She had left there in January 1830.[27] Sarah Ann along with her sisters, Juliana and Augusta, had gone to school at Beech Woods in Feliciana Parish to Lucy Audubon in 1823 when Sarah was 14.
The Woodville Republican reported that James A. Stewart had six hounds to run off in the direction of Fort Adams in 1834. A liberal reward was offered.[28] This is one of a few references that James A. Stewart might live elsewhere than Holly Grove since Ft. Adams is some 20 miles west of Woodville.
Cornelia Randolph, now 17, wrote three letters in 1836 to her sister, Sarah Ann addressed to Woodville. She wrote from Louisville Kentucky, then Guyandotte Virginia, and NY talking about eating ice cream, enjoying illuminated gardens, listening to music, a trip to Saratoga from New Orleans by way of Louisville Kentucky and White Sulphur Springs Virginia (after the Civil War this would be West Virginia). In the letters she mentions family members and James Ventress (Her older sister Augusta had married William CS Ventress in 1828. James Alexander Ventress was his brother, aged 31 at the time. These Ventress boys were first cousins of Sarah Ann’s husband Tignal Jones.) who were with her on at least part of the trip.[29]
James Alexander and Juliana’s son Duncan was born in early October 1836 in Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi gulf coast where the family was summering.[30]
At some point James A. Stewart purchased a house in Mississippi City as he gave it to his wife in December 1867.[31] Mississippi City was originally the county seat for Harrison Co. (1841-1902). In 1841 it was in contention with Oxford for the location of the University of Mississippi. The Louisville and Nashville RR came through in 1869-70.
These travels suggest of the wealth and sophistication of the Randolph and Stewart families.
Another sign of the wealth of the family is the Bible that has descended in the family.[32] The Bible is a Harpers Illuminated Bible of 1846, printed by Harper and Bros. NYC. It was the publishing event of the 1800’s, the most heavily illustrated Bible ever printed with 1600 detailed illustrations. It is also the first known example of using electrotype technology to reproduce original woodcut engravings. It was published in 54 parts between 1843 and 1846. The Stewart Bible is embossed with the names of “T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart.”
In 1837 Cornellia Randolph wrote again to her sister Sarah Ann at Holly Grove. She wrote on the 6th and later on the 27th of August from Shieldsborough, Hancock County, Mississippi about social activities, clothes, family and friends, and the spread of yellow fever in New Orleans. Hancock County is on the Gulf of Mexico and near to New Orleans and was a Gulf Coast watering spot. Apparently the Randolphs are summering elsewhere than their Mississippi plantation again that summer.[33]
From James Alexander Ventress’ biographer we learn that he was invited in the 15 years after 1833 to his cousins, the Stewarts, to dinner, a fish-fry, and a shooting match.[34]
A big storm caused “great loss and injury” in Natchez in the spring of 1840. A large meeting of the citizens of Wilkinson County convened at the courthouse in Woodville on May 12, 1840 for the purpose of expressing the deep sympathy felt by this county. A committee appointed to collect funds included among others, Messrs. E. McGehee, James A Stewart,…AM Feltus…Moses Liddell…Gen WL Brandon, Col. Robt. Semple…..[35]
The Woodville Republican reported in September 1840 the delegates to the Democratic and Whig Conventions in Jackson. MF DeGraffenreid, Duncan Stewart’s niece’s husband, was a Democratic delegate.[36] The Democrats in Wilkinson County were certainly outnumbered by the Whigs with their delegates being 133 to 19 Democrats. Among the Whig delegates were AM Feltus, HM Farish, E. McGehee, CA Thornton, JA Stewart, H. Connell, JH Randolph, M. Liddell, John W. Burrus from Woodville; RT Semple from Pinckneyville; Harry Cage, JA Ventress, AG Cage, P Cage and Charles D. Stewart from Mount Pleasant.[37] Mount Pleasant is the closest community to Holly Grove in Wilkinson County as Centreville at that time was in Amite County. However this does not explain why JA Stewart is a delegate for Woodville. Was he not living at Holly Grove at this time as was previously thought? Charles D. Stewart, age 25, still appears to be living at Holly Grove at this time
On June 23, 1842 there is a letter to Sarah Ann from her sister, Augusta, now married to William Ventress (m.1828), about family and personal matters. She mentioned Florence, William, Peter, and Jim (her children).[38] William Ventress is a cousin of Sarah Ann’s husband, Jones Stewart.
In 1843 a mule had strayed from the plantation of James A. Stewart, according to the Woodville Republican.[39]
In 1843 T. Jones Stewart was listed as elected to office in the Wilkinson County Agricultural Society along with JW Burruss, CA Thornton, Harry Cage, AM Feltus, JA Ventress, Edward McGehee, Pulaski Cage, Hugh Connell, AG Cage and others.[40] Receiving awards in the county’s first agricultural fair in 1843 were some of the same names: T. Jones Stewart and associated relatives and in-laws: Dr. Currier, Judge H. Cage, JW Burrus, Major JL Trask, J. Alexander Ventress, Dr. Redhead, Mrs. E. Feltus, and CA Thornton.[41] The Hon. TJ Stewart was absent as president of the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Mechanical Association’s fair in May 1846. But duly elected to office were TJ Stewart, AG Cage, W. Burruss, and JD Stewart among others. Ladies awarded were Mrs. McGehee, Mrs. Currier and others.[42]
The Woodville Republican reported the full grown English peas of this season on 8 March 1845 from the plantation of JA Stewart.
In November 1846 the Agricultural Society reported on the cotton crop in Wilkinson County: T. Jones Stewart with 700 acres made 115 (is this bales?), James A. Stewart with 450 acres made 140. other associated family listed were AG Cage, JD Stewart, JW Burruss, E. McGehee, James L. Trask, CC Cage and AM Feltus. Of the 75 producers listed, T. Jones Stewart has the 5th largest acreage.[43]
There are three letters (19 July, 5 August, and 27 December 1846) from Cornelia Randolph Thornton, (who married in 1839, Charles Augustine Thornton) to Sarah Ann from Hopemore, Bayou Goula and St. Francisville. These talk of family and personal matters and a mention of Hamden’s family (This would be their brother, John Hampden who had married Emily Jane Liddell in 1837 and who would ultimately have eleven children to populate his palatial mansion, Nottoway, on the Mississippi near White Castle, Louisiana.) [44] Hamden at that time lived at Bayou Goula, very near the later Nottoway.
In 1846 (15 August) Augusta Randolph Ventress is at the “coast” although her letter to her sister, Sarah Ann, at Woodville is postmarked from Donaldsonville on the Mississippi in Ascension Parish, Louisiana near her home.[45]
The Mexican War drew to a fever pitch in Wilkinson County in 1846. The Woodville Republican noted, “Although Wilkinson county has no Militia at all, as a nucleus around which to gather the brave and patriotic spirits that are burning to fly to the Rio Grande, still the people have moved and nobly too, by public meetings, resolutions and subscriptions, and the immediate enrollment of about sixty noble fellows who love their country ‘s fame better than the peace and quiet of home…The man who will not support his country in the time of her need is unworthy of the protection she has given him and should be sent out of it as were the Tories formerly. Hurrah for Uncle Sam, right or wrong!” A public meeting was held at the courthouse for the purpose of discussing the warlike relations of the United States and Mexico. Gen. WL Brandon was recommended to command such forces as may be raised from this section of the state. A committee was formed to collect together the yagers (a hunting rifle) in the county. Jas. B. Stewart ( James A.?) was part of the committee.[46] Maj. Gen. WL Brandon appointed JD Stewart (son of William, son of James, twin to Duncan) Division Quarter Master of the 1st Division, MM to rank as major.[47] A list of volunteers was published 20 June 1846 in the Woodville Republican. Among these were JD Stewart, BM Cage, AG Cage (Albert Gallatin Cage, son of Judge Harry Cage and Catherine Stewart, daughter to Duncan), WL Cage (William Lyall Cage was the son of Pulaski Cage and Mary Ventress) and IG Gayden (his sister Elvira married Albert G. Cage). In November the Woodville Republican reported on 3 deaths in Mexico of local volunteers.[48] And in another issue of the paper more dead and wounded at Monterey were reported. James D. Stewart was requested by Col. Mays to raise a company of Mounted Rangers for Hays’ Texas Regiment.[49]
In June 1847 plans were being made to welcome home the volunteers back from Mexico. The committee to receive the volunteers consisted of JA Ventress, T. Jones Stewart, CC Cage, JA Stewart, E. McGehee and others. A barbecue was planned. JA Stewart along with many others was on the barbecue arrangement committee.[50] Among those published in the local paper as mustering out: BM Cage, 12 June 1847, New Orleans; WL Cage, 13 Oct. ’46, Camp Allen; James D. Stewart, 24 Feb ’47, Monterey; W. Stewart, fifer, 24 Sept ’46, Matamoros; Transferred: AG Cage, to Col. Hay’s Texas Rangers.[51]
A ball was held in Woodville in honor of General Taylor on the evening of his arrival on the 15th Feb 1848. Among the managers were JD Stewart (grandson of James, twin to Duncan) and Carnot Posey (whose sister married Pulaski Cage’s son).[52]
T. Jones Stewart did get involved in politics like his father. In 1843 Whig leaders, including James Alexander Ventress and his cousin T. Jones Stewart, were urged by the press to get out the vote, guard against election shenanigans, and see to the rejection of the repudiators[53] (a reference to an important issue of the day, the repudiation of the Mississippi bank bonds.) In April 1844 the Wilkinson County Clay Club met in the courthouse. T. Jones Stewart was selected as president. The Hon. Edward McGehee was one of the vice presidents. For distribution to the different precincts in the county: Mt. Pleasant, AG Cage and Dr. Redhead.[54] On the 24 August 1844, “This being the regular day for the monthly meeting of the Clay Club of Wilkinson County, the town was alive with the citizens of the country pouring in at an early hour of the day to participate in the patriotic efforts.” TJ Stewart, president, was noted to be present.[55] In 1844 at the Whig meeting in Jackson T. Jones Stewart was named for the second time as a Whig elector, serving also as president of the Wilkinson Clay Club (Henry Clay).[56] In 1845 James Alexander Ventress and Cooper, former Whig senator and representative, were endorsed by the Wilkinson Democrats. The same meeting endorsed Jones Stewart, noting that he was a sincere worker for local needs. He had been nominated for the house by the local Whig caucus a week earlier.[57] In July 1845 we read in the Woodville Republican that James A. Ventress is running for senator and T. Jones Stewart for representative.[58] In August we read that WL Cage among others is supporting WL Smith.[59] Jones Stewart was named in September for the senate by the Whig meeting reversing their former decision.[60] Ventress lost in November. He was out for the first time in a decade. His cousin, Jones Stewart, had 468 votes to Ventress’ 357.[61] And Stewart was named to Ventress’ favorite committees: education and public buildings.[62] Stewart ran for senate again in 1847 as a Whig; Ventress ran for the house as a Democrat. The Natchez Courier forecast that Stewart, “an honorable, high-toned, intellectual gentleman” would be returned to the senate. The Woodville Republican reported in August 1847, “The Free Trader runs up the name of our fellow citizen, Douglas H. Cooper, as a candidate for state senator from this senatorial district, composed of Adams, Wilkinson and Franklin counties. It will be remembered that a Whig meeting in Natchez nominated T. Jones Stewart, ‘of ours’, for the same office. So the contest bids fair to be between two of our own citizens.”[63] The Whigs won again and Stewart not his cousin went to Jackson.[64] Although the Democrats had a majority in the state legislature, the Whigs were still strong in Wilkinson County. They returned Jones Stewart to the Senate in 1849 and his kinsman James D. Stewart in the house.[65] (James D. Stewart would be James Duncan Stewart [b. 1824, Wilkinson Co.] the third child of William Stewart, the son of James Stewart who was twin to Duncan Stewart of Holly Grove.) Jones Stewart served in the state legislature in Jackson as well as state senator. He was the founder of a bill to protect the rights of married women to hold property and real estate.[66] The 1839 Act for the Protection and Preservation of the Rights of Women gave women the ability to possess property separate from their husband.[67] A letter dated 26 January 1846, Sarah Ann, Tignal Jones’s wife, wrote from Holly Grove to her husband in Jackson, Mississippi. She mentioned visiting his brother James Ventress (he had Ventress cousins), plans for a trip to the coast, and regret that his session would be lengthy.[68]
Other letters to T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi, from his wife Sarah Ann on 15 January and 7 February 1848, are about family and personal matters. She also mentions agricultural matters and a visit to Judge Cage (the widower of Catherine Stewart, T. Jones’s sister).[69]
In November 1850 an open letter was sent to the Hon Jefferson Davis [US Senator from Mississippi] from a very large number of men, citizens of Wilkinson County, showing their support for his course in the recent struggle between the Northern Might and the Southern Right. The first signature printed in the paper is that of T. Jones Stewart. Other family members signing were his first cousin, JA Ventress, Charles C. Cage, George W. Cage, Pulaski Cage, Wm. L. Cage, Wm. J. Feltus, and HJ Feltus.[70] JA Stewart is not among the signatories. In January 1851 T. Jones Stewart is a part of a committee forming a “Southern Rights Association.” Another family member is WJ Feltus.[71]
Delegates to the Democratic State Convention in Jackson on 2 May included T. Jones Stewart from the Mount Pleasant precinct. James A. Ventress was chairman and CC Cage was a delegate from Woodville and William L. Cage from Percy’s Creek.[72]
From one source we learn that Tignal Jones Stewart is a polished gentleman and fond of field sports and hunting.[73]
Cornelia Randolph Thornton’s daughters, Cornelia Virginia (b. 1842) and Anna Maria (b. Feb 1840) are living at Holly Grove with their aunt, Sarah Ann Stewart, and going to school when they write in 8 letters (1850-1852) to their uncle, T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi. They mention visits from their father.[74] Their mother had died in 1849 at age 30. (She was buried with her parents at the Randolph Cemetery south of Woodville.) Were the two younger Thornton children, John and Sarah also at Holly Grove but not writing at their young ages? The 1850 census has Charles Thornton living alone in Rapides Parish and his children (? number) with their aunt in Mississippi.
There is an undated letter to Sarah Ann Stewart at Woodville from Phoebe Vail Randolph, Sarah’s sister in law, from Troy, NY.[75] Phoebe is the wife of Sarah’s older brother Algernon Sidney who died in 1837.
Holly Grove remained a cotton plantation. Cotton prices rose sharply in 1849 and 1850, after the low prices of a decade, and they would continue to rise throughout the 1850’s (except for a slight fall in 1851).[76] The 1850’s would therefore probably be a prosperous time at Holly Grove. In 1859 Mississippi was the leading cotton producer in the nation.
In July 1850 several citizens called for a meeting at the courthouse in Woodville for August. James A. Stewart, CG[77] Cage and James A. Ventress were among them.[78]
Col. T. Jones Stewart, Col. RA Stewart,[79] and three others, members of the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County, met on the 19th day of April, 1851. The meeting was adjourned to meet at Cold Springs in the Lower Homochitto Precinct on the 3rd Saturday (the 17th) of May. Col. John S. Holt, Jr. was invited to address the association.[80] On Saturday, the 31st of May the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County met. The following gentlemen were appointed as delegates to the State Convention to be held in Jackson: T. Jones Stewart, and 18 others.[81]
The 22 July 1851 Woodville Republican reported at a meeting of Adams County “Southern Rights Association,” held in Natchez, a resolution was passed to endorse Hon TJ Stewart of Wilkinson County, for the State Senate. In the same paper at the Union meeting held on Saturday last, Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was nominated for the Convention and Mr. John H. Sims was nominated for the legislature.
On 19 August 1851 the Woodville Republican reported that Cols. Stewart and Gordon will speak tomorrow at Sinkum Sank.
T. Jones Stewart as guardian is selling land purchased by his Uncle Charles Stewart to benefit Charles’ grandson Charles E. Stewart in October 1851.[82] Charles E. Stewart’s father had died in 1833 and his grandfather in 1835.
The Democrats of Wilkinson County met in June 1853 to nominate a candidate for the lower house of the state legislature. Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was called to the chair. Col. George H. Gordon was chosen. T. Jones Stewart was one of several delegates appointed to the Monticello Convention.[83]
Jas. A. Stewart was one of three commissioners (along with WC Connell and Jas. Dunckley) for building two bridges across the branches of the Bayou Sara, about three miles west of Woodville on the Fort Adams road in March 1855.[84]
But T. Jones Stewart would die in 1855. “Died at his residence in this county, on the 20th [March], T. Jones Stewart, in the 55th year of his age. Few men have been more intimately associated with the public and political history of this portion of the State of Mississippi, for the past quarter century. Warmly devoted to the doctrine of States Rights, he knew no party in politics which did not cherish this, as one of their cardinal principles.”[85]
The 1860 census of Wilkinson County[86] tells us some about the fortunes of the family and their relatives. The census shows 2,779 white people, 22 free colored and 13,132 slaves. A list of the largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County lists 41 names. James Alexander Stewart with 235 is one of the larger of this group (Five others are listed as having more. Elgee and Chambers, 501, JC Jenkins, 368, FH Hook, 325, LL Fabers, 280, and TC Patrick, 260). Ventress’ sister in law, Sarah Ann Stewart, Tignal’s widow, is listed with 111. Another Stewart, CE, had 120. Even James Alexander Ventress, Duncan’s nephew, who built his grand home, La Grange, about this time, is listed as having 222 slaves—less than James Alexander and certainly less than the combined slaves of James and Sarah at Holly Grove—346. The McGehee family into which two of James Alexander’s children had recently married, was estimated by one source to have 736 slaves.[87] The census lists Edward, the patriarch, with 146; George T., his son, had 73; CG had 129 and E. had 120. The McGehee family did have plantations in Louisiana as well, where the Stewart in-laws were living at this time.
We don’t know much about the war years at Holly Grove. Many of the children had married and left. The 1860 census has James Alexander and Juliana at Holly Grove with 6 of their children: Duncan, age 23; T. Jones, age 19; Henry M., age 15; Rosa, age 17, Cornelia, age 12; Ida, age 10. T. Jones’ widow Sarah Ann Stewart is listed at another location in the census. James Alexander’s son, Duncan’s wife was pregnant at her father’s plantation when Bolling Green Plantation was burned in 1864. James Alexander’s daughter, Catherine’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee was in the Louisiana Calvary. T. Jones would serve in the Confederacy as well as Henry who would drown in the Mississippi in 1866.
T. Jones Stewart was dead. His grandchildren were too young to serve. His son in laws were not too old but apparently did not serve. We do not have any evidence that Charles Mathews (age 37 in 1861) served, and William J. Fort, age 43, died in 1862.
James Alexander Stewart was age 50 in 1861. He did have sons who served. Tignal Jones served in the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. Duncan served in the Confederacy as well as Henry.
Penelope Jones Stewart’s husband, Jacob Bowman Stirling, age 36 in 1861, was a planter in Washington County, Mississippi. We do not have any record of his service. Caroline’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee, served in Co. C of the Louisiana Calvary. They lived in West Feliciana Parish. Cornelia’s future husband, Albert Batchelor was a private in Co. E, 2nd Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, Johnson’s Division, Jackson’s Corp, Army of Northern Virginia, July 1862-July 1863; then a Drillmaster, Enterprise, Mississippi, 1864.
Charles Duncan Stewart was age 46 in 1861 was a planter in Pointe Coupee but there is no evidence that he served. His son was too young.
The Cage boys had moved to Terrebonne Parish but both served the Confederacy. Duncan Cage moved to Terrebonne Parish about 1855. He was a sugar planter. When the war of secession came, he raised a company of infantry which became a part of the 26th Louisiana. He was made Lt. Col. and later colonel. He served as Colonel of a regiment (the 26th) of Louisiana troops just before they were captured at the siege of Vicksburg. He was taken sick and not permitted to be in command and therefore was not captured.[88] He was later on the staff of Gen. E. Kirby Smith.[89] Albert Cage, his brothr, served as a captain.
Eliza Stewart Hamilton had three sons who served the Confederacy, Douglas Montrose Hamilton and William Belhaven Hamilton. Jones Stewart Hamilton enlisted in the first company that left Wilkinson County to go to Virginia, where he was 1st Lt. in Co. K, 16th Ms.[90] In 1862 Jones S. Hamilton was Adj. Gen. State of MS. He was ordered back to Jackson and reported to Governor John H. Pettus organizing and mustering in companies for the Confederacy. In 1863 he was elected State Senator for Wilkinson, Adams and Amite Counties. He resigned as Adj. Gen. In 1864 he was made Lt. Col. commanding a battalion of cavalry, later attached to the regiment commanded by Frank Powers. One source lists him as a Lt. Col. in Scott’s Cavalry.[91] Col. Jones S. Hamilton had in Dec 1863 a sufficient number of companies to form the battalion of cavalry, which he had been authorized to raise, by special authority from the War Department, to operate on the Mississippi—between Natchez and Baton Rouge.[92] Hamilton was paroled 19 May 1865.
He was a member of the Mississippi Peace Commission that traveled to Washington in 1865 to meet with Andrew Johnson.
Cotton was probably grown at Holly Grove after the War. The Federal government and northern capitalists were aware that restoration of cotton production was critical to the financial recovery of the nation. By 1870 sharecroppers, small farmers and plantation owners were producing more cotton than in 1860.[93] We do have records of Sarah Stewart contracting with former slaves to grow cotton. From 1803 until 1937 America was the world’s leading cotton exporter.[94]
We do note that Sarah Stewart’s granddaughter, Sallie Fort’s youngest daughter, Anna Key Fort, born in 1861, spent most of her childhood at Hollygrove.[95] Anna’s father died in 1862 so her mother may have needed the help of Sarah Stewart. Since James and Juliana’s children were mostly grown, the house was quieter in the late 60’s and 70’s than it had been in a long time.
Was there some discord or was it just to settle up matters? James A. Stewart petitioned in court to divide the estate with his sister-in-law Sarah A. Stewart and her children, Sallie J. Fort and Penelopie Mathews in October 1876. The petition notes that Penelope Stewart had died in 1843 leaving five legal heirs: James A. Stewart, T. Jones Stewart (now deceased), Charles D. Stewart, Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage. The petition further notes the estate was never divided and was held by the heirs.
It is on the survey to divide the property that we first find the name Holly Grove given to the plantation (1877) though undoubtedly the name was being used earlier. In this survey is a tenant of the Stewarts, William Veal. It is William Veal who is the butler in the fictionalized version of the McGehee family and the burning of their home, Bowling Green, in So Red the Rose, by Stark Young. The butler was said to be in real life a slave of the Stewarts. It was Duncan Stewarts grandson’s wife who was the pregnant daughter of Judge McGehee who was present when Bowling Green was burned.
T. Jones Stewart in his lifetime purchased the undivided interest of Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage which he left to his wife Sarah Ann Stewart, widow, and children Sallie J. Fort and Penelope Mathews. Therefore this portion of the family has 3/5 of the estate. James A. Stewart has 2/5 of the estate having purchased 1/5 from his brother Charles Stewart.
The tract was surveyed (2,367 57/100 acres) and divided. It consisted of parts of sections 21-26 and 31-36. A plot of the plantation shows it running from the Amite County line in the east to the Ventress and Whitaker lands in the west. The Woodville-Clinton Road near bisects it from north to south and the Jackson Road branching off south of the house. The dwelling is noted in arable lot #3 (374.24 acres, valued with improvements at $1666),[96] and an area marked quarters lies to the east of the house between the house and the Woodville-Clinton Road. Also of note is a gin tract.[97] This is 27 acres on which there is a gin house, steam engine, mill and gin, the value not including the engine, boiler and gin stand but including the press is $272.30.[98]
How this division of the property changed things we do not know. In 1879, Sarah and her daughters sell to James all of arable lot 5---334 acres. Sarah still has an interest in 1883 when she sues for damages done by the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Memphis railroad which was run through the area in 1882. She notes corn and cotton growing on the tract. It was a contentious affair going to a jury trial with the verdict being set aside.[99]
A list of unclaimed letters remaining in the Woodville Post Office, Nov. 1, 1878 included JA Stewart.[100]
A list of the regular jurors for the April term 1879 of the circuit court include James Stewart.[101]
Jas. Stewart was a grand juror for the third district, 1880.[102]
James died in 1883 at the home of his son in law J. Burruss McGehee.[103] As early as 1874 James was giving money and land to his children from Laurel Hill.[104] He died intestate and in the division of his estate it is noted he was living at the home place. Perhaps his sister-in-law had already gone to live with her daughter. Sarah Ann died at the home of her daughter in 1892 in West Feliciana Parish.[105] James is buried at Holly Grove.
The settling of the estate notes he possessed a plantation and personal property: notes, money, accounts, stock, $12,000. The 1883 petition also notes his widow Juliana is now living in Washington, D.C. (this would be with her daughter Ida Simpson) and his heirs include seven children: Duncan Stewart, T. Jones Stewart, Catherine E. McGehee, wife of JB McGehee, Penelope J. Sterling, Cornelia R. Batchelor, wife of AA Batchelor, Ida Simpson, wife of Lennox Simpson, and Rosa Sutherland. It is further noted that Juliana, Penelope Stirling, and Duncan Stewart received from the intestate in his life time advancement to an amount greater that any distributor’s share. And T. Jones Stewart had transferred his interest to his sister Rosa Sutherland.[106]
In a filing December 1883 the residence of all the heirs is listed: Juliana is now with Ida Simpson in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, Rosa Sutherland is in Washington, D.C., Duncan and Catherine E. McGehee are both in Laurel Hill in West Feliciana Parish (They had married siblings.), Cornelia Batchelor lived at Smithland, Point Coupee Parish, and T. Jones Stewart lived in New Orleans.
It is of interest to note how much James Alexander Stewart had given his children during his lifetime, but to count against their inheritance. Penelope Stirling had received $16,000, Duncan $18,000, Catherine McGehee $10,000, Ida Simpson $10,000, Rosa Sutherland $700, Jones $7,920.30 and his wife Juliana $41,400. The administrator states there is $20,000 in the estate with the land only valued at $3,600. The heirs ask to be made equal and Juliana asks for 160 acres including “the dwelling house in which her said husband lived at the time of his death.” It is further noted in the pre death gifts, one in 1859 to Penelope Sterling: $10,000 and three Negroes, Jo and his wife Irene and their son Levy, valued at $2,600. Those were better times. In February 1863, Duncan received title to seven Negroes, value $6,800. The son Henry Stewart is not mentioned. He died in 1866. In 1867 Juliana received 112 shares of the City Railroad stock of New Orleans, $22,000 and received a house and lot, fixtures, furniture at Mississippi City, value $9,000. In 1872 Cornelia and Ida received each $7,500 and ¼ of Highland Plantation in Point Coupee Parish valued at $2,500. Also in 1872, Jones received ½ of Highland Plantation, value $5,000. In 1881, James’ daughter Penelope Stirling was noted to have received her full share of his property of every description and had no further claim. In 1884 the 1277.3 acres was divided into eight shares with Rosa Sutherland receiving two shares.[107]
Charles Fort and his wife are living at Holly Grove with their children in the 80’s and 90’s. Maybe Juliana comes back since she asked for the house and some acreage. Who is in the mansion house? The mansion house is in the section belonging to Sarah Stewart, Charles’ grandmother. Is there another house on the plantation? Penelope Stirling conveys a portion to Rosa Sutherland in 1884 of her undivided interest in the estate. Cornelia conveys 145 acres to Rosa the same year. Rosa may also have moved back by this time. Ida is now living in Pittsburg. In 1886 Rosa Sutherland conveys ½ interest in several tracts of about 400 acres plus tools and cattle to HT Sharp. He starts mortgaging the land in 1886, 87 and 88. Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp for in 1889 they are mortgaging it together. Of note, in 1889 Mrs. SA Stewart, Mrs. Rosa Sharp, and Mrs. Catherine McGehee purchase 32 acres. But the land starts to be sold off. T. Jones Stewart sells 141 acres to AJ Norwood in 1889.
Sarah Stewart takes the railroad to court for damages to her crops in 1883 so as to suggest she is farming at that time. She and her daughters appear to have the house tract in the division of the estate of Penelope Stewart petitioned by James A. Stewart in 1876. In 1892 Sarah Stewart dies at her daughters in West Feliciana. Rosa Sutherland is definitely back living in Wilkinson Co. in 1886, perhaps by 1884. Where is she living? She does own the east part of section 25 of 57.5 acres. This could be the mansion tract. But she also at the time of her death in 1928 has a residence in the town of Centreville. Is she living there? She and her husband are farming portions of the Holly Grove Plantation from 1886 until near the time of her death, perhaps as late as 1920 although they had sold off a substantial portion in 1913.
Charles Mathews Fort of Catalpa, great grandson of Duncan, was a student at VMI, Class of 1874, but he left early (Oct 1871) to return home, and his mother, Sally Fort sent him to Holly Grove to help his grandmother, Sarah Stewart at Holly Grove. Sally had his older brother William Johnson Fort, Jr. at Catalpa. Charles M. Fort probably came in 1873 at age 21 to Holly Grove. There is a notation elsewhere that the laid by his cotton crop in 1871 (Holly Grove or Catalpa?).
Charles Fort married Sarah Wall in 1885. The Walls owned land west of the Ventress Place but the family first came to the area with a Spanish land grant of 1795 to Richland Plantation in the western part of the present county. Charles lived at Holly Grove until he died in 1914. Sarah Wall Fort died in 1897, a few days after the birth of Jones Stewart Fort, her 6th child. The home was sold after Charles died and the contents distributed in the family.[108] Anna Key Fort Pipes organized the dispersal of the contents of Holly Grove after her brother, Charles’ death.
From 1889 until 1917 Rosa and her husband Hiram Sharp mortgage the land almost every year to apparently have money to run the farm. This is in several tracts totaling 752 acres and consists of Lots 3,4,5,7 and 8 of the estate of James A. Stewart. The mortgages are usually satisfied in a year or two. On one note we note they are producing cotton, cotton seed, corn, oats, and potatoes. It is also noted they have a 1/3 interest in a gin at Whitaker Station. In 1913 they sell 530 acres to CJ Bear. 1917 is the last year that they jointly borrow money. In 1920 Rosa takes a loan by herself and sells an oil and gas lease and is termed a widow.
Rosa Stewart Sharp died 13 January 1928 leaving a will.[109] She was living in a house in Centreville.
In 1892 Sarah Ann Randolph Stewart died at age 83 in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Fort, with whom she lived. She is buried next to her husband at Holly Grove.
In 1894 Penelope Mathews conveys to her sister, Sally Fort, lot 2, 950 acres and lot 1, 949 acres, is warranted by Sally Fort to Penelope Mathews. In 1897 Penelope Mathews sells lot 1 to JA Redhead.[110]
In 1898 Juliana dies and is buried beside her husband, James Alexander at Holly Grove. Now Duncan’s widow, Penelope, their two sons who lived at Holly Grove and their wives are all buried together near the homeplace. Also Duncan’s daughter, Catherine and her husband Harry Cage are buried in the cemetery.
Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp and returns to live at Holly Grove. On September 10, 1907, evidence that the boll weevil had crossed the Mississippi River appeared in a cotton field six miles south of Natchez. By the fall of 1909, infestation covered the southwestern third of the state, and it took about six acres of land to produce a single bale of cotton.[111] We know that Southern cotton farming was devastated in 1910. We note in a filing to divide the Redhead estate, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove, that the boll weevil had made cotton not profitable.[112] In 1916 Cornelia conveys to Rosa S. Sharp 57.5 acres, the east part of section 25, where Rosa Sharp lives, plus 107 aces of section 22.[113] Charles Fort died 1914 and maybe Rosa is now living in the mansion house.
Not only will Holly Grove no longer be a cotton plantation, but the Stewart presence is coming to an end at Holly Grove. Sallie Fort Butler (daughter of Sarah Stewart Fort) sells to the White brothers in 1914, and in 1924 Rosa S. Sharp sells to FE White the 57.5 acres of section 25 she owns. Is she selling the mansion house and moving to a residence in Centreville? I believe that the mansion house is in the 482 acres sold by Sallie Fort Butler to the White brothers in 1914. I think Charles Fort lived in the mansion house until he died in 1914 and the house tract was then sold to the Whites.
Rosa dies in 1928 and is buried along with her husband Hiram Sharp (death date not known but Rosa is a widow by 1920) at Holly Grove, the last of the Stewarts to live and to be buried there.
The White family lives at Holly Grove until the 1950’s when it is sold to Charles Dudley.
In the 1960’s Georgie Perkins Williamson and her husband Floyd purchase Holly Grove
Georgie was related to the Stewarts through the marriages of Cornelia Stewart to Albert Batchelor and also with the marriage of Albert Gallatin Cage to Elvira Scott Gayden.
The Walter Propst family lived at Holly Grove in the 1970’s before abandoning it. Dr. Marvin Stuckey purchased the property, 110 acres, in 1988 and began a restoration and rebuilding of the house. He sold the property to Landon and Connie Anderson in 2005.
[1]
Woodville Republican, June 1825.
[2] Chuck
Speed lists 3 more children on his website but seems to have them confused with
Duncan’s children. I have found no other evidence of any more children than the
two girls.
[3] Holly
Grove Cemetery
[4]
Tombstone Grace Churchyard, Henry Martin Stewart, 6 Mar 1845-27 Dec 1866.
[5] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891.
[6] Statues
of MS Territory, The Constitution of the US, Edward Turner
[7] 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.
[8]
Encyclopedia of MS Hx, Vol 1, Dunbar Rowland
[9] Memoirs
of MS, part 2, 1891.
[10]
American Historical Magazine, Univ. Press, Vol. 8, 1902. Originally written by
Dr. Morgan Brown in 1826 and states James is now at Cumberland College.
[11]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[12]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[13] WR, 20
June 1854.
[14] ibid,
Vol II, p. 835.
[15]
lib.lsu.edu/special/guides/Natchez
[16]
gravestone
[17] Madness
and the Mississippi Bonds, A Tale of Old Woodville by Robert Bruce Smith, 2004.
p. 10.
[18]
Madness, pp. 10-12.
[19]
Madness, p. 14.
[20]
Woodville Republican, 5 Dec 1840.
[21] Or
March
[22] Old
Centreville was in Amite County and originally was known at Elysian Fields. It
was moved to its present location to be on the railroad in the 1880’s.
[23] It is
not clear who this is. Sarah’s father Peter had no brothers but this could have
been a great uncle.
[24]
Manuscripts Department, Library of the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Southern Historical Collection, #1998-z, Randolph and Yates Family Papers.
[25]
Rootsweb
[26] UNC
papers
[27] Lucy
Audubon, p. 213.
[28]
Woodville Republican, 1 Mar 1834.
[29] UNC
papers
[30] Memoirs
of Ms, Bio and Hx. part 2
[31] Deed
records of Joe Brian, p. 111.
[32]
Provenance: T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart (Holly Grove Plantation) as it is
embossed on the leather binding to Penelope Stewart and Charles Mathews (Butler
Greenwood Plantation), to Sallie Mathews and James Alexander Ventress, to her
niece Anne Mathews Lawrason and Edward Butler, to Charles Mathews Butler and
Katherine Pipes, to Anne Butler.
[33] UNC
papers
[34] Lynda
Crist, p. 249.
[35]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1840.
[36]
Woodville Republican, 19 Sept 1840.
[37]
Woodville Republican, 26 Sept 1840.
[38] UNC
papers
[39]
Woodville Republican, 13 May 1843.
[40]
Woodville Republican, 10 June 1843.
[41]
Woodville Republican, 11 Nov 1843.
[42]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1846.
[43]
Woodville Republican, 14 Nov 1846.
[44] UNC
papers
[45] UNC
papers
[46]
Woodville Republican, 9 May 1846.
[47]
Woodville Republican, 6 June 1846.
[48]
Woodville Republican, 7 Nov 1846.
[49]
Woodville Republican, 21 Nov 1846.
[50]
Woodville Republican, 12 June 1847.
[51]
Woodville Republican, 14 Aug 1847.
[52] WR 12
Feb 1848.
[53] Lynda
Crist, p. 137.
[54]
Woodville Republican, 13 Apr 1844.
[55]
Woodville Republican, 24 Aug 1844.
[56] Lynda
Crist, p. 145
[57] Lynda
Crist, p. 147
[58]
Woodville Republican, 5 July 1845.
[59]
Woodville Republican, 23 Aug 1845.
[60] Lynda
Crist, p. 148
[61] Lynda
Crist, p. 150
[62] Lynda
Crist, p. 150-51
[63]
Woodville Republican, 7 Aug 1847.
[64] Lynda
Crist, p. 154-55
[65] Lynda
Crist, p. 166
[66] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2. 1891.
[67]
Independent Minds and Shared Community, Married Women’s Wills in Amite Co. MS,
1840-1919, Jennifer M. Payne, Masters Thesis, Rice Univ. 1996.
[68] UNC
papers
[69] UNC
papers
[70] WR, 19
Nov 1850.
[71] WR, 28
Jan 1851.
[72] WR, 19
April 1853.
[73] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891
[74] UNC
papers
[75] UNC
papers
[76] Port
Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 17.
[77]
Probably CC Cage.
[78] WR, 16
July 1850.
[79] ?
relation
[80] WR, 29
Apr 1851.
[81] WR, 3
June 1851.
[82] WR, 14
Oct 1851.
[83] WR, 21
June 1853.
[84] WR, 20
Mar. 1855
[85]
Woodville Republican, 3 April 1855.
[86]
Rootsweb largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County 1860.
[87] The
Burning of Bowling Green, p. 8.
[88]
files.usgwarchives.net
[89]
Confederate Col. a biographical register by Bruce Allardice gives the
following: Grivot Guards early 1862; Lt. Col. 26th La. 3 Apr 1862;
Col. 10 Nov 1862; resign 30 Dec 1862 due
to ill health; VADC to Gen. Kirby Smith 1863; Col. and judge military court of
the TMD 9 Mar 1864, appt. never confirmed; 1865 elected state representative;
speaker of the house, 1865-67.
[90] MS
Contemporary Bio. Ed. Dunbar Rowland, p. 311-312. 1907. The information in this and the next 4
paragraphs.
[91] Lists
of Officers and privates who volunteered in CSA from Wilkinson Co. compiled by
WC Miller, 19 May 1903.
[92]
Woodville Republican, 19 Dec 1863.
[93] MS Hx
Now, cotton and the Civil War, Eugene R. Dattel
[94] Dattel
[95]
Pipesfamily.com
[96]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[97]
Abstracts for Charles Dudley, Vol. I, p. 151.
[98]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[99]
Abstracts, vol. I, p. 187
[100]
WR, 16 Nov 1878.
[102]
WR, 11 Sept 1880.
[103]
Obit, Woodville Republican, 1 Sept 1883
[104]
Joe Brian abstracts of the settlement of Jas A. Stewart estate.
[105]
tombstone
[106]
Abstracts, vol II, p. 434.
[107]
Abstracts, Vol II, p. 445.
[108]
Personal communication, 2016, Jim Titley, Dallas.
[109]
Abstracts of deed in the possession of Joe Brian.
[110]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 203.
[111]
Port Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 21.
[112]
Abstracts Vol I. P. 259.
[113]
Abstracts, Vol III, p. 834.
The Second and Third Generations
The first of Duncan Stewart’s sons to marry was Tignal Jones, his eldest son. “Married at Sligo, on Thursday evening the 16th, [June 1825] by the Rev. James A. Fox, Mr. Tignal Jones Stewart to Miss Sally Ann Randolph, eldest daughter of Judge Randolph.”[1] Sligo was the name of the plantation of John Sims south of Woodville. The Randolph plantation Elmwood, was also south of Woodville Was this wedding at the home of the bride as was usually the case? Jones Stewart (as he was usually referred to) and his bride Sarah Ann Yates Randolph, the daughter of the Federal District Judge of Mississippi, who lived just south of Woodville would make their home at Holly Grove with Tignal Jones’ widowed mother, Penelope, and with the younger brothers, James Alexander, age 14 and Charles age 10. The Stewart daughters had married earlier: Elizabeth (Eliza) at age 20 in 1818 to Col. WS Hamilton, a lawyer from St. Francisville; Catherine Mary at age 16 in 1820 to Henry Cage. Harry and Catherine Cage may have also lived at Holly Grove. Their children were born in 1822, 1825 and 1827. The youngest child, a daughter, Penelope, died in 1824 and Catherine died in 1828. Judge Cage did not remarry so it seems possible that the two young boys, Duncan Stewart Cage and Albert Gallatin Cage, may well have lived at Holly Grove with their grandmother.
Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s first child was born 31 August 1826 and named Sarah Jones. Penelope followed on 14 November 1828.[2]
Tignal Jones’ younger brother James Alexander married Sarah Ann’s younger sister, Juliana, 23 February 1832 and I think they also lived at Holly Grove. James was 21, Juliana 18. Their first child was named Penelope, born 25 Jan 1835; followed by Duncan B., born 7 Oct 1836 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi where the family was summering; Catherine Eliza, 26 September 1839; Tignal Jones; Rosa, 1842;[3] Henry Martin, 6 Mar 1845;[4] Cornelia, 1845; and Ida, 1847.
Duncan Stewart’s youngest son Charles married in the late 1840’s (His first child was born in 1851.) He lived in Pointe Coupee Parish but when he went there is not known. He would have been in his 30’s when he married and may have continued to live at Holly Grove after he was of age.
If all these family members did live at Holly Grove the house was full but by that time it was a big house.
The Randolph girls were educated by Lucy Audubon when she was teaching in West Felliciana Parish, and at some point Juliana (and perhaps her sisters) was sent to the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans for instruction.[5]
Jones and James Alexander (Charles was probably too young) were in part educated at the Jackson Academy, a boys school located about 16 miles east of Woodville near the Ventress Place, which would make it close to Holly Grove as well. Jackson Academy’s location eventually became the Redwood plantation, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove.
An act establishing Jackson Academy was passed 27 Dec. 1814. The academy was named after General Jackson. Superintendence Daniel Williams, sen. James Stewart, Samuel Riley, Lovick Vintress, John Davis, Samuel Norwood, Francis Richards, William Bryan, John Nismith, board of Trustees.[6] 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.[7]
Jackson Academy was one of the first schools in Mississippi. Jefferson College was established in 1802 but did not open until 1810. Madison near Port Gibson was established in 1809, then Jackson Academy in 1814. In 1815 three academies were established nearby, Pinckneyville and Williamson near Woodville, and Amite. Shieldsboro Academy in Pass Christian was established in 1818. Elizabeth Female Academy in Washington, Natchez Academy, Pearl Hill in Jefferson Co. and the Wilkinson Female Academy were established in 1819.[8]
While the Stewarts’ cousin, James Alexander Ventress (b. 1805), who lived next door at Lone Hall Plantation was educated in Europe and his stay there is extensively documented, not much is known of the higher education of the Stewart boys. We do know that James Alexander did attend schools in Nashville, Tennessee (possibly the University of Nashville, created in 1826 from Cumberland University and later to become Montgomery Bell Academy, Peabody College and part of Vanderbilt University) and Troy, NY.[9] (The Rensselaer School was established in 1824 in Troy by Stephen Van Rensselaer “in the application of science to the common purposes of life.” It would become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.) James A. Stewart was born in 1811 and married in 1832. Therefore his schooling away from Mississippi would probably be after 1825. One document states James attended Cumberland College in Nashville, Tennessee[10] so he may have gone there before 1826 when it became the University of Nashville.
Certainly Holly Grove was a busy place with marriages and children but there was sadness as well. Catherine Cage’s oldest child died: Penelope Jones Cage (b. September 5, 1822, died Aug 12, 1824, aged 1 yr. 11 mos. 17 days) and was the first person buried at Holly Grove. Catherine had two more children: Duncan Cage (b. c. 1825) and Albert Gallatin (b. 20 June 1827) before following her first born to the cemetery at Holly Grove 12 February 1829.
Duncan’s wife Penelope died aged 64 years on February 23, 1843 and was buried at Holly Grove.
But marriages would start again. Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s oldest daughter Sarah Jones wed William Johnston Fort of St. Francisville, 17 Dec 1846[11] and moved to West Feliciana Parish and the Fort’s home, Catalpa. The widow of William Fort, Mary Johnston Fort had married Charles Stewart, brother to Duncan, in 1820 and lived with her young son, William Johnston Fort, in Wilkinson County where the boy would grow up not far from Holly Grove. Sarah’s sister, Penelope, married two years later, 27 April 1848[12] to Charles Lewis Mathews of Greenwood (now Butler-Greenwood) Plantation, very near to Catalpa in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander’s daughter Penelope Jones Stewart married in 1854 into the planter aristocracy of West Feliciana, Jacob Bowman Stirling, grandson of Alexander Stirling of Egypt Pantation. “Maried on the 15th [June 1854], at the residence of James A. Stewart, Esq., by the Rev. WW Lord, J. Bowman Sterling, Esq., to Miss Penelope J. Stewart.[13] Their young daughter, Mary, would be buried at Holly Grove in 1857.
James Alexander and Juliana’s eldest son Duncan made a propitious marriage in January 1861 when he married Caroline McGehee of Bolling Green Plantation, Wilkinson County. Caroline was the daughter of Judge Edward McGehee of Wilkinson County, one of its most prominent and wealthiest citizens. Duncan’s sister, Catherine, had already married Caroline’s brother, J. Burruss McGehee in June 1859. These two siblings would also make their homes in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander and Juliana’s son, Tignal J. (b. 1839) married Mary Hayward in 1871 and they lived in New Orleans.
James and Juliana’s daughter, Rosa (b. 1842) married first St. Clair Sutherland of Maryland (related to the Knickerbocker family of New York) before 1883. They lived in Washington DC. She then married Capt. Hiram Sharp of Alabama before 1889 and they lived at Holly Grove in the latter part of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. They would be the last of the Stewarts to live at Holly Grove and both would be buried there, she, the last, in 1928.
James and Juliana’s son Henry, at age 21 in 1866, drowned, in the Mississippi trying to rescue a lady passenger from a burning boat. He was a soldier in the 38th MS. regiment, twice wounded, distinguished for his bravery and coolness. It was said he always kept his gun loaded. When ordered to shoot a prisoner, he replied he did not keep his gun loaded to shoot unarmed men.[14] His grave marker is in Grace Churchyard: Henry Martin Stewart, Mar 6, 1845-Dec 27, 1866. The monument is shared with his cousin, Jones Stewart Fort of Catalpa, and is one of the grandest in Grace Cemetery.
James and Juliana’s daughter Cornelia (b. 1845) married a physician, Albert Batchelor, on 3 Dec 1876 and lived in Pointe Coupee Parish. Albert Agrippa Batchelor (1845-1905)[15] was the son of Thomas A. Batchelor and Victoria Gayden Wren of Beech Grove Plantation in Amite County, Mississippi.
James and Juliana’s daughter Ida (b. 1847) married Lenox W. Simpson (b. Maryland 1857) of Washington, DC, a nephew of the celebrated jurist, Lenox of Washington.
Duncan’s son, Tignal Jones Stewart (b. 1800) would die in 1855 and be buried at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann, his widow would live on until 1892 before joining him in the Holly Grove Cemetery. Although she did live in 1891 at age 82 with her daughter Sallie Fort at Catalpa in West Feliciana and she would die there in January 1892.[16] Tignal Jones brother James Alexander would die at age 72, in 1883, living longer than his siblings and parents. His wife, Juliana, would not join him in the Holly Grove Cemetery until 1898 when she died, age 84.
Although we see the Stewarts marrying into the Feliciana aristocracy, Wilkinson County was very much a part of the plantation economy all along the Mississippi. Scattered around Wilkinson County during the flush times of its heyday were perhaps 160 plantations considered worthy of the name. A few were very grand, many relatively humble; virtually all flourished or failed by the number of 500-pound cotton bales piled up for downriver shipment each fall.[17] Bowling Green, the home of the McGehees was a fine Federal house with a double height columned portico. La Grange built on the eve of the War Between the States was magnificent indeed. Alexander Ventress, the son of Duncan Stewart’s sister, Elizabeth who married Lovick Ventress, had engaged the famous Philadelphia architect, Samuel Sloan to build the home.[18]
Woodville, in the 1830’s had become urbane, encompassing an ultrafashionable French coffeehouse, the Café de Woodville, two newspapers, (including the still-publishing Woodville Republican), as well as banks, blacksmiths, livery stables, stores, saloons, hotels, an Episcopal church with a pipe organ, and the beginnings of a railroad.[19]
Mississippi grew as well. In 1839 the population was 91,865 whites, 991 free persons of color and 133,431 slaves.[20]
We do not at present have a great deal of information of the daily life at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann married Jones Stewart in 1825 and by 1833 had two girls, ages seven and five. Sarah Randolph Stewart received a letter, 17 May[21] 1833 from Elizabeth Leatherbury Randolph, her step-mother in Natchez. (Sarah’s mother had died in 1825. Sarah’s step-mother, Elizabeth Randolph [widowed when Peter Randolph died in 1832] married Thomas Butler Percy in Natchez, 4 June 1833 at Trinity Church.) The letter is addressed to Sarah at Centreville, Amite County.[22] The letter mentions gifts to Sarah and her children and Elizabeth’s recent acquisition of a German piano at auction for $250.
A letter (undated) survives from T. Jones Stewart in Columbia County, Georgia, to his wife Sarah Ann of his activities in attending to the settlement of her father’s estate, of his plan to visit her uncle Randolph[23] and his family, and of young ladies in the area who had captivated Hampden (this would be Sarah’s brother, John Hampden Randolph who married in 1837 so this letter predates that event.).[24] We do know from other sources that Sarah’s grandfather, Peter Randolph (b. 1750) died in 1812 in Jackson County, Georgia and left a will in Clarke County, Georgia in 1804.[25]
There are four letters, 1833-1834 from Cornelia Virginia Randolph (Sarah Ann’s 14 year old sister) at Beech Grove to Sarah Ann in which she mentioned some aspects of her life as a boarding school student.[26] Beech Grove is the plantation in West Feliciana Parish where Lucy Audubon taught although at an earlier date. She had left there in January 1830.[27] Sarah Ann along with her sisters, Juliana and Augusta, had gone to school at Beech Woods in Feliciana Parish to Lucy Audubon in 1823 when Sarah was 14.
The Woodville Republican reported that James A. Stewart had six hounds to run off in the direction of Fort Adams in 1834. A liberal reward was offered.[28] This is one of a few references that James A. Stewart might live elsewhere than Holly Grove since Ft. Adams is some 20 miles west of Woodville.
Cornelia Randolph, now 17, wrote three letters in 1836 to her sister, Sarah Ann addressed to Woodville. She wrote from Louisville Kentucky, then Guyandotte Virginia, and NY talking about eating ice cream, enjoying illuminated gardens, listening to music, a trip to Saratoga from New Orleans by way of Louisville Kentucky and White Sulphur Springs Virginia (after the Civil War this would be West Virginia). In the letters she mentions family members and James Ventress (Her older sister Augusta had married William CS Ventress in 1828. James Alexander Ventress was his brother, aged 31 at the time. These Ventress boys were first cousins of Sarah Ann’s husband Tignal Jones.) who were with her on at least part of the trip.[29]
James Alexander and Juliana’s son Duncan was born in early October 1836 in Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi gulf coast where the family was summering.[30]
At some point James A. Stewart purchased a house in Mississippi City as he gave it to his wife in December 1867.[31] Mississippi City was originally the county seat for Harrison Co. (1841-1902). In 1841 it was in contention with Oxford for the location of the University of Mississippi. The Louisville and Nashville RR came through in 1869-70.
These travels suggest of the wealth and sophistication of the Randolph and Stewart families.
Another sign of the wealth of the family is the Bible that has descended in the family.[32] The Bible is a Harpers Illuminated Bible of 1846, printed by Harper and Bros. NYC. It was the publishing event of the 1800’s, the most heavily illustrated Bible ever printed with 1600 detailed illustrations. It is also the first known example of using electrotype technology to reproduce original woodcut engravings. It was published in 54 parts between 1843 and 1846. The Stewart Bible is embossed with the names of “T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart.”
In 1837 Cornellia Randolph wrote again to her sister Sarah Ann at Holly Grove. She wrote on the 6th and later on the 27th of August from Shieldsborough, Hancock County, Mississippi about social activities, clothes, family and friends, and the spread of yellow fever in New Orleans. Hancock County is on the Gulf of Mexico and near to New Orleans and was a Gulf Coast watering spot. Apparently the Randolphs are summering elsewhere than their Mississippi plantation again that summer.[33]
From James Alexander Ventress’ biographer we learn that he was invited in the 15 years after 1833 to his cousins, the Stewarts, to dinner, a fish-fry, and a shooting match.[34]
A big storm caused “great loss and injury” in Natchez in the spring of 1840. A large meeting of the citizens of Wilkinson County convened at the courthouse in Woodville on May 12, 1840 for the purpose of expressing the deep sympathy felt by this county. A committee appointed to collect funds included among others, Messrs. E. McGehee, James A Stewart,…AM Feltus…Moses Liddell…Gen WL Brandon, Col. Robt. Semple…..[35]
The Woodville Republican reported in September 1840 the delegates to the Democratic and Whig Conventions in Jackson. MF DeGraffenreid, Duncan Stewart’s niece’s husband, was a Democratic delegate.[36] The Democrats in Wilkinson County were certainly outnumbered by the Whigs with their delegates being 133 to 19 Democrats. Among the Whig delegates were AM Feltus, HM Farish, E. McGehee, CA Thornton, JA Stewart, H. Connell, JH Randolph, M. Liddell, John W. Burrus from Woodville; RT Semple from Pinckneyville; Harry Cage, JA Ventress, AG Cage, P Cage and Charles D. Stewart from Mount Pleasant.[37] Mount Pleasant is the closest community to Holly Grove in Wilkinson County as Centreville at that time was in Amite County. However this does not explain why JA Stewart is a delegate for Woodville. Was he not living at Holly Grove at this time as was previously thought? Charles D. Stewart, age 25, still appears to be living at Holly Grove at this time
On June 23, 1842 there is a letter to Sarah Ann from her sister, Augusta, now married to William Ventress (m.1828), about family and personal matters. She mentioned Florence, William, Peter, and Jim (her children).[38] William Ventress is a cousin of Sarah Ann’s husband, Jones Stewart.
In 1843 a mule had strayed from the plantation of James A. Stewart, according to the Woodville Republican.[39]
In 1843 T. Jones Stewart was listed as elected to office in the Wilkinson County Agricultural Society along with JW Burruss, CA Thornton, Harry Cage, AM Feltus, JA Ventress, Edward McGehee, Pulaski Cage, Hugh Connell, AG Cage and others.[40] Receiving awards in the county’s first agricultural fair in 1843 were some of the same names: T. Jones Stewart and associated relatives and in-laws: Dr. Currier, Judge H. Cage, JW Burrus, Major JL Trask, J. Alexander Ventress, Dr. Redhead, Mrs. E. Feltus, and CA Thornton.[41] The Hon. TJ Stewart was absent as president of the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Mechanical Association’s fair in May 1846. But duly elected to office were TJ Stewart, AG Cage, W. Burruss, and JD Stewart among others. Ladies awarded were Mrs. McGehee, Mrs. Currier and others.[42]
The Woodville Republican reported the full grown English peas of this season on 8 March 1845 from the plantation of JA Stewart.
In November 1846 the Agricultural Society reported on the cotton crop in Wilkinson County: T. Jones Stewart with 700 acres made 115 (is this bales?), James A. Stewart with 450 acres made 140. other associated family listed were AG Cage, JD Stewart, JW Burruss, E. McGehee, James L. Trask, CC Cage and AM Feltus. Of the 75 producers listed, T. Jones Stewart has the 5th largest acreage.[43]
There are three letters (19 July, 5 August, and 27 December 1846) from Cornelia Randolph Thornton, (who married in 1839, Charles Augustine Thornton) to Sarah Ann from Hopemore, Bayou Goula and St. Francisville. These talk of family and personal matters and a mention of Hamden’s family (This would be their brother, John Hampden who had married Emily Jane Liddell in 1837 and who would ultimately have eleven children to populate his palatial mansion, Nottoway, on the Mississippi near White Castle, Louisiana.) [44] Hamden at that time lived at Bayou Goula, very near the later Nottoway.
In 1846 (15 August) Augusta Randolph Ventress is at the “coast” although her letter to her sister, Sarah Ann, at Woodville is postmarked from Donaldsonville on the Mississippi in Ascension Parish, Louisiana near her home.[45]
The Mexican War drew to a fever pitch in Wilkinson County in 1846. The Woodville Republican noted, “Although Wilkinson county has no Militia at all, as a nucleus around which to gather the brave and patriotic spirits that are burning to fly to the Rio Grande, still the people have moved and nobly too, by public meetings, resolutions and subscriptions, and the immediate enrollment of about sixty noble fellows who love their country ‘s fame better than the peace and quiet of home…The man who will not support his country in the time of her need is unworthy of the protection she has given him and should be sent out of it as were the Tories formerly. Hurrah for Uncle Sam, right or wrong!” A public meeting was held at the courthouse for the purpose of discussing the warlike relations of the United States and Mexico. Gen. WL Brandon was recommended to command such forces as may be raised from this section of the state. A committee was formed to collect together the yagers (a hunting rifle) in the county. Jas. B. Stewart ( James A.?) was part of the committee.[46] Maj. Gen. WL Brandon appointed JD Stewart (son of William, son of James, twin to Duncan) Division Quarter Master of the 1st Division, MM to rank as major.[47] A list of volunteers was published 20 June 1846 in the Woodville Republican. Among these were JD Stewart, BM Cage, AG Cage (Albert Gallatin Cage, son of Judge Harry Cage and Catherine Stewart, daughter to Duncan), WL Cage (William Lyall Cage was the son of Pulaski Cage and Mary Ventress) and IG Gayden (his sister Elvira married Albert G. Cage). In November the Woodville Republican reported on 3 deaths in Mexico of local volunteers.[48] And in another issue of the paper more dead and wounded at Monterey were reported. James D. Stewart was requested by Col. Mays to raise a company of Mounted Rangers for Hays’ Texas Regiment.[49]
In June 1847 plans were being made to welcome home the volunteers back from Mexico. The committee to receive the volunteers consisted of JA Ventress, T. Jones Stewart, CC Cage, JA Stewart, E. McGehee and others. A barbecue was planned. JA Stewart along with many others was on the barbecue arrangement committee.[50] Among those published in the local paper as mustering out: BM Cage, 12 June 1847, New Orleans; WL Cage, 13 Oct. ’46, Camp Allen; James D. Stewart, 24 Feb ’47, Monterey; W. Stewart, fifer, 24 Sept ’46, Matamoros; Transferred: AG Cage, to Col. Hay’s Texas Rangers.[51]
A ball was held in Woodville in honor of General Taylor on the evening of his arrival on the 15th Feb 1848. Among the managers were JD Stewart (grandson of James, twin to Duncan) and Carnot Posey (whose sister married Pulaski Cage’s son).[52]
T. Jones Stewart did get involved in politics like his father. In 1843 Whig leaders, including James Alexander Ventress and his cousin T. Jones Stewart, were urged by the press to get out the vote, guard against election shenanigans, and see to the rejection of the repudiators[53] (a reference to an important issue of the day, the repudiation of the Mississippi bank bonds.) In April 1844 the Wilkinson County Clay Club met in the courthouse. T. Jones Stewart was selected as president. The Hon. Edward McGehee was one of the vice presidents. For distribution to the different precincts in the county: Mt. Pleasant, AG Cage and Dr. Redhead.[54] On the 24 August 1844, “This being the regular day for the monthly meeting of the Clay Club of Wilkinson County, the town was alive with the citizens of the country pouring in at an early hour of the day to participate in the patriotic efforts.” TJ Stewart, president, was noted to be present.[55] In 1844 at the Whig meeting in Jackson T. Jones Stewart was named for the second time as a Whig elector, serving also as president of the Wilkinson Clay Club (Henry Clay).[56] In 1845 James Alexander Ventress and Cooper, former Whig senator and representative, were endorsed by the Wilkinson Democrats. The same meeting endorsed Jones Stewart, noting that he was a sincere worker for local needs. He had been nominated for the house by the local Whig caucus a week earlier.[57] In July 1845 we read in the Woodville Republican that James A. Ventress is running for senator and T. Jones Stewart for representative.[58] In August we read that WL Cage among others is supporting WL Smith.[59] Jones Stewart was named in September for the senate by the Whig meeting reversing their former decision.[60] Ventress lost in November. He was out for the first time in a decade. His cousin, Jones Stewart, had 468 votes to Ventress’ 357.[61] And Stewart was named to Ventress’ favorite committees: education and public buildings.[62] Stewart ran for senate again in 1847 as a Whig; Ventress ran for the house as a Democrat. The Natchez Courier forecast that Stewart, “an honorable, high-toned, intellectual gentleman” would be returned to the senate. The Woodville Republican reported in August 1847, “The Free Trader runs up the name of our fellow citizen, Douglas H. Cooper, as a candidate for state senator from this senatorial district, composed of Adams, Wilkinson and Franklin counties. It will be remembered that a Whig meeting in Natchez nominated T. Jones Stewart, ‘of ours’, for the same office. So the contest bids fair to be between two of our own citizens.”[63] The Whigs won again and Stewart not his cousin went to Jackson.[64] Although the Democrats had a majority in the state legislature, the Whigs were still strong in Wilkinson County. They returned Jones Stewart to the Senate in 1849 and his kinsman James D. Stewart in the house.[65] (James D. Stewart would be James Duncan Stewart [b. 1824, Wilkinson Co.] the third child of William Stewart, the son of James Stewart who was twin to Duncan Stewart of Holly Grove.) Jones Stewart served in the state legislature in Jackson as well as state senator. He was the founder of a bill to protect the rights of married women to hold property and real estate.[66] The 1839 Act for the Protection and Preservation of the Rights of Women gave women the ability to possess property separate from their husband.[67] A letter dated 26 January 1846, Sarah Ann, Tignal Jones’s wife, wrote from Holly Grove to her husband in Jackson, Mississippi. She mentioned visiting his brother James Ventress (he had Ventress cousins), plans for a trip to the coast, and regret that his session would be lengthy.[68]
Other letters to T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi, from his wife Sarah Ann on 15 January and 7 February 1848, are about family and personal matters. She also mentions agricultural matters and a visit to Judge Cage (the widower of Catherine Stewart, T. Jones’s sister).[69]
In November 1850 an open letter was sent to the Hon Jefferson Davis [US Senator from Mississippi] from a very large number of men, citizens of Wilkinson County, showing their support for his course in the recent struggle between the Northern Might and the Southern Right. The first signature printed in the paper is that of T. Jones Stewart. Other family members signing were his first cousin, JA Ventress, Charles C. Cage, George W. Cage, Pulaski Cage, Wm. L. Cage, Wm. J. Feltus, and HJ Feltus.[70] JA Stewart is not among the signatories. In January 1851 T. Jones Stewart is a part of a committee forming a “Southern Rights Association.” Another family member is WJ Feltus.[71]
Delegates to the Democratic State Convention in Jackson on 2 May included T. Jones Stewart from the Mount Pleasant precinct. James A. Ventress was chairman and CC Cage was a delegate from Woodville and William L. Cage from Percy’s Creek.[72]
From one source we learn that Tignal Jones Stewart is a polished gentleman and fond of field sports and hunting.[73]
Cornelia Randolph Thornton’s daughters, Cornelia Virginia (b. 1842) and Anna Maria (b. Feb 1840) are living at Holly Grove with their aunt, Sarah Ann Stewart, and going to school when they write in 8 letters (1850-1852) to their uncle, T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi. They mention visits from their father.[74] Their mother had died in 1849 at age 30. (She was buried with her parents at the Randolph Cemetery south of Woodville.) Were the two younger Thornton children, John and Sarah also at Holly Grove but not writing at their young ages? The 1850 census has Charles Thornton living alone in Rapides Parish and his children (? number) with their aunt in Mississippi.
There is an undated letter to Sarah Ann Stewart at Woodville from Phoebe Vail Randolph, Sarah’s sister in law, from Troy, NY.[75] Phoebe is the wife of Sarah’s older brother Algernon Sidney who died in 1837.
Holly Grove remained a cotton plantation. Cotton prices rose sharply in 1849 and 1850, after the low prices of a decade, and they would continue to rise throughout the 1850’s (except for a slight fall in 1851).[76] The 1850’s would therefore probably be a prosperous time at Holly Grove. In 1859 Mississippi was the leading cotton producer in the nation.
In July 1850 several citizens called for a meeting at the courthouse in Woodville for August. James A. Stewart, CG[77] Cage and James A. Ventress were among them.[78]
Col. T. Jones Stewart, Col. RA Stewart,[79] and three others, members of the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County, met on the 19th day of April, 1851. The meeting was adjourned to meet at Cold Springs in the Lower Homochitto Precinct on the 3rd Saturday (the 17th) of May. Col. John S. Holt, Jr. was invited to address the association.[80] On Saturday, the 31st of May the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County met. The following gentlemen were appointed as delegates to the State Convention to be held in Jackson: T. Jones Stewart, and 18 others.[81]
The 22 July 1851 Woodville Republican reported at a meeting of Adams County “Southern Rights Association,” held in Natchez, a resolution was passed to endorse Hon TJ Stewart of Wilkinson County, for the State Senate. In the same paper at the Union meeting held on Saturday last, Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was nominated for the Convention and Mr. John H. Sims was nominated for the legislature.
On 19 August 1851 the Woodville Republican reported that Cols. Stewart and Gordon will speak tomorrow at Sinkum Sank.
T. Jones Stewart as guardian is selling land purchased by his Uncle Charles Stewart to benefit Charles’ grandson Charles E. Stewart in October 1851.[82] Charles E. Stewart’s father had died in 1833 and his grandfather in 1835.
The Democrats of Wilkinson County met in June 1853 to nominate a candidate for the lower house of the state legislature. Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was called to the chair. Col. George H. Gordon was chosen. T. Jones Stewart was one of several delegates appointed to the Monticello Convention.[83]
Jas. A. Stewart was one of three commissioners (along with WC Connell and Jas. Dunckley) for building two bridges across the branches of the Bayou Sara, about three miles west of Woodville on the Fort Adams road in March 1855.[84]
But T. Jones Stewart would die in 1855. “Died at his residence in this county, on the 20th [March], T. Jones Stewart, in the 55th year of his age. Few men have been more intimately associated with the public and political history of this portion of the State of Mississippi, for the past quarter century. Warmly devoted to the doctrine of States Rights, he knew no party in politics which did not cherish this, as one of their cardinal principles.”[85]
The 1860 census of Wilkinson County[86] tells us some about the fortunes of the family and their relatives. The census shows 2,779 white people, 22 free colored and 13,132 slaves. A list of the largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County lists 41 names. James Alexander Stewart with 235 is one of the larger of this group (Five others are listed as having more. Elgee and Chambers, 501, JC Jenkins, 368, FH Hook, 325, LL Fabers, 280, and TC Patrick, 260). Ventress’ sister in law, Sarah Ann Stewart, Tignal’s widow, is listed with 111. Another Stewart, CE, had 120. Even James Alexander Ventress, Duncan’s nephew, who built his grand home, La Grange, about this time, is listed as having 222 slaves—less than James Alexander and certainly less than the combined slaves of James and Sarah at Holly Grove—346. The McGehee family into which two of James Alexander’s children had recently married, was estimated by one source to have 736 slaves.[87] The census lists Edward, the patriarch, with 146; George T., his son, had 73; CG had 129 and E. had 120. The McGehee family did have plantations in Louisiana as well, where the Stewart in-laws were living at this time.
We don’t know much about the war years at Holly Grove. Many of the children had married and left. The 1860 census has James Alexander and Juliana at Holly Grove with 6 of their children: Duncan, age 23; T. Jones, age 19; Henry M., age 15; Rosa, age 17, Cornelia, age 12; Ida, age 10. T. Jones’ widow Sarah Ann Stewart is listed at another location in the census. James Alexander’s son, Duncan’s wife was pregnant at her father’s plantation when Bolling Green Plantation was burned in 1864. James Alexander’s daughter, Catherine’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee was in the Louisiana Calvary. T. Jones would serve in the Confederacy as well as Henry who would drown in the Mississippi in 1866.
T. Jones Stewart was dead. His grandchildren were too young to serve. His son in laws were not too old but apparently did not serve. We do not have any evidence that Charles Mathews (age 37 in 1861) served, and William J. Fort, age 43, died in 1862.
James Alexander Stewart was age 50 in 1861. He did have sons who served. Tignal Jones served in the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. Duncan served in the Confederacy as well as Henry.
Penelope Jones Stewart’s husband, Jacob Bowman Stirling, age 36 in 1861, was a planter in Washington County, Mississippi. We do not have any record of his service. Caroline’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee, served in Co. C of the Louisiana Calvary. They lived in West Feliciana Parish. Cornelia’s future husband, Albert Batchelor was a private in Co. E, 2nd Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, Johnson’s Division, Jackson’s Corp, Army of Northern Virginia, July 1862-July 1863; then a Drillmaster, Enterprise, Mississippi, 1864.
Charles Duncan Stewart was age 46 in 1861 was a planter in Pointe Coupee but there is no evidence that he served. His son was too young.
The Cage boys had moved to Terrebonne Parish but both served the Confederacy. Duncan Cage moved to Terrebonne Parish about 1855. He was a sugar planter. When the war of secession came, he raised a company of infantry which became a part of the 26th Louisiana. He was made Lt. Col. and later colonel. He served as Colonel of a regiment (the 26th) of Louisiana troops just before they were captured at the siege of Vicksburg. He was taken sick and not permitted to be in command and therefore was not captured.[88] He was later on the staff of Gen. E. Kirby Smith.[89] Albert Cage, his brothr, served as a captain.
Eliza Stewart Hamilton had three sons who served the Confederacy, Douglas Montrose Hamilton and William Belhaven Hamilton. Jones Stewart Hamilton enlisted in the first company that left Wilkinson County to go to Virginia, where he was 1st Lt. in Co. K, 16th Ms.[90] In 1862 Jones S. Hamilton was Adj. Gen. State of MS. He was ordered back to Jackson and reported to Governor John H. Pettus organizing and mustering in companies for the Confederacy. In 1863 he was elected State Senator for Wilkinson, Adams and Amite Counties. He resigned as Adj. Gen. In 1864 he was made Lt. Col. commanding a battalion of cavalry, later attached to the regiment commanded by Frank Powers. One source lists him as a Lt. Col. in Scott’s Cavalry.[91] Col. Jones S. Hamilton had in Dec 1863 a sufficient number of companies to form the battalion of cavalry, which he had been authorized to raise, by special authority from the War Department, to operate on the Mississippi—between Natchez and Baton Rouge.[92] Hamilton was paroled 19 May 1865.
He was a member of the Mississippi Peace Commission that traveled to Washington in 1865 to meet with Andrew Johnson.
Cotton was probably grown at Holly Grove after the War. The Federal government and northern capitalists were aware that restoration of cotton production was critical to the financial recovery of the nation. By 1870 sharecroppers, small farmers and plantation owners were producing more cotton than in 1860.[93] We do have records of Sarah Stewart contracting with former slaves to grow cotton. From 1803 until 1937 America was the world’s leading cotton exporter.[94]
We do note that Sarah Stewart’s granddaughter, Sallie Fort’s youngest daughter, Anna Key Fort, born in 1861, spent most of her childhood at Hollygrove.[95] Anna’s father died in 1862 so her mother may have needed the help of Sarah Stewart. Since James and Juliana’s children were mostly grown, the house was quieter in the late 60’s and 70’s than it had been in a long time.
Was there some discord or was it just to settle up matters? James A. Stewart petitioned in court to divide the estate with his sister-in-law Sarah A. Stewart and her children, Sallie J. Fort and Penelopie Mathews in October 1876. The petition notes that Penelope Stewart had died in 1843 leaving five legal heirs: James A. Stewart, T. Jones Stewart (now deceased), Charles D. Stewart, Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage. The petition further notes the estate was never divided and was held by the heirs.
It is on the survey to divide the property that we first find the name Holly Grove given to the plantation (1877) though undoubtedly the name was being used earlier. In this survey is a tenant of the Stewarts, William Veal. It is William Veal who is the butler in the fictionalized version of the McGehee family and the burning of their home, Bowling Green, in So Red the Rose, by Stark Young. The butler was said to be in real life a slave of the Stewarts. It was Duncan Stewarts grandson’s wife who was the pregnant daughter of Judge McGehee who was present when Bowling Green was burned.
T. Jones Stewart in his lifetime purchased the undivided interest of Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage which he left to his wife Sarah Ann Stewart, widow, and children Sallie J. Fort and Penelope Mathews. Therefore this portion of the family has 3/5 of the estate. James A. Stewart has 2/5 of the estate having purchased 1/5 from his brother Charles Stewart.
The tract was surveyed (2,367 57/100 acres) and divided. It consisted of parts of sections 21-26 and 31-36. A plot of the plantation shows it running from the Amite County line in the east to the Ventress and Whitaker lands in the west. The Woodville-Clinton Road near bisects it from north to south and the Jackson Road branching off south of the house. The dwelling is noted in arable lot #3 (374.24 acres, valued with improvements at $1666),[96] and an area marked quarters lies to the east of the house between the house and the Woodville-Clinton Road. Also of note is a gin tract.[97] This is 27 acres on which there is a gin house, steam engine, mill and gin, the value not including the engine, boiler and gin stand but including the press is $272.30.[98]
How this division of the property changed things we do not know. In 1879, Sarah and her daughters sell to James all of arable lot 5---334 acres. Sarah still has an interest in 1883 when she sues for damages done by the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Memphis railroad which was run through the area in 1882. She notes corn and cotton growing on the tract. It was a contentious affair going to a jury trial with the verdict being set aside.[99]
A list of unclaimed letters remaining in the Woodville Post Office, Nov. 1, 1878 included JA Stewart.[100]
A list of the regular jurors for the April term 1879 of the circuit court include James Stewart.[101]
Jas. Stewart was a grand juror for the third district, 1880.[102]
James died in 1883 at the home of his son in law J. Burruss McGehee.[103] As early as 1874 James was giving money and land to his children from Laurel Hill.[104] He died intestate and in the division of his estate it is noted he was living at the home place. Perhaps his sister-in-law had already gone to live with her daughter. Sarah Ann died at the home of her daughter in 1892 in West Feliciana Parish.[105] James is buried at Holly Grove.
The settling of the estate notes he possessed a plantation and personal property: notes, money, accounts, stock, $12,000. The 1883 petition also notes his widow Juliana is now living in Washington, D.C. (this would be with her daughter Ida Simpson) and his heirs include seven children: Duncan Stewart, T. Jones Stewart, Catherine E. McGehee, wife of JB McGehee, Penelope J. Sterling, Cornelia R. Batchelor, wife of AA Batchelor, Ida Simpson, wife of Lennox Simpson, and Rosa Sutherland. It is further noted that Juliana, Penelope Stirling, and Duncan Stewart received from the intestate in his life time advancement to an amount greater that any distributor’s share. And T. Jones Stewart had transferred his interest to his sister Rosa Sutherland.[106]
In a filing December 1883 the residence of all the heirs is listed: Juliana is now with Ida Simpson in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, Rosa Sutherland is in Washington, D.C., Duncan and Catherine E. McGehee are both in Laurel Hill in West Feliciana Parish (They had married siblings.), Cornelia Batchelor lived at Smithland, Point Coupee Parish, and T. Jones Stewart lived in New Orleans.
It is of interest to note how much James Alexander Stewart had given his children during his lifetime, but to count against their inheritance. Penelope Stirling had received $16,000, Duncan $18,000, Catherine McGehee $10,000, Ida Simpson $10,000, Rosa Sutherland $700, Jones $7,920.30 and his wife Juliana $41,400. The administrator states there is $20,000 in the estate with the land only valued at $3,600. The heirs ask to be made equal and Juliana asks for 160 acres including “the dwelling house in which her said husband lived at the time of his death.” It is further noted in the pre death gifts, one in 1859 to Penelope Sterling: $10,000 and three Negroes, Jo and his wife Irene and their son Levy, valued at $2,600. Those were better times. In February 1863, Duncan received title to seven Negroes, value $6,800. The son Henry Stewart is not mentioned. He died in 1866. In 1867 Juliana received 112 shares of the City Railroad stock of New Orleans, $22,000 and received a house and lot, fixtures, furniture at Mississippi City, value $9,000. In 1872 Cornelia and Ida received each $7,500 and ¼ of Highland Plantation in Point Coupee Parish valued at $2,500. Also in 1872, Jones received ½ of Highland Plantation, value $5,000. In 1881, James’ daughter Penelope Stirling was noted to have received her full share of his property of every description and had no further claim. In 1884 the 1277.3 acres was divided into eight shares with Rosa Sutherland receiving two shares.[107]
Charles Fort and his wife are living at Holly Grove with their children in the 80’s and 90’s. Maybe Juliana comes back since she asked for the house and some acreage. Who is in the mansion house? The mansion house is in the section belonging to Sarah Stewart, Charles’ grandmother. Is there another house on the plantation? Penelope Stirling conveys a portion to Rosa Sutherland in 1884 of her undivided interest in the estate. Cornelia conveys 145 acres to Rosa the same year. Rosa may also have moved back by this time. Ida is now living in Pittsburg. In 1886 Rosa Sutherland conveys ½ interest in several tracts of about 400 acres plus tools and cattle to HT Sharp. He starts mortgaging the land in 1886, 87 and 88. Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp for in 1889 they are mortgaging it together. Of note, in 1889 Mrs. SA Stewart, Mrs. Rosa Sharp, and Mrs. Catherine McGehee purchase 32 acres. But the land starts to be sold off. T. Jones Stewart sells 141 acres to AJ Norwood in 1889.
Sarah Stewart takes the railroad to court for damages to her crops in 1883 so as to suggest she is farming at that time. She and her daughters appear to have the house tract in the division of the estate of Penelope Stewart petitioned by James A. Stewart in 1876. In 1892 Sarah Stewart dies at her daughters in West Feliciana. Rosa Sutherland is definitely back living in Wilkinson Co. in 1886, perhaps by 1884. Where is she living? She does own the east part of section 25 of 57.5 acres. This could be the mansion tract. But she also at the time of her death in 1928 has a residence in the town of Centreville. Is she living there? She and her husband are farming portions of the Holly Grove Plantation from 1886 until near the time of her death, perhaps as late as 1920 although they had sold off a substantial portion in 1913.
Charles Mathews Fort of Catalpa, great grandson of Duncan, was a student at VMI, Class of 1874, but he left early (Oct 1871) to return home, and his mother, Sally Fort sent him to Holly Grove to help his grandmother, Sarah Stewart at Holly Grove. Sally had his older brother William Johnson Fort, Jr. at Catalpa. Charles M. Fort probably came in 1873 at age 21 to Holly Grove. There is a notation elsewhere that the laid by his cotton crop in 1871 (Holly Grove or Catalpa?).
Charles Fort married Sarah Wall in 1885. The Walls owned land west of the Ventress Place but the family first came to the area with a Spanish land grant of 1795 to Richland Plantation in the western part of the present county. Charles lived at Holly Grove until he died in 1914. Sarah Wall Fort died in 1897, a few days after the birth of Jones Stewart Fort, her 6th child. The home was sold after Charles died and the contents distributed in the family.[108] Anna Key Fort Pipes organized the dispersal of the contents of Holly Grove after her brother, Charles’ death.
From 1889 until 1917 Rosa and her husband Hiram Sharp mortgage the land almost every year to apparently have money to run the farm. This is in several tracts totaling 752 acres and consists of Lots 3,4,5,7 and 8 of the estate of James A. Stewart. The mortgages are usually satisfied in a year or two. On one note we note they are producing cotton, cotton seed, corn, oats, and potatoes. It is also noted they have a 1/3 interest in a gin at Whitaker Station. In 1913 they sell 530 acres to CJ Bear. 1917 is the last year that they jointly borrow money. In 1920 Rosa takes a loan by herself and sells an oil and gas lease and is termed a widow.
Rosa Stewart Sharp died 13 January 1928 leaving a will.[109] She was living in a house in Centreville.
In 1892 Sarah Ann Randolph Stewart died at age 83 in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Fort, with whom she lived. She is buried next to her husband at Holly Grove.
In 1894 Penelope Mathews conveys to her sister, Sally Fort, lot 2, 950 acres and lot 1, 949 acres, is warranted by Sally Fort to Penelope Mathews. In 1897 Penelope Mathews sells lot 1 to JA Redhead.[110]
In 1898 Juliana dies and is buried beside her husband, James Alexander at Holly Grove. Now Duncan’s widow, Penelope, their two sons who lived at Holly Grove and their wives are all buried together near the homeplace. Also Duncan’s daughter, Catherine and her husband Harry Cage are buried in the cemetery.
Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp and returns to live at Holly Grove. On September 10, 1907, evidence that the boll weevil had crossed the Mississippi River appeared in a cotton field six miles south of Natchez. By the fall of 1909, infestation covered the southwestern third of the state, and it took about six acres of land to produce a single bale of cotton.[111] We know that Southern cotton farming was devastated in 1910. We note in a filing to divide the Redhead estate, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove, that the boll weevil had made cotton not profitable.[112] In 1916 Cornelia conveys to Rosa S. Sharp 57.5 acres, the east part of section 25, where Rosa Sharp lives, plus 107 aces of section 22.[113] Charles Fort died 1914 and maybe Rosa is now living in the mansion house.
Not only will Holly Grove no longer be a cotton plantation, but the Stewart presence is coming to an end at Holly Grove. Sallie Fort Butler (daughter of Sarah Stewart Fort) sells to the White brothers in 1914, and in 1924 Rosa S. Sharp sells to FE White the 57.5 acres of section 25 she owns. Is she selling the mansion house and moving to a residence in Centreville? I believe that the mansion house is in the 482 acres sold by Sallie Fort Butler to the White brothers in 1914. I think Charles Fort lived in the mansion house until he died in 1914 and the house tract was then sold to the Whites.
Rosa dies in 1928 and is buried along with her husband Hiram Sharp (death date not known but Rosa is a widow by 1920) at Holly Grove, the last of the Stewarts to live and to be buried there.
The White family lives at Holly Grove until the 1950’s when it is sold to Charles Dudley.
In the 1960’s Georgie Perkins Williamson and her husband Floyd purchase Holly Grove
Georgie was related to the Stewarts through the marriages of Cornelia Stewart to Albert Batchelor and also with the marriage of Albert Gallatin Cage to Elvira Scott Gayden.
The Walter Propst family lived at Holly Grove in the 1970’s before abandoning it. Dr. Marvin Stuckey purchased the property, 110 acres, in 1988 and began a restoration and rebuilding of the house. He sold the property to Landon and Connie Anderson in 2005.
[1]
Woodville Republican, June 1825.
[2] Chuck
Speed lists 3 more children on his website but seems to have them confused with
Duncan’s children. I have found no other evidence of any more children than the
two girls.
[3] Holly
Grove Cemetery
[4]
Tombstone Grace Churchyard, Henry Martin Stewart, 6 Mar 1845-27 Dec 1866.
[5] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891.
[6] Statues
of MS Territory, The Constitution of the US, Edward Turner
[7] 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.
[8]
Encyclopedia of MS Hx, Vol 1, Dunbar Rowland
[9] Memoirs
of MS, part 2, 1891.
[10]
American Historical Magazine, Univ. Press, Vol. 8, 1902. Originally written by
Dr. Morgan Brown in 1826 and states James is now at Cumberland College.
[11]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[12]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[13] WR, 20
June 1854.
[14] ibid,
Vol II, p. 835.
[15]
lib.lsu.edu/special/guides/Natchez
[16]
gravestone
[17] Madness
and the Mississippi Bonds, A Tale of Old Woodville by Robert Bruce Smith, 2004.
p. 10.
[18]
Madness, pp. 10-12.
[19]
Madness, p. 14.
[20]
Woodville Republican, 5 Dec 1840.
[21] Or
March
[22] Old
Centreville was in Amite County and originally was known at Elysian Fields. It
was moved to its present location to be on the railroad in the 1880’s.
[23] It is
not clear who this is. Sarah’s father Peter had no brothers but this could have
been a great uncle.
[24]
Manuscripts Department, Library of the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Southern Historical Collection, #1998-z, Randolph and Yates Family Papers.
[25]
Rootsweb
[26] UNC
papers
[27] Lucy
Audubon, p. 213.
[28]
Woodville Republican, 1 Mar 1834.
[29] UNC
papers
[30] Memoirs
of Ms, Bio and Hx. part 2
[31] Deed
records of Joe Brian, p. 111.
[32]
Provenance: T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart (Holly Grove Plantation) as it is
embossed on the leather binding to Penelope Stewart and Charles Mathews (Butler
Greenwood Plantation), to Sallie Mathews and James Alexander Ventress, to her
niece Anne Mathews Lawrason and Edward Butler, to Charles Mathews Butler and
Katherine Pipes, to Anne Butler.
[33] UNC
papers
[34] Lynda
Crist, p. 249.
[35]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1840.
[36]
Woodville Republican, 19 Sept 1840.
[37]
Woodville Republican, 26 Sept 1840.
[38] UNC
papers
[39]
Woodville Republican, 13 May 1843.
[40]
Woodville Republican, 10 June 1843.
[41]
Woodville Republican, 11 Nov 1843.
[42]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1846.
[43]
Woodville Republican, 14 Nov 1846.
[44] UNC
papers
[45] UNC
papers
[46]
Woodville Republican, 9 May 1846.
[47]
Woodville Republican, 6 June 1846.
[48]
Woodville Republican, 7 Nov 1846.
[49]
Woodville Republican, 21 Nov 1846.
[50]
Woodville Republican, 12 June 1847.
[51]
Woodville Republican, 14 Aug 1847.
[52] WR 12
Feb 1848.
[53] Lynda
Crist, p. 137.
[54]
Woodville Republican, 13 Apr 1844.
[55]
Woodville Republican, 24 Aug 1844.
[56] Lynda
Crist, p. 145
[57] Lynda
Crist, p. 147
[58]
Woodville Republican, 5 July 1845.
[59]
Woodville Republican, 23 Aug 1845.
[60] Lynda
Crist, p. 148
[61] Lynda
Crist, p. 150
[62] Lynda
Crist, p. 150-51
[63]
Woodville Republican, 7 Aug 1847.
[64] Lynda
Crist, p. 154-55
[65] Lynda
Crist, p. 166
[66] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2. 1891.
[67]
Independent Minds and Shared Community, Married Women’s Wills in Amite Co. MS,
1840-1919, Jennifer M. Payne, Masters Thesis, Rice Univ. 1996.
[68] UNC
papers
[69] UNC
papers
[70] WR, 19
Nov 1850.
[71] WR, 28
Jan 1851.
[72] WR, 19
April 1853.
[73] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891
[74] UNC
papers
[75] UNC
papers
[76] Port
Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 17.
[77]
Probably CC Cage.
[78] WR, 16
July 1850.
[79] ?
relation
[80] WR, 29
Apr 1851.
[81] WR, 3
June 1851.
[82] WR, 14
Oct 1851.
[83] WR, 21
June 1853.
[84] WR, 20
Mar. 1855
[85]
Woodville Republican, 3 April 1855.
[86]
Rootsweb largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County 1860.
[87] The
Burning of Bowling Green, p. 8.
[88]
files.usgwarchives.net
[89]
Confederate Col. a biographical register by Bruce Allardice gives the
following: Grivot Guards early 1862; Lt. Col. 26th La. 3 Apr 1862;
Col. 10 Nov 1862; resign 30 Dec 1862 due
to ill health; VADC to Gen. Kirby Smith 1863; Col. and judge military court of
the TMD 9 Mar 1864, appt. never confirmed; 1865 elected state representative;
speaker of the house, 1865-67.
[90] MS
Contemporary Bio. Ed. Dunbar Rowland, p. 311-312. 1907. The information in this and the next 4
paragraphs.
[91] Lists
of Officers and privates who volunteered in CSA from Wilkinson Co. compiled by
WC Miller, 19 May 1903.
[92]
Woodville Republican, 19 Dec 1863.
[93] MS Hx
Now, cotton and the Civil War, Eugene R. Dattel
[94] Dattel
[95]
Pipesfamily.com
[96]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[97]
Abstracts for Charles Dudley, Vol. I, p. 151.
[98]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[99]
Abstracts, vol. I, p. 187
[100]
WR, 16 Nov 1878.
[102]
WR, 11 Sept 1880.
[103]
Obit, Woodville Republican, 1 Sept 1883
[104]
Joe Brian abstracts of the settlement of Jas A. Stewart estate.
[105]
tombstone
[106]
Abstracts, vol II, p. 434.
[107]
Abstracts, Vol II, p. 445.
[108]
Personal communication, 2016, Jim Titley, Dallas.
[109]
Abstracts of deed in the possession of Joe Brian.
[110]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 203.
[111]
Port Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 21.
[112]
Abstracts Vol I. P. 259.
[113]
Abstracts, Vol III, p. 834.
The Second and Third Generations
The first of Duncan Stewart’s sons to marry was Tignal Jones, his eldest son. “Married at Sligo, on Thursday evening the 16th, [June 1825] by the Rev. James A. Fox, Mr. Tignal Jones Stewart to Miss Sally Ann Randolph, eldest daughter of Judge Randolph.”[1] Sligo was the name of the plantation of John Sims south of Woodville. The Randolph plantation Elmwood, was also south of Woodville Was this wedding at the home of the bride as was usually the case? Jones Stewart (as he was usually referred to) and his bride Sarah Ann Yates Randolph, the daughter of the Federal District Judge of Mississippi, who lived just south of Woodville would make their home at Holly Grove with Tignal Jones’ widowed mother, Penelope, and with the younger brothers, James Alexander, age 14 and Charles age 10. The Stewart daughters had married earlier: Elizabeth (Eliza) at age 20 in 1818 to Col. WS Hamilton, a lawyer from St. Francisville; Catherine Mary at age 16 in 1820 to Henry Cage. Harry and Catherine Cage may have also lived at Holly Grove. Their children were born in 1822, 1825 and 1827. The youngest child, a daughter, Penelope, died in 1824 and Catherine died in 1828. Judge Cage did not remarry so it seems possible that the two young boys, Duncan Stewart Cage and Albert Gallatin Cage, may well have lived at Holly Grove with their grandmother.
Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s first child was born 31 August 1826 and named Sarah Jones. Penelope followed on 14 November 1828.[2]
Tignal Jones’ younger brother James Alexander married Sarah Ann’s younger sister, Juliana, 23 February 1832 and I think they also lived at Holly Grove. James was 21, Juliana 18. Their first child was named Penelope, born 25 Jan 1835; followed by Duncan B., born 7 Oct 1836 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi where the family was summering; Catherine Eliza, 26 September 1839; Tignal Jones; Rosa, 1842;[3] Henry Martin, 6 Mar 1845;[4] Cornelia, 1845; and Ida, 1847.
Duncan Stewart’s youngest son Charles married in the late 1840’s (His first child was born in 1851.) He lived in Pointe Coupee Parish but when he went there is not known. He would have been in his 30’s when he married and may have continued to live at Holly Grove after he was of age.
If all these family members did live at Holly Grove the house was full but by that time it was a big house.
The Randolph girls were educated by Lucy Audubon when she was teaching in West Felliciana Parish, and at some point Juliana (and perhaps her sisters) was sent to the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans for instruction.[5]
Jones and James Alexander (Charles was probably too young) were in part educated at the Jackson Academy, a boys school located about 16 miles east of Woodville near the Ventress Place, which would make it close to Holly Grove as well. Jackson Academy’s location eventually became the Redwood plantation, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove.
An act establishing Jackson Academy was passed 27 Dec. 1814. The academy was named after General Jackson. Superintendence Daniel Williams, sen. James Stewart, Samuel Riley, Lovick Vintress, John Davis, Samuel Norwood, Francis Richards, William Bryan, John Nismith, board of Trustees.[6] 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.[7]
Jackson Academy was one of the first schools in Mississippi. Jefferson College was established in 1802 but did not open until 1810. Madison near Port Gibson was established in 1809, then Jackson Academy in 1814. In 1815 three academies were established nearby, Pinckneyville and Williamson near Woodville, and Amite. Shieldsboro Academy in Pass Christian was established in 1818. Elizabeth Female Academy in Washington, Natchez Academy, Pearl Hill in Jefferson Co. and the Wilkinson Female Academy were established in 1819.[8]
While the Stewarts’ cousin, James Alexander Ventress (b. 1805), who lived next door at Lone Hall Plantation was educated in Europe and his stay there is extensively documented, not much is known of the higher education of the Stewart boys. We do know that James Alexander did attend schools in Nashville, Tennessee (possibly the University of Nashville, created in 1826 from Cumberland University and later to become Montgomery Bell Academy, Peabody College and part of Vanderbilt University) and Troy, NY.[9] (The Rensselaer School was established in 1824 in Troy by Stephen Van Rensselaer “in the application of science to the common purposes of life.” It would become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.) James A. Stewart was born in 1811 and married in 1832. Therefore his schooling away from Mississippi would probably be after 1825. One document states James attended Cumberland College in Nashville, Tennessee[10] so he may have gone there before 1826 when it became the University of Nashville.
Certainly Holly Grove was a busy place with marriages and children but there was sadness as well. Catherine Cage’s oldest child died: Penelope Jones Cage (b. September 5, 1822, died Aug 12, 1824, aged 1 yr. 11 mos. 17 days) and was the first person buried at Holly Grove. Catherine had two more children: Duncan Cage (b. c. 1825) and Albert Gallatin (b. 20 June 1827) before following her first born to the cemetery at Holly Grove 12 February 1829.
Duncan’s wife Penelope died aged 64 years on February 23, 1843 and was buried at Holly Grove.
But marriages would start again. Tignal Jones and Sarah Ann’s oldest daughter Sarah Jones wed William Johnston Fort of St. Francisville, 17 Dec 1846[11] and moved to West Feliciana Parish and the Fort’s home, Catalpa. The widow of William Fort, Mary Johnston Fort had married Charles Stewart, brother to Duncan, in 1820 and lived with her young son, William Johnston Fort, in Wilkinson County where the boy would grow up not far from Holly Grove. Sarah’s sister, Penelope, married two years later, 27 April 1848[12] to Charles Lewis Mathews of Greenwood (now Butler-Greenwood) Plantation, very near to Catalpa in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander’s daughter Penelope Jones Stewart married in 1854 into the planter aristocracy of West Feliciana, Jacob Bowman Stirling, grandson of Alexander Stirling of Egypt Pantation. “Maried on the 15th [June 1854], at the residence of James A. Stewart, Esq., by the Rev. WW Lord, J. Bowman Sterling, Esq., to Miss Penelope J. Stewart.[13] Their young daughter, Mary, would be buried at Holly Grove in 1857.
James Alexander and Juliana’s eldest son Duncan made a propitious marriage in January 1861 when he married Caroline McGehee of Bolling Green Plantation, Wilkinson County. Caroline was the daughter of Judge Edward McGehee of Wilkinson County, one of its most prominent and wealthiest citizens. Duncan’s sister, Catherine, had already married Caroline’s brother, J. Burruss McGehee in June 1859. These two siblings would also make their homes in West Feliciana Parish.
James Alexander and Juliana’s son, Tignal J. (b. 1839) married Mary Hayward in 1871 and they lived in New Orleans.
James and Juliana’s daughter, Rosa (b. 1842) married first St. Clair Sutherland of Maryland (related to the Knickerbocker family of New York) before 1883. They lived in Washington DC. She then married Capt. Hiram Sharp of Alabama before 1889 and they lived at Holly Grove in the latter part of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. They would be the last of the Stewarts to live at Holly Grove and both would be buried there, she, the last, in 1928.
James and Juliana’s son Henry, at age 21 in 1866, drowned, in the Mississippi trying to rescue a lady passenger from a burning boat. He was a soldier in the 38th MS. regiment, twice wounded, distinguished for his bravery and coolness. It was said he always kept his gun loaded. When ordered to shoot a prisoner, he replied he did not keep his gun loaded to shoot unarmed men.[14] His grave marker is in Grace Churchyard: Henry Martin Stewart, Mar 6, 1845-Dec 27, 1866. The monument is shared with his cousin, Jones Stewart Fort of Catalpa, and is one of the grandest in Grace Cemetery.
James and Juliana’s daughter Cornelia (b. 1845) married a physician, Albert Batchelor, on 3 Dec 1876 and lived in Pointe Coupee Parish. Albert Agrippa Batchelor (1845-1905)[15] was the son of Thomas A. Batchelor and Victoria Gayden Wren of Beech Grove Plantation in Amite County, Mississippi.
James and Juliana’s daughter Ida (b. 1847) married Lenox W. Simpson (b. Maryland 1857) of Washington, DC, a nephew of the celebrated jurist, Lenox of Washington.
Duncan’s son, Tignal Jones Stewart (b. 1800) would die in 1855 and be buried at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann, his widow would live on until 1892 before joining him in the Holly Grove Cemetery. Although she did live in 1891 at age 82 with her daughter Sallie Fort at Catalpa in West Feliciana and she would die there in January 1892.[16] Tignal Jones brother James Alexander would die at age 72, in 1883, living longer than his siblings and parents. His wife, Juliana, would not join him in the Holly Grove Cemetery until 1898 when she died, age 84.
Although we see the Stewarts marrying into the Feliciana aristocracy, Wilkinson County was very much a part of the plantation economy all along the Mississippi. Scattered around Wilkinson County during the flush times of its heyday were perhaps 160 plantations considered worthy of the name. A few were very grand, many relatively humble; virtually all flourished or failed by the number of 500-pound cotton bales piled up for downriver shipment each fall.[17] Bowling Green, the home of the McGehees was a fine Federal house with a double height columned portico. La Grange built on the eve of the War Between the States was magnificent indeed. Alexander Ventress, the son of Duncan Stewart’s sister, Elizabeth who married Lovick Ventress, had engaged the famous Philadelphia architect, Samuel Sloan to build the home.[18]
Woodville, in the 1830’s had become urbane, encompassing an ultrafashionable French coffeehouse, the Café de Woodville, two newspapers, (including the still-publishing Woodville Republican), as well as banks, blacksmiths, livery stables, stores, saloons, hotels, an Episcopal church with a pipe organ, and the beginnings of a railroad.[19]
Mississippi grew as well. In 1839 the population was 91,865 whites, 991 free persons of color and 133,431 slaves.[20]
We do not at present have a great deal of information of the daily life at Holly Grove. Sarah Ann married Jones Stewart in 1825 and by 1833 had two girls, ages seven and five. Sarah Randolph Stewart received a letter, 17 May[21] 1833 from Elizabeth Leatherbury Randolph, her step-mother in Natchez. (Sarah’s mother had died in 1825. Sarah’s step-mother, Elizabeth Randolph [widowed when Peter Randolph died in 1832] married Thomas Butler Percy in Natchez, 4 June 1833 at Trinity Church.) The letter is addressed to Sarah at Centreville, Amite County.[22] The letter mentions gifts to Sarah and her children and Elizabeth’s recent acquisition of a German piano at auction for $250.
A letter (undated) survives from T. Jones Stewart in Columbia County, Georgia, to his wife Sarah Ann of his activities in attending to the settlement of her father’s estate, of his plan to visit her uncle Randolph[23] and his family, and of young ladies in the area who had captivated Hampden (this would be Sarah’s brother, John Hampden Randolph who married in 1837 so this letter predates that event.).[24] We do know from other sources that Sarah’s grandfather, Peter Randolph (b. 1750) died in 1812 in Jackson County, Georgia and left a will in Clarke County, Georgia in 1804.[25]
There are four letters, 1833-1834 from Cornelia Virginia Randolph (Sarah Ann’s 14 year old sister) at Beech Grove to Sarah Ann in which she mentioned some aspects of her life as a boarding school student.[26] Beech Grove is the plantation in West Feliciana Parish where Lucy Audubon taught although at an earlier date. She had left there in January 1830.[27] Sarah Ann along with her sisters, Juliana and Augusta, had gone to school at Beech Woods in Feliciana Parish to Lucy Audubon in 1823 when Sarah was 14.
The Woodville Republican reported that James A. Stewart had six hounds to run off in the direction of Fort Adams in 1834. A liberal reward was offered.[28] This is one of a few references that James A. Stewart might live elsewhere than Holly Grove since Ft. Adams is some 20 miles west of Woodville.
Cornelia Randolph, now 17, wrote three letters in 1836 to her sister, Sarah Ann addressed to Woodville. She wrote from Louisville Kentucky, then Guyandotte Virginia, and NY talking about eating ice cream, enjoying illuminated gardens, listening to music, a trip to Saratoga from New Orleans by way of Louisville Kentucky and White Sulphur Springs Virginia (after the Civil War this would be West Virginia). In the letters she mentions family members and James Ventress (Her older sister Augusta had married William CS Ventress in 1828. James Alexander Ventress was his brother, aged 31 at the time. These Ventress boys were first cousins of Sarah Ann’s husband Tignal Jones.) who were with her on at least part of the trip.[29]
James Alexander and Juliana’s son Duncan was born in early October 1836 in Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi gulf coast where the family was summering.[30]
At some point James A. Stewart purchased a house in Mississippi City as he gave it to his wife in December 1867.[31] Mississippi City was originally the county seat for Harrison Co. (1841-1902). In 1841 it was in contention with Oxford for the location of the University of Mississippi. The Louisville and Nashville RR came through in 1869-70.
These travels suggest of the wealth and sophistication of the Randolph and Stewart families.
Another sign of the wealth of the family is the Bible that has descended in the family.[32] The Bible is a Harpers Illuminated Bible of 1846, printed by Harper and Bros. NYC. It was the publishing event of the 1800’s, the most heavily illustrated Bible ever printed with 1600 detailed illustrations. It is also the first known example of using electrotype technology to reproduce original woodcut engravings. It was published in 54 parts between 1843 and 1846. The Stewart Bible is embossed with the names of “T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart.”
In 1837 Cornellia Randolph wrote again to her sister Sarah Ann at Holly Grove. She wrote on the 6th and later on the 27th of August from Shieldsborough, Hancock County, Mississippi about social activities, clothes, family and friends, and the spread of yellow fever in New Orleans. Hancock County is on the Gulf of Mexico and near to New Orleans and was a Gulf Coast watering spot. Apparently the Randolphs are summering elsewhere than their Mississippi plantation again that summer.[33]
From James Alexander Ventress’ biographer we learn that he was invited in the 15 years after 1833 to his cousins, the Stewarts, to dinner, a fish-fry, and a shooting match.[34]
A big storm caused “great loss and injury” in Natchez in the spring of 1840. A large meeting of the citizens of Wilkinson County convened at the courthouse in Woodville on May 12, 1840 for the purpose of expressing the deep sympathy felt by this county. A committee appointed to collect funds included among others, Messrs. E. McGehee, James A Stewart,…AM Feltus…Moses Liddell…Gen WL Brandon, Col. Robt. Semple…..[35]
The Woodville Republican reported in September 1840 the delegates to the Democratic and Whig Conventions in Jackson. MF DeGraffenreid, Duncan Stewart’s niece’s husband, was a Democratic delegate.[36] The Democrats in Wilkinson County were certainly outnumbered by the Whigs with their delegates being 133 to 19 Democrats. Among the Whig delegates were AM Feltus, HM Farish, E. McGehee, CA Thornton, JA Stewart, H. Connell, JH Randolph, M. Liddell, John W. Burrus from Woodville; RT Semple from Pinckneyville; Harry Cage, JA Ventress, AG Cage, P Cage and Charles D. Stewart from Mount Pleasant.[37] Mount Pleasant is the closest community to Holly Grove in Wilkinson County as Centreville at that time was in Amite County. However this does not explain why JA Stewart is a delegate for Woodville. Was he not living at Holly Grove at this time as was previously thought? Charles D. Stewart, age 25, still appears to be living at Holly Grove at this time
On June 23, 1842 there is a letter to Sarah Ann from her sister, Augusta, now married to William Ventress (m.1828), about family and personal matters. She mentioned Florence, William, Peter, and Jim (her children).[38] William Ventress is a cousin of Sarah Ann’s husband, Jones Stewart.
In 1843 a mule had strayed from the plantation of James A. Stewart, according to the Woodville Republican.[39]
In 1843 T. Jones Stewart was listed as elected to office in the Wilkinson County Agricultural Society along with JW Burruss, CA Thornton, Harry Cage, AM Feltus, JA Ventress, Edward McGehee, Pulaski Cage, Hugh Connell, AG Cage and others.[40] Receiving awards in the county’s first agricultural fair in 1843 were some of the same names: T. Jones Stewart and associated relatives and in-laws: Dr. Currier, Judge H. Cage, JW Burrus, Major JL Trask, J. Alexander Ventress, Dr. Redhead, Mrs. E. Feltus, and CA Thornton.[41] The Hon. TJ Stewart was absent as president of the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Mechanical Association’s fair in May 1846. But duly elected to office were TJ Stewart, AG Cage, W. Burruss, and JD Stewart among others. Ladies awarded were Mrs. McGehee, Mrs. Currier and others.[42]
The Woodville Republican reported the full grown English peas of this season on 8 March 1845 from the plantation of JA Stewart.
In November 1846 the Agricultural Society reported on the cotton crop in Wilkinson County: T. Jones Stewart with 700 acres made 115 (is this bales?), James A. Stewart with 450 acres made 140. other associated family listed were AG Cage, JD Stewart, JW Burruss, E. McGehee, James L. Trask, CC Cage and AM Feltus. Of the 75 producers listed, T. Jones Stewart has the 5th largest acreage.[43]
There are three letters (19 July, 5 August, and 27 December 1846) from Cornelia Randolph Thornton, (who married in 1839, Charles Augustine Thornton) to Sarah Ann from Hopemore, Bayou Goula and St. Francisville. These talk of family and personal matters and a mention of Hamden’s family (This would be their brother, John Hampden who had married Emily Jane Liddell in 1837 and who would ultimately have eleven children to populate his palatial mansion, Nottoway, on the Mississippi near White Castle, Louisiana.) [44] Hamden at that time lived at Bayou Goula, very near the later Nottoway.
In 1846 (15 August) Augusta Randolph Ventress is at the “coast” although her letter to her sister, Sarah Ann, at Woodville is postmarked from Donaldsonville on the Mississippi in Ascension Parish, Louisiana near her home.[45]
The Mexican War drew to a fever pitch in Wilkinson County in 1846. The Woodville Republican noted, “Although Wilkinson county has no Militia at all, as a nucleus around which to gather the brave and patriotic spirits that are burning to fly to the Rio Grande, still the people have moved and nobly too, by public meetings, resolutions and subscriptions, and the immediate enrollment of about sixty noble fellows who love their country ‘s fame better than the peace and quiet of home…The man who will not support his country in the time of her need is unworthy of the protection she has given him and should be sent out of it as were the Tories formerly. Hurrah for Uncle Sam, right or wrong!” A public meeting was held at the courthouse for the purpose of discussing the warlike relations of the United States and Mexico. Gen. WL Brandon was recommended to command such forces as may be raised from this section of the state. A committee was formed to collect together the yagers (a hunting rifle) in the county. Jas. B. Stewart ( James A.?) was part of the committee.[46] Maj. Gen. WL Brandon appointed JD Stewart (son of William, son of James, twin to Duncan) Division Quarter Master of the 1st Division, MM to rank as major.[47] A list of volunteers was published 20 June 1846 in the Woodville Republican. Among these were JD Stewart, BM Cage, AG Cage (Albert Gallatin Cage, son of Judge Harry Cage and Catherine Stewart, daughter to Duncan), WL Cage (William Lyall Cage was the son of Pulaski Cage and Mary Ventress) and IG Gayden (his sister Elvira married Albert G. Cage). In November the Woodville Republican reported on 3 deaths in Mexico of local volunteers.[48] And in another issue of the paper more dead and wounded at Monterey were reported. James D. Stewart was requested by Col. Mays to raise a company of Mounted Rangers for Hays’ Texas Regiment.[49]
In June 1847 plans were being made to welcome home the volunteers back from Mexico. The committee to receive the volunteers consisted of JA Ventress, T. Jones Stewart, CC Cage, JA Stewart, E. McGehee and others. A barbecue was planned. JA Stewart along with many others was on the barbecue arrangement committee.[50] Among those published in the local paper as mustering out: BM Cage, 12 June 1847, New Orleans; WL Cage, 13 Oct. ’46, Camp Allen; James D. Stewart, 24 Feb ’47, Monterey; W. Stewart, fifer, 24 Sept ’46, Matamoros; Transferred: AG Cage, to Col. Hay’s Texas Rangers.[51]
A ball was held in Woodville in honor of General Taylor on the evening of his arrival on the 15th Feb 1848. Among the managers were JD Stewart (grandson of James, twin to Duncan) and Carnot Posey (whose sister married Pulaski Cage’s son).[52]
T. Jones Stewart did get involved in politics like his father. In 1843 Whig leaders, including James Alexander Ventress and his cousin T. Jones Stewart, were urged by the press to get out the vote, guard against election shenanigans, and see to the rejection of the repudiators[53] (a reference to an important issue of the day, the repudiation of the Mississippi bank bonds.) In April 1844 the Wilkinson County Clay Club met in the courthouse. T. Jones Stewart was selected as president. The Hon. Edward McGehee was one of the vice presidents. For distribution to the different precincts in the county: Mt. Pleasant, AG Cage and Dr. Redhead.[54] On the 24 August 1844, “This being the regular day for the monthly meeting of the Clay Club of Wilkinson County, the town was alive with the citizens of the country pouring in at an early hour of the day to participate in the patriotic efforts.” TJ Stewart, president, was noted to be present.[55] In 1844 at the Whig meeting in Jackson T. Jones Stewart was named for the second time as a Whig elector, serving also as president of the Wilkinson Clay Club (Henry Clay).[56] In 1845 James Alexander Ventress and Cooper, former Whig senator and representative, were endorsed by the Wilkinson Democrats. The same meeting endorsed Jones Stewart, noting that he was a sincere worker for local needs. He had been nominated for the house by the local Whig caucus a week earlier.[57] In July 1845 we read in the Woodville Republican that James A. Ventress is running for senator and T. Jones Stewart for representative.[58] In August we read that WL Cage among others is supporting WL Smith.[59] Jones Stewart was named in September for the senate by the Whig meeting reversing their former decision.[60] Ventress lost in November. He was out for the first time in a decade. His cousin, Jones Stewart, had 468 votes to Ventress’ 357.[61] And Stewart was named to Ventress’ favorite committees: education and public buildings.[62] Stewart ran for senate again in 1847 as a Whig; Ventress ran for the house as a Democrat. The Natchez Courier forecast that Stewart, “an honorable, high-toned, intellectual gentleman” would be returned to the senate. The Woodville Republican reported in August 1847, “The Free Trader runs up the name of our fellow citizen, Douglas H. Cooper, as a candidate for state senator from this senatorial district, composed of Adams, Wilkinson and Franklin counties. It will be remembered that a Whig meeting in Natchez nominated T. Jones Stewart, ‘of ours’, for the same office. So the contest bids fair to be between two of our own citizens.”[63] The Whigs won again and Stewart not his cousin went to Jackson.[64] Although the Democrats had a majority in the state legislature, the Whigs were still strong in Wilkinson County. They returned Jones Stewart to the Senate in 1849 and his kinsman James D. Stewart in the house.[65] (James D. Stewart would be James Duncan Stewart [b. 1824, Wilkinson Co.] the third child of William Stewart, the son of James Stewart who was twin to Duncan Stewart of Holly Grove.) Jones Stewart served in the state legislature in Jackson as well as state senator. He was the founder of a bill to protect the rights of married women to hold property and real estate.[66] The 1839 Act for the Protection and Preservation of the Rights of Women gave women the ability to possess property separate from their husband.[67] A letter dated 26 January 1846, Sarah Ann, Tignal Jones’s wife, wrote from Holly Grove to her husband in Jackson, Mississippi. She mentioned visiting his brother James Ventress (he had Ventress cousins), plans for a trip to the coast, and regret that his session would be lengthy.[68]
Other letters to T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi, from his wife Sarah Ann on 15 January and 7 February 1848, are about family and personal matters. She also mentions agricultural matters and a visit to Judge Cage (the widower of Catherine Stewart, T. Jones’s sister).[69]
In November 1850 an open letter was sent to the Hon Jefferson Davis [US Senator from Mississippi] from a very large number of men, citizens of Wilkinson County, showing their support for his course in the recent struggle between the Northern Might and the Southern Right. The first signature printed in the paper is that of T. Jones Stewart. Other family members signing were his first cousin, JA Ventress, Charles C. Cage, George W. Cage, Pulaski Cage, Wm. L. Cage, Wm. J. Feltus, and HJ Feltus.[70] JA Stewart is not among the signatories. In January 1851 T. Jones Stewart is a part of a committee forming a “Southern Rights Association.” Another family member is WJ Feltus.[71]
Delegates to the Democratic State Convention in Jackson on 2 May included T. Jones Stewart from the Mount Pleasant precinct. James A. Ventress was chairman and CC Cage was a delegate from Woodville and William L. Cage from Percy’s Creek.[72]
From one source we learn that Tignal Jones Stewart is a polished gentleman and fond of field sports and hunting.[73]
Cornelia Randolph Thornton’s daughters, Cornelia Virginia (b. 1842) and Anna Maria (b. Feb 1840) are living at Holly Grove with their aunt, Sarah Ann Stewart, and going to school when they write in 8 letters (1850-1852) to their uncle, T. Jones Stewart in Jackson, Mississippi. They mention visits from their father.[74] Their mother had died in 1849 at age 30. (She was buried with her parents at the Randolph Cemetery south of Woodville.) Were the two younger Thornton children, John and Sarah also at Holly Grove but not writing at their young ages? The 1850 census has Charles Thornton living alone in Rapides Parish and his children (? number) with their aunt in Mississippi.
There is an undated letter to Sarah Ann Stewart at Woodville from Phoebe Vail Randolph, Sarah’s sister in law, from Troy, NY.[75] Phoebe is the wife of Sarah’s older brother Algernon Sidney who died in 1837.
Holly Grove remained a cotton plantation. Cotton prices rose sharply in 1849 and 1850, after the low prices of a decade, and they would continue to rise throughout the 1850’s (except for a slight fall in 1851).[76] The 1850’s would therefore probably be a prosperous time at Holly Grove. In 1859 Mississippi was the leading cotton producer in the nation.
In July 1850 several citizens called for a meeting at the courthouse in Woodville for August. James A. Stewart, CG[77] Cage and James A. Ventress were among them.[78]
Col. T. Jones Stewart, Col. RA Stewart,[79] and three others, members of the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County, met on the 19th day of April, 1851. The meeting was adjourned to meet at Cold Springs in the Lower Homochitto Precinct on the 3rd Saturday (the 17th) of May. Col. John S. Holt, Jr. was invited to address the association.[80] On Saturday, the 31st of May the Southern Rights Association of Wilkinson County met. The following gentlemen were appointed as delegates to the State Convention to be held in Jackson: T. Jones Stewart, and 18 others.[81]
The 22 July 1851 Woodville Republican reported at a meeting of Adams County “Southern Rights Association,” held in Natchez, a resolution was passed to endorse Hon TJ Stewart of Wilkinson County, for the State Senate. In the same paper at the Union meeting held on Saturday last, Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was nominated for the Convention and Mr. John H. Sims was nominated for the legislature.
On 19 August 1851 the Woodville Republican reported that Cols. Stewart and Gordon will speak tomorrow at Sinkum Sank.
T. Jones Stewart as guardian is selling land purchased by his Uncle Charles Stewart to benefit Charles’ grandson Charles E. Stewart in October 1851.[82] Charles E. Stewart’s father had died in 1833 and his grandfather in 1835.
The Democrats of Wilkinson County met in June 1853 to nominate a candidate for the lower house of the state legislature. Hon. Jas. A. Ventress was called to the chair. Col. George H. Gordon was chosen. T. Jones Stewart was one of several delegates appointed to the Monticello Convention.[83]
Jas. A. Stewart was one of three commissioners (along with WC Connell and Jas. Dunckley) for building two bridges across the branches of the Bayou Sara, about three miles west of Woodville on the Fort Adams road in March 1855.[84]
But T. Jones Stewart would die in 1855. “Died at his residence in this county, on the 20th [March], T. Jones Stewart, in the 55th year of his age. Few men have been more intimately associated with the public and political history of this portion of the State of Mississippi, for the past quarter century. Warmly devoted to the doctrine of States Rights, he knew no party in politics which did not cherish this, as one of their cardinal principles.”[85]
The 1860 census of Wilkinson County[86] tells us some about the fortunes of the family and their relatives. The census shows 2,779 white people, 22 free colored and 13,132 slaves. A list of the largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County lists 41 names. James Alexander Stewart with 235 is one of the larger of this group (Five others are listed as having more. Elgee and Chambers, 501, JC Jenkins, 368, FH Hook, 325, LL Fabers, 280, and TC Patrick, 260). Ventress’ sister in law, Sarah Ann Stewart, Tignal’s widow, is listed with 111. Another Stewart, CE, had 120. Even James Alexander Ventress, Duncan’s nephew, who built his grand home, La Grange, about this time, is listed as having 222 slaves—less than James Alexander and certainly less than the combined slaves of James and Sarah at Holly Grove—346. The McGehee family into which two of James Alexander’s children had recently married, was estimated by one source to have 736 slaves.[87] The census lists Edward, the patriarch, with 146; George T., his son, had 73; CG had 129 and E. had 120. The McGehee family did have plantations in Louisiana as well, where the Stewart in-laws were living at this time.
We don’t know much about the war years at Holly Grove. Many of the children had married and left. The 1860 census has James Alexander and Juliana at Holly Grove with 6 of their children: Duncan, age 23; T. Jones, age 19; Henry M., age 15; Rosa, age 17, Cornelia, age 12; Ida, age 10. T. Jones’ widow Sarah Ann Stewart is listed at another location in the census. James Alexander’s son, Duncan’s wife was pregnant at her father’s plantation when Bolling Green Plantation was burned in 1864. James Alexander’s daughter, Catherine’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee was in the Louisiana Calvary. T. Jones would serve in the Confederacy as well as Henry who would drown in the Mississippi in 1866.
T. Jones Stewart was dead. His grandchildren were too young to serve. His son in laws were not too old but apparently did not serve. We do not have any evidence that Charles Mathews (age 37 in 1861) served, and William J. Fort, age 43, died in 1862.
James Alexander Stewart was age 50 in 1861. He did have sons who served. Tignal Jones served in the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. Duncan served in the Confederacy as well as Henry.
Penelope Jones Stewart’s husband, Jacob Bowman Stirling, age 36 in 1861, was a planter in Washington County, Mississippi. We do not have any record of his service. Caroline’s husband, J. Burruss McGehee, served in Co. C of the Louisiana Calvary. They lived in West Feliciana Parish. Cornelia’s future husband, Albert Batchelor was a private in Co. E, 2nd Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, Johnson’s Division, Jackson’s Corp, Army of Northern Virginia, July 1862-July 1863; then a Drillmaster, Enterprise, Mississippi, 1864.
Charles Duncan Stewart was age 46 in 1861 was a planter in Pointe Coupee but there is no evidence that he served. His son was too young.
The Cage boys had moved to Terrebonne Parish but both served the Confederacy. Duncan Cage moved to Terrebonne Parish about 1855. He was a sugar planter. When the war of secession came, he raised a company of infantry which became a part of the 26th Louisiana. He was made Lt. Col. and later colonel. He served as Colonel of a regiment (the 26th) of Louisiana troops just before they were captured at the siege of Vicksburg. He was taken sick and not permitted to be in command and therefore was not captured.[88] He was later on the staff of Gen. E. Kirby Smith.[89] Albert Cage, his brothr, served as a captain.
Eliza Stewart Hamilton had three sons who served the Confederacy, Douglas Montrose Hamilton and William Belhaven Hamilton. Jones Stewart Hamilton enlisted in the first company that left Wilkinson County to go to Virginia, where he was 1st Lt. in Co. K, 16th Ms.[90] In 1862 Jones S. Hamilton was Adj. Gen. State of MS. He was ordered back to Jackson and reported to Governor John H. Pettus organizing and mustering in companies for the Confederacy. In 1863 he was elected State Senator for Wilkinson, Adams and Amite Counties. He resigned as Adj. Gen. In 1864 he was made Lt. Col. commanding a battalion of cavalry, later attached to the regiment commanded by Frank Powers. One source lists him as a Lt. Col. in Scott’s Cavalry.[91] Col. Jones S. Hamilton had in Dec 1863 a sufficient number of companies to form the battalion of cavalry, which he had been authorized to raise, by special authority from the War Department, to operate on the Mississippi—between Natchez and Baton Rouge.[92] Hamilton was paroled 19 May 1865.
He was a member of the Mississippi Peace Commission that traveled to Washington in 1865 to meet with Andrew Johnson.
Cotton was probably grown at Holly Grove after the War. The Federal government and northern capitalists were aware that restoration of cotton production was critical to the financial recovery of the nation. By 1870 sharecroppers, small farmers and plantation owners were producing more cotton than in 1860.[93] We do have records of Sarah Stewart contracting with former slaves to grow cotton. From 1803 until 1937 America was the world’s leading cotton exporter.[94]
We do note that Sarah Stewart’s granddaughter, Sallie Fort’s youngest daughter, Anna Key Fort, born in 1861, spent most of her childhood at Hollygrove.[95] Anna’s father died in 1862 so her mother may have needed the help of Sarah Stewart. Since James and Juliana’s children were mostly grown, the house was quieter in the late 60’s and 70’s than it had been in a long time.
Was there some discord or was it just to settle up matters? James A. Stewart petitioned in court to divide the estate with his sister-in-law Sarah A. Stewart and her children, Sallie J. Fort and Penelopie Mathews in October 1876. The petition notes that Penelope Stewart had died in 1843 leaving five legal heirs: James A. Stewart, T. Jones Stewart (now deceased), Charles D. Stewart, Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage. The petition further notes the estate was never divided and was held by the heirs.
It is on the survey to divide the property that we first find the name Holly Grove given to the plantation (1877) though undoubtedly the name was being used earlier. In this survey is a tenant of the Stewarts, William Veal. It is William Veal who is the butler in the fictionalized version of the McGehee family and the burning of their home, Bowling Green, in So Red the Rose, by Stark Young. The butler was said to be in real life a slave of the Stewarts. It was Duncan Stewarts grandson’s wife who was the pregnant daughter of Judge McGehee who was present when Bowling Green was burned.
T. Jones Stewart in his lifetime purchased the undivided interest of Eliza C. Hamilton and Catherine M. Cage which he left to his wife Sarah Ann Stewart, widow, and children Sallie J. Fort and Penelope Mathews. Therefore this portion of the family has 3/5 of the estate. James A. Stewart has 2/5 of the estate having purchased 1/5 from his brother Charles Stewart.
The tract was surveyed (2,367 57/100 acres) and divided. It consisted of parts of sections 21-26 and 31-36. A plot of the plantation shows it running from the Amite County line in the east to the Ventress and Whitaker lands in the west. The Woodville-Clinton Road near bisects it from north to south and the Jackson Road branching off south of the house. The dwelling is noted in arable lot #3 (374.24 acres, valued with improvements at $1666),[96] and an area marked quarters lies to the east of the house between the house and the Woodville-Clinton Road. Also of note is a gin tract.[97] This is 27 acres on which there is a gin house, steam engine, mill and gin, the value not including the engine, boiler and gin stand but including the press is $272.30.[98]
How this division of the property changed things we do not know. In 1879, Sarah and her daughters sell to James all of arable lot 5---334 acres. Sarah still has an interest in 1883 when she sues for damages done by the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Memphis railroad which was run through the area in 1882. She notes corn and cotton growing on the tract. It was a contentious affair going to a jury trial with the verdict being set aside.[99]
A list of unclaimed letters remaining in the Woodville Post Office, Nov. 1, 1878 included JA Stewart.[100]
A list of the regular jurors for the April term 1879 of the circuit court include James Stewart.[101]
Jas. Stewart was a grand juror for the third district, 1880.[102]
James died in 1883 at the home of his son in law J. Burruss McGehee.[103] As early as 1874 James was giving money and land to his children from Laurel Hill.[104] He died intestate and in the division of his estate it is noted he was living at the home place. Perhaps his sister-in-law had already gone to live with her daughter. Sarah Ann died at the home of her daughter in 1892 in West Feliciana Parish.[105] James is buried at Holly Grove.
The settling of the estate notes he possessed a plantation and personal property: notes, money, accounts, stock, $12,000. The 1883 petition also notes his widow Juliana is now living in Washington, D.C. (this would be with her daughter Ida Simpson) and his heirs include seven children: Duncan Stewart, T. Jones Stewart, Catherine E. McGehee, wife of JB McGehee, Penelope J. Sterling, Cornelia R. Batchelor, wife of AA Batchelor, Ida Simpson, wife of Lennox Simpson, and Rosa Sutherland. It is further noted that Juliana, Penelope Stirling, and Duncan Stewart received from the intestate in his life time advancement to an amount greater that any distributor’s share. And T. Jones Stewart had transferred his interest to his sister Rosa Sutherland.[106]
In a filing December 1883 the residence of all the heirs is listed: Juliana is now with Ida Simpson in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, Rosa Sutherland is in Washington, D.C., Duncan and Catherine E. McGehee are both in Laurel Hill in West Feliciana Parish (They had married siblings.), Cornelia Batchelor lived at Smithland, Point Coupee Parish, and T. Jones Stewart lived in New Orleans.
It is of interest to note how much James Alexander Stewart had given his children during his lifetime, but to count against their inheritance. Penelope Stirling had received $16,000, Duncan $18,000, Catherine McGehee $10,000, Ida Simpson $10,000, Rosa Sutherland $700, Jones $7,920.30 and his wife Juliana $41,400. The administrator states there is $20,000 in the estate with the land only valued at $3,600. The heirs ask to be made equal and Juliana asks for 160 acres including “the dwelling house in which her said husband lived at the time of his death.” It is further noted in the pre death gifts, one in 1859 to Penelope Sterling: $10,000 and three Negroes, Jo and his wife Irene and their son Levy, valued at $2,600. Those were better times. In February 1863, Duncan received title to seven Negroes, value $6,800. The son Henry Stewart is not mentioned. He died in 1866. In 1867 Juliana received 112 shares of the City Railroad stock of New Orleans, $22,000 and received a house and lot, fixtures, furniture at Mississippi City, value $9,000. In 1872 Cornelia and Ida received each $7,500 and ¼ of Highland Plantation in Point Coupee Parish valued at $2,500. Also in 1872, Jones received ½ of Highland Plantation, value $5,000. In 1881, James’ daughter Penelope Stirling was noted to have received her full share of his property of every description and had no further claim. In 1884 the 1277.3 acres was divided into eight shares with Rosa Sutherland receiving two shares.[107]
Charles Fort and his wife are living at Holly Grove with their children in the 80’s and 90’s. Maybe Juliana comes back since she asked for the house and some acreage. Who is in the mansion house? The mansion house is in the section belonging to Sarah Stewart, Charles’ grandmother. Is there another house on the plantation? Penelope Stirling conveys a portion to Rosa Sutherland in 1884 of her undivided interest in the estate. Cornelia conveys 145 acres to Rosa the same year. Rosa may also have moved back by this time. Ida is now living in Pittsburg. In 1886 Rosa Sutherland conveys ½ interest in several tracts of about 400 acres plus tools and cattle to HT Sharp. He starts mortgaging the land in 1886, 87 and 88. Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp for in 1889 they are mortgaging it together. Of note, in 1889 Mrs. SA Stewart, Mrs. Rosa Sharp, and Mrs. Catherine McGehee purchase 32 acres. But the land starts to be sold off. T. Jones Stewart sells 141 acres to AJ Norwood in 1889.
Sarah Stewart takes the railroad to court for damages to her crops in 1883 so as to suggest she is farming at that time. She and her daughters appear to have the house tract in the division of the estate of Penelope Stewart petitioned by James A. Stewart in 1876. In 1892 Sarah Stewart dies at her daughters in West Feliciana. Rosa Sutherland is definitely back living in Wilkinson Co. in 1886, perhaps by 1884. Where is she living? She does own the east part of section 25 of 57.5 acres. This could be the mansion tract. But she also at the time of her death in 1928 has a residence in the town of Centreville. Is she living there? She and her husband are farming portions of the Holly Grove Plantation from 1886 until near the time of her death, perhaps as late as 1920 although they had sold off a substantial portion in 1913.
Charles Mathews Fort of Catalpa, great grandson of Duncan, was a student at VMI, Class of 1874, but he left early (Oct 1871) to return home, and his mother, Sally Fort sent him to Holly Grove to help his grandmother, Sarah Stewart at Holly Grove. Sally had his older brother William Johnson Fort, Jr. at Catalpa. Charles M. Fort probably came in 1873 at age 21 to Holly Grove. There is a notation elsewhere that the laid by his cotton crop in 1871 (Holly Grove or Catalpa?).
Charles Fort married Sarah Wall in 1885. The Walls owned land west of the Ventress Place but the family first came to the area with a Spanish land grant of 1795 to Richland Plantation in the western part of the present county. Charles lived at Holly Grove until he died in 1914. Sarah Wall Fort died in 1897, a few days after the birth of Jones Stewart Fort, her 6th child. The home was sold after Charles died and the contents distributed in the family.[108] Anna Key Fort Pipes organized the dispersal of the contents of Holly Grove after her brother, Charles’ death.
From 1889 until 1917 Rosa and her husband Hiram Sharp mortgage the land almost every year to apparently have money to run the farm. This is in several tracts totaling 752 acres and consists of Lots 3,4,5,7 and 8 of the estate of James A. Stewart. The mortgages are usually satisfied in a year or two. On one note we note they are producing cotton, cotton seed, corn, oats, and potatoes. It is also noted they have a 1/3 interest in a gin at Whitaker Station. In 1913 they sell 530 acres to CJ Bear. 1917 is the last year that they jointly borrow money. In 1920 Rosa takes a loan by herself and sells an oil and gas lease and is termed a widow.
Rosa Stewart Sharp died 13 January 1928 leaving a will.[109] She was living in a house in Centreville.
In 1892 Sarah Ann Randolph Stewart died at age 83 in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Fort, with whom she lived. She is buried next to her husband at Holly Grove.
In 1894 Penelope Mathews conveys to her sister, Sally Fort, lot 2, 950 acres and lot 1, 949 acres, is warranted by Sally Fort to Penelope Mathews. In 1897 Penelope Mathews sells lot 1 to JA Redhead.[110]
In 1898 Juliana dies and is buried beside her husband, James Alexander at Holly Grove. Now Duncan’s widow, Penelope, their two sons who lived at Holly Grove and their wives are all buried together near the homeplace. Also Duncan’s daughter, Catherine and her husband Harry Cage are buried in the cemetery.
Rosa Sutherland marries Hiram Sharp and returns to live at Holly Grove. On September 10, 1907, evidence that the boll weevil had crossed the Mississippi River appeared in a cotton field six miles south of Natchez. By the fall of 1909, infestation covered the southwestern third of the state, and it took about six acres of land to produce a single bale of cotton.[111] We know that Southern cotton farming was devastated in 1910. We note in a filing to divide the Redhead estate, Montrose, which is just north of Holly Grove, that the boll weevil had made cotton not profitable.[112] In 1916 Cornelia conveys to Rosa S. Sharp 57.5 acres, the east part of section 25, where Rosa Sharp lives, plus 107 aces of section 22.[113] Charles Fort died 1914 and maybe Rosa is now living in the mansion house.
Not only will Holly Grove no longer be a cotton plantation, but the Stewart presence is coming to an end at Holly Grove. Sallie Fort Butler (daughter of Sarah Stewart Fort) sells to the White brothers in 1914, and in 1924 Rosa S. Sharp sells to FE White the 57.5 acres of section 25 she owns. Is she selling the mansion house and moving to a residence in Centreville? I believe that the mansion house is in the 482 acres sold by Sallie Fort Butler to the White brothers in 1914. I think Charles Fort lived in the mansion house until he died in 1914 and the house tract was then sold to the Whites.
Rosa dies in 1928 and is buried along with her husband Hiram Sharp (death date not known but Rosa is a widow by 1920) at Holly Grove, the last of the Stewarts to live and to be buried there.
The White family lives at Holly Grove until the 1950’s when it is sold to Charles Dudley.
In the 1960’s Georgie Perkins Williamson and her husband Floyd purchase Holly Grove
Georgie was related to the Stewarts through the marriages of Cornelia Stewart to Albert Batchelor and also with the marriage of Albert Gallatin Cage to Elvira Scott Gayden.
The Walter Propst family lived at Holly Grove in the 1970’s before abandoning it. Dr. Marvin Stuckey purchased the property, 110 acres, in 1988 and began a restoration and rebuilding of the house. He sold the property to Landon and Connie Anderson in 2005.
[1]
Woodville Republican, June 1825.
[2] Chuck
Speed lists 3 more children on his website but seems to have them confused with
Duncan’s children. I have found no other evidence of any more children than the
two girls.
[3] Holly
Grove Cemetery
[4]
Tombstone Grace Churchyard, Henry Martin Stewart, 6 Mar 1845-27 Dec 1866.
[5] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891.
[6] Statues
of MS Territory, The Constitution of the US, Edward Turner
[7] 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.
[8]
Encyclopedia of MS Hx, Vol 1, Dunbar Rowland
[9] Memoirs
of MS, part 2, 1891.
[10]
American Historical Magazine, Univ. Press, Vol. 8, 1902. Originally written by
Dr. Morgan Brown in 1826 and states James is now at Cumberland College.
[11]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[12]
Wilkinson County marriage records.
[13] WR, 20
June 1854.
[14] ibid,
Vol II, p. 835.
[15]
lib.lsu.edu/special/guides/Natchez
[16]
gravestone
[17] Madness
and the Mississippi Bonds, A Tale of Old Woodville by Robert Bruce Smith, 2004.
p. 10.
[18]
Madness, pp. 10-12.
[19]
Madness, p. 14.
[20]
Woodville Republican, 5 Dec 1840.
[21] Or
March
[22] Old
Centreville was in Amite County and originally was known at Elysian Fields. It
was moved to its present location to be on the railroad in the 1880’s.
[23] It is
not clear who this is. Sarah’s father Peter had no brothers but this could have
been a great uncle.
[24]
Manuscripts Department, Library of the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Southern Historical Collection, #1998-z, Randolph and Yates Family Papers.
[25]
Rootsweb
[26] UNC
papers
[27] Lucy
Audubon, p. 213.
[28]
Woodville Republican, 1 Mar 1834.
[29] UNC
papers
[30] Memoirs
of Ms, Bio and Hx. part 2
[31] Deed
records of Joe Brian, p. 111.
[32]
Provenance: T. Jones and Sarah Ann Stewart (Holly Grove Plantation) as it is
embossed on the leather binding to Penelope Stewart and Charles Mathews (Butler
Greenwood Plantation), to Sallie Mathews and James Alexander Ventress, to her
niece Anne Mathews Lawrason and Edward Butler, to Charles Mathews Butler and
Katherine Pipes, to Anne Butler.
[33] UNC
papers
[34] Lynda
Crist, p. 249.
[35]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1840.
[36]
Woodville Republican, 19 Sept 1840.
[37]
Woodville Republican, 26 Sept 1840.
[38] UNC
papers
[39]
Woodville Republican, 13 May 1843.
[40]
Woodville Republican, 10 June 1843.
[41]
Woodville Republican, 11 Nov 1843.
[42]
Woodville Republican, 16 May 1846.
[43]
Woodville Republican, 14 Nov 1846.
[44] UNC
papers
[45] UNC
papers
[46]
Woodville Republican, 9 May 1846.
[47]
Woodville Republican, 6 June 1846.
[48]
Woodville Republican, 7 Nov 1846.
[49]
Woodville Republican, 21 Nov 1846.
[50]
Woodville Republican, 12 June 1847.
[51]
Woodville Republican, 14 Aug 1847.
[52] WR 12
Feb 1848.
[53] Lynda
Crist, p. 137.
[54]
Woodville Republican, 13 Apr 1844.
[55]
Woodville Republican, 24 Aug 1844.
[56] Lynda
Crist, p. 145
[57] Lynda
Crist, p. 147
[58]
Woodville Republican, 5 July 1845.
[59]
Woodville Republican, 23 Aug 1845.
[60] Lynda
Crist, p. 148
[61] Lynda
Crist, p. 150
[62] Lynda
Crist, p. 150-51
[63]
Woodville Republican, 7 Aug 1847.
[64] Lynda
Crist, p. 154-55
[65] Lynda
Crist, p. 166
[66] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2. 1891.
[67]
Independent Minds and Shared Community, Married Women’s Wills in Amite Co. MS,
1840-1919, Jennifer M. Payne, Masters Thesis, Rice Univ. 1996.
[68] UNC
papers
[69] UNC
papers
[70] WR, 19
Nov 1850.
[71] WR, 28
Jan 1851.
[72] WR, 19
April 1853.
[73] Memoirs
of Ms. Part 2, 1891
[74] UNC
papers
[75] UNC
papers
[76] Port
Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 17.
[77]
Probably CC Cage.
[78] WR, 16
July 1850.
[79] ?
relation
[80] WR, 29
Apr 1851.
[81] WR, 3
June 1851.
[82] WR, 14
Oct 1851.
[83] WR, 21
June 1853.
[84] WR, 20
Mar. 1855
[85]
Woodville Republican, 3 April 1855.
[86]
Rootsweb largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County 1860.
[87] The
Burning of Bowling Green, p. 8.
[88]
files.usgwarchives.net
[89]
Confederate Col. a biographical register by Bruce Allardice gives the
following: Grivot Guards early 1862; Lt. Col. 26th La. 3 Apr 1862;
Col. 10 Nov 1862; resign 30 Dec 1862 due
to ill health; VADC to Gen. Kirby Smith 1863; Col. and judge military court of
the TMD 9 Mar 1864, appt. never confirmed; 1865 elected state representative;
speaker of the house, 1865-67.
[90] MS
Contemporary Bio. Ed. Dunbar Rowland, p. 311-312. 1907. The information in this and the next 4
paragraphs.
[91] Lists
of Officers and privates who volunteered in CSA from Wilkinson Co. compiled by
WC Miller, 19 May 1903.
[92]
Woodville Republican, 19 Dec 1863.
[93] MS Hx
Now, cotton and the Civil War, Eugene R. Dattel
[94] Dattel
[95]
Pipesfamily.com
[96]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[97]
Abstracts for Charles Dudley, Vol. I, p. 151.
[98]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 236.
[99]
Abstracts, vol. I, p. 187
[100]
WR, 16 Nov 1878.
[102]
WR, 11 Sept 1880.
[103]
Obit, Woodville Republican, 1 Sept 1883
[104]
Joe Brian abstracts of the settlement of Jas A. Stewart estate.
[105]
tombstone
[106]
Abstracts, vol II, p. 434.
[107]
Abstracts, Vol II, p. 445.
[108]
Personal communication, 2016, Jim Titley, Dallas.
[109]
Abstracts of deed in the possession of Joe Brian.
[110]
Abstracts, Vol I, p. 203.
[111]
Port Gibson Design Guidelines, Mimi Miller, p. 21.
[112]
Abstracts Vol I. P. 259.
[113]
Abstracts, Vol III, p. 834.
Thank you for your research and sharing. This article gives a good look at the relationship between the Stewart and Cage families. Sure I will read it several times
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