Hometown Calhoun

Hometown Mississippi is informative and entertaining book compiled by James F. (Jim) Brieger and published privately in 1980. It’s also an important work, since it includes all of Mississippi’s towns and counties of record, with a short write-up providing significant data. These are the entries for Calhoun County; Pittsboro, as county seat, is first listed, then the others alphabetically.

CALHOUN COUNTY

Organized in 1852, Calhoun County is located in the Sand Clay Hills Soil Area of the state. It was the fifty-ninth county to organize and ranks thirtythird in area. The county was named for John C. Calhoun, Vice-President of the United States, and at the time of formation, Henry s. Foote was Governor of Mississippi, and Millard Fillmore was President of the United States. Calhoun was the home county of Dennis Murphree, twice Governor of Mississippi, 1927-28 and 1943-44.

PITTSBORO

Pittsboro was founded on July 26, 1852 along with Calhoun County. The county seat was temporarily located at Hartfords, four miles east of the present site of Pittsboro, with monthly court being held in a log building which was used as a courthouse, Hartford did not remain for long as the county seat as the geographical center of the county was determined to be within a few hundred yards of Camp Springs,

On July 15, 1852, the Board of Police met at this point to discuss the matter of a permanent county seat, and Ebenezer Gaston, a wealthy local citizen offered 160 acres as a gift to the county for the location of a seat of government. The gift was accepted by the board and the proposed new town was named Orrsville, for J.A. Orr who had been very instrumental in the organization of the county. The name of the town was later changed to Pittsboro, for Pittsboro, North Carolina, which was Mr. Orr’s original home.

The Odom Grocery Store was the first building to be constructed, and in 1853, the Pittsboro Academy was established, being conducted in a two-story log building. In 1886, a frame building was erected to house the Pittsboro Male and Female College, then in 1888, Honorable B.J. Lowery, noted educator and statesman, taught his first school as principal of this college. The red brick courthouse was built the same year as the log jail, in 1856. In this courthouse the Secession Convention was held in 1861, and many other events connected with the war and reconstruction centered around it.

Pittsboro has had its times of prosperity and adversity, but has remained the county seat throughout the years, with many attempts having been made to move it, but all failed. In 1922 the courthouse was destroyed by fire, with the loss of almost all the records.

BANNER

Located eight miles north of Brice, Banner is one of the oldest existing places in the county, being settled by the Finn family from Ireland in 1840. The story is told, that Uncle Mickey Finn gave his reason for coming to America was the fact that land was so high in his native Ireland that he could not afford to buy a burial plot for his family. When he bought his land here and gave it the name, Banner, he immediately built a house, then he marked off a family burying ground,

Several large planters and slave owners were permanently settled here before the Civil War, and the town was known as a social as well as an educational center. A college was established in 1889 which offered commercial and music courses, but with the establishment of public schools the college became extinct. Since the start of the 1900’s, the place has been on the decline because of its remote location,

BENELA

The origin of its name is not known, but Benela was established eight miles southeast of Pittsboro in 1840. There were settlers here in the early 1830’s, but Benela was not founded until 1840 when Hugh Gaston came here with several others to establish business enterprises,

In 1853, Dr. S.T. Buchanan, Captain Enoch, Wiley and Austin Woodward settled here and Benela soon became a thriving trade center. In 1865 the town boasted six stores, two saloons, a large water mill and manufacturing plant. Being located on the Yalobusha River, cotton was transported to Greenwood by keel boat, bringing back supplies on their return trip. Lumber was also shipped down the river in rafts until the railroad was built to Calhoun City in 1905.

The growth of Benela was impeded by the fact that the railroad missed the town, and its rivals, Calhoun City and Derma gained the supremacy in leadership growth, and as trading centers, The Church, mill, and school were finally abandoned and the community became a farming area, using other points as trading centers,

BENTLEY

Bentley, located ten miles southeast of Calhoun City, was established in 1844 by Jesse H. Bently, the first settler, who erected a water mill on nearby Bear Creek. The town was incorporated in 1911.

BIG CREEK

Big Creek was founded eight miles west of Calhoun City in the 1840’s, The first settlers were R. Chruthird and Abram Sellers in the early 1840’s, being joined by other pioneers between 1845 and 1855. At this time Big Creek was located two miles north of its present location and was the distributing point for the sale of whiskey, with a wholesale house having been opened here,

Being so far from the railroad, the growth of the town was slow but with the building of the highway, two miles to the south, Big Creek was moved to its present location near the highway in 1920 with more stores being added and a post office being established.

BOUNDS

About 1824, J.R, Bounds, a cattleman, settled almost midway between the Skuna and Yalobusha Rivers, about eight miles west of present-day Pittsboro. His brother, Henry Bounds, joined him in 1828 and they found an ideal cattle range between the two streams. The two brothers rented this land from an Indian sub-chief named Bob Cole during their first two years of settlement, but later bought the land.

BRUCE

Bruce was founded in 1927 when the E.L. Bruce Lumber Company purchased a vast acreage in this section, four miles north of Pittsboro and established their large mill three miles north of Pittsboro in the Skuna Valley. The company purchased the Thurman Barton farm which became the home of George Rogers, Superintendent of the Bruce interests.

Johnny Main Mountain, six miles east of Brue, is the highest point in the county, covering several acres. Some remarkable rock formations are found on the mountain, and Skuna River flows around the base on the north side. According to legend, this mountain was the home of a prominent Chickasaw Chief named Piomingo at the time the Indians occupied this section. The mountain received its name from Johnny Main, an old Dutchman who hunted and trapped here during the 1860’s.

BUSYTON

Busyton was established about 1865, four miles south of Sarepta, and at one time a post office was located two miles to the southeast, but it was discontinued in 1905. Sometime after 1905, when State Highway 9 was improved, J.T. Ivy built a store on the highway and called it Busyton.

CALHOUN CITY

Federal Land Records show that the site on which Calhoun City stands, ten miles south of Bruce, was conveyed to an Indian named Ish tah hath la, T.P. Gore purchased an entire section of 640 acres from this Indian, supposedly for a handful of bright-colored beads, a few furs, and several quarts of whiskey. Being a large slave owner, Gore cleared a plantation and lived an easy life, in which horse racing and cock fighting figured prominently. Before his death he is thought to have buried a great amount of gold on his plantation, but died without revealing its hiding place. He is buried near Calhoun City in a wooded section of his former plantation,

In 1900 the Gore property passed into the hands of T.L. Beadles and Jeff Boland, being purchased from them in 1904 by Frank Burkett and J.S. Rowe. The place was named Burkett for Frank Bukett, but the name was later changed to Calhoun City for John C, Calhoun. These men learned that the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was planning to build a branch line through this section and made plans for the building of a town. One mile east lived two other landowners who were demanding that the terminal be located on their land. A legal battle was fought, and the court decided in favor of both places, so just one mile east of Calhoun City was established the town of Derma, Because of this matter, hard feelings existed between the towns cor several years.

The present town of Calhoun City was surveyed and laid off in lots in 1905. That same year, a hotel was built and a central parkway was laid out, awaiting the time when Pittsboro would relinquish its claim to the county seat and a courthouse could be erected.

The year of 1906 brought the incorporation of Calhoun City as well as many new families. On the first Sunday in January, 1907, the first passenger train ariived in Calhoun City. This was a great event in the history of the town and people, many of whom had never seen a train, came from miles around to witness the arrival.

DENTONTOWN

Located fourteen miles southwest of Pittsboro.

DERMA

In 1905, upon learning of the railroad to be built from Okalona to Calhoun City, Frank Burkett and J.S. Rowe immediately made plans for the establishment of a town in the vicinity of Calhoun City. Just one mile east lived J.M. Smith and Dr. S.H. Lawrence who also proposed to build a depot and town, Heated controversy resulted in a court decision in favor of both places, and soon there sprang up two rival towns. It is said that in time, Captain Burkett and Dr, Lawrence, both Civil War Veterans, were able to ease the friction between the two towns to a large extent. During the early history of the town, Derma enjoyed gradual growth which continued until the depression of 1929, at which time the town began to decline, The town also suffered several disastrous fires from which it never recovered, but at its peak, Derma boasted two churches, fourteen stores, and an Agricultural High School.

About four miles southeast of Derma is the site of the boyhood home of Fox Conner who was promoted to the rank of Major General by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War I, Fox Conner was General Perishing’s fight hand man, and Perishing once stated that Fox Conner did more to help win the war than any one man he knew.

ELLARD

Located six miles northwest of Pittsboro,

ELZY

Settlers first came to this site, three miles north of Vardaman, in the 1840!s, and called the settlement Cherryhill. The place was later named Elzy, supposedly for B.M. Elzy an early merchant. A post office was established here in the mid 1850’s and was in operation until 1905. The village began its decline when the railroad was built through three miles to the north, and the railroad accommodations attracted most of the residents to Vardaman,

HARDIN TOWN

Hardin Town was established and named by Johnnie Hardin who came to this site, four miles east of Calhoun City, in 1845. The place also seems to have been known as Hopewell, since the post office, which was in operation from 1880 until 1903, and the school was known as Hopewell. Hardin Town was never much more than a one store settlement, and that became extinct during the depression of 1929.

HARTFORD

The extinct town of Hartford is historic in the fact that it was the first county seat of Calhoun County. Established in 1830, Hartford served as the seat of government from January until July of 1852, at which time Pittsboro, four miles to the southwest, was selected as the permanent county seat. Martin Murphree, Grandfather of Dennis Murphree, was one of the first settlers in this section, coming in 1835. A few years later Hartford had become a thriving trade center, with a furniture and jug factory being operated by 0. K. Bennet in the early 1840’s. Soon after the establishment of the county seat at Pittsboro, the town of Hartford began to decline, and by 1886 was an extinct village.

HOLLIS

Prior to 1860, Alexander Hollis and his brother, Marvin V. Hollis settled in this locality, three miles east of Derma and the place was named for these two brothers. Hollis was no more than a rural community until the building of the railroad in 1905, and it became a flag station. At that time a post office was opened and the town became incorporated in 1910. Hollis prospered for a few years but when the post office was discontinued in 1922 it began to decline. The nearby larger towns drew most of the trade and by 1927 the town was almost extinct.

LOYD

Located eight miles east of Pittsboro, the name origin is uncertain, but it is known that the community was settled before 1860. A post office was established at Loyd following the Civil War and in 1900 there were three stores in operation. The post office was discontinued in 1910 and mail was received from Vardaman.

MABRY

Mabry was a railroad switch located a short distance west of the depot at Derma. The switch served a large planing mill operated by G.C. and I. Mabry of Derma. Mabry became extinct with the abolishment of the switch in 1939.

PARTEE

Located seven and one-half miles west of Pittsboro,

PITTMAN

Pittman was established as a flag station on the Mississippi and Skuna Valley Railroad, twelve miles west of Bruce. The station was named for Sam Pittman who owned the land where the station was located before it was sold to the Bruce Lumber Company.

REID

It is thought that Young Phillips, who arrived here about 1850, was the first settler in this section, nine miles north of Vardaman, Other early settlers included the Hardins, Campbells, Morgans, and the Reid family, for whom the town was named. A post office had been in operation for several years when a store was opened by Tom Phillips in 1880. Three other stores were eventually built, and Reid enjoyed good business activity until the building of a railroad to the south in 1904. At that time the population began to shift to the railroad, business started to decline, and in 1910, the post office was discontinued.

RETREAT

About 1890, Stewart Warner opened a merchantile store near his home, ten miles northwest of Calhoun City, and in time, the settlement gained a post office which was named Retreat. Within a few years the post office was discontinued, and at that time the business of Stewart Warner was closed and Warner moved to Big Creek.

SABOUGLA

 

This settlement, located eleven miles southwest of Calhoun City, was first known as Davis Town, for J.W. Davis, who settled near here in the 1830’s. About 1880 when & post office was granted, the community was given the name, Sabougla for the creek on which it is located.

SAREPTA

Located eleven miles northeast of Bruce, it is thought that John Hellum was the first settler, coming in 1836 from Tennessee and acquired land a few miles north of the present site of Sarepta. Dr. Andrew Roane, son of Governor Archibald Roane of Tennessee, settled here in 1840 and at that time there was one store which was operated by a man named McLarty.

There is a story told of a happening in Sarepta, when in the 1880’s the backwoodsmen of the area had the habit of coming to town and taking the law in their own hands. It seems that a government man named Wise came to Mississippi in 1884 in search of a criminal. When he reached Oxford, he was reassigned to locate and arrest two brothers named Dock and Jim Bishop. The two brothers were wanted for the killing of two Harmon boys in a drunken brawl near Sarepta. Jim Bishop was finally located by Wise, who made friends with him, thinking that he could be persuaded to betray his brother. He gave Jim Bishop a bottle of drugged whiskey for his brother, setting a time and place for his capture.

Instead of betraying Dock, Jim betrayed Mr. Wise, and hiding behind a tree they ambushed him, filling him full of buckshot. They then buried him in a shallow grave where he was found a few days later. About three years later Dock Bishop was captured, convicted, and hanged for his crimes. A song, “The Ballad of Dock Bishop,” was then composed by one of the local citizens, and is probably still sung occasionally.

SHEPHERD

Located three and one-half miles northwest of Pittsboro,

SKUNA Located six and one-hal miles west of Pittsboro.

SLATE SPRINGS

Located nine miles south of Calhoun City, the place took its name from the springs located west of town on the Slate Springs-Grenada Road. The exact settlement date is uncertain, but it is thought by local people to be older than Pittsboro. If this is true, then Slate Springs could possibly be the oldest settlement in the county. Slate Springs appears to have been a trading center in the early 1800’s. At that time, in addition to the saloons, there were two stores, the first one probably being operated by a man named Woodward. Between 1880 and 1890, a post office, flour mill, and two churches were added. Also, at this time the Fox College was opened, with Fuller Fox as the first teacher.

TRUSTY

This small community, located twelve miles northwest of Sarepta, falls just within the county line. A store, in which was housed the post office, was given the name Trusty, for a local resident. The store as well as the post office have been discontinued, the Trusty family, along with other residents have moved away, and little now remains to mark the site of the settlement.

VANCE

Now listed as being extinct, Vance was located about two miles east of Slate Springs, being named for William Vance, who in 1837 was the first settler. After building a log cabin in 1837, Vance established a water mill on Shulispear Creek for the purpose of grinding grain. In 1844, Vance cleared a plot of ground about 300 yards from his mill on which to erect a larger home. He died before the home was built, and on being buried in the clearing, the spot came to be known as the Vance Graveyard, being used by the community which later sprang up.

For many years wheat as well as corn was ground at the mill, and during the Civil War and Reconstruction, this old mill provided bread for many people. Shulispear Creek was an ideal fishing spot, and people bringing their grain from many miles away would take advantage of the opportunity to camp for several days at a time, fishing and hunting while their grain was being ground. After William Vance’s death his son operated the mill for a few years, then it was sold and operated under the new owners until it was discontinued in 1914.

VARDAMAN

This settlement, four miles east of Derma, was originally known as Ticky Bin, and several stories have been told as to how the name originated. In those days the cattle grazed in the bottom lands where ticks were found, not only on the cattle but on the grass and trees as well. In 1872 a store was opened by Tom Richardson, but the chief industry in this section, especially from 1895 until 1903. was the stave industry. Handhewn staves were made all up and down the Yalobusha and Skuna Rivers, and at the time of the Paris World’s Fair, several staves were sent to the fair and received first prize.

By 1904 the community of Ticky Bin had increased in population and the need of a post office was realized by the citizens. The long hoped for railroad had. been surveyed so a petition was sent to President Theodore Roosevelt for the establishment of a post office to be named Vardaman, in honor of James K. Vardaman. The office was granted but was named Timberville instead of Vardaman as proposed. As the town grew, business firms, schools, and churches were established. The citizens, never satisfied with the name, Timberville, requested and was granted the name change to Vardaman.

Old Courthouse, Pittsboro

The Dixie Limited: A Review

With The Dixie Limited, M. Thomas Inge fills a crucial academic niche in work on the Faulkner canon. Arranged chronologically from over the last eight decades in a collection of essays, articles, reviews, letters, and interviews by Faulkner’s contemporaries and their successors.

In his introduction Inge refers to a paper presented by Thomas L. McHaney at the 1979 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of Mississippi, “Watching for the Dixie Limited: Faulkner’s Impact upon the Creative Writer,” later published in Fifty Years of Yoknapatawpha (University Press of Mississippi: 1980), edited by Dr. Doreen Fowler and Ann Abadie. McHaney stated that “writers seem to have more in common with one another than with their own native literary establishments.” He continues to say that “the literary establishment, especially in the sense that it constitutes the best-seller and the major book-reviewing media, did not have as much to do with him . . . as did the other creative writers in English. His impact on them was immediate and sustained . . .” Inge’s thesis echoes—and subsequently amplifies—this assessment: “The novel has certainly not been the same since Faulkner, that much seems clear, and the intent here is to document some of the reasons by surveying the exact nature of what Faulkner has meant to his colleagues both in the United States and abroad.”

The title references a famous quote by Flannery O’Connor that first appeared in a paper she read in 1960 at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. The subject of the speech, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Fiction,” notes a tendency to the grotesque in the “Southern situation” as well as the “prevalence of good Southern writers.” She then states, “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.” Inge notes that O’Connor took heed of her own advice, and developed an original vision and distinctive style of spiritual and gothic austerity. Eudora Welty also cultivated her own talents in Faulkner’s looming shadow. “It was like living near a big mountain, something majestic—it made me happy to know it was there, all that work of his life,” she wrote. “But it wasn’t a helping or hindering presence.” She also said—with characteristic modesty—that “[Faulkner] wrote about a much vaster world than anything I ever contemplated in my own work.” She was not intimidated by Faulkner; she learned from him.

We often lose sight of Faulkner’s earlier works, situated as they are behind the towering edifices of his Yoknapatawpha novels, but he attracted the attention of other writers at the beginning of his career. The Fugitive poet and future Agrarian Donald Davidson found Soldiers’ Pay (1926) the product of “an artist in language, a sort of poet turned into prose,” and considered Mosquitoes (1927) grotesque, too heavily influenced by Joyce, yet admirable “for the skill of the performance.” Lillian Hellman read the manuscript of Mosquitoes (for publisher Boni & Liveright) and in an enthusiastic review for the New York Herald Tribune likewise found Faulkner at his worst under the influence of Joyce in overwritten passages, but the novel demonstrated to her a genius “found in the writings of only a few men.”

Following the publication of The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), nobody with an eye to the landscape of American literature could ignore the emergence of William Faulkner as a dominant if not to say dominating presence. Sherwood Anderson, writing in an essay for The American Mercury in 1930—sixteen years after the editor, H. L. Mencken, published his searing denunciation of the state of southern literature, “The Sahara of the Bozart” in the New York Evening Mail—set the stage for the century’s most celebrated literary rivalry by saying, “The two most notable young writers who have come on in America since the war, it seems to me, are William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.” This comparison became even more unavoidable as the two barreled down, traveled the same track, or —in a perhaps more apt Hemingwayesque metaphor—faced off in the same ring.

As the century wore on, more and more writers, playwrights, and poets found it contingent upon them to weigh in on Faulkner’s looming stature. His impact in Britain was impressive, though mixed, with Rebecca West and George Orwell, who, as a champion of lucid style, condemning The Hamlet in 1940 as “fatiguing” and “certainly not worth a second reading to understand it.” Somewhat predictably, considering Faulkner’s own indebtedness to Proust in both style and theme, his reception in France was both spectacular and profound. Sartre declared in 1946 that Faulkner had “evoked a revolution” through his innovations in perspective, tonal monologues, and changing the “chronological order of the story” in behalf of “a more subtle order, half logical, half intuitive.” In a letter to Malcolm Cowley, Sartre wrote, “Pour la jeune France, Faulkner c’est un dieu.”

Inge delineates Faulkner’s deep impression on the literature of South America, saying, “By liberating these writers, and many others, from the traditional themes and methods of narration, and paving the way for new techniques in dealing with time and history and modern tragedy, Faulkner helped generate what may be the most vital writing in the world at the century’s end,” even going so far as to say, “It is indeed arguable that [Gabriel García] Márquez’s 1967 masterpiece, Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), could not have been possible without Faulkner’s fiction to serve as inspiration and master instruction.” Inge also describes Faulkner’s global impact with contributions from writers in South Africa, Japan, and China.

In addition to the two above-mentioned, Dixie Limited includes a generous portion of women writers: Kay Boyle, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Spencer, Lee Smith, and others. Excruciatingly appropriate on several levels are selections from black writers: Ralph Ellison, Chester Gaines, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Faulkner’s fellow Mississippian Richard Wright. Faulkner’s impact—and lack thereof—on political and social issues features prominently in Baldwin’s essay, “Faulkner and Desegregation,” and it’s also the theme of perhaps the most endearing essay in the collection, Roark Bradford’s “The Private World of William Faulkner” (1984).

Faulkner’s critics are not ignored. In addition to Orwell, you’ll find disparaging statements—in varying degrees and often at different stages in their own careers—from Ellen Glasgow, Booth Tarkington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Katherine Ann Porter, John Barth, Truman Capote, John Steinbeck, and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as a generous helping of bile from Hemingway. Inge includes “one of the most damning assessments perhaps ever written about Faulkner” from Irish short story writer Sean O’Faolain, who concluded in a1953 address at Princeton University, that Faulkner demonstrated “More genius than talent.”  You’ll find most of these in Inge’s remarkable introduction, which deserves reading and re-reading for only for those includes these poison pen remarks, but also for and also paeons from the likes of Katherine Anne Porter, Carson McCullers, William Styron, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy, along with illuminating observations from Richard Ford and John Grisham.

Though The Dixie Limited is an academic work, it is important for the lay scholar as well, particularly those of us who grew up in the same milieu as that of the man many consider the most important writer of the Twentieth Century. Our proximity to Faulkner seems to have bred in us a complacent acceptance of his stature. This book provides us with perspectives for a more balanced appreciation of a literary figure of global stature who just happened to have been born in the wilds of North Mississippi.

 

Rock Cornish Road Kill

Spatchcocking is similar to butterflying, but refers only to whole fowl, whereas butterflying typically applies to any boneless cuts. Spatchcocked birds cook up well with crisp skin and juicy meat, but there’s always some smart ass who’s going to tell you it looks like that chicken didn’t make it across the road from either side.

Rinse hen, pat dry, remove wing tips and backbone with shears or a knife then turn the hen breast side up, open it up like a book and then whack it a time or two with the heel of your hand (you can use your fist if you like) to crack the breastbone and flatten it out. Tuck the wings under the thighs. Oil the hen, season with salt and pepper. Place rosemary, garlic and whatever other herbs you might like in the bottom of a skillet, lay the bird on top, and pop onto the top rack of a hot oven (400) until sizzling.