admin | October 13, 2010 in Historical Locations | Comments (0)
The Ford Home, also know as Ford’s Fort, was built in 1805 by Reverend John Ford. Ford moved to Mississippi from South Carolina in 1798 and settled in Marion County, in what would eventually be known as the Sandy Hook community, around 1805. Rev. Ford was a Methodist minister and took up farming upon setting in Marion County. The Ford home was the site of the first Mississippi Methodist Conference in 1814 and the Pearl River Convention of 1816, which recommended partitioning the Mississippi Territory into the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi. On November 27-28 in 1814 the Ford Home hosted General Andrew Jackson. General Jackson stopped there on his way to defend New Orleans from the British during the War of 1812. The home and its property were sold to the Marion County Historical Society in 1962 and are open for tours on the weekends and during the week by appointment.
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admin | October 11, 2010 in Historical Locations | Comments (0)
Jefferson College, chartered in 1802 and opened in 1811, was the first institution of higher learning in Mississippi. It was also was the first to receive a charter for any purpose by the Mississippi Territorial Legislature. It began as a preparatory school until 1817 when it became a full college. Jefferson Davis attended in 1818. In 1830 the school purchased the church that held the 1817 Mississippi statehood convention.
It continued as a college until being forced to close in 1863 due to the Civil War. It reopened in 1866 again as a preparatory school. It remain as such until it finally closed its doors in 1964 due to declining enrollment.
Jefferson College is also near Ellicott Springs where Andrew Ellicott camped in 1797 while surveying the 31st parallel to mark the border between the United States and Spanish territories.
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admin | February 24, 2009 in Extinct Locations,Historical Locations | Comments (0)
Once a very important port on the Mississippi River, it is now considered a ghost town having been forsaken by both railroads and the river. It’s history can be traced to the early 18th Century when it was originally known as Petit Gulf, in contrast to Grand Gulf which is situated a little further upstream. Rodney was incorporated in 1828 and named for Judge Thomas Rodney. (more…)
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admin | in Extinct Locations,Historical Locations | Comments (0)
The ruins of the Windsor Plantation. Once considered one of the most stately mansions on the Mississippi River, if not the entire South. So majestic that it even inspired Walt Whitman to write about it. Built between 1859-1861 by Smith Coffee Daniell II, it was the main house of a 2600 acre plantation built on land that once comprised Judge Bruin’s land grant. During the US Civil War it was the first house Union troops encountered after landing about one mile west of Windsor at Bruinsburg during the second Vicksburg Campaign. It survived the war only to be destroyed in 1890 by a careless house guest and his cigar. (more…)
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admin | in Historical Locations | Comments (0)
A ceremonial mound built and occupied by the ancestors of the Natchez tribe between 1250 and 1600 AD. It is the second largest ceremonial earthwork in the United States. The largest being the Monk’s Mound at Cahokia in Illinois.
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admin | February 18, 2009 in Extinct Locations,Historical Locations | Comments (0)
A boat landing on the Mississippi River that was the site of Grant’s amphibious landing in 1863 during the second Vicksburg Campaign of the US Civil War. The landing, involving over 24,000 troops, was the largest amphibious operation in American military history until World War II. (more…)
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