Holly Springs, Mississippi

“ MISSISSIPPI, Marshall County, Holly Springs, Southwest Holly Springs Historic District (Holly Springs MRA) , Bounded by S. Center, S. Memphis, and Craft Sts. Marbury Ct. and Ghulahoma, Gholson, Elder and Mason Aves. ”

“ In 1871, Sherwood Bonner became the wife of Mr. Edward McDowell, a gentleman of refinement and liberal culture; like his wife he was a native of Holly Springs. The young wife assumed with earnestness the responsibilities of the new life and when her husband determined to try his fortune in the frontier state of Texas, she went with him into a country that was little [Pg 48] better than a wilderness. But the venture failed and the young people returned to Holly Springs poorer in purse than when they left. ”

“ Even in spring, the roads cannot be called muddy or difficult to pass. There are two extensive tracts of heavily timbered upland, similar to those of Ohio and Kentucky—the one is called the Bellevue, the other the Boone's Lick Settlement. The surface rolls gently and almost imperceptibly. In this region are many springs of good water, and it is said to be healthy.
The Mississippi is skirted with a prairie, commencing ten miles above the mouth of the Missouri, for the distance of seventy miles. It is about five miles in width, and possesses an excellent soil. ”

“ A thriving domestic commerce is carried on along the Mississippi, Arkansas, and other navigable streams of the state; and the traffic with the Indians on the western border is of considerable importance. Among the most striking natural curiosities in the state are the famous hot springs, beneficial to those suffering from the effects of mercury in the system, rheumatism, stiffness of the joints, &c. These springs are situated on a small tributary of the Washita, about 6 m. from that river, and 60 m. S. W. of Little Rock, in Hot Springs county. ”

“ Through these places an ancient highway has coursed from times to which the memory of white men runneth not to the contrary. Water was scarce on the highest grounds, but springs, here and there, were well known, and at one of these, probably near Lenan (section 15, township 8, range 3) , the adventurers paused, on the night of September 2, and built their evening fires. [15]
The end was now almost in sight; two days more and the immediate basin of the Mississippi River would be reached, and the success or failure of the daring raid be decided. ”

“ Blaylock’s maiden days,” said the Colonel, interpreting her mood to J. Pinkney Bloom, “were spent among the mountains of northern Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days. Holly Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I fear that she may have suffered in health and spirits by so long a residence there. That is one portent reason for the change we are making. ”

“ In common with most of its great tributaries, it widens as it ascends; being wider above the mouth of the Missouri, with a tenth part of its water, than it is in the region of New-Orleans. In the same manner, Arkansas and Red River are wider, a thousand miles up their streams, than they are at their mouths.
No thinking mind can view with indifference, the mighty Mississippi, as it sweeps round its bends from point to point, and rolls on its resistless wave, through dark forests, in lonely grandeur to the sea. ”

“ One hundred million people are annually regaled and exasperated by the irresistible powers that nature wields in this great central basin.
Men have dammed the little rivulets of a thousand gullies and valleys in the Appalachians to turn the wheels of grist-mills, so that corn can be ground for pone and sprouts ground for moonshine. They have stretched their masonry across the Great Falls of the Missouri to smelt copper and silver. Myriads of horse-power are beginning to serve the nation by hauling railroad-trains over the long divides. They have bridled the upper Mississippi at Keokuk. ”

“ The prairie lands are, as a rule, quite fertile. The most fertile land in the State is in the Yazoo delta, in the extreme W. part of the State, N. of Vicksburg. Mississippi has still a vast area covered by virgin forests. The principal trees are the oak, willow, chestnut, wateroak, walnut, butternut, dogwood, black gum, sweet gum, beech, cottonwood, sycamore, magnolia, locust, mulberry, hickory, pine, cypress, and live oak.
Agriculture.—The prairie region in the N. W. of the State has always been noted as having the best farming land in the South. ”

“ The ground is high and rolling, and the great oaks, with their heavy hanging moss, lend a grandeur and charm to the place. There are only two schools of similar grade in the State open to colored people—Alcorn, in the extreme south-west, and Shaw University, in the extreme north. The field is before us. Mississippi, with her 350,000 souls, over sixteen years of age, who cannot read and write, is calling for our teachers. ”

“ The debtor's prison still existed in England,—the stocks and pillory were instruments of common use both here and there,—the public whipping post claimed its daily victims,—the rack and thumb-screw were still applied to refractory witnesses in some of the courts of the old world and there was not yet in all Christendom a country in which women had equal property rights with men,—which, by the way, Mississippi was the first community in the civilized world to confer, and she had not progressed thus far by some twenty odd years. ”

“ Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi, and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant room for a population of a hundred million. ”

“ Croix.—Traditionary account of an ancient Indian battle, fought at these falls by the Chippewas, Saucs, Foxes, and Sioux.—Wahb Ojeeg.
That portion of the Upper Mississippi, lying between the junction of the De Corbeau and St. Anthony’s Falls, presents to the eye a succession of prairie and forest land, which has the characteristics of a valuable agricultural country. It is difficult in passing it, to resist the idea, that it will, at some future day, sustain a dense population. It is so elevated above the bed of the Mississippi, as to be out of the reach of its periodical floods. ”

“ Over a bluff we come upon a beautiful rolling prairie, and back as far as Duck Creek the land is covered with fruit, vegetable and flower gardens, and presents a picture of uncommon beauty. Views of the Mississippi are obtained from the summit of the bluff; also of Rock Island Arsenal and Rock Island City on the opposite shore of the river.
In 1832, General Winfield Scott made a treaty with the Indians of the Sac tribe for the purchase by the United States of the land occupied by them bordering on the west side of the river. ”

“ In the swamps and bottoms are dense thickets of cane and cypress. The prairies where uncultivated are covered with grass during the greater part of the year, and the forests of long-leaved pine have commonly an undergrowth of long grass, which affords good pasturage. Cotton (in the production of which Mississippi surpassed all other states in 1870) and Indian corn are the staple crops. Wheat and other grains are grown in the north, and rice and the sugar cane in the south. All the fruits of temperate climates grow here in perfection ”

“ Those works which are incontestibly defensive usually occupy strong natural positions; and to understand fully their character, their capability for defence, and the nature of their entrenchments, it is necessary to notice briefly the predominant features of the country in which they occur. The valley of the Mississippi river, from the Alleghanies to the ranges of the Rocky Mountains, is a vast sedimentary basin, and owes its general aspect to the powerful agency of water. Its rivers have worn their valleys deep into a vast original plain ”

“ Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly. The Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's neighbor. ”

“ The soil rests on a rock foundation, which renders it incapable of being undermined by the Mississippi. Its streets are broad and laid out at right angles. It has several Protestant churches, a Catholic cathedral, a public land office, two banks, four printing offices, and by the last census contains a population of 7,500, the county of which it is the seat of justice, has 10,840. ”

“ Cloud, a representative of the precinct of St. Anthony Falls in the fifth and sixth territorial councils.
It is bounded on the north by Todd and Morrison counties, on the east by Benton, Sherburne and Wright counties, the Mississippi forming the dividing line against Benton and Sherburne, and Clearwater against Wright county, on the south by Kandiyohi and Mecker, and on the west by Pope county. It contains an area equal to thirty-six townships. It is a fine agricultural county and is well watered by the tributaries of the Mississippi, the principal of which is Sauk river. ”

“ Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. ”

“ Anthony’s Falls, may be considered as the termination of this tract. Above this point, although the Mississippi has some rich alluvions, as at the mouth of Sandy Lake River, its vegetation assumes generally an alpine character, and a large portion of the wide area of its valley, is traversed by pine ridges, with innumerable intervening lakes, and extensive tracts of, what the natives denominate, mushkeegs. ”

“ A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire.
We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday: two full hours' liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight. In the back streets but few white people were visible, but there were plenty of colored folk—mainly women and girls; and almost without exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and cut—a glaring and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles.
Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of population—which is placed at five thousand. ”

“ Not for blessing nor cursing, not for popularity nor for selfish ends, not for anything outside, but for the happiness that comes from within.
The Mississippi blesses the valley every day as he goes on south and overcomes. But the valley does not bless the river in return. The valley throws its junk back upon the river. The valley pours its foul, muddy, poisonous streams back upon the Mississippi to defile him. The Mississippi makes St. Paul and Minneapolis about all the prosperity they have, gives them power to turn their mills. ”

“ In March, 1817, Congress passed an enabling act for the admission of Mississippi to the Union, and the State was formally admitted December 10, 1817. The most notable features of the first Constitution of Mississippi were the high property qualifications for holding office, the short tenures of offices, and the large appointing power of the Governor and Legislature. The first Governor was David Holmes, and during his administration the capital was permanently located at Jackson, near the headwaters of the Pearl River. ”

“ More than half the total population of the country to-day is found in the score of states bordering directly on the navigable portions of the Mississippi system. As the population increases the most rapid growth must be in these same states, until a century hence with hundreds of millions of people living between the slopes of the Alleghenies and the Rockies, there will exist in the Mississippi Valley the highest and most permanent type of civilization in the history of man. ”

“ To-day the timber of the hickories from its bottoms are the spokes of automobiles, and the handles of golf-clubs are sought among the dark corners of its brakes. Millions eat its fish, and the sheen of pearls from its tributaries delights countless women. There is scarcely a garment in the country that might not be improved by a button from a Mississippi clam-shell.
Whatever men may do to the Mississippi, the Father of Waters does not neglect their interests, nor does he fail to rebuke their impertinences and to stimulate their imagination. ”

“ We pursued our course at the rate of ten miles an hour, passing the Chickasaw Bluffs, Memphis, a small settlement on the Tennessee side, and a number of smaller and larger islands, from two to six miles in length, but seldom more than one in breadth. The sediment of the Mississippi is continually forming new sand banks, at the same time that its irresistible power carries away old ones. ”