Re: Twins Of The Pasture Crack Pirates Bay
Rubie Mccloughan
As in most undertakings that take five years (maybe more) to complete, there are many to whom credit should be given. In this case, they are far too numerous to list, so we must content ourselves with just the major ones.
First, there is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for the initial impetus for an in-depth study of the beginnings of this little but important corner of Hancock County, Mississippi.
The East bank of the East Pearl River is high and dry land, built in the Pleistocene period, tens of thousands of years before the present. There is a West Pearl and also a Middle Pearl in Louisiana, but it is in that high terrace on the eastern side of East Pearl, in Mississippi, that merits historic study.
For fifty years it was the international boundary between European colonial powers. Here the British granted land to the officers and soldiers that fought in the Revolutionary War. Here, the Americans drew the boundary line separating the new Louisiana Purchase from Spanish territory. It was on this high land that slave traders of the early19th century found staging areas to import Africans into the New World, after Thomas Jefferson had prohibited this horrid commerce in the newly bought territory.
The East Pearl River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, or it almost does. It bifurcates around an island at its mouth where the British camped on their way to being defeated by Gen. Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Earlier, Iberville had named it Pea Island, because he lost a sack of peas there in 1699. The Pearl empties into the Mississippi Sound, protected from the open Gulf by a series of barrier islands with names like Ship and Cat, important to the early Canadian explorers under Iberville and his brother Bienville.
There is ample evidence along the east bank of the Pearl that Native Americans favored the place from earliest times. The land was there during the time of the Paleo-Indian big game hunters, but few artifacts from that period have been discovered. At that time, the Gulf of Mexico was dozens of miles to the south of its currect location, and those earliest archaeological sites are likely under the waters. There are numerous sites dating from the Archaic period, and particularly from the mound-building times called Poverty Point. As early as 1500 BC and continuing until historic tribes like the Pascagoula and Biloxi, Native Americans hunted, fished and navigated the Pearl River drainage, building earthworks and shell middens and leaving a great deal of evidence of their trading acumen and artisanship.
There is good reason that a reader may ask earnestly why a little populated area in the southwest corner of a sparsely populated state might command much attention. That edge of Hancock County, Mississippi, which borders Louisiana at the mid-point of the Pearl River, is in many ways now nondescript, quiet and forlorn bereft of whatever culture evolved there over the ages.
In truth, very little of what meets the eye is indicative of what came before. With the exception of Pearlington, which is only a partial reflection of its former self, all the towns are gone. There is no more Logtown, or Napoleon, or Santa Rosa, or Westonia. Even the former county seat, Gainesville, can be found only on old maps. Its archaeological remains are now within the NASA Fee Area.
Evidence of once thriving prehistoric cultures of indigenous peoples is familiar, by and large, only to the professional archaeologist. The remains of what by some accounts was the largest sawmill in the world is a few large blocks of concrete, once foundation for nineteenth century mechanisms that even today would be considered imposing structures. The people too are gone. Names that once commanded power or reflected wealth, like Claiborne, Pray, Weston and Favre, are known elsewhere today, but now exist along the Pearl only on tombstones in the Logtown and Napoleon cemeteries. The erasure of these communities was occasioned in 1961 by the federal government's decision to locate the Stennis space facility in this area, requiring that all buildings within a large area be leveled.
It is perhaps in the very nonexistence of these once vital communities wherein their fascination lies. There is, after all, a certain element of finality to their being, in that, at least for the foreseeable future, they will not, nay cannot, be resurrected.
Besides the physical evidence, including shell middens, overgrown streets, an occasional brick or other artifact, there is a wealth of written testimony to the history of the area. Prominent in this regard are the journals of Iberville and Father DuRu, Penicaut, and LePage du Pratz. There are also legal documents left by settlers over the years. The above notwithstanding, for purposes of this study, the most telling documents consist of two collections of letters, surviving from the Jackson and Koch families.
This book began simply. In an effort to improve the interpretation of historical archaeological sites located in southwestern Hancock County, Mississippi, we undertook what we believed was a simple deed search. What we had not anticipated was the complexity of this enterprise, out of which arose the opportunity to tell of a much broader history of the area. In that process, several poignant stories have emerged, as well as historical accounts that have importance beyond the boundaries of the area.
The area under study is bounded on the west by the East Pearl River, which served for more than 50 years as an international boundary. France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States owned this territory as a result of gifts, wars, invasions, treaties and purchases. Consequently, the land titles in Hancock County were purchased, traded, ignored, assigned, granted, and usurped. Further complicating the matter, each Nation granted land parcels in various sizes, using different land measures, surveying protocols, and methods of registering and confirming deeds.
The destruction of the Courthouse in Gainesville, also by fire, in 1853 destroyed many original local land records. At the time, Gainesville was the county seat, later giving way to Shieldsborough, now called Bay St. Louis.
Hancock County, with Mississippi, finally became a state of the United States on March 1, 1817. However, even after that time, the Spanish continued to issue certificates of surveys for land in West Florida and in portions of Louisiana (Hebert 1987:51). The United States Congress appointed a group of Commissioners in 1819 when the Adams-Onis Treaty made possible the inclusion of all of East and West Florida into the US territory to adjudicate land claims. A study of these documents reveals the often complex and confusing issue of land ownership in Hancock County.
As we began to unravel the story of land ownership in the study area, we soon encountered a growing list of owners whose historical significance, in many cases, extended far beyond the boundaries of Hancock County. While some colorful characters are most likely to interest only local readers, other settlers are clearly relevant in regional and national history.
His son Simon, probably the first European to reside along the East Pearl River, was the first official appointed by Thomas Jefferson in West Florida after the Louisiana Purchase. Like his father, he was often used as a translator and expert informant on the Choctaw Nation. Spain, France and Great Britain utilized his services and recorded his activities in numerous primary documents. He probably met and assisted several historical figures like Andrew Ellicott, Bernard Romans and William Bartram.
Simon became the patriarch of several Favre families, having fathered children with white, black and Indian women. One of his descendants became the MVP in two Superbowls and will likely end up in the Football Hall of Fame.
The adopted son of President Andrew Jackson, Andrew Jackson Jr., and his family resided briefly in the project area. Their unfortunate stay along the Hancock County seashore is poignantly and thoroughly documented in a series of letters written between family members. His wife Sarah, an educated and proper lady from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had served as First Lady during the second Jackson presidency. Their son Samuel died a hero at Chickamauga.
Among the other historical personages that lived in the area and whose documents shed significant light on the late 18th and most of the 19th centuries include Christian and Annette Koch whose life and marriage is detailed in numerous letters written during the Civil War. Others include Judge Daniells, early occupant of the Clifton Plantation and prominent figure in Mississippi history; the enigmatic Louis Boisdore, previous owner of Clifton and owner of a huge parcel of land which he apparently never used; Phillippe Saucier, early French settler, descendant of the first French explorers, prominent official during the last years of Spanish ownership and also patriarch of a numerous clan of current Hancock County residents; Joseph Collins, surveyor with Pintado, chief at Pensacola for the Spanish, head of the Militia, and possibly husband or father of Nancy Collins, whose name appears in the middle 1800s on numerous land parcels. Pushmahata, famous Choctaw hunter, warrior and chief, often visited the area, and numerous deeds with Choctaw names are still extant in the Hancock County courthouse.
As we learned about these past citizens of the county, we grew to respect even more those lands in southwestern Hancock County where they lived, worked, fought, and died. The sites of their homesteads, plantations, houses, farms, and stores have become for us critical archaeological sites, to be found, studied and preserved. We are thankful to all of them for writing letters and books, signing documents, registering deeds, and finally leaving on their land the material remnants of their lives for us to conserve and treasure.
On the 10th March 1788, twenty arpens tract by forty deep, lying on Pearl River, was granted by Stephen Miro to Charles Souvigny. The same quantity of land was granted on the 2nd of June 1788 by governor Miro to John Baptiste Roussere, Roussere having purchased the title of Charles Souvigny. The two grants were united in favor of John Baptiste Roussere by John Morales, on June 21, 1805, William Crawford, commissioner.
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