A New Baby ...

Names, date, location unknown ...

From John H. Williams "Old School" collection, on file at Lincoln, Lawrence, Franklin Library

For the Well Dressed Man

Gulley's Men's Shop.  Circa 1950s.  I am unclear on where this shop was, but I believe it was on the same side of the street as Benoits, perhaps in the Storm Building?

Photo from the John H. Williams Collection at the local library.

R.C. Applewhite Home Circa 1900

This image and caption is from a commemorative anniversary edition of the local paper, supplied by Bettie Hatcher Cox and scanned by Deenie Tallant. A big thank you to both for sharing.

This house and the grounds are so appealing to the eye. And now, the $64,000 question: does this house still stand today?  I took a "drive" via Google Streetview and could not find any structure that resembled it from this angle.  

If anyone has information as to its fate, I would appreciate a comment here or a message on my Facebook page.

This Old House Mystery ...

Photo Courtesy of Bill Hickman

This old house faced the railroad and backed up to the old Coffee Pot cafe operated by my cousins, to whom we affectionately refer as the "Dixie Springs Carruths."

Bill Hickman took this photo in 1986, and the structure, which evidently was beyond repair and probably infested with termites, was torn down soon after the picture was taken.  The house at one point was used as a business office, and for a long time after it was demolished, Bill reports, an old brick safe survived the razing.

If anyone has any idea who built this house and when, or knows any of its history, please leave a comment either here on the blog or on my FB page. 

After the Coffee Pot ceased existence as one of the South's very first "fast food" places, Bill's grandfather took over the cafe's location and used it as an office to run his masonite business, from around 1940 until he died in the 1980s. Between this old house and the Coffee Pot was a pole yard and a storage shed.  The wood his grandfather traded in was loaded, along with poles and pilings, next to this old house and onto rail cars.

Thanks, Bill, for the photo and the information!  It's good to keep Brookhaven's history alive.

UPDATE:  Marti Parker reports this house was unusual in that the rear of the home faced the railroad, while so many others built in the same time frame had their fronts facing the tracks.  We are not clear on when this house was built, but for many years it was the home of an African American family by the name of Dow.  The family members were well known for their activities promoting higher education in the community.

A Twister's Tale with an Ironic Twist

It seems that tornadoes have always been a way of life in the Deep South -- Mississippi in particular.  


A twister that touched down in Natchez in 1840 is counted as the second deadliest tornado in all of U.S. history.  Yet another one took more than 430 lives in Tupelo in 1936, making it the fourth deadliest in the nation's history.  Notably, one of those survivors was 15-month-old Elvis Aaron Presley.


In the heart of the Piney Woods, Brookhaven* -- situated due east of Natchez, due south of Wesson and due west of Monticello -- has had its share of tornado activity throughout the years, but it is safe to say that it has experienced nothing like the deadly twisters in 1882 and 1883 that virtually destroyed its close neighbors to the east and to the north.


Ten miles to Brookhaven's north, the "Great Cyclone" of 1883 essentially wiped Beauregard and parts of Wesson off the map, and, exactly one year earlier to the day, another deadly tornado touched down in Monticello, obliterating that small town, located just 20 miles east of Brookhaven.


In Monticello, ten people were killed instantly and more than a dozen others were injured in the Lawrence County county seat, whose population was reported to be roughly 150 at the time.


That twister struck on April 22, 1882, at lunch hour -- 12:15 p.m. -- and demolished countless churches, stores, homes and a court house.  When it was all over, only three homes were left standing on the outskirts of the storm's path.


That sad story might be ended there, but records show that there is an ironic twist, if you will pardon the awful pun.


One of the Monticello merchants, a man by the name of Jake Myers, suffered not only a broken collarbone and lacerations to the head, but the loss of his entire general merchandise business. 


In the aftermath, it has been recounted by none other than a former governor of the state, A.H. Longino, at the time a resident of Monticello, that our Jake Myers was inconsolable.  


Assessing the damage and nursing his bodily wounds, he keened and wailed at the sight of his dry goods, groceries, furniture, crockery, and fine fabrics shredded, splintered, and strewn about on the ground or dangling high from mangled trees.  


When a fellow townsman tried to console Jake with "it could have been worse" and we have "much to be thankful for," Myers lost all control and spewed language that surely was considered indelicate at the time.


"Jesus Christ, God Almighty! Hell and Damnation to the Devil! How COULD it be worse when everything I have is gone to HELL?" 


Myers soon regained his composure, picked up the pieces of his life and decided to relocate to Copiah County, where he opened another general merchandise business in Beauregard.


Exactly one year later to the day that he had lost everything in his life, Myers again found himself huddled against the colossal fury of a massive killer tornado.  His building ripped from around him by a giant black and fiery vortex, rescuers soon discovered him trapped and injured, but not seriously.  


When released from his splintered prison, Myers was found to be clutching a paper bag of a dozen eggs, and not one -- not one -- of them had been broken.


Myers retired after that, but he apparently never missed an opportunity to tell his stories of surviving not one, but two, deadly cyclones.
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For further reading, please cursor over the highlighted words above to find embedded links.
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*This story doesn't even touch on the weather system that spawned wicked tornadoes that destroyed businesses on Delaware Avenue in McComb and blew out the walls of a brand new school near Summit back in the 1970s -- a disaster I myself covered as a cub reporter at the Jackson Daily News.

Brookhaven's Police Force from the 1950s ...

Recognize anyone?  Besides Paul Turnbough?

Mike Burt reports that the man on the back row, second from left, is his uncle, Benton Burt, who later became Chief of Police.  Thanks, Mike!

With the Fury of Ten Thousand Demons

Originally built in 1863 as three rooms, a porch and a detached kitchen at the southwest corner of S. Jackson and W. Chippewa, the entrance to A.E. Moreton house originally faced north. The young lad in the above penny post card from roughly 100 years ago is standing in front of the original front porch. 

Brookhaven, Miss. -- April 22, 1883, started out as just another quiet Sunday in the Heart of Dixie.

On the edge of downtown Brookhaven, Mr. and Mrs. A.E. Moreton and their young daughter Fannie found themselves sitting on the front porch of their home that overcast and windy afternoon.

Soon A.E. and Laura Moreton turned their collective attention away from the playful antics of their 6-year-old, and directed it toward the sky, which was gathering a foreboding darkness to the north.

Even little Fannie sensed something was terribly awry. "It was almost like night," Fannie would tell her nephew, William F. Crawford, years later.

The Moretons knew the weather was bad somewhere toward Copiah County, but it wasn't until the next day that they learned that scores of people had been killed and injured by a massive cyclone that all but blew Beauregard off the map and did considerable damage to the mill town of Wesson as well, only 10 miles away from where they sat.

The Great Cyclone, as it is now known, went down state history as being one of the most destructive to ever tear through the state.  With an initial track a quarter mile wide and more than 30 miles long, the system continued its deadly and destructive path through north Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.  An estimated 100 people were killed in Mississippi alone.

Witnesses described the tornado, which first touched down at 3 p.m., as being a massive column of black smoke "filled with fire" and tossing trees and other debris high into the air above.

Brookhaven newspaper man B.T. Hobbs wrote ongoing accounts of the disaster in his weekly paper, including a truly unbelievable account of a West Lincoln man who days later showed up in Brookhaven and reported that he had been swept from his home, carried past Beauregard and Wesson and "sloshed down into the middle of Pearl River at Rockport," a distance of roughly 35 miles as the crow flies.

The man said that he swam the Pearl more than 20 winding miles to Monticello, and he next "crawled" some 26 miles to Brookhaven, where he sought assistance from the Red Cross.

He was believed by the upstanding citizens of Brookhaven and received a princely sum of $100 for his ordeal and his eye-brow-raising tale.

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Hobbs, the owner and editor of the Brookhaven Leader, understood the old newspaper adage that names make news, and he went to great lengths to mention as many of the killed and wounded as he could, in addition to those who stepped up to help their fellow citizens in their time of need.

There are Cases and Smiths and plenty of other names that natives of Lincoln and Copiah counties may recognize, including Applewhite, Arrington, Britt, East, Moody, Parker, Turnbough and Whitworth. (Cursor over Hobbs if you wish to read the link.)

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A remarkably descriptive account from an Iowa newspaper is contained in this link, which details the weather system that went on to inflict damage on Meridian, Starkville, and parts of Alabama and Georgia.

Here is but a small sampling of that report:

"At Wesson the storm's approach was marked by deep rumbling sounds, rattling windows and quivering earth.  Thunder roared, and the lightning flashed with dreadful force and dazzling vividness.  Then, with the fury of ten thousand demons, the gale burst upon the town.

"Fences were torn to pieces and sent whirling through the air; trees that had stood the fiercest storms for ages were uprooted and hurled hundreds of yards.

"Houses were demolished, and the pine forest encircling the town was blown out of existence. As soon as the wind's violence had somewhat abated, and the citizens had begun to look about, the church bells rang out in loud peals, the signals of distress and death.  Men ran from all directions toward West Wesson, though the rain was pouring down in drenching torrents."

The account goes on to say that a deluge following the cyclone turned ditches and gutters into raging rivers and reported that some people feared that they would drown.  Soon the dark of night replaced the dark of the storm and it was not until the following dawn that the actual measure of the destruction become evident.  It's a remarkable read for those interested.

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Yet another link contains an alphabetical listing of those killed, mortally wounded, or otherwise suffering notable injuries that spring day, which forever changed the fate of several Copiah towns and countless inhabitants.