Story's shared

Louie & Vida Thomas

1980 Interview

They were still in love after 60 years and the love of my Grandmothers  never ending faith, she witnessed her husband become a Christian.

Jackson, MS. Clarion-Ledger

 American Revolution Bicentennial 1776-1976

Plublished in The Jackson Ms Democrate Newspaper 1976

" Bicentennial Means different things to different people" 

• 

  Death of William Andrew Alexander

• Mar 1893 , Homestead
• 1893 - William Andrew Alexander struck his knee with an axe while clearing some trees and brush.  It made a deep gash and his boot was full of blood by the time he reached the house.

  When the knee worsened, a doctor was called and he told the family that gangrene had set in the wound.  The leg would need to be removed above the knee to save William's life.  William refused to let the doctor proceed and said that he would rather die than lose the leg.  He explained that he had been deeply touched by the many men he had seen lose limbs during the Civil War.  He was thankful that he came through the war whole and he wasn't about to lose a leg now.  

  Of course, the gangrene continued to worsen and did cause William to lose his life.  He died the 13th of March 1893 at the age of 47. 

  William left his wife, Emily, with their 14th child, Andrew, not quite a month old. 

  Family history as told by Peggy Powers Wiley. 

(Shared by James Smith, my 2 cousin 1X removed and son of Thomas James Smith)

I know very little about your great-grandfather, but I'll let you in on what I know.  Dummy line railroads ran through the woods around the Blue Hill community where they lived at the time.  There was a sawmill there with barracks like living quarters.  Some family members were in a loud argument on the second floor in a different building.  Mr. Thomas got his gun and started shooting up in the apartment yelling to the people to quiet down.  A male member of the family that was making all the noise came out the other side of the building and shot Mr. Thomas.  He never warned him or asked him to put the gun down.  His story was, 'he had been shot at first and was just returning the fire'.  According to my father Mr. Thomas had a pretty bad reputation around the community.  Sorry, but that is all the details I can remember, but I know about where that happened in Jefferson County.  Your grandfather, Mr. Louie was a very nice gentleman, I visited them with my parents several times when they lived on Raymond Rd, or just off that road.  He was a Baptist deacon and helped build a new church near their home.  Everytime he was at the Trevillion Cemetery, he turned the thanks for the food.  He was a very christian man and I liked him very much.  He always carried a smile and made you feel comfortable with him.  They raised Billie Ruth to have very nice manners.  If she walked in front of a person she said excuse me and always thank you, etc.  I guess my parents paid attention to that, because they were kin and they liked Aubry, he was a nice guy too.

 My grandmother Annie, John Hiram Smith's wife was a Trevillion and her grandfather Phillip Barnes Trevillion started the Trevillion Cemetery by buring his 21 year old daughter there about 1850, give or take a year or so.  It was on a main county road at that time and the road has since been closed, but we use it for a driveway to the cemetery and it's in very good shape. My father was the caretaker for many years and he measured the distance from the west fence to each grave.  Then he made another measurment from the south fense to each grave.  He then recorded who was buried in each grave and that made a grid, so you can find anybody burried there.  He then had that recorded in Jackson, MS in the Mississippi Archives and History Dept.  Many of the graves were marked with wood crosses and no name or dates on the markers.  Dad laid 8 X 16 inch concrete stones in front of each grave, so it could be mowed over and would never rot, it's permanent.  There is a grave there that was marked "wild man".  Nobody knew the name, but many knew the story.  He was from out of the country and committed some kind of crime.  The law surrounded the house near the cemetery and killed him there.  They burried the man in the cemetery and a wild plum bush grew in the center of that grave.  That's the truth, I'm not making this up, I have witnesses.

Bennie Buckles Home and the story behind the Masion:

D'Evereux (also known as D'Evereux Hall) is located at 170 D'Evereaux Drive, Natchez, Mississippi. Perfection of proportion and academic rendering of its structural and decorative detail make D'Evereux one of the outstanding American examples of the Greek Revival style. The north (front) portico features six Doric columns of fluted stucco over brick which support a full entablature: architrave with paneled soffit, plain frieze, and cornice with cymatium and fascia. The ceiling of the portico is adorned with plaster medallions and borderwork in the egg and dart, bead and reel, and acanthus leaf motifs. Rectangular engaged columns with Doric capitals define the corners of the facade. The entrance, recessed approximately two and one-half feet within a shouldered architrave, has an eight-pane transom and pairs of Doric pilasters flanking the side lights. An identical doorway on the second floor opens onto a small balcony enclosed by a wrought-iron railing in a palmette and floral volute design. Windows on the facade are six-over-six, with green shutters which are thought to be original. The wooden panels beneath the lower sashes of the first-floor windows open from the interior to give access to the portico. The shafts of the six columns on the south portico are smooth rather than fluted and instead of a balcony there is a second-story gallery with railing of vase-shaped balusters which extends the width of the house. Doorways of the two porticoes also differ, with these on the north reinforcing with their straight lines the rather monumental academicism of the facade. The rear entrances, perhaps reflecting the less formal use of the south portico, are more lightly — almost Federally — treated, with muntins applied to fanlights and side lights in a gossamer pattern of ovals, circles, and swags. The original simulated oak graining of front and rear doors has been meticulously restored, and other exterior woodwork is of cypress. Walls are stucco scored to resemble stone.

D'Evereux has a fully finished basement, two residential floors, and an attic floor beneath a hipped roof. Centered on the latter is a square cupola which repeats in miniature a number of elements already noted: Doric pilasters at the corners, shuttered apertures, broad frieze, and molded cornice, the whole being encompassed by a widow's walk with railing of vase-shaped balusters and square corner posts. The first-floor layout includes a central hallway with double parlors on the west; on the east are the dining room and the former butler's pantry, now converted to a kitchen. The stairway is offset next to the kitchen, leaving unobstructed the broad expanse of hallway. The second floor consists of hallway with two bedrooms on each side, separated by baths and closets. Changes made during the 1930' s in the original floor plan, including enclosure of the south portico and partitioning of the present kitchen into pantry, breakfast room, and bath, have been removed; with the exception of closets and baths, the house is as it was built.

Interior architectural detail includes three mantelpieces and four of marble, with one of black marble in the dining room. Baseboards in the double parlors are painted to simulate white marble, while those in the dining room and hallway are marbleized in black. Door casings are fluted moldings with circularly carved end boxes, and the front and rear entrances also have between casing and transom a cornice-like projection known locally as a "candle-shelf." Decorative ceiling plaster work on the first floor is especially fine, featuring leaf and dart and bead and reel moldings, anthemia, acanthuses, arabesques, paterae, and frets. Rugs and draperies woven for the first floor carry out a color scheme of green, blue, gold, and ivory. Furnishings original to the house include a Recamier sofa, six side chairs, a game table, a mid-Victorian carved mahogany sofa and eight drawing-room chairs, and several Empire pieces: a square marble-top parlor table, a bookcase with "petticoat mirror," and a mahogany dining table and sideboard. In the dining room is the original set of porcelain china manufactured by Edward Honore, Paris, in 1820, and on the north wall of the room hangs a portrait of General John D'Evereux, for whom the house was named.

Overlooking the rear garden, facing east, is the garconniere (now a garage and apartment), a two-story stucco-over-brick structure with galleries, stepped gables, and oval and round-arch windows. Fire destroyed a similar building, the original kitchen, which was located at the southeast corner of the house. The D'Evereux property once consisted of eighty acres, twelve of which were elaborately landscaped in gardens, a series of terraces, and a lake. The present estate contains seven acres and is extensively planted in lawn, shrubs, and flowers.

The builder of D'Evereux was William St. John a planter born in Maryland in 1800. Elliot was president of the Natchez Protection Insurance Company, chartered in 1829 to insure Mississippi cotton crops from the time of ginning to sale at New Orleans or elsewhere. Mrs. Elliot was Anna Frances Conner, daughter of William Conner of Berkley Plantation, in the Second Creek settlement near Natchez. Twice widowed by the time she was twenty-three, Mrs. Elliot brought to her third marriage substantial estates inherited from her previous husbands, a Mr. Bell and Dr. William H. Ruffin. In 1836 Elliot purchased eighty acres on the outskirts of Natchez from Henry Chotard and the heirs of James Moore and completed his home on the site by 1840. He named it D'Evereux in honor of his mother's brother, General John D'Evereux, who served with Simon Bolivar. Although the architect of the house is unknown, the names of two men presumably associated with its construction have been preserved, inscribed in chalk on two attic beams: "P.H. Hardy, Ohio," and "William Ledbetter, Virginia."

In December, 1842, Henry Clay, a friend of the Elliots, was entertained at D'Evereux, and it was during one such visit that his portrait was painted by the French artist Bahin. Elliot died childless in 1855, having stipulated in his will that unless his nephew and intended heir, William St. John Elliot Parker, took the Elliot surname, D'Evereux was to be incorporated by the state legislature as a Catholic male orphanage under the supervision of the Bishop of Natchez. Although the nephew failed to comply with the terms, Mrs. Elliot retained the property by endowing $27,500 for the D'Evereux Hall Orphan Asylum built at Aldrich and Pine Streets, Natchez. (When the building was demolished in 1969, the orphanage bell and a plaque commemorating the patronage of the Elliots were remounted in the rear garden of D'Evereux.) Upon Mrs. Elliot's death in 1876, the estate passed to her grandniece, Mrs. Bayard Shields (Margaret Spencer Martin) of Natchez, and Mrs. Shields' daughter, Mrs. Ernest Bennett, subsequently inherited the original furnishings of the house.

The decline of D'Evereux began in the aftermath of the Civil War with the billeting of Union troops on the grounds and continued through the early decades of the twentieth century, when tenant farmers stored harvested crops inside the house and cooked in the parlor fireplaces. In 1925 it was purchased by Miss Myra Virginia Smith, a Chicago schoolteacher who left an account of her first impression of the house: "The galleries were sagging, plaster was coming down, rats had eaten through the baseboards, silverfish had devoured the wall paper, and 200 panes of glass were needed. But I was entranced. The house was dilapidated, but it had a grandeur...that fascinated me....I felt I had to own it."

Miss Smith initiated the restoration of D'Evereux and made it her permanent home after her retirement in 1941 until her death in 1961. By the terms of her will, the estate was sold to finance scholarships to the University of Chicago, from which she had been graduated in 1902. In 1962 the First Baptist Church of Natchez acquired 48.6 acres of the D'Evereux tract for the purpose of expanding its facilities, and Mr. and Mrs. T.B. Buckles of Natchez purchased seven acres and the house, in which they now [1971] reside. Mr. and Mrs. T.B. Buckles, Jr., occupy the apartment on the second floor of the former garconniere. The Buckles family has made a thoroughgoing study of the history of D'Evereux, and the superb restoration which has resulted is a major attraction of the pilgrimage sponsored each spring by the garden clubs of Natchez.