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| Using Mount Holly, Washington County, MS (left) and Stanton Hall, Natchez, MS (right) as examples, historian Clinton Bagley will explore the architecture and history of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Images courtesy of Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress; and Historic Resource Inventory Database, MDAH. |
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| Portrait of John Drennen (1801-1855) |
Camp Monticello, the Italian Prisoner of War (PoW) camp located in Monticello, is a significant part of Arkansas’s World War II Home Front heritage. It opened as a training facility for the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1943 and served as a PoW camp for Italians from 1943 to 1946. Dr. Barnes will discuss recent excavations at the site and the role of historical and oral records archeology.
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| Advertisements for architect/builder and a painter/paper-hanger in The Chicot Press, February 26 1870 |
In an 1870 Chicot County newspaper two craftsmen advertise their services. Architect and builder J.W. Trawick is an “Architect and Builder” at “Luna, Ark.” He “solicits contracts for buildings of every style, and will promptly perform all work in his line.” Your “Satisfaction is guaranteed” he states confidently. In the 1870 Census, Trawick is listed as a thirty-four year old carpenter. Living at Luna Landing, he was born in North Carolina, as was Jane (sp?), his thirty-three year old wife.
John Barnes, a “Painter, Paper-hanger and Glazier” also advertised his services. Barnes offered a more verbose and sweeping guarantee: “All work done by him warranted to give entire satisfaction, and to be as good as any done in the South.” In the 1870 Census, Barnes is a thirty year old painter. Living at Lake Village, he was born in Illinois; his wife, Mary Jane, age eighteen, was a native Arkansan.
Ten years earlier in 1860, Barnes is a twenty-three year old painter; listed this time in the Census as a Indiana native. In 1860, he shared a Lake Village residence with several other craftsmen:
Living next door the bricklayers and painters in 1860 is Andrew J. Herod, a mechanic (builder). Herod was in Chicot County as early as 1858 and likely arrived in Lake Village to help build the new county seat. He advertised his services in the January 17, 1861 Chicot Press— the only antebellum Chicot County paper known to survive. Like Trawick, a decade earlier, Herod styled himself a “Architect and Builder.” He
SOLICITS contracts for buildings of every style. He is also prepared to furnish Designs, Estimates, and Perspective Drawings of all the modern orders of architecture: build, measure, superintend, and furnish working plans for building at modest prices.
Herod, a Mississippi native, was later appointed Mississippi’s State Architect by Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys in 1865. However, little is known about Herod, and by 1870 he was farming in Yazoo County, Mississippi.
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| The Chicot Press, January 17, 1861 |
Above Herod’s 1861 advertisement is an ad for A & E Molero, Plain and Ornamental Plasters and Cistern Builder. In the 1860 Census, Edward and William Molero are English born plasters, likely brothers, ages twenty-six and thirty-five. They are living in the Packet House Hotel with a number of Lake Village notables (lawyers, a printer, a merchant, a mechanic/builder and a physician), including Daniel H. Reynolds and William B. Street. A year later the British-born plasterers had been recruited into Reynolds’ Chicot Rangers. The Moleros settled in Meridian, Mississippi, where Edward appears in the 1870 Census and William in the 1910 Census.
Lakeport will be
We have Lakeport Christmas Tree ornaments for sale.
For $12, we’ll ship it to your address.
Mrs. C. B. Cornell’s “Mexican Tamale” Recipe
Just in time for this weekend’s Hot Tamale Festival in Greenville…a ca. 1920 recipe for “Mexican Tamales”
This recipe appears in a cookbook published by the Lake Village Methodist Episcopal Church South (today’s Lakeside United Methodist Church), around 1920. The cookbook is part of the Arkansas Cookbook Collection at the Special Collections at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Anybody know who Mrs. C.B. Cornell was? She was living in Lake Village as late as 1946.
I wonder how these “Mexican Tamales” compare to Mrs. Rhoda’s Hot Tamales?
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| Cleveland Gazette, December 3, 1887 |
Edward Allen Fulton, a former slave in Missouri and abolitionist in Chicago, served as Drew County’s only African American legislator during Reconstruction. Little has been written about this African American Reconstruction leader, politician and newspaper editor. In 1866 he arrived in Chicot County to farm, later relocating to Little Rock. He returned to southeast Arkansas and Drew County in 1870 as a census taker and was elected the Arkansas House later that year. His career in Republican politics during Reconstruction proved to be controversial–he survived an assassination attempt (possibly by a Republican rival), later ran unsuccessfully for Secretary of State, and was an out-spoken proponent of Civil Rights.
