Davis Bend Plantations, Warren County, Mississippi

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Davis Bend, Warren, Mississippi
Surnames/tags: Davis black_heritage Black_Heritage

Index of Plantations

Mississippi Plantations

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 HURRICANE 1.2 BRIERFIELD 1.3 URSINO 1.4 PALMYRA 2 Post War 3 Slaves of Davis Bend 3.1 Slave Holdings in Census Records 4 Davis Bend and Benjamin T. Montgomery 5 Sources

Introduction

The land known as Davis Bend was located in Warren County, Mississippi, on a thumb-like peninsula of land thrusting westward, about 20 miles south of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. Across the river, on the Louisiana side, lay the community of New Carthage to the north, and Somerset plantation due west, the home, John Perkins. (See also: Davis Bend Colony, Mississippi)

Lloyd's map of the lower Mississippi River from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, No. 4, 1862, showing Davis Bend. Modified to show plantation names.

Originally comprised of eleven thousand acres of swampland, the land became the home of at least four prominent planter families, the Davis family being the most notable.

Quick Links

1. Hurricane Plantation
2. Brierfield Plantation
3. Ursino Plantation
4. Palmyra
5. Mound Bayou, Mississippi One Place Study
6. Home Colony web page

HURRICANE

Colonel Joseph Emory Davis moved from Kentucky to Mississippi and established a law practice in Old Greenville in Jefferson County, Mississippi. By 1820, Joe Davis had moved his law practice to Natchez and became very successful. In 1824 he was able to purchase 11,000 acres south of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River which became known as Hurricane Plantation, and in the fall of 1827, he abandoned his practice in Natchez and moved his family to their new home, Hurricane Plantation, at Davis Bend.

Joe Davis maintained control of sixty-nine hundred acres along the western and southern portions of the peninsula and in 1824 had 112 slaves there under the direction of his younger brother, Isaac, preparing the land for planting. In 1827, Joseph Davis, his wife, Eliza Van Benthuysen Davis and his three daughters from previously undocumented unions settled into the plantation home. According the 1860 census, Joseph Davis owned 346 slaves and was worth more than $600,000 ($15 million in today’s dollars).

BRIERFIELD

Joseph gifted his brother, Jefferson Davis 1,000 acres around 1832 they built a homestead they named Brierfield Plantation. It bordered Hurricane on the north and Ursino on the east. In 1848 Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina Howell Davis, moved into their own newly built house on Brierfield Plantation.

URSINO

Colonel James Gillam Wood was born November 14, 1770, in Prince Charles County, Maryland. Wood grew up to become a planter, a judge, and a member of the Maryland legislature. In  ? Col Wood migrated to Jefferson County, settling on the banks on 1,000 acres of land of Coles Creek. (This is the same part of the state where Samuel Emory Davis (1756-1824), the father of Joseph and Jefferson had settled around the same time and established their home called Rosemont.)

Col. Wood and Joseph Davis both served on the Jefferson County Court in Mississippi. When Joseph decided to sell off portions of Davis Bend to people he thought would make good neighbors, Col. Wood was one of those people. On February 26, 1836, he bought 1,570 acres from Joseph Davis. Then on April 12, 1836, his son Robert Young Wood bought 513 additional acres for $15,390. The property became known as Ursino Plantation and was operated for many years by Robert Y. Wood and his brother, Edgar.

In the ensuing years the relationship between the Davis brothers and the Wood brothers began to deteriorate, primarily due to the failure of the Woods to maintain their levees. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 Ursino was being run by overseers with both of the Wood brothers returning to Jefferson County —Robert Young Wood to Woodland Plantation and Edgar Wood to Calviton Plantation.

PALMYRA

The story of Palmyra predates Davis Bend. Long before the peninsula became known as Davis Bend, it was known as Palmyra. Settled by frontiersmen during territorial expansion, land claims from Spanish Land Grants and from when the land was part of the Natchez District left property in the hands of at least nine owners. In his doctoral thesis, Christopher Morris stated, "About fifteen or twenty families clustered on the banks of the Mississippi River, at a place they named Palmyra..."^[1]

1834 Survey Tract Map. Township 14 Range 1 East

Henry Turner (the elder), a Natchez merchant, initially purchased the land on Palmyra. He and his wife, Sarah Baker Turner, had substantial land holdings in several counties in Mississippi as well as Louisiana. When Henry died in 1821, his properties were divided between his children. Henry Turner's daughter, Eliza, received a share of the lands, including the property at Palmyra.

In 1822, a young John Anthony Quitman would be introduced to 15 year-old Eliza Turner through a coworker, William Griffith, who was dating her cousin. John courted Eliza and on December 24, 1824 married. Before the nuptials, Eliza's mother Sarah insisted he sign a contract making herself, Edward Turner (Eliza's uncle), and William Griffith (the lawyer friend who had introduced John to Eliza) trustees for Eliza's share of her father's still undivided estate of slaves and landholdings in Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, and elsewhere. This estate was to be divided among Eliza and her brothers George, Henry, and Fielding.

In December 1836, John and Eliza ceded Eliza’s one-fourth share of Palmyra to Eliza’s brothers Henry and Fielding Turner for $40,000. Eliza’s brother George, subsequently bought out Fielding’s share. On March 2, 1842, Quitman and Henry bought George out for $200,000. In one swoop, Quitman gained a half interest in some 5,710 acres (divided into Palmyra plantation and two islands known as “upper Palmyra Island” and “lower Palmyra island”), 230 slaves, and some 60 head of cattle.^[2]

Post War

In the aftermath of the war, Jefferson Davis' service as Confederate president left the family fortune exposed to northern reprisals. Joseph Davis, sickly and seeking a means to maintain some semblance of financial independence, transferred ownership of the Davis family plantations to his former slave, Benjamin Montgomery, on 19 November 1866. This decision, while locally lamented, offered an expedient way to avoid a Union backlash while keeping the property under Davis family control. Benjamin Montgomery obtained a $300,000 nine-year mortgage from Joseph Davis.^[3]

Just one year after Joseph Davis mortgaged the Davis family properties to Ben Montgomery, calamity struck. In March 1867, after a particularly snowy winter and wet spring in the North, the Mississippi River leapt its banks and cut through the neck of Davis Bend, turning Davis Bend into Davis Island.^[4]

Davis Bend (now Davis Island)

Despite no longer having land access, Ben, his family, and a company of former slaves under the business name of Montgomery and Sons operated the properties for several years. They struggled with shovels and mules to make their sixteen miles of levees hold against high water in 1867, 1868, 1871, and 1874. They even went so far as (on April 15, 1871) to take on another $100,000 of debt to acquire the neighboring Ursino plantation from its bankrupt owner who refused to maintain his own levees.

Montgomery & Sons succeeded in creating one of the most profitable cotton operations in the state in the early 1870s, but declining cotton prices, economic hard times in the financial panic, and the repeated flooding were just part of the cause of their eventual failure. By 1876, Montgomery & Sons were unable to pay off the loan and the Davis Bend property reverted back to the Davis family. Benjamin died the following year.^[5]

Benjamin and Isaiah had pursued a dream of establishing a community of freed slaves. Isaiah took up his father’s dream and later purchased 840 acres of land and along with a number of other former slaves, and founded the town of Mound Bayou in 1887.

Slaves of Davis Bend

The following men and women were known to be enslaved on Davis Bend but also worked on Hurricane Plantation which was the Estate home. They are also the original founders of Mound Bayou Settlement.

1. Benjamin T. Montgomery, husband to Mary and father to Isaiah, Joshua, Benjamin, Mary and Rebecca
2. Mary Virginia Lewis Montgomery, wife to Benjamin, mother to Isaiah, Joshua, Benjamin, Mary and Rebecca
3. Isaiah T. Montgomery
4. Joshua P. T. Montgomery
5. Benjamin O. Montgomery
6. Mary V. Montgomery
7. Rebecca C. Montgomery
8. Isaac Green, husband to Katie and father of Benjamin
9. Katie Jane Lewis, wife to Isaac and mother of Benjamin
10. Benjamin Titus Green

Slave Holdings in Census Records

In the 1850 census Joseph was enumerated in Warren, Mississippi, United States owning 242 enslaved people.^[6]

In the 1860 census Joseph was enumerated in Warren, Mississippi owning 355 enslaved people. ^[7]

Davis Bend and Benjamin T. Montgomery

The Davis Bend Plantation was originally comprised of eleven thousand acres of swampland along a bend in the Mississippi River. In May 1818 Joseph Emery Davis purchased the 9000 acres of the property as an investment. Davis maintained control of sixty-nine hundred acres along the western and southern portions and by the 1830s left behind his legal practice to become a planter.

In 1824 Joseph Davis held 112 slaves under the direction of his younger brother, Isaac, to prepare the land for planting. In 1827, Joseph Davis, his wife, Eliza Van Benthuysen Davis and his three daughters from previously undocumented unions settled into the plantation home, known as Hurricane Plantation.

When Joseph Davis’s parents died, he assumed the role of family patriarch, and in 1835 the youngest of his nine brothers, Jefferson, purchased and began clearing a portion of the land. In 1848 Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina Howell Davis, moved into their own newly built Brierfield Plantation.

By 1850 successful cotton harvests helped make the Davis Bend plantations extremely successful. The Davis Bend labor force, which at its peak topped 450 enslaved, was extremely versatile and self-sufficient, and was fostered in part by Joseph Davis’s interpretation of Robert Owen’s theories of working-class partnership and self-governance. Davis wanted to build the same sort of versatile and self-motivated workforce that Owen had pioneered at his textile mill in New Lanark, Scotland. Joseph Davis offered his slaves opportunities for advancement. They ultimately had access to a school that offered a basic education and a court system to deal with infractions and settle disputes.

The most indispensable of Davis’s slaves was Benjamin Thornton Montgomery, who arrived at Davis Bend in 1836. Montgomery was taught and eventually ran the Davis operation during the antebellum years, which helped cement Davis's reputation as a well-rounded businessman by running a dry goods store at the back of the plantation. (See Benjamin's profile for more information). Until his death in 1878, Montgomery and Sons ranked among the state’s top cotton producers."^[8]

Sources

1. ↑ Christopher Charles Morris. Town and Country in the Old South: Vicksburg and Warren County, Mississippi, 1770-1860. Doctoral Thesis. University of Florida. 1991. https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/03/76/36/00001/towncountryinold00morr.pdf
2. ↑ Robert E. May. John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader LSU Press, 1985. page 111, citing Quitman Family Papers #616, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/00616/#d1e61)
3. ↑ https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/davis-bend-plantation/
4. ↑ Brian Hamilton, "Davis Island: A Confederate Shrine, Submerged", Edge Effects, 9 October 2014, University of Wisconsin-Madison, accessed 14 June 2015.
5. ↑ Davis Island, Mississippi. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Island_(Mississippi)
6. ↑ 1850 Census:"1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules"
   The National Archive in Washington DC; Washington, DC; NARA Microform Publication: M432; Title: Seventh Census Of The United States, 1850; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29
   Ancestry Sharing Link - Ancestry Record 8055 #91202391 (accessed 17 August 2022)
   Joseph E Davis in Warren, Mississippi, USA.
7. ↑ "United States Census (Slave Schedule), 1860," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9BSH-GW8?cc=3161105&wc=8B25-YWL%3A1610406201%2C1610317601%2C1610303601 : 16 October 2019), Mississippi > Warren > Other > image 147 of 158; citing NARA microfilm publication M653 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
8. ↑ https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/davis-bend-plantation/

• https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L92Y-CCMR?i=3&wc=9L33-92J%3A1078468707%2C1078468710&cc=2333768
• Quitman Family Papers #616, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/00616/#d1e61)