Tchula, MS to Lexington Distance

. . is also about 14 minutes (11.4 miles)

 

Tchula is a town in Holmes County, Mississippi. The population was 2,332 at the 2000 census.

Statistics:  724 households, and 524 families.   Tchula has a total area of 1.4 square miles (3.6 km²), and Population Density was 1,683.6 people per square mile.  Racial makeup of the town:   3.43% White, 95.93% Black, less than 1% Indian, Hispanic Latino or other races.

Lexington, MS Just up the Road... I'd say...

Distance between Durant, Mississippi (MS) and Lexington, Mississippi (MS) ??  13 Miles...about 19 minutes .............  just up the road!

 

Lexington is a city in Holmes County, Mississippi. The population was 2,025 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Holmes County.

 Statistics:  725 households, and 503 families; Lexington has a total area of 2.5 square miles (6.5 km²), Population Density 825.6 people per square mile. Racial makeup:  31.36% White, 67.26% African American, Less than 1% Indian, Asian, two or more, other, Hispanic or Latino. 

Durant Mississipi City Fact @ Family History

Durant is a city in Holmes County, Mississippi. It was founded in 1858 as a station on the Mississippi Central Railroad, later part of the Illinois Central. Durant was named for Louis Durant, a Choctaw chief, who had lived on a bluff just across the nearby Big Black River. The population was 2,932 at the 2000 census

Statistics:  1,075 households, and 744 families. Durant has a total area of 2.2 square miles (5.7 km^2):   Population Density: was 1,316.4 people per square mile.   Racial makeup:  28% White, 70.% Black;  less than 1% Indian, Asian, Hispanic or Latino or othr races.

FACTS:  Absolom M. West (planter, politician, Civil War general, labor organizer and Vice Presidential candidate, 1818–1894) owned a plantation near Durant prior to the American Civil War.

 

Travis Family aka Sharecroppers on the Watson Farm

Sharecropping enabled the South to maintain the economic power relations

of plantation cotton production after the legal form of slavery was abolished. Here¹s how it worked:

Debt was as central to sharecropping as cotton. Each sharecropping family rented a plot of land from the planter, or landlord, and was loaned a monthly stipend called the furnish to buy food and other necessary items (usually at the plantation commissary, or store) until the crop came in. The landlord also loaned the sharecropper seed money - often at high interest rates - for the cotton seed, tools, fuel, fertilizer and feed (banks wouldn¹t lend to sharecroppers). The cotton was picked by hand in October and November (schools would shut until after the harvest) and taken to the gin where the cotton was separated from its seed, weighed by the landlord, packed into bales, and sold.

 

Around Christmas, the sharecropper would go to the plantation office for the settle. There the manager would first deduct fees and debts - including interest on the furnish and seed money - and then pay the sharecropper his share. In Goin’ to Chicago, Dr. Martin says he and his parents worked for a whole year and cleared $300. Dr. Martin was lucky. After all the deductions taken by the landlord (often calculated fraudulently), many sharecroppers discovered at the settle that they owed the landlord money. Falling ever deeper into debt, they were compelled to pledge the next year¹s crop as payment . . . . . . . . . Thus a system of debt peonage replaced slavery, ensuring a cheap supply of labor to grow cotton and other crops while condemning African Americans to grinding poverty.

 

Some sharecroppers were white, but the great majority were black.

How to Vote back in the Travis Day !! ?? !!

THE VOICE OF THE NEGRO The Negro cannot trust the Democratic party on the vital questions of his rights. The Southern Democracy, where lies the main strength of the party, is frankly hostile to his rights and would if possible limit them still more. Thinking colored men can only view with apprehension the prospect of a cabinet dominated by the Gormans, Tillmans, Vardamans, or others of their kind. With all its shortcomings the Republican party, by virtue of its traditions, and in view of the large Northern colored vote, cannot afford to be actively unfriendly to the Negro. It might be still more indifferent and still be the lesser of two evils. But the chief reason why colored men who vote will support the Republican ticket in the coming campaign lies in the personality of the candidates. President Roosevelt and his appointees in the Federal Courts have made a strong effort to break up the new slavery ere it became firmly established, and in many other way the President has endeavored to stem the tide of prejudice, which, sweeping up from the South, has sought to overwhelm the Negro everywhere; and he has made it clear that he regards himself as the representative of the people. The influence of the executive is greater in the nation than ever before. The opponents of President Roosevelt criticise him as impulsive; his impulses are friendly towards the colored race. He is said to be impolitic in his attitude upon the question; his impolicy in that regard has been in the line of justice and generosity. We have nothing to hope for from the national Democratic party; its success in the present campaign would be a menace to our liberty.

Chesnutt, Charles W. "Peonage, or the New Slavery." Voice of the Negro, 1 (Sept. 1904): 394-97.

Were my Black Family Members subject to "Peonage"

???

Peonage and involuntary servitude became substitutes for the word slavery.

A Georgia Sharecropper’s Story of Forced Labor ca. 1900

At the turn of the century the group of black women most subject to sexual exploitation and abuse were those who lived under the system of quasi-slavery known as “peonage.”Under contract labor laws, which existed in almost every southern state, a laborer who signed a contract and then quit his or her job could be arrested. The horrors of this system of forced labor (as well as the equally horrific system of convict labor) are detailed in this stark, turn-of-the-century personal account of life under the “peonage” system in the South, published in the Independent magazine in 1904. Although this account by an African-American man did not focus especially on the sexual exploitation suffered by his wife and others, his report described how his wife was forced to become a mistress to the plantation’s owner.

Pictures of my Great-Grand Daddy

James Travis and Cornelia (Salter) Travis

 

Jim Travis was often referred to as Jug... and Nally.....
He was born in November of 1874.... and somewhere in the family records I have the specific date of death as January 7, 1950 in Holmes County, Mississippi    My great-grandmother Nellie died earlier - She is recorded

Marriage Record for Cornelia Salter

Spouse: James Travis
Date: 08 Jun 1895
B/G: BRIDE
Source: Book:H Page:551
County and State: Holmes Co. MS
Notes: MINISTER: Church, B. C.

 

 

According the the 1900 Census, the couple was had been married for five years and they were the parents of Mollie (b. 11-21-1896) and Byrd Travis (b. 1898) ...   They were living in Beat 4 of Holmes County, MS.... the map shows divisions below: whether or not applicable to-date. 

This 1860 map shows the concentration of blacks living in slavery in Mississippi.

 

 

 As I search the web.... I often see Pictures and

IMAGINE

that maybe this is the look of my proud, beautiful, peaceful look of my great-grandparents....

Gen Writers..... Hopeful...Helpful.... Searching

Genwriters.... Writing for Future Generations...

This is the essence of what I am doing.   I look back on the missed opportunities of asking questions to my relatives.....  Genealogy and ROOTS was not on my mind... DUH !!!

Tony Kirk...b. 3-11-1982

 

Kandaace Kirk, Joi Huggins, Lawry Shabazz, Valerie Huggins, Tameria Huggins, Andrea Carter. 

 

Borrowing Inspiration....

In order to tell my family story.... this is an outline from Liscomb T. Blackwell: (a snapshot of family and farm life in the late 1800"s.  Book reference Midcentury America:  Life in the Mid 1850's

     "In 1860, _______ and ______ TRAVIS had been married for __ yrs.  Their family had grown to ___ children ( # girls and # boys):   (l) ___name/age  (2) ___ name/age etc.   All of the children were living at home and the older ones were either attending school or helping out on the _______place/name.  There were chores even for the youngest of children, and help from the oldest children was a necessity to keep the farm running.  The livestock required daily care:  feeding, cleaning stables, milking cows, and turning cattle out to pasture and bring them back in at night.  During the harvesting months, April - Oct, long hours were spent in the ields plowing, rolling, pulling up stumps, buring refuse, preparing the fields for sowing, planting and harvesting.  After cutting  the hay, it had to be raked and drawn to the barn.  The wheat had to be shucked and stored.  Barley and rye had to be mowed, usually by hand.  Spetember was spent threshing the wheat.  Threshing parties were often held with neighbors helping neighbors.  October was the month to bring in the crops before the heavy frosts.  Potatoes, corn, and beans were harvested and stored for the winter months.  The oats were threshed, corn husked, fields plowed, and wheat was cut, bound and shucked.  mid-November thru march was the "slack" period of the year.  That period of time between the fall harvest and spring planting.  This was a time that farmers worked on projects not directly related to planting and harvesting:  such as slaughter of animals, cutting and hauling timber, splitting rails, replacing fences, hauling straw, shelling corn, cleaning seed for spring planting, and repairing or building out-houses (out buildings) and water troughs..... " 

My thoughts immediately run towards....  off season activities..... Quilting!   letting down the ceiling frame.... and women gather to prepare bedding..

 

2003 Huggins (Travis) Family Picture

 

Presidential Elections in Holmes County, Mississippi

According to the census^[4] of 2000, the largest ancestry groups in Holmes County were African 78.66%, English 11.4%, and Scots-Irish 5%

Holmes is a heavily Democratic county in Presidential and Congressional elections. The last Republican to win a majority in the county was Barry Goldwater in 1964. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama won 81% of the county's vote.

Holmes is part of Mississippi's 2nd congressional district, which is held by Democrat Bennie Thompson ( a black man)

Presidential election results

Year	GOP	DEM	Others
2008	18.0% 1,714	81.4% 7,765	0.7% 64
2004	23.4% 1,961	75.9% 6,366	0.7% 56
2000	26.1% 1,937	73.4% 5,447	0.5% 38
1996	24.0% 1,536	73.6% 4,720	2.4% 155
1992	28.2% 1,694	68.0% 4,092	3.8% 228
1988	33.7% 2,737	65.8% 5,350	0.5% 39
1984	35.4% 3,102	64.4% 5,641	0.1% 10
1980	32.3% 2,693	65.5% 5,463	2.2% 180
1976	33.8% 2,438	64.1% 4,616	2.1% 149
1972	47.2% 3,158	51.7% 3,459	1.0% 69
1968	7.0% 520	52.4% 3,881	40.6% 3,008
1964	96.6% 3,115	3.4% 110	0.0% 0
1960	17.7% 455	24.5% 628	57.8% 1,484

Mississippi Sharecropper Facts - My Discovery

Really... its a way to verbalize what I suspected, heard tell of by my daddy and uncles from Mississippi...

The Leflore County Massacre and the Demise of the Colored Farmers' Alliance   by William F. Holmes

Phylon (1960-)
Vol. 34, No. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1973), pp. 267-274
Published by: Clark Atlanta University
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/274185

 

The troubles in Leflore County sprang largely from the attempts by blacks to improve themselves financially…. At that time the South was overwhelmingly rural, and for many years the farmers of that region had suffered from such problems as rising costs, falling prioces and rural isolation….. 

 

While some blacks owned small farms, many more worked as sharecroppers or field hands for white planters.  With many of them living at a bare subsistence level, the black farmers, more than any other group in American History, resembled the peasant classes in the poorest European nations of the nineteenth century (1800’s)

 

Leflore County, located in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, was in one of the last sections of Mississippi to be settled.  In the 1880;s thousands of Negroes and whites began migrating into the lowland region, clearing forests from vast acres and planting them with cotton.  The building of railroads, the beginning of federal flood control programs, and a a relative stabilization of cotton prices accounted for the Delta boom of the 1880’s.

 

Some hill people wrote off the entire Delta as a swamp – but they were wrong.  The sprawling lowland region was so blessed with miles and miles of dark, rich soil – soil so rich that its cotton yield per acre exceeded that of all other regions in the US. 

  Leflore Cty is adjacent to Holmes MS !!!

 

As plantations came to dominate the Delta’s economy, the whites strove hard to attract Negro laborers to work their lands, and a a result the blacks greatly outnumbered the whites.    In Leflore County, for example, there were 14,276 blacks and 2,597 whites.  


 

Greenwood, Ita Bena in LeFlore County, MS

Leflore County is a county located in the Mississippi Delta region of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of 2010, the population was 32,317. The county seat is Greenwood2000 Census Data

LeFlore County has a 603 square miles.  there were 37,294 people, 12,956 households, and 8888 families:  The racial makeup of the city was 30.00% White, 67.73% Black or African American, less than 1% Native American, Asian, other races, and two or more races. 1.9% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

the largest ancestry groups in Leflore County were African 67.73%, English 19%, and Scots-Irish 9.4%

THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG

 

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.


I find this to useful.... helps me realistically IMAGINE what my grandparents may have looked like....how Mollie and Travis may have live in rural Mississippi.

The facts of this Photo:   Washington, D.C., circa 1916. "Slaves reunion. Lewis Martin, age 100; Martha Elizabeth Banks, age 104; Amy Ware, age 103; Rev. Simon P. Drew, born free." Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, 921 N Street N.W. Washington, D.C.

 

Balance Due Road.... in Lexington MS

.....

This was my Cemetery Travel Adventure of 2008 to Lexington Mississippi.  I recently searched the Greenlawn Cemetery (owned by Porter & Sons).... I searched in Find-a-grave.... hoping maybe by chance... Bryd or Mollie were buried there.  Their death dates may have been 1950-ish...!!!   I think I'll make a phone call today!
 

Which set of Relatives....???

Where shall I start?

Excited about Ancestry dot com

I'm onto a free trial and a six month subscription... their family tree.... it's mad-hatter happiness for me1

My Mississippi Man of the HOUR !!! I be Ms Hildy!

"What dey are sayin' is dat Tarantino may be a mess, but he sure know how to make movies!" Buckwheat exclaimed. "It ain't every day you see a black character kill all kinda white folk, includin' a mousy white woman, ride off into de sunset and get white folks cheering for him!

"Dat makes Django a rare and endangered species!" Buckwheat continued. "We wants him and Broomhilda to move in here wid us. If they keep ridin' all over the antebellum South causin' mayhem, the paddy rollers are sure to catch 'em!"

"What a laudable notion," I replied in genuine admiration. "You want to provide them with sanctuary, sort of like the Underground Railroad."

"You got it," Buckwheat continued. "It been a long time since anybody come up with a new racial stereotype like Django! He a lot more creative den dat downtrodden ghetto girl in Precious or dem dysfunctional folks in de Big Momma movies!""Ain't dat the truth," added Kingfish. "Don't nobody know racial stereotypes like Buckwheat, and I knows racial stereotypes! And Django is a stereotype's kinda stereotype! He belong here with de otha' truly seminal clichés like us! He and Broomhilda will be right at home!"

"Dat's right," Buckwheat chimed in. "All of us is changin' our names to help dem feel comf'table when dey gets here! From now on you can call me DBuckwheat, and dis here is DKingfish."

"Don't forget dat dee d is silent," added Kingfish. "Now, leave us alone so dat we can get back to work. You done wasted enough of our time."

Jack White, a former columnist for Time magazine, is a freelance writer in Richmond, Virginia