Embracing an authentic and comprehensive account of the chief events in the history of the state, this newly republished double volume collection provides a record of the lives of many of the most worthy and illustrious families and individuals of Mississippi. Part 1, containing chapters one through fifteen, explores everything from postbellum organization to the records of families and individuals, including several citizens' private memoirs. This section provides much of the historical information from the legal and judicial history, political, educational, and religious history.

From a plantation ledger, an abandoned graveyard, a fragile manuscript, and old newspapers, author Mary Helen Griffin Halloran has raised the bones of her ancestors and made them come alive in this memoir that traces the history of five generations of her Mississippi family. In A Mississippi Family, Halloran has painted a backdrop to the life the family lived. The story begins with the life and times of three men: Jonas Griffin (17621815), his son Francis Griffin (1800-1865), and his son Judge John Bettis Griffin (18261903). It ends with portraits of two remarkable women, Judge Johns daughters, Mary Lane Griffin (18581942) and Helen Knight Griffin (18641949). The stories of these five people, whose fates and values shaped the lives of their children, capture the early history of the Mississippi Delta, Warren and Washington Counties, and the town of Greenville. Telling tales of river journeys and life on southern plantations, Hallorans meticulous research has provided a record of her fascinating family saga at a crucial period in the history of the county, state, and nation.

This easy-to-understand guide through a maze of research possibilities is for any genealogist who has Mississippi ancestry. It identifies the many official state records, incorporated community records, related federal records, and unofficial documents useful in researching Mississippi genealogy. Here the contents of these resources are clearly described, and directions for using them are clearly stated. Tracing Your Mississippi Ancestors also introduces many other helpful genealogical resources, including detailed colonial, territorial, state, and local materials. Among official records are census schedules, birth, marriage, divorce, and death registers, tax records, military documents, and records of land transactions such as deeds, tract books, land office papers, plats, and claims. In addition to noting such frequently used sources as Confederate Army records, this guidebook leads the researcher toward lesser-known materials, such as passenger lists from ships, Spanish court records, midwives' reports, WPA county histories, cemetery records, and information about extinct towns. Since researching forebears who belong to minority groups can be a difficult challenge, this book offers several avenues to discovering them. Of special focus are sources for locating African American and Native American ancestors. These include slave schedules, Freedman's Bureau papers, Civil War rolls, plantation journals, slave narratives, Indian census records, and Indian enrollment cards. To these specialized resources the authors of Tracing Your Mississippi Ancestors append an annotated bibliography of published and unpublished genealogical materials relating to Mississippi. Including over 200 citations, this is by far the most comprehensive list ever given for researching Mississippi genealogy. In addition, all of Mississippi's local, county, and state repositories of genealogical materials are identified, but because most documents for tracing Mississippi ancestors are found at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the authors have made the state archival collection in Jackson the focus of this book.

Owned by his father, Isaac Harold Anderson (1835–1906) was born a slave but went on to become a wealthy businessman, grocer, politician, publisher, and religious leader in the African American community in the state of Georgia. Elected to the state senate, Anderson replaced his white father there, and later shepherded his people as a founding member and leader of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church. He helped support the establishment of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, where he subsequently served as vice president. Anderson was instrumental in helping freed people leave Georgia for the security of progressive safe havens with significantly large Black communities in northern Mississippi and Arkansas. Eventually under threat to his life, Anderson made his own exodus to Arkansas, and then later still, to Holly Springs, Mississippi, where a vibrant Black community thrived. Much of Anderson’s unique story has been lost to history—until now. In The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson, author Alicia K. Jackson presents a biography of Anderson and in it a microhistory of Black religious life and politics after emancipation. A work of recovery, the volume captures the life of a shepherd to his journeying people, and of a college pioneer, a CME minister, a politician, and a former slave. Gathering together threads from salvaged details of his life, Jackson sheds light on the varied perspectives and strategies adopted by Black leaders dealing with a society that was antithetical to them and to their success.

Charles Woolverton was in Burlington County, New Jersey, by 1693, and appears in records there and in Hunterdon County until 1727. David Macdonald and Nancy McAdams have traced Charles' descendants to the seventh generation, by which time they had spread out to many parts of the country ... This is a beautifully crafted genealogy. The format is easy to follow, and the documentation is impressive. The compilers have carefully explained their handling of problem areas, including the need to refute longstanding family lore about the immigrant ... This is an exemplary work, which descendants will certainly value and other genealogists would be well advised to study. -- Excerpts from a review published in the April 2003 issue of The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record and reprinted with permission of the author, Harry Macy, Jr. and The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.