Duckport (also Duck Port or Duckport Landing) was a plantation and boat landing in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States, [2] best known today as one of the endpoints of the unsuccessful Duckport Canal project during the American Civil War. An alternate name for the Duckport Landing was Sparta or Sparta Landing. [3] As of 1890 two placenames were about 300 yards (270 m) apart on the Mississippi River, with Sparta preferred in high water and Duckport preferred in low. [4]
The settlement was originally known as Sparta and was described in Zadok Cramer's Navigator in 1817: "Good landing on the left side opposite [My Wife's Island], along a willow shore. The river bends to the right. This island is about 3 miles long. Opposite the head of No. 103 on the left shore, the old bed of the river formerly ran across to the Yazoo, and entered that ziver two miles above its present mouth. This tract is marked by the young willows with which it is now filled. Just below No. 103, on the right side, and in a right hand bend, is a considerable settlement, called SPARTA, on which resides judge Lindsey, below whose farm the river bears hard against the right hand bank, and it requires some pulling to keep out from among the fallen trees and snags near the shore. The bank having given way considerably in one place, an eddy is formed, but it presents no danger if you ply the oars well and keep pretty well out." [5] My Wife's Island was noted in 1851 as a particular River navigation hazard (where ships were prone to major hull damage from underwater snags and sawyers), along with "Plum Point, Turkey Island, Dogtooth Bend, Riddle's Point, Number Ten, Devil's Island, Hull's Left Leg, Elk Island, Number Twenty-One, Devil's Backbone, Devil's Tea Table, Hanging Dog's Island, Devil's Elbow, Tyawapita...Shirt-tail Bend, Grand Chain, Goose Island and the Grave Yard." [6]
In the 19th century, Duckport Landing was located between Paw Paw Island and Young's Point along the Mississippi River. [1] There was a boat landing at Duckport that was used by mail packet steamboats beginning sometime before 1852. [7] In 1869, the application for a Duck Port post office stated there were about 150 families in the vicinity who would be served by the station. [8] There was a series of suspicious fires at Duckport in 1885–86 that totaled a home at Sparta Landing, a storehouse, and a lumber warehouse. [9]
The sternwheel packet boat Ben Hur burned and sank at Duckport in March 1916. [10] Duckport was flooded in spring 1922. [11] There was an illegal 150-gallon still in operation near Duckport during Prohibition. [12] A fragment of the civil war-era canal was still visible in 1933 from a gravel road that ran from Thomaston to Duckport. [13] [14] Thomaston Road had been the "center of wealth" in the area before the war and had been lined with plantation houses. [15] By the 21st century, all that was left of the canal was "a small indentation because area farmers tried to plow it down." [15]
The Duckport Plantation encompassed about 1800 acres as of the 1990s. [16] Duckport Landing no longer exists and has disappeared under the Mississippi River. [17]
Madison Parish is a parish located on the northeastern border of the U.S. state of Louisiana, in the delta lowlands along the Mississippi River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,017. Its parish seat is Tallulah. The parish was formed in 1839. With a history of cotton plantations and pecan farms, the parish economy continues to be primarily agricultural. It has a majority African-American population. For years a ferry connected Delta, Louisiana to Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Vicksburg Bridge now carries U.S. Route 80 and Interstate 20 across the river into Madison Parish.
The Anchor Line was a steamboat company that operated a fleet of boats on the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri, and New Orleans, Louisiana, between 1859 and 1898, when it went out of business. It was one of the most well-known, if not successful, pools of steamboats formed on the lower Mississippi River in the decades following the American Civil War.
Milliken's Bend is an extinct settlement that was located along the Mississippi River in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States for about 100 years. In its heyday, the village had a boat landing, two streets of businesses, residences, churches, a four-room schoolhouse, a ferryman, and roads connecting it to Lake Providence, and Tallulah.
Davis Island is a large island located in the Mississippi River. It lies mostly in Warren County in the state of Mississippi but is also partly in Madison Parish, in the state of Louisiana. It is located about 20 miles southwest of Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA. The island is approximately 30,000 acres (120 km2) in size depending on the level of the Mississippi River. It was formerly a peninsula known as Davis Bend, with an 11,000 acres (45 km2) area of rich bottomlands, bounded on three sides by the Mississippi River.
The Battle of Richmond was fought on June 15, 1863, near Richmond, Louisiana, during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Major General John George Walker's division of Confederate troops, known as Walker's Greyhounds had attacked Union forces in the Battle of Milliken's Bend and the Battle of Lake Providence earlier that month in hopes of relieving some of the pressure on the Confederate troops besieged in Vicksburg, Mississippi. While both of Walker's strikes were failures and the Confederates withdrew to Richmond, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant still viewed the presence of Walker's men at Richmond to be a threat. On June 14, the Mississippi Marine Brigade and the infantry brigade of Brigadier General Joseph A. Mower were sent to attack the Confederates at Richmond.
Tallula is an unincorporated community in Issaquena County, Mississippi, United States. Tallula was the county seat from 1848 to 1871.
Bruinsburg is an extinct settlement in Claiborne County, Mississippi, United States. Founded when the Natchez District was part of West Florida, the settlement was one of the end points of the Natchez Trace land route from Nashville to the lower Mississippi River valley.
The Mississippi River was an important military highway that bordered ten states, roughly equally divided between Union and Confederate loyalties.
The Duckport Canal was an unsuccessful military venture by Union forces during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Ordered built in late March 1863 by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the canal stretched from the Mississippi River near Duckport, Louisiana, to New Carthage, Louisiana, and utilized a series of swampy bayous for much of its path. It was intended to provide a water-based supply route for a southward movement against the Confederate-held city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as high water levels made overland travel difficult. Manual digging was provided by 3,500 soldiers from Grant's army and was finished on April 12. The next day, the levee separating the canal cut and the Mississippi River was breached, and water flowed into the canal. Trees that had grown up in the bayous and falling water levels that reached as shallow as 6 inches (15 cm) at one point hampered the use of the canal, and the project was abandoned on May 4. Grant moved men and supplies through the overland route, which had been made more accessible by the same falling water levels that doomed the canal. After some inland maneuvering and a lengthy siege, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, marking a significant turning point in the war.
The Kentucky was a 19th-century sidewheel steamboat of the Ohio River, Mississippi River, and Red River of the South in the United States. Kentucky was involved in not one, not two, but three serious accidents over her lifespan (1856–1865), which resulted in the deaths of one, 20+, and 50+ people, respectively. She was built in Cincinnati, and her length was 222 ft (68 m) with a capacity of 375 short tons (340,000 kg).
John Jenkins Poindexter was an American slave trader, commission merchant, school commissioner, and steamboat master of Louisiana and Mississippi. He served in the Mexican-American War as a junior officer in the Mississippi Rifles. The historic John J. Poindexter House in Jackson, Mississippi, was commissioned for the young Poindexter family and designed in the 1840s by architect William Nichols.
Columbia, Arkansas was a 19th-century boat landing and human settlement along the Mississippi River located in Chicot County near Helena, Arkansas. Columbia stood on what was called Spanish Moss Bend, in a section of the River known as the Greenville Bends, between Gaines' Landing and Island 82. Columbia, which lay roughly opposite Greenville, Mississippi, was the county seat of Chicot from 1833 until 1855.
Petit Gulf was a location on the Mississippi River in North America. The gulf was an eddy or whirlpool that was smaller than the nearby Grand Gulf. The eddy lent its name to the nearby Petit Gulf Hills and Petit Gulf Creek. There was a settlement there prior to the 1828 organization of Rodney, Mississippi, and the Petit Gulf cotton cultivar, which was widely planted in the U.S. South before the American Civil War, was named for the landing and town.
Goodrich's Landing, earlier known as Pecan Grove and later known as Illawara, was a placename connected to a steamboat landing and plantation in Carroll Parish, Louisiana, United States. Goodrich's Landing was the site of the American Civil War battle of Goodrich's Landing in 1863.
Gaines Landing is an extinct settlement in Chicot County, Arkansas, United States that once hosted a boat landing along the Mississippi River. The location played a role in the story of fugitive slave Margaret Garner, and was used for troop movements during the American Civil War.
New Carthage, Louisiana, also known as Carthage Landing, was a 19th-century Mississippi River boat landing and village surrounded by cotton-producing agricultural land and undeveloped wetlands. New Carthage was located in, successively, Concordia Parish, Madison Parish, and Tensas Parish in Louisiana, United States. Destroyed by a combination of the American Civil War and the power of the Mississippi River, nothing remains of New Carthage today.
Profit Island, originally known as Islands No. 123 and 124, then Prophet Island, and also known as Browns Island and Isle de Iberville, is a 2,300-acre (930 ha) island of the Mississippi River in North America. The island is part of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, United States, and is located "just off the mouth of Thompson Creek, which breaks through the Tunica Hills from the uplands of southern Mississippi and the northern Florida parishes." Along with Middle Ground Island, Choctaw Island, Big Island, and Island No. 8, Profit is one of the "first-order islands" of the Mississippi that host 2,000 acres or more of forest.
The 1892–1896 Mississippi Legislature was a legislative term in the United States composed of the Mississippi State Senate and the Mississippi House of Representatives that met in two sessions in 1892 and 1894.
Peter Bryan Bruin was a landowner and judge in Mississippi Territory, United States. A veteran of the American Revolutionary War who served as an officer with Daniel Morgan and worked as an aide-de-camp to John Sullivan, he settled in the Natchez District shortly after the conclusion of the American revolution. He was later a host to a young Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards, on what may have amounted to their honeymoon circa 1790. In 1798 Bruin was signatory to the "Memorial to Congress by Permanent Committee of the Natchez District," which encouraged the U.S. Congress to annex the Natchez District from Spain and to preserve and extend slavery in the region. After the Mississippi Territory was organized, he was appointed to be a judge by John Adams. Bruin was tangentially connected to Aaron Burr's still-mysterious shenanigans in the lower Mississippi River valley in 1806. In 1808, the Mississippi Territorial Legislature passed a resolution condemning Bruin's conduct on the bench, and delegate George Poindexter requested that the U.S. Congress open an impeachment investigation into Bruin. Bruin resigned his judgeship amidst public charges of alcoholism and dereliction of judicial duty.