Gaines Landing (also Gaines' Landing and Gaines's 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 (whose life was the basis of Toni Morrison's Beloved ), and was used for troop movements during the American Civil War.
Gaines Landing was named for the Gaines family of Kentucky, specifically brothers William H. Gaines, Richard M. Gaines, and Benjamin P. Gaines. Benjamin Gaines, and his wife Matilda Fox first settled there in August 1824, the same year they got married. [1] The first Episcopal Mission service west of the Mississippi was reportedly held at Gaines Landing. [1] Chicot County's major product was cotton. [2] The landing ultimately became one of the major Mississippi River ports between Helena, Arkansas and Vicksburg, Mississippi, where local planters could debark new slaves and supplies for their farms, and send cotton bales out for export to mills in New England and Great Britain. [3]
In the 1850s Gaines Landing received regular mail from the packet boats and was the starting point of a mail route to inland Arkansas. [4] Circa 1852 there was a plank road from Gaines Landing to Bradley County, Arkansas. [5] The first toll gate was four miles west of Gaines Landing. [6] There were plans for a Gaines Landing Railroad in 1853; Lloyd Tilghman was hired to be the chief engineer for the survey. [7] The steamboat E. Howard sank near Gaines Landing in 1858. [8] William Gaines transported an enslaved man named R. D. Green, a native of Caroline County, Virginia, to Gaines' Landing in 1858 after purchasing him from Richmond slave trader Solomon Davis. [9]
During the 1850s, according to a planter named Charles McDermott, "Chicot County...had quite a number of Murrellites—men who lived by plunder, murder, gambling, and theft. About eight of them lived near old man Fulton's house above Gaines' Landing. They would steal a horse or a Negro. Once they got into a quarrel with one of their own members, a man named McReynolds. Seven of them came to his place and killed him with a gun. The name of this band were Fulton, Cooper, Johns, and James Forsythe." [10] : 261 The next settlement after Gaines Landing was at Dermott, "named for members of the McDermott family who settled here in 1832. Charles McDermott's house was an overnight stopping point for westward travelers who crossed the Mississippi at Gaines' Landing. Slaves brought water in cedar tubs for the guests." [11]
In 1856, some 30 years after the first Gaines settled at Gaines Landing, recaptured fugitive slave Margaret Garner was being shipped from Kentucky to Gaines' Landing by her legal owner Archibald K. Gaines (brother to the brothers above) when a boat collision killed her baby. [12] She was later returned to Kentucky and then shipped south a second time, where she was kept for a time at Benjamin Gaines' plantation and then shipped further south to still another brother, Abner LeGrand Gaines, a cotton broker and planter who had property in Issaquena County and near Natchez, Mississippi. [13]
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas , "During the American Civil War, Gaines' Landing was one of many points along the river used by Confederate troops to harass Federal steamboats. Long bends of the river were ideal for the Confederates' hit-and-run tactics: they could attack a boat as it entered the bend and then race across the narrow neck of land to attack it again as it came out of the bend; this was particularly effective when boats were moving slowly upstream." [14] Samuel Curtis wrote to Henry Halleck in July 1862 that Gaines Landing was used for shipping arms and artillery to Confederate guerrillas harassing Union boats in the Greenville Bends and beyond. [3] There were skirmishes at Gaines Landing in June 1862; [15] on July 20, 1862; on December 23, 1862; on June 15–16, 1863; on June 27–28, 1863; [14] and in May 1864. [16] William T. Sherman landed a division at Gaines Landing on December 24, 1862, and burned and pillaged the surrounding area in retaliation. [17] When Tennessee's Confederate Governor Isham G. Harris fled west at the end of the war, he crossed the Mississippi near Gaines Landing. [18] : 155
There was still a post office at Gaines Landing in 1923. [19] The post office was discontinued in 1932, and services moved to the post office of Lake Village, Arkansas. [20] The settlement lost river access with the creation of the Ashbrook Cutoff of Rowdy Bend in 1935 and nothing remains of it today. [21]
The elevation of Gaines Landing was 130 ft (40 m) above sea level. [22]
Chicot County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,208. The county seat is Lake Village. Chicot County is Arkansas's 10th county, formed on October 25, 1823, and named after Point Chicot on the Mississippi River. It is part of the Arkansas Delta, lowlands along the river that have been historically important as an area for large-scale cotton cultivation.
USS Essex was a 1000-ton ironclad river gunboat of the United States Army and later United States Navy during the American Civil War. It was named by her captain, William Porter, for his father's old sailing frigate, the USS Essex. This Essex was originally constructed in 1856 at New Albany, Indiana as a steam-powered ferry named New Era.
The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. The Union Army of the Tennessee under Major General Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the river by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The Battle of Goodrich's Landing, Louisiana, was fought on June 29 and June 30, 1863, between Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The Confederates attacked several Union regiments, who were composed mostly of black soldiers, in an attempt to disrupt the campaign at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.
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.
Joseph Emory Davis was an American lawyer who became one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi in the antebellum era; he owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who owned more than 300 slaves. He was the elder brother of Jefferson Davis and acted as his surrogate father for several years. The younger Davis became a politician, U.S. Senator, and later President of the Confederacy.
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 51st United States Colored Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment composed of African-American troops recruited from Mississippi that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Initially formed in the spring of 1863 as the 1st Regiment Mississippi Volunteer Infantry (African Descent), the Regiment took part in fierce fighting at the Battle of Milliken's Bend, served on garrison duty in Louisiana, and then took part in the Battle of Fort Blakely, the last major battle of the war.
Liverpool is a ghost town in Yazoo County, Mississippi, United States. Liverpool Landing, the settlement's port on the Yazoo River, was located 0.9 mi (1.4 km) west of Liverpool.
Lycurgus Johnson (1818–1876) was an American cotton planter and large slaveholder in the Arkansas Delta during the antebellum years. Born to the powerful political and planter Johnson family in Scott County, Kentucky, he became the owner and developer of the Lakeport Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas. It bordered the west bank of the Mississippi River.
The Sunnyside Plantation was a former cotton plantation and is a historic site, located near Lake Village in Chicot County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta region.
The Mississippi River was an important military highway that bordered ten states, roughly equally divided between Union and Confederate loyalties.
Capt. Montgomery Little, CSA was an American slave trader and a Confederate Army cavalry officer who served in Nathan Bedford Forrest's Escort Company. Little was killed in action during the American Civil War at the Battle of Thompson's Station.
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).
Skipwith's Landing was a 19th-century boat landing and human settlement on the east bank of the Mississippi River, located in the county of Issaquena in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Skipwith's Landing was situated about 55 mi (89 km) to 100 mi (160 km) north of Vicksburg, Mississippi, depending on mode of travel. Circa 1866, a witness at a U.S. Congressional hearing described Skipwith's Landing as being among the most sparsely populated sections of the state with no village or town in proximity. Circa 1867, there were no roads leading to or from Skipwith's Landing; the only access was by the river. For a time there was a cut made by the river that was known as Skipwith's Chute. Another related placename was Skipwith Crevasse. There was a U.S. post office at Skipwith's in 1870.
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.
Aaron H. Forrest was one of the six Forrest brothers who engaged in the interregional slave trade in the United States prior to the American Civil War. He may have also owned or managed cotton plantations in Mississippi. He led a Confederate cavalry unit composed of volunteers from the Yazoo River region of Mississippi during the American Civil War. He died in 1864, apparently from illness.
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.
Duckport was a plantation and boat landing in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States, 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.
Municipalities and communities of Chicot County, Arkansas, United States | ||
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