Z 1992.000
HOSKINS (WILLIAM WALTON) PAPERS



Original materials in folder 2 are restricted; reference photocopies in folder 1 must be used instead.

Biography/History:

William Walton Hoskins was born in Lexington, Holmes County, Mississippi, on August 2, 1856. He was one of five children of John Stone Hoskins and Sarah Agnes Walton who were originally from Virginia. John Stone Hoskins served the Confederacy as captain of Company A, Thirty-eighth Regiment, Mississippi Infantry. Captain Hoskins was severely wounded in the battle of Harrisburg, Mississippi, resulting in the amputation of his left leg. Despite his disability, Captain Hoskins later became the editor and publisher of the Lexington Advertiser. He also served as a sheriff and a state representative of Holmes County. Hoskins died in Holmes County in 1891.

Enrolling at the University of Mississippi in 1872, William Walton Hoskins studied to become a lawyer and minister. He also served as editor of the Lexington Advertiser and the Corinthian. Hoskins championed the cause of prohibition, lecturing throughout the South on the subject. He compiled an anthology of his poetry entitled Atlantis, and Other Poems that was published by Sherman and Company, Printers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1881. He married Mary Evans Inge, and by 1893, he was living in Atlanta, Georgia, where he worked for the Southern Christian Printing and Publishing Company. William Walton Hoskins died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, around 1910.

Scope and Content:

The papers of William Walton Hoskins include the 1881 first edition of Hoskinss Atlantis, and Other Poems, two 1893 letters to a Mr. Wellborn, and printed materials such as an undated broadside announcing Hoskinss prohibition lecture entitled "A Plea for Wife and Home" and an undated, annotated prohibition leaflet entitled "Philip Raymond: A Plea for Wife and Home."

Hoskins inscribed the first page of Atlantis, and Other Poems with a poem composed on March 26, 1893, for an undisclosed audience. The poem entitled "Atlantis" is based on the legendary island of Atlantis that was thought by Plato to have disappeared beneath the Atlantic Ocean after a cataclysmic event. The remaining poems cover a variety of subjects, and some poems are based on actual events in Mississippi history. In the letters written on Southern Christian Printing and Publishing Company letterhead in 1893, Hoskins first wrote Mr. Wellborn to obtain a manuscript entitled "The Promise Fulfilled," and in the second letter Hoskins thanked Mr. Wellborn for sending it. Hoskins annotated the prohibition leaflet entitled "Philip Raymond" with notes about his lectures throughout the South and his intention to start a prohibition newspaper entitled the Life-Line in Atlanta, Georgia.

Series Identification:

  1. Atlantis, and Other Poems. 1881. 1 volume.
  2. Correspondence. 1893. 1 folder.
  3. Printed Materials. n.d. 2 folders.

    Folder 1: reference photocopies of original material.
    Folder 2: restricted original material.