Z 2010.000 Ellis (Mary Barrett) Collection

John Hinds, who was most likely the son of James and Margaret Hinds, was born in 1752. John Hinds owned land in Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Mississippi Territory at various times, and in 1791 he was a flatboat captain involved in trading between Cumberland County, Kentucky, and the Natchez area of the Mississippi Territory. Hinds paid taxes in Cumberland County in 1799, and he lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, for some time before 1801. He apparently had a son named after him, as a John Hinds, Sr., and a John Hinds, Jr., both signed the same petition in the Mississippi Territory in 1803. John Hinds, Sr., bought and sold several tracts of land in Pickering County, Mississippi Territory, between 1799 and 1804. Pickering County was subdivided and renamed several times, beginning in 1802, and portions of Adams and Jefferson counties were formed from this county. Hindss property was close to Old Greenville in Jefferson County, a few miles north of Adams County. He was living in Adams County in 1799, but he died at his home in Jefferson County on February 19, 1807, and was buried in the Hinds family cemetery on Thomas Hindss property. Also buried in the cemetery are Thomas Hinds (1780-1840) and several other Hinds family members. Thomas Hinds is variously identified as either the brother or son of John Hinds.

An acquaintance of John Hinds, Andrew Hunter Holmes, was born in Frederick County, Virginia, around 1782. He was the youngest son of Colonel Joseph Holmes of Pennsylvania and Rebecca Hunter Holmes of Berkeley County, Virginia. Their second son, David Holmes (1770-1832), became the last territorial and first state governor of Mississippi. Andrew H. Holmes graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), and he moved from New Jersey to Lexington, Kentucky, where he was employed as a merchant in 1799. The governor of the Mississippi Territory commissioned Holmes as an attorney on October 8, 1809, and he began practicing law in Washington, Mississippi. After surviving a duel in February of 1810, in which he killed Lieutenant Stephen Rose, Holmes expanded his legal practice in 1812 by becoming a member of the bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. When the War of 1812 began, Holmes volunteered for service and soon attained the rank of major. Andrew H. Holmes died on August 4, 1814, while leading his troops into battle at Fort Mackinac in Michigan.

Charles Nicaisse, Sr., was married and living in the Shieldsboro (Bay St. Louis) area of Hancock County, Mississippi, by 1819. The present town of Necaise, located nineteen miles north of Bay St. Louis, may be associated with the Nicaisse family. The Nicaisses had Charles Nicaisse, Jr., and at least five other children. Charles Nicaisse, Sr., owned five hundred dollars in personal property in 1819, and he was appointed chief justice of the quorum and county court of Hancock County in February of that year. Charles Nicaisse, Sr., owned one slave and one thousand dollars in personal property in 1821, and by 1837 he farmed 246 acres, while Charles Nicaisse, Jr., farmed forty acres of land. Charles Nicaisse, Sr., owned three slaves in 1842, and he most likely died before 1850.

Henry Stuart Foote was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, on September 20, 1800. After graduating from Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in 1819, he was admitted to the bar and subsequently moved to Clinton, Hinds County, Mississippi. He helped establish a newspaper, the Mississippian, in nearby Jackson, and he was elected to the United States Senate in 1847. Known as a Unionist and a staunch opponent of secession, Foote was elected as governor of Mississippi in 1851. After the 1853 elections, when John J. McRae was elected as governor and William Barksdale was elected as a United States congressman, Foote wrote a final message to the Mississippi legislature offering his early resignation from the office of governor. On January 5, 1854, five days before the inauguration of Governor McRae, Foote officially relinquished his office and moved to California. He moved back to Mississippi in 1858, this time to Vicksburg in Warren County. Foote was a member of the 1859 convention in Knoxville, Tennessee. Although he opposed secession at the convention, when Tennessee left the Union, he became a representative in the Confederate States Congress. Foote was imprisoned throughout much of the latter part of the Civil War as a result of surrendering himself to try to secure peace. His freedom and civil rights were eventually restored, and he lived in Nashville, Tennessee, until his death on May 20, 1880. His second wife, two sons, and a daughter survived him.

The collection of Mary Barrett Ellis includes one legal document conveying power of attorney, a legal document granting a county commission, and an imprint of Henry Stuart Footes resignation as governor.

The first legal document conveys power of attorney from John Hinds of Adams County, Mississippi Territory, to Andrew Holmes of Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky. Signing the document on April 17, 1799, Hinds specifies the location and provenance of 14,880 acres that he owns in Kentucky and Tennessee. Hinds indicates that Thomas Molloy, Captain Edmund Gamble, and Captain Anthony Hart sold him several large tracts of land in years past. Winthrop Sargent, governor of the Mississippi Territory, and Peter Bryan Bruin, a judge of the Supreme Court of the Mississippi Territory, both sign the document on April 22, 1799. The clerk of Davidson County, Tennessee, records the document on August 21, 1799, and the clerk of Lexington County, Kentucky, records the document on September 13, 1801.

The second legal document commissions Charles Nicaisse as chief justice of the quorum and county court of Hancock County, Mississippi, on February 20, 1819. The commission is signed by Mississippi governor David Holmes.

The final item is an imprint of Governor Henry Stuart Footes address to the Mississippi legislature, entitled, Message of the Governor of the State of Mississippi: Delivered in the City of Jackson, January 2, 1854. It was printed by Barksdale and Jones, State Printers, in Jackson, Mississippi. In the twenty-four-page document, Stuart explains his resignation, and he entreats the legislature to take specified measures in order to prevent the disaster that he foresees in the growing movement toward secession.

1. Legal Documents. 1799; 1819. 2 items.
2. Imprint. 1854. 1 item.