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Society

City Personals

Mary Clay Brooks
City Personals

Happy birthday to Jimmy Gilliam, who celebrated Tuesday.

(To put your news in City Personals, please e-mail maryclayb @yahoo.com; mail to City Personals, The South Reporter, P.O. Box 278, Holly Springs, MS 38635 or call 662-252-4261. You may also e-mail your City Personal news to south@dixie-net.com).

Welcome Peytin Faye Thomas

Thomas

Trey and Mandi Thomas of Holly Springs joyfully announce the birth of their daughter, Peytin Faye Thomas, who was born December 10, 2009 at Baptist Women’s Center in Memphis, Tenn. Peytin was born at 4:39 p.m., weighing seven pounds, 11 ounces. She was 21 inches long.

She is welcomed home by big sister Marti Mari Thomas, and her grandparents, Larry and Phyllis Carpenter Jr. of Mt. Pleasant and Chuck and Sue Thomas of Holly Springs.

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

The Joneses from Virginia

Eddie Lee Jones

Once upon a time long ago the Virginia Joneses decided for some of them to move to Mississippi. In the move there were at least four Jones boys. At that particular time in history the whole South had a law called the “progenitor factor” where the oldest son got the main inheritance, such as the father’s name, farm, and the money. The second son went into the ministry and the third son went into the military. In these cases, the second and third sons came to Holly Springs. In 1836 the first settlers were cultured, educated, and in most cases, rich. They had seen the Indians growing great cotton and knew that they could raise great cotton too, so they brought many slaves with them to help produce the cotton. In the ensuing years before the War Between the States, Marshall County produced more cotton per capita than any other place in the world. Cotton was king! Cotton money was what produced the fabulous Holly Springs.

In 1832 in the Treaty of Pontotoc, the United States government bought this land from the Indians and the land was sold to land entrepreneurs to resell to the white settlers.

Four Jones families came to Holly Springs in the 1830s and 1840s. In the county, one settled in the northeastern part of the county, one settled in the western part, one in the south part and one in Holly Springs. They bought slaves to help build an empire and they did! They built all the wonderful houses around town as many of the slaves were artisans in their work and the houses they built are like beautiful monuments. One of the Joneses brought 349 slaves with him, which was more than anybody else in the state except a man in Natchez who owned 500 slaves. It was very rare in history for anyone to own that many slaves.

Can you imagine all those people walking from Virginia? There were no roads, only trails. There were no bridges and rivers had to be forded. There were no trains, cars, or planes. Walking was the way to get here.

Today if you look in the phone book, it is filled with Joneses. (Two of them work for me.) They are ubiquitous.

One of the Jones boys was W.A. Jones. He married the richest girl in town, Maggie Mason. W.A. Joneses lived in the house called “The Magnolias” and had a store on the square for many years. For his store, he imported beautiful Dresden china from Germany with his name and “Holly Springs” on the back. One of the Jones died before arriving in Holly Springs and his widow and eight children moved here and built a dynasty. There were Jones boys marching the streets as soldiers in every war; 1845 Mexican War, Civil War, World War I, World War II. They began in the 1830s patrolling the streets of Holly Springs.

Reverend Guilford Jones taught at Franklin Female Institute. Wiley P. Jones helped create the foundry for making farm tools, buggies, fences, wagons, mantles etc., but when the war started, switched from foundry to armory and we made the first firearms for the Confederacy right here in Holly Springs.

In later history, one of the Jones boys, Wilson Cole Jones was an explorer to Antarctica twice. (He brought us a meteorite from there.)

One of the modern-day Jones boys is Eddie Lee Jones, a Holly Springs native who was born and reared here. He attended local schools and has worked here all his life. Today Eddie Lee works at the local Wal-Mart as a “Jack of all jobs.” I would consider him one of the star employees as he is so polite, so friendly, so cheerful, always has a smile on his face and is about the nicest guy in town. Wal-Mart is lucky to have him as an employee.

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