Written by Richard Bolling Powell, Sr. – Jan. 7, 1995
Born November 20, 1919 near Gallman, Miss.
My Grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell was born April 25, 1856 at Ringgold Plantation which was located on Bayou Pierre in Copiah County,
Mississippi, not far from the city of Port Gibson, Mississippi. She died December 6, 1938 in Jackson, Mississippi.
She was the thirteenth child born into her family.
She was the youngest child in the family and the baby of the family. She lived at Ringgold Plantation during the Civil War and had two brothers who served in the Confederate Army, and she told me some
of the most interesting things that happened at Ringgold Plantation and to her two brothers who served in the Confederate Army.
One of my grandmother brothers was named Thomas R. Lloyd and he served in the Confederate Army, company "D" 12th
Mississippi Regiment – Harris Brigade – Army of Northern Virginia; and I have a New Testament that he was carrying in his shirt pocket with the words written in it – "In the trenches near Petersburg, Virginia and the date August 4
th
1864". According to records obtained by my son Richard B. Powell, Jr. from the library in downtown Jacksonville, Florida, the Harris Brigade of the Twelfth Mississippi Regiment was created after the Battle of Seven Pines. In all of the principle battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862 to April 9
th
1865, this regiment participated. In all this dreadful and trying time they were admirably commanded and were ever as a Macedonian Phalanx. They won just distinction and while winning it from recognized sources of both military and civil authorities they deported themselves well, and wore their well earned honors with credit to themselves, state and cause. No wonder it was a boast that I belonged to the Twelfth Mississippi Regiment. The roll of Company D, 12
th
Mississippi Regiment shows that T. R. Lloyd, Sergeant, wounded twice – killed April 2, 1865. This was the date on which Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill was killed during the defense of Petersburg.
Grandmother's brother, Thomas R. Lloyd, was killed during a Federal attack on Fort Gregg. A minnie ball struck the bayonette of a man standing next to him during one of the
assaults on Fort Gregg and glanced off the New Testament that he was carrying in his shirt pocket and wounded him on his foot. He had a premonition that he would be killed in the next battle, so he
gave the New Testament, along with all his personal effects to the Negro slave that he had with him and sent him back to Mississippi.
I have this New Testament in my
possession and prize it very highly. The imprint of the minnie ball that struck the New Testament that he was carrying in his shirt pocket stops on the 40th
verse of St. Luke, chapter twelve and reads as follows: "Be ye therefore ready: "For the Son of Man cometh at an Hour when ye think not".
General Lee had ordered them
to hold the fort at all hazards. He was killed in the next battle. They think that actually this battle may have been fought after Lee had surrendered, but the system for sending and receiving
messages back in those days was not good.
During the attack on Fort Gregg the Federal troops expected to have no problem overwhelming the tiny garrison with sheer weight of
numbers. Charging across the open field the Federal troops came under a killing fire from Fort Gregg and they had to fall back to re-form. Again they charged, and again they were repulsed.
The Rebels in Fort Gregg beat off attack after attack, until no one could say for sure just how many separate assaults took place. Gradually, the battle became one continuous attack, as the Union
troops tried desperately to surround the fort. Inside Fort Gregg the Confederates fought like demons. The defense of Fort Gregg was one of the high points for Lee's brilliant artillery corps.
Wounded men were not exempt from the fighting – they painfully loaded rifles and handed them to comrades with bloody hands. 86% of the southern garrison were casualties, a
figure few units ever approached in a war marked by stupendous mortality rates. The gallant holding action by a handful of Confederates at Fort Gregg gave Lee the time necessary to cross the Appomattox
and head his shattered, hungry army toward the little courthouse town that bore the river's name.
My grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell, had another brother who was in the siege of
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Total casualties in the campaign were: Union Army 10,142; Confederates 9091. In addition the Confederates lost 31,000 prisoners of war. During the Siege of
Vicksburg, grandmother and her parents would sit on the front porch of their home and could hear the cannonade that was taking place in and around Vicksburg. After having crossed the Mississippi River
south of Vicksburg, General Grant defeated a Confederate force under General Bowen near Port Gibson, Mississippi, and some of his soldiers were camping near Ringgold Plantation while on their way to
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Some of the soldiers from the camp came up to the house where my grandmother and her parents lived and walked up to my grandmother's father and told him that if he did not take
the oath of allegiance to the United States that they would hang him. Her father told them that he had two boys serving in the Confederate army and that he could not take the oath of allegiance.
A Union army officer came up later and drove the soldiers away. After finding out that the Union army officer was a fraternal brother of his, my grandmother's father invited the officer to have dinner
with them and he accepted the invitation.
Before the War Between the States started my grandmother's father, William Selman Lloyd, who was a Whig, said that the south would be
defeated and would become the poorest nation on the face of the earth. He converted most of his cash into gold, and some of their valuables were buried in their garden and the garden was plowed over
nearly every day. Some of their valuables were put in their cistern near their house.
While some of Grant's soldiers were camped near Ringgold Plantation, grandmother's
mother, Serana Esther Lloyd, who was a Miss Shelby, decided that she had to go and visit some of her Shelby relatives who lived in Post Gibson, Mississippi. In order to get to Port Gibson, she had to
go through the Yankee camp and she got into a buggy that was pulled by an old mule, along with my grandmother, who was sitting by her side and who was just a small child at the time, she drove up to the
Yankee camp. A Union soldier came out to lead the mule through the camp and all during the time that the Union soldier was leading the mule through the camp, her mother was fussing at the soldier and
told him, "if you had not stolen my carriage horses I would not be driving this old mule". While all of this was going on my grandmother yanked on her mother's dress and said to her, "Mama, aren't you
afraid to talk to that soldier that way?" Her mother replied to her, "No! I am only afraid of the good Lord and the elements."
My grandmother's brother was taken prisoner
during the Siege of Vicksburg and was taken down to Ship Island which was located in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles out in the gulf from the city of Biloxi, Mississippi; and was put in prison at Fort
Massachusetts, which was located on Ship Island. He was guarded while there by Negro soldiers with bayonettes on their rifles, and they had only seepage water to drink. He was freed later and was
put on a boat and taken around to the port of New Orleans, Louisiana. General "Silver spoon" Butler fired into the boat, that the prisoners who had been freed from Ship Island were in, and would not
let the boat land at the port of New Orleans. General Butler was called "Silver Spoon" because he stole much silver from the people of New Orleans.
The boat then proceeded up
the Mississippi River to Vicksburg, Mississippi. His father came to meet him at Vicksburg, Mississippi, but he walked back to Ringgold Plantation another way and finally reached home safely; but he
died of starvation a few days later. While he was serving in the Confederate army during the Siege of Vicksburg, the Confederate troops had only rats and parched corn to eat, and I doubt that the food
down at Ship Island where he was put in prison was any better.
My grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell, told me that many years after the Civil War was over and her two boys were grown
men, that she had been put in charge of seeing that the cemetery, located near the little Methodist church that she and her family had worshipped at all of their lives, was cleaned up and kept in good
condition. She hired a Negro man who lived nearby to clean up the cemetery and she went by to pay the man for cleaning up the cemetery, she told the man that he had done a real good job cleaning up
everything and she was going to pay him for having done such a good job, but that she still remembered when the Yankee soldiers came by their home during the Civil War and she watched him as he came down
their winding stairway wearing one of her brother's finest shirts.
The name of the little church where my grandmother, Orah Powell's family worshipped was the Burdenton
Church. Grandmother told me that several times during the year that the members of the church would hold meetings at the church that would last all day long. They called these meetings love
feasts. Dinner would be served on the grounds, and during the meetings members of the congregation would get up and tell what the good Lord had done in their lives lately. During on of these
meetings, they called on an elderly man named Brother Kilcrease to pray. Brother Kilcrease got up to pray and said, "O Lord this world is a whirley gig, a whirley gig, a whirley gig, Amen." That
was his prayer and was all that he had to say about the situation.
Another interesting thing that grandmother told me, was about a circuit rider who would travel on horseback up
and down the Natchez Trace, preaching in communities where there was no church or preacher. His name was Lorenza Dow, and was well known in the area where my grandmother's parents lived. The
story is told about him that one day late in the day about nightfall, that he rode up to this house located in the woods way out in the country, got off of his horse, knocked on the door of the house, and
asked the lady of the house if it would be all right for him to spend the night at her house. She said that she thought that it would be all right for him to spend the night at her house. Lorenza
enters the house and begins to get ready to retire for the evening. What Lorenza did not know, though, was that the lady's husband had gone off on a trip and that her boyfriend was in the house; all of
a sudden the lady of the house comes rushing into the room where Lorenza is, with her boyfriend in tow, and hides him in a barrel of feathers that is in a corner of the room. The lady's husband had
come home unexpectedly just as drunk as he could possibly be and upon entering the room where Lorenza was, his wife introduced Lorenza Dow to him. Her husband then pulls a pistol out and says,
"Lorenza, I have heard a lot about you and that you can raise the Devil. Now, Lorenza, I want to see you raise the Devil." Lorenza replies that he will grant his wish, where upon he strikes a match,
walks over to the barrel of feathers, drops the match in the feather barrel, and up pops the man from the barrel and runs and jumps out the window; so the man actually got to see Lorenza Dow raise the
Devil.
My father, William Lloyd Powell, told me about a local colored man, who was on trial, for having shot another colored man, at the county courthouse. The man was being
questioned by one of the attorneys and was asked by the lawyer, "John, did you shoot this man in self defense", and the man replied, "No suh! No suh! I shot him in the bohind and he jumped the fence."
My father also told me about the time that he was sitting in front of a little grocery store that was located near Bayou Pierre and he noticed an elderly colored man walking up the
road that past in front of the little store. The man was carrying a large catfish that he had caught down in the bayou and as he walked past the store, my father yelled over to him, "Hey Tom are you
taking that fish home for Easter." It just happened that the wife of this man who had caught the fish was named Easter, and the day following that all of this was happening was Easter Sunday. The
man replied to my father, after hearing my father ask him if he was taking the fish home for Easter, "No suh! No suh! Old Easter ain't going to get to stick her tooth in this fish."
My mother, Alma Bolling Powell, taught in the public schools of Mississippi for thirteen years. On July 18, 1925, my mother was authorized by the State of Mississippi
Department of Public Education Office of the State Board of Examiners, Jackson, Mississippi, to teach in the public schools for life, without further examination. The certificate that she received from
the State Board of Examiners was signed by G. W. Huddleston, Bailey Schumpert and John Rundle. These certificates are no longer issued, but at the time that this certificate was issued to my mother,
they were highly prized by the recipient.
After having graduated from college my mother taught at a school down in south Mississippi and she told me about an incident that happened
while she was teaching there. One of the students was supposed to make an impromptu speech before a group that had gathered at the school. He made the mistake of memorizing his speech and when he
got up to speak, he forgot his speech and started off by saying, "When Greece, her knees in abject slavery bent, when Greece, her knees in abject slavery bent". Finally someone in the back of the
audience yelled out, "Grease her knees one more time, buddy, and let her slide."
My mother, Alma Bolling Powell, was born February 10, 1886 at Durant, Mississippi. Her father
was Richard Asa Bolling, Sr. and her mother was Ida May Drane Bolling. Her mother, Ida May Drane Bolling, was from Louisville, Kentucky and was a graduate of Bellewood seminary in Anchorage,
Kentucky. Her father, Dr. William Henry Drane, died in a yellow fever epidemic in Louisville, Kentucky and she moved to Raymond, Mississippi to live with her Uncle, Colonel Jim Drane. My mother's
grandfather was Major John Bolling and he was born in Virginia near Petersburg in the year of 1811. My father, William Lloyd Powell, was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana in 1879. His father,
Marcus Shelby Powell, was born in Lake Providence, Louisiana and was married to my grandmother January 26, 1876. The old Powell home where my grandfather Powell was born was used as a hospital during
the Civil War, by the Union forces and after the war they had to clean up the blood that was on the flooring of the home. Where the house once stood on the banks of the Mississippi River is now located
out in the Mississippi River.
The only way that you could get to Lake Providence, Louisiana, when my grandmother went there as a bride, from Vicksburg, Mississippi, was by
steamboat. My grandfather, Marcus Shelby Powell, owned the steamboat landing at Lake Providence, Louisiana and all of the boats that used his wharf boat, the "Alice Dean", for loading or unloading had
to pay him to do so.
My grandmother's mother, Serana Esther Shelby Lloyd, was a Miss Shelby and her people, the Shelbys, were from Kentucky. They came down the Mississippi
River, to settle in Mississippi, on a flat boat and when they got down near Memphis, Tennessee, an earthquake took place and the Mississippi River started to flow backwards. That was when Reel Foot
Lake near Memphis, Tennessee was formed.
My grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell, told me many times that I was a direct descendent of Isaac Shelby who was the first governor of Kentucky
and who fought at Kings Mountain during the Revolutionary War. The Shelby blood line is number 68508 and is recorded in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The National Blood Line Number
is 74137.
This information was recorded by my father's aunt, Olive Powell Ransdell, who was the wife of United States Senator, Joseph Ransdell of Louisiana. She was the
treasurer general of the D.A.R. while she was in Washington, D.C. and she was the one who signed the check that paid for the building of Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Her husband, U.S.
Senator Joseph E. Ransdell is the one who introduced the bill in Congress that created the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.; where information from all over
the world is gathered and used for the betterment of mankind. He was also the founder of the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana. United States Senator Joseph E. Ransdell was a Catholic and
was awarded the Order of St. Gregory by the Pope in Rome. The Order of St. Gregory is a very coveted award and is given by the Pope to outstanding members of the Catholic Church. Senator Ransdell
wrote a letter to President Woodrow Wilson when he was getting ready to attend a peace conference in France and told him that he should by all means take Teddy Roosevelt to the peace conference in France
with him. The only reply that he got from President Wilson was, "not that man", and he signed his name to the letter. Former President Teddy Roosevelt was a good friend of Senator Ransdell and
came down to visit him and to hunt bear along the Mississippi River near Lake Providence, Louisiana.
Childhood Memories of Richard Bolling Powell, Sr.
I was born
November the twentieth 1919 in a bid old house of fourteen rooms that was located way back in a pecan orchard about one hundred yards from Highway Fifty One, which, at the time, was the main highway between
New Orleans, Louisiana and Chicago, Illinois. Highway Fifty One, at that time, in our area, was made of gravel and remained that way for many years. A man by the name of Mr. Dent Corley took care
of the highway that ran in front of our house, with the help of two strong mules and a scraper and a wagon to haul the gravel in.
It was a big event in my life, when Mr. Dent, as I
called him, would come by on the scraper that had a large blade on it and smooth out the gravel that he had dumped out of his gravel wagon on the highway. Mr. Dent would see me standing by the highway
and would invite me to ride on the scraper with him and I was more than glad to accept the invitation to ride on the scraper with him and watch the large blade smooth out the gravel that he had placed on the
highway.
The big old house that I was born in had two large gabels located just above the second story of the house, which made it look even larger. The house was built on
large brick pillars that stood about five feet off the ground. One thing about the house that stood out in my mind was the many lightening rods that were attached to the house. The rods were
swivel shaped and there were glass balls attached to the rods in certain places. I am certain that the lightening rod salesman, who sold them the rods to go on his house, filled his quota many times
over when the sale was completed.
When my grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell, who was just a little girl at the time, lived with her mother, Serana Esther Shelby Lloyd, and her father,
William Selman Lloyd in the big old two story house that had a winding stairway in it and was located on a hill that overlooked Bayou Pierre. The county seat of Copiah County was located at Gallatin,
Mississippi. The county seat was later moved to Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Nothing much remains of Gallatin, Mississippi, but it was located in the vicinity of Mr. Sam Caldwell's farm. Mr.
Sam Caldwell is dead now but he was an officer of the Bank of Hazelhurst for years. The old Lloyd home had large sliding doors in it and when the sliding doors were pulled back, most of the entire
first floor was opened for what ever occasion that you might want to use it for.
The pretty little road that ran in front of the Ringgold Plantation home with its high embankments
on each side of it has been replaced with a farm to market road that has destroyed much of the beauty of the area.
Some of my grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell's friends would now and
then tease her about being so proud of who she was kin to and her reply to them would be, "Why certainly I was not raised by the buzzards and hatched by the sun, I know who I am."
Grandmother Powell told me about some of the boats that carried passengers up and down the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St. Louis and she said that they were called floating palaces and had
beautiful hanging chandeliers in them, thick Brussels carpets and highly polished door knobs.
When I was just a young boy, my grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell showed me a poem that
was given to her by a friend of hers, named Irwin Russell. The title of the poem was "The Girl in the Gabriel". A Gabriel is a bonnet that is held in place by a ribbon tied under the chin.
A group of young people in the area had gone blackberry picking and she was wearing this bonnet and later, Irwin Russell wrote this poem and gave it to my grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell. Irwin Russell
later became famous as a writer of Negro dialect poems. One of his poems was titled "Christmas Night in the Quarters". This poem, along with some other of his poems, was in my literature book
that we studied in high school when I was a boy. I am certain that they do not appear in any of the literature books anymore. Many years later, when my grandmother was in her seventies, she gave
this poem to the Irwin Russell Memorial, which is in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Years later when my son was going through the memorial, he noticed that the poem was shown there as having been given to
the memorial by a friend of Irwin Russell. A portrait of her from a girlhood sitting hangs therein.
When we lived near Gallman, Mississippi, we would attend the Methodist
church and we had two dogs. One was a collie, who would walk down the gravel road with us to church on Sundays. One of the dogs would stay at the Methodist church and the other dog would go over
to the Baptist church which was located just a short distance from the Methodist church. When church was over, they would walk back down the gravel road to our house with us. Each church had a
bell tower with a rope hanging down from the tower and each Sunday, someone would pull on the rope and ring the bell to let people know that it was time to come and worship the Good Lord.
There was, at one time, located at the mouth of Bayou Pierre, where it empties into the Mississippi River, a trading post that was owned by Andrew Jackson. He did not run
the trading post, but he owned it.
Some of the Shelbys, who first settled in that part of the country, had a little girl that was stolen by the Indians. They found the girl
years later, and they brought her back home to live with them, but she could not adjust and they let her go back to live with the Indians.
When my mother taught school in Gallman,
Mississippi, there were a family of people named Barlow and they were always very nice to me, and I appreciated it very much. Their names were Miss Pearl Barlow, Miss Nanny Barlow, Mr. Thurmon Barlow
and Mr. Hood Barlow. Miss Pearl Barlow and Miss Nannie Barlow taught in the Gallman School that, at that time, was located across from the Methodist and Baptist churches and also the Methodist
Parsonage. Brother Ferguson lived in the Methodist parsonage at that time along with his son Jimmy Ferguson and several daughters. Jimmy Ferguson later become Dr. Ferguson and taught at Millsaps
College in Jackson, Mississippi. He later became the president of one of the universities of the state of North Carolina.
My son, Richard B. Powell, Jr. was reading a book
written by Peter Marshall on the War with Mexico and he noticed that there was an American officer named Ringgold and also an American officer named Gallatin, and that they were both from Mississippi.
I don not know whether or not this is where the Ringgold Plantation got its name or not, but it could have been.
In our latest discussion of where the Ringgold Plantation was
located, I remember my mother telling me about her brother, years ago, Robert Bolling, driving my sister, Warrene Ramsey, and Kate Blair Ramsey down to where the old Ringgold Plantation was located.
Warrene married Philip Kolb of Jackson, Mississippi. While they were down there, the car got stuck in the mud and they had to spend the night in the car.
My grandmother, Orah
Lloyd had a double first cousin, named Cousin Billie Lloyd, who lived at Carpenter, Mississippi, which is located on Bayou Pierre. Some of his family still live at Carpenter and should be able to show
us where the old Ringgold Plantation home with the winding stairs in it was located.
My daughter, Nancy Powell Scoper, who lives in Memphis, Tennessee and my son, Richard B.
Powell, Jr., who lives here in Jacksonville, Florida. Both visited the place where the Ringgold Plantation home was located, along with me and his mother, before the farm to market road was put through
there and should be able to show us where the house was located. If the cemetery has been destroyed, though, it may be hard to locate the site. My grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell, told me that the
cemetery belonged to the Lloyd descendants for ever and that any of us could be buried there.
My mother, Alma Bolling Powell, and my father, William Lloyd Powell, were married in
Hermanville, Mississippi and spent their wedding night in the old Ringgold Plantation home. My father, William Lloyd Powell, told me that the fireplaces were big enough to hold a tree trunk. My
mother told me that on their wedding night, my grandmother had filled the large fireplace with magnolia leaves and blossoms, in the room where they slept.
Before my father was
married, my grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell, was often alone in the Ringgold Plantation home and one night she heard a rustling in the leaves underneath the magnolia tree that was located near the house and
she walks to the upstairs bedroom window and fires a pistol out of the window. The next morning she looks out the window and finds that she has killed her finest Tennessee walking horse, named Old
Lady. They bought their Tennessee walking horses from some people in Gallatin, Tennessee and were very fine horses.
My father's brother, Dr. James Dubose Powell, practiced
dentistry in New York City and one of his daughters, Gibson Powell, married Alice Duer Miller's son, Denning Duer Miller. Alice Duer Miller wrote quite a few Broadway plays. She also wrote for
the "Saturday Evening Post" and other magazines of the day. She wrote the "White Cliffs of Dover" and was a well known author of her day.
My sister, Orah Bickelhoupt Powell,
and my brother, William Lloyd Powell, were both born in the old home at Ringgold Plantation, where my mother went as a bride.
The boll weevil came into the southern states of the
U.S. and destroyed the cotton crops all over the south. My mother said that the cotton balls would fall off the stalks of cotton and no one knew what to do about it.
My
grandmother's father, William Selman Lloyd, owned quite a bit of land up and down the bayou and before he died he divided his land up among his children. The old home place where my brother and sister
were born and where my mother went as a bride consisted of eighteen hundred acres and the old Ringgold Plantation home was located there.
After the boll weevils destroyed the
cotton crops, my grandmother sold the Ringgold Plantation to Mrs. Frost Kelley of Utica, Mississippi. Mrs. Frost Kelley's husband owned a furnishing business in Utica, Mississippi and Mr. D. C. Simmons
went to work there as a young boy, as a bookkeeper. When Mr. Frost Kelley, Mr. Simmons took over the business and that is where he made most of his money furnishing the farmers of the area with things
that they needed to run their farms. My Grandmother was kin to Mrs. Frost Kelley. When Mr. Frost Kelley died, Mrs. Frost Kelley had a life size marble statue made in Italy of Mr. Frost Kelley and
it stands today in the cemetery in Utica, Mississippi. Mr. D. C. Simmons bought the large home in Jackson, Miss. Just off of North State Street and one of his sons owns the home at the present
time. The home looks a great deal like Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington in Virginia.
When my grandmother sold the old Ringgold home and plantation to Mrs. Frost
Kelley, they moved to Hermanville, Mississippi and one night they saw the sky all lit up back towards Bayou Pierre and that is when the old Ringgold Plantation Home burned to the ground.
My grandmother told me that when her father, William Selman Lloyd was running his farm, he kept noticing that some of his bales of cotton kept disappearing, so one night he
goes out and finds some men with masks over their faces, stealing his cotton. He tells them, after holding a pistol on them, to remove their masks and he finds out that they are neighbors of his.
He tells them that if they had told him that they needed the cotton to make ends meet that he would have given them the cotton.
Years ago, when I was just a little boy, we were
visiting a cousin, Billie Lloyd, in Carpenter, Mississippi. He had a son named W. L. Lloyd, and he had a Polly Parrot that he kept in a cage in his home. The Polly Parrot could talk and I
was standing near the parrot cage one day, watching him, when all of a sudden he said, "Aw hell W. L. quit running those mules."
When my grandmother was twelve years old, she
entered at the Southern Female Academy, Port Gibson, Mississippi. While there, she enjoyed the friendship of youthful Irwin Russell, afterwards to become known as one of the nation's gifted
poets. The old academy building has been turned into the Irwin Russell Memorial. A portrait of Orah Lloyd Powell, made from a girlhood sitting, hangs therein to commemorate her friendship with
the poet.
After her academy course, she spent five years in the Southern Female College at Memphis, Tennessee. Her student friends and roommates, in turn, during this period,
were the lady who later became Mrs. Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, and Kate Carl, who achieved note as an artist in the waking years of the New South. She made her debut in Memphis.
The notice of my grandmother's death was written by Bishop H. M. DuBose, who at that time was a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church south and lived in Nashville,
Tennessee. When I was about seven years old he was speaking at Galloway Memorial Church in Jackson, Mississippi and he came by our house to see my grandmother, Orah Lloyd Powell. He was rather a
rotund little man with long sideburns and I was fascinated by him.
When my grandmother was still living at Ringgold Plantation in Copiah County, Mississippi, Bishop DuBose came to
visit her. After his visit was over he was ready to return to Nashville, Tennessee, he climbed into a buggy driven by my father, and as they drove down the little road that ran in front of Ringgold
Plantation, they ran over a snake that wrapped itself around one of the front wheels of the buggy and for a few minutes, he had a very upset Bishop DuBose riding in the buggy with him.
