Clinton

By Chad Chisholm

Clinton, Mississippi, is the home of Mississippi College, the state’s oldest existing institution of higher learning. Clinton produced statesmen such as Walter Leake, writers and artists such as Barry Hannah and Wyatt Waters, and modern celebrities such as Lance Bass and Mandy Ashford. Today Clinton serves as a bedroom community for Jackson. Clinton began as the Mount Dexter trading post on the Old Natchez Trace. The town was founded as Mount Salus in 1823 by Walter Leake, one of Mississippi’s first U.S. senators and the third governor. Six years later, Clinton fell one vote short of becoming the state capital. Through antebellum prosperity, occupation by Union troops, rebirth as a college community, and growth into a postwar suburban center, Clinton and its people have been marked by independence. This pictorial history is a chronicle of Clinton’s most indelible individuals, families, and institutions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jan 10, 2007
• ISBN: 9781439617502

Chad Chisholm

Chad Chisholm is a commercial photographer specializing in the hospitality and food & beverage genre of photography. Based in the Rocky Mountain Region, his travels take him all over the state and beyond. More can be seen at www.chadchisholmcreative.com. Previous books include Colorado Cocktail Cookbook, Unique Eats and Eateries of Denver, and Imbibe Worldwide as well as multiple inclusions in magazines and online outlets.

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Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

The present city of Clinton, Mississippi, is directly adjacent to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. Most Mississippians (as well as some present-day Clintonians) think they know Clinton. Ask a new Clintonian—and anyone, this author included, whose family moved here after 1960, is still new—and he or she will probably quote such statistics as the city’s population of 23,347, a sizable urban area for rural Mississippi. Other new Clintonians might ebulliently add that their suburban mecca is the most prominent bedtime community within the Jackson metropolitan area, which numbers about 400,000 residents. The new Clintonian who habitually reads the Wall Street Journal might focus on the city’s economic eminence: Clinton is home to companies such as Delphi Corporations-Packard Electric Systems and a branch office of MCI/SkyTel. Many new Clintonians will mention the city’s government-rated Level Five public school system and Mississippi College, Clinton’s historic institution of higher learning.

However, beneath the surface of commercial sprawl and urban flight is a unique and independent history, and Clinton’s past coexists with its present. For instance, when the city began construction on Eastside Elementary School, workers unearthed several Choctaw arrowheads. An occasional Civil War minié ball is not an uncommon discovery in a garden or backyard. Clinton’s past is alive and reveals itself to anyone who has patience and a sharp eye.

Clinton was formed in 1823 as Mount Salus (meaning mountain of health in Latin), and in 1828, the citizens changed the name of their teeming village to Clinton after Gov. Dewitt Clinton of New York, the man famous for pushing the construction of the Hudson Canal. The city was founded by Walter Leake, the third governor of Mississippi, who in 1823 supposedly built the first brick home in Hinds County.

However, none of these interesting facts means for a moment that the Clinton area was entirely tame in 1823. Clinton’s effulgent future in the fields of economics, academics, and community would have seemed a mere dream to Mrs. Priscilla Thomas Patten, whose parents, Daniel and Polly Thomas, moved their family to a homestead west of Clinton in 1830. About 60 years later, Mrs. Patten retold her experience:

The country was new, very few settlers. We went into the woods, not a stick cut. Ma and us three children slept in the wagon until a rough log cabin was built.... The land was full of game and wild animals. Often a herd of deer would run by across the prairie. We gathered wild plums, grapes and haws. Hickory and walnuts were abundant. A company of Indians (Choctaws) were camped in the swamp near us. They lived some distance but came here every fall and winter to get furs. [There were] so many animals. The wolves frightened us very much. They would come up near the house and howl and yell for hours. [The men] built fires out in the yard, blew horns, and fired guns at [the wolves].

Mrs. Patten also recalls an incident during the winter of 1830–1831 when her father hired a young Choctaw man to watch after the family while he traveled:

[The Choctaw man] would kill a deer every day, bringing the hams to my mother. One night it was raining, the wind blowing, [and] the dogs began to act strange. The Indian looked out and said some animal was near. Just then he ran [into the kitchen] to the fire and piled all the wood on and made a big blaze. After a while he looked out and all was quiet. He said it was a panther and [later] we saw the prints of its feet where it [had] climbed up on the chimney.

Eventually the forests were cleared, the wild animals were killed or driven deeper into the woods, the federal government removed the Choctaws from their ancestral lands, and soon this frontier image of Clinton faded into a dream.

Today Clinton is a satellite of Jackson, but in 1829, Clinton fell one vote short of becoming the state’s capital. In May 1863, Clinton was occupied by Union troops under the command of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who was on his way to Vicksburg. Because of its proximity to this city, Clinton was in the backyard of an active theater of warfare, and Clinton women such as Polly Thomas and her sister Nancy had to put on a brave countenance to face Union occupation while their sons were fighting and dying in Confederate units such as the Mississippi College Rifles.

During Reconstruction, inspiring individuals such as Sarah Dickey came to Clinton to educate the freed slaves. Dickey opened Mount Hermon Female Seminary in 1871 near where Sumner Hill is today. Miss Dickey ran Mount Hermon for 28 years and enrolled up to 100 students per session. However, Reconstruction was also a time of infamy and tragedy, and Clinton had its share of both. In September 1875, a state election year that was a hotbed of political unrest across Mississippi, the Clinton Riot occurred north of downtown during a political rally of about 3,000 people. About 50 people were killed in the riot, most of them black Republicans.

In the early years, Clinton was home to two institutions of higher learning: Mississippi College and Central Female Institute (later Hillman College). By 1850, both colleges were affiliated with the Baptist Church, and having two colleges in the same town earned Clinton the title of Mississippi’s seat of learning. However, after the Civil War, both colleges were on the verge of closing and might have succumbed were it not for the leadership of Charles Hillman, who served for a time as president of both colleges. From the late 19th century until World War II, Clinton’s colleges dominated its social, economic, and political life.

During World War II, Clinton had a military importance as a housing place for German