Reference book on the first 40 years of Mississippi’s state prison contains multitudes
Trying to piece together information about the whereabouts of that one outlaw cousin, the one you heard might’ve done time?
Longtime former Mississippi Department of Archives and History research librarian Anne L. Webster recently published “Behind the Walls: Mississippi Penitentiary Inmates, 1840-1880” in an effort to compile available data about this population in one place. Researchers and genealogists looking for various family members have one more central place to check with this new volume.
The purpose of this book is to compile in one place the listing of inmates in the state prison from 1840-1880 to facilitate research.
Webster uses state documents (annual and biennial reports of the Superintendent of the Penitentiary, Mississippi Senate Journals) and hundreds of entries from newspapers to compile the information. Administrators 150 years ago were not terribly concerned with future people being able to track consistent data across the years for each incarcerated person, so sometimes an entry might be as short as the person’s name and the date they were discharged from prison. But most of the entries have a little more, making it a great resource to thumb through.
The original penitentiary, called The Walls, was built on the grounds of what is now the New Capitol in Jackson, and in 1840 was completed enough to admit 28 prisoners, who would then be used to work on the building in which they were incarcerated.
Four years later, the Inspector’s Report identified that there was a slight error in the construction: there was no plan to heat the facility. The penitentiary later expanded to include cotton and wool manufacturing and an iron foundry.
Then came the Civil War, when the governor pardoned some inmates to join the Confederacy and sent others to county jails so the facility could be used as a munitions plant. The Walls was badly damaged during the war and was not rebuilt.
When I opened the book at random, I came upon entries for James and Sam’l McCarty, both age 23, whose apparently shared crime was “Obstructing railroad” in Lafayette County. They were both admitted to the state penitentiary on Nov. 30, 1858, but James’s sentence expired on Nov. 1, 1860, while the sentence of his cousin (?) or twin brother (?) or co-conspirator expired on Nov. 1, 1865 — a full five years longer.
A little digging revealed that James placed something on the Mississippi Central Railroad line near Abbeville with, as the writer of the Sept. 23, 1858, “Daily Southern Reveille” article about the situation put it, “the intention, no doubt, of throwing the train off the track and making an indiscriminate slaughter of every one on board.”
James was sentenced to five years. The fact that I could find nothing for Sam’l/Samuel leads me to believe it’s a duplicate entry, especially since the five-year sentence makes more sense. Sadly, I was unable to determine just what exactly that obstruction was. I really wanted to know.
Aspiring writers searching for authentic sounding old timey names or even seeds of ideas for historical crime novels
The purpose of this book is to compile in one place the listing of inmates in the state prison from 1840-1880 to facilitate research.
will love this reference book. (Can someone please fill in the details of James McCarty’s train obstruction for me?)
This isn’t the type of book you sit down with and read from cover to cover; it’s first and foremost a reference book, but not just librarians and researchers will find it interesting. Anyone who is curious about Mississippi’s carceral history will certainly find it useful, but really, anyone who is curious about other people’s lives will as well — just know that you’ll need to plan to spend some time at your local public library to get some answers to the questions you’ll undoubtedly have.
— Tracy Carr is the coordinator of the Mississippi Center for the Book, a Library of Congress program focused on promoting reading, books, libraries and literacy.