Wikipedia

Milliken's Bend, Louisiana

Milliken's Bend is an extinct settlement that was located along the Mississippi River in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States for about 100 years. In its heyday, the village had a boat landing, two streets of businesses, residences, churches, a four-room schoolhouse, a ferryman, and roads connecting it to Lake Providence, and Tallulah.

Location of public road from Illawara to Milliken's Bend alongside the Mississippi
Lloyd's Steamboat Directory Mississippi map No. 18 (1856)
"Mansion House" Southern Reformer, November 2, 1844
Plantations in the vicinity of Milliken's Bend and location of Milliken's Store, mapped shortly after the American Civil War

History

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The settlement and the bend in the river were named for Major John Milliken.[1] According to one telling, Milliken was "an early settler supposed to have been a member of the pirate band of Captain Bunch" that gave its name to Bunch's Bend (or Bunches Bend).[2] According to a family history, "He studied surveying when a young man, and going to Kentucky with others of the family found employment under the State government, and was rewarded by a grant of land in Louisiana, where he cleared a large and valuable plantation, which was called Milliken's Bend, it being on a loop of the Mississippi River. He owned many slaves, and acquired wealth."[3] Milliken is believed to have made his settlement slightly after 1813.[4] He eventually owned a vast area between Morancy Plantation and Cabin Teele Plantation.[5] Millikin's Settlement was present on Mississippi River guide books intended for use by boat pilots as early as 1827.[6] There is a record in the Madison Parish registers for a slave sale from L. Hyland to John Milliken on July 13, 1832.[7]

Milliken's Bend had regular packet boat service by 1840.[8] It hosted an official U.S. post office as of 1846.[9] Epidemic cholera killed six people enslaved by Dr. Parker of Milliken's Bend in 1849.[10] The cotton crop in the vicinity of Milliken's Bend suffered badly from the boll weevil in 1852.[11] In 1855 the clerk of the Cavalier & Rathman store at Milliken's Bend got into a shootout with a local plantation overseer over a shipment of freight; the overseer was killed, the clerk was expected to survive his multiple gunshot wounds.[12]

The local cotton plantations shipped 19,000 bales out of Milliken's Bend in 1857.[13] The settlement supported a dry-goods store in 1857,[14] and a French-language travel guide published 1859 described it as a colony of planters, a similar to the nearby Tompkin's Settlement, but more important.[15] There was a schoolhouse "with four large and commodious rooms, play ground, &c" in Milliken's Bend in 1860.[16] The town also supported a Catholic Church, two streets of businesses, and had several roads connecting it to nearby settlements.[5] According to a history of Milliken's Bend written by a Louisiana Tech student in 1941, Milliken's Bend was also accessible from Eagle Bend by "the ferry, operated by old Ned Thompson, a Negro, that made regular trips across the River."[5]

 
Battle of Milliken's Bend from The Black Phlanx (1887)

The town formally incorporated in 1861.[5] During the American Civil War, William T. Sherman used Milliken's Bend as his base for "his ill-fated attempt to storm Chickasaw Bluffs and capture Vicksburg."[17]: 142  John McClernand's XIII Corps camped at Milliken's Bend in March 1863.[18] In 1863 Milliken's Bend was the site of the Battle of Milliken's Bend,[19] when Confederate general Dick Taylor, son of former U.S. president Zachary Taylor, and H. E. McCulloch's Texas Division unsuccessfully attacked the post.[18] There was a U.S. Army hospital there in 1864.[20]

After the end of Reconstruction, Milliken's Bend was a departure point for black families migrating to Kansas. This group of mass migrants are today known as the Exodusters. According to P. B. S. Pinchback:

Before leaving New Orleans I heard of the Kansas fever among the colored people of this section, but did not attach much importance to it. I was, therefore, surprised on nearing the Delta ferrylanding, to find the banks of the river covered with colored people and their little stores of worldly goods. The crowd awaiting transportation at this point was estimated at 300, but I learn it was swollen to 500 yesterday, when the people took their departure on the St. Louis packet Grand Tower for Kansas. A noticeable feature about their departure was the fact that not one of that vast number was permitted to board the steamer until fare was paid to St. Louis. This fact explodes the erroneous idea that these people are having their expenses paid by some outside agency, and that the movement is not a spontaneous one on their part. Numerous reasons are alleged for this remarkable exodus, but so far as I have been able to learn, the real cause is an apprehension of undefined danger in the near future. They religiously believe that the Constitutional Convention bodes them no good; that it has been called for the express purpose of abridging their rights and liberties, and they are fleeing from the wrath to come. They are absolutely panic stricken. Every road leading to the river is filled with wagons loaded with plunder, and families who seem to think anywhere is better than here. On my way yesterday to Milliken's Bend, I saw a large crowd camped on the landing at Duckport. A still larger crowd awaited transportation at Milliken's Bend. There is no doubt in my mind that this movement has assumed formidable shape, and, unless some means are devised to arrest it, this portion of the State will soon be entirely depopulated of its laboring classes."[21]: 311 

By 1880, the Mississippi was eroding the ground on which the town stood, so it was moved wholesale about a mile inland. This new location was reasonably called "New Bend".[1] An Episcopal Church was added to the village.[5] The New Bend, however, was flooded in 1882, and then bypassed by the railroads that were coming through, and 1910 New Bend supported only a small store and a boat landing, and those were gone by the end of the decade.[5] There was a Rosenwald School in the vicinity of Milliken's Bend in the first half of the 20th century.[22]

 
1909 U.S. Geological Survey map of Milliken's Bend (Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

According to the Friends of the Vicksburg Campaign Trail, the site of Milliken's Bend's can be found at the end of Thomaston Road.[18]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Land and Negroes for Sale". Vicksburg Whig. 1836-09-08. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  2. ^ Louisiana: a guide to the state, compiled by workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Louisiana. American Guide Series. p. 589. hdl:2027/uc1.$b727648. Retrieved 2024-07-24 – via HathiTrust.
  3. ^ "History of the families Millingas and Millanges of Saxony and Normandy, comprising genealogies and biographies of their posterity surnamed Milliken, ..." HathiTrust. p. 480. hdl:2027/loc.ark:/13960/t9c53p19m. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  4. ^ "West Carroll Parish resources and facilities / survey by West Carroll Parish Development Board. Published in cooperation with State of Louisiana Department ..." HathiTrust. p. 10. hdl:2027/uiug.30112051912639. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  5. ^ a b c d e f "Curtains for the Bend-A Memorial to Milliken's Bend by Frances Alexander – 1941; Notes by Richard P. Sevier – 1999, 2002". sites.rootsweb.com. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  6. ^ The western pilot, containing charts of the Ohio River, and of the Mississippi from the mouth of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, accompanied with directions ... p. 67. hdl:2027/uiuo.ark:/13960/t3gx46m48. Retrieved 2024-07-24 – via HathiTrust.
  7. ^ "Old Record Book Tells Story of Adventure, Romance, Tragedy". The Madison Journal. 1932-12-23. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-08-02.
  8. ^ "Regular Packet". The Times-Picayune. 1840-09-16. pp. [3]. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  9. ^ "Table of post offices in the United States on the First day of October, 1846 : arranged in alphabetical order, exhibiting the states, territories, and counties ..." HathiTrust. p. 136. hdl:2027/njp.32101068315124. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  10. ^ "The Cholera". The Port Gibson Herald, and Correspondent. 1849-05-25. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  11. ^ "The Cotton Crop". Semi-Weekly Standard. 1852-09-29. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  12. ^ "Terrible Affray in Louisiana". The Washington Union. 1855-08-03. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  13. ^ "Last year..." Vicksburg Daily Whig. 1858-09-14. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  14. ^ "A. D. Hawkins & Co". Vicksburg Whig. 1857-05-06. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  15. ^ "Bibliothèque de l'émigrant". HathiTrust. p. 71. hdl:2027/umn.31951001684572m. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  16. ^ "School Teachers Wanted". Vicksburg Whig. 1860-09-05. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  17. ^ Doyle, Daniel R. (2011). "The Civil War in the Greenville Bends". The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 70 (2): 131–161. ISSN 0004-1823. JSTOR 23046161.
  18. ^ a b c Friends of the Vicksburg Campaign and Historic Trail. "Discovery Tour of the Vicksburg Campaign Trail" (PDF). npshistory.com.
  19. ^ "Milliken's Bend". American Battlefield Trust. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  20. ^ "Records of the Mississippi Freedmen's Department ("pre-Bureau records"), Office of the Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned ..." HathiTrust. p. 10. hdl:2027/pur1.32754081183760. Retrieved 2024-07-24.
  21. ^ Ervin, Keona K. (1978), Foner, Philip S.; Lewis, Ronald L. (eds.), "The Black Exodus", The Black Worker, Volume 2, The Black Worker During the Era of the National Labor Union, Temple University Press, pp. 303–352, doi:10.2307/j.ctvn5tvwc.13, JSTOR j.ctvn5tvwc.13, retrieved 2024-07-25
  22. ^ Davis, Jackson (c. 1915). "Rosenwald School". Jackson Davis Collection of African American Photographs, Special Collections Call Number: MSS 3072, 3072-a, viu01291, MSS 3072, 3072-a. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Library. 189621, 93644, uva-lib-443722.
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