----- Original Message -----
From: beverley ballantine
To: CALVIT-L(a)rootsweb.com
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2001 6:13 PM
Subject: New: Child of GEN. SAMUEL CALVIT at CALVITON CEMETERY Jefferson Co MS
Found on page 21 of "Southern Cowdens" by John W. Cowden, 1933:
(1) "Sarah Cowden Calvit (1788-1866) had only one child, Mary Hawkins [Calvit], who
died young, and her husband [Gen. Samuel Calvit 1782-1820] also died soon
afterwards." That now explains the passage in David Hunt's 1854 Will :
"Whereas my departed brother-in-law, Samuel Calvit and myself established a burial
place on his then Plantation and removed the remains of our dearest family to that
consecrated spot where his remains and his daughter now rest with a number of my family in
the brick enclosure . . . ." Ann Beckerson Brown in "Jefferson County
Mississippi Cemeteries, Etc. , Volume II" does not record any stone for MARY HAWKINS
CALVIT in the Calviton Cemetery. So, either (a) no marker was ever placed for her, (b)
the marker disappeared or (c) her nickname was Kate and she is on pg. 130 as "A
child's grave marked simply KATE."
Also, on page 22 of "Southern Cowdens":
(2) "After the death of her husband, Mrs. Calvit [referring to Sarah Cowden widow of
Gen. Samuel Calvit], having large business interests to look after, was defrauded out of
large sums of money through letters of credit in New York to some men, whom her husband
had trusted and set up in business. She thereafter employed Mr. James M. Smith , of the
Mississippi land office, who afterwards married her niece, Emily Hawkins Carson, to look
after her affairs. She had much land and about three hundred negroes, and was known as
'the Cotton Queen of the South.' Selling much of her land and slaves in Jefferson
County, Miss., she removed to Clinton, Miss., twelve miles west of Jackson, where she
built a beautiful home with sunken gardens, one of the show places of the state, which she
named 'Pebble Hill.' * * * Mrs. Calvit, after reading 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin,' foresaw the coming of the War Between the States, so she sold all her slaves
except the household servants and her home, 'Pe!
bble Hill'; and, putting her money in the Bank of England, moved down on the Gulf of
Mexico near Mississippi City, where she bought land and built a home, and where she died
in 1866."
Family lore sure puts a different slant on things as time goes by. My grandmother (Sara
Roberts Hackley) told me that Mrs.Calvit FREED her slaves and moved to MS City/Gulfport
after reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mrs.Calvit's house is still lived
in at Gulfport. At Mrs. Calvit's suggestion, her other niece Emily Jones Roberts and
husband H.A.G.Roberts also moved to MS City/Gulfport and built Grass Lawn which is on the
National Register of Historic Places and open to the public, owned by the City of Gulfport
MS. Submitted by Beverley Ballantine