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20-592: The Port Gibson Correspondent was a newspaper published in Port Gibson, Mississippi , United States from 1818 until 1847 or 1848. The Port Gibson Correspondent was the first newspaper published in Claiborne County , and Port Gibson was only the second town in Mississippi to have a newspaper, after Natchez . The Correspondent was a four-page, six-column weekly when it was started by W. A. A. Chisholm. According to

40-548: A history of journalism in Claiborne County, after changing editors several times over the years, "In 1844 the paper fell into the hands of James A. Gage and Samuel F. Boyd. Mr. Gage, a South Carolinian, was a life-long citizen of Port Gibson, dying while on a visit to Texas in 1891. In 1845 W. B. Tebo became editor and proprietor and so continued until September, 1848, when he sold the Correspondent to W. H. Jacobs, editor of

60-576: A leading media outlet for the entire region. This article about a Mississippi newspaper is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Port Gibson, Mississippi The first European settlers in Port Gibson were French colonists in 1729; it was part of their La Louisiane . After the United States acquired the territory from France in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase , the town

80-632: Is the third-oldest European-American settlement in Mississippi. Its development began in 1729 by French colonists and was then within French-claimed territory known as La Louisiane . The British acquired this area after the French ceded their colonies east of the Mississippi River in 1763, following their defeat in the Seven Years' War . Following the U.S. acquisition of former French territory through

100-483: The P. G. Herald , with which sheet it was consolidated under the title of Herald and Correspondent . The Correspondent thus had a separate and continuous existence of thirty years, an age that no other Port Gibson paper has attained. Mr. Tebo removed to Natchez and then to New Orleans where his descendants still live." At the time of statehood in 1817, Port Gibson was the second-biggest town in Mississippi (after Natchez), suggesting that its major newspaper would have been

120-525: The American Civil War . Port Gibson has several historical sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places ( National Register of Historic Places listings in Claiborne County, Mississippi ). In the twentieth century, Port Gibson was home to The Rabbit's Foot Company . It had a substantial role in the development of blues in Mississippi, operating taverns and juke joints now included on

140-554: The Mississippi Blues Trail . In the second half of the twentieth century many jobs in agriculture were lost because of industrialization, which, combined with a lack of other jobs, has led to a substantial loss of population and to poverty in the city and the surrounding county. Port Gibson's population peaked in 1950. The last major employer, the Port Gibson Oil Works, a cottonseed mill, closed in 2002. Port Gibson

160-689: The Louisiana Purchase of 1803, more Americans entered the area. Port Gibson was chartered as a town that year on March 12, 1803. The federal government carried out Indian Removal in the 1830s, pushing the Five Civilized Tribes , including the Choctaw and Chickasaw peoples, west of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory . It took over their lands in the Southeast for sale and development by European Americans. Planters developed cotton plantations in

180-582: The ability to hold Mississippi and defend against an amphibious attack . Reportedly, many of the historic buildings in the town survived the Civil War because Grant proclaimed the city to be "too beautiful to burn". These words appear on the sign marking the city limits. Despite postwar economic upheaval, the city continued as a center of trade and economy associated with cotton. In 1882, the Port Gibson Oil Works started operating, established as one of

200-553: The city hall. Similarly, they founded Chamberlain-Hunt Academy in 1879, a military preparatory boarding school which became co-ed in 1971. CHA was the legacy of Oakland College founded in 1830 in nearby Lorman. Oakland was closed during the Civil War and the Oakland campus was sold to the State of Mississippi to create Alcorn A&M College, the first land-grant college for African Americans. Chamberlain-Hunt closed its doors in 2014. In 1990,

220-514: The city has a total area of 1.8 square miles (4.7 km ), all land. As of the 2020 United States census , there were 1,269 people, 554 households, and 290 families residing in the city. Port Gibson is served by the Claiborne County School District . Port Gibson High School is the comprehensive high school of the district. The Chamberlain-Hunt Academy , a private military boarding school, opened in Port Gibson in 1879. It

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240-609: The contribution the Rabbit's Foot Company made to the development of the blues in Mississippi, in its decades of operation after the founder's death. In 2006, an exhibition, The Blues in Claiborne County: From Rabbit Foot Minstrels to Blues and Cruise , was shown in Port Gibson, exploring the history of the show, with artifacts and memorabilia. According to the United States Census Bureau ,

260-698: The fertile river lowlands of the Mississippi Delta and other riverfront areas, dependent on the labor of enslaved Africans, initially brought from the Upper South. The African Americans comprised a majority in the county before the Civil War, and this continued. With international demand high for cotton, such planters prospered. As the planter population increased, they founded the Port Gibson Female College in 1843 to educate their daughters. The college later closed and one of its buildings now serves as

280-510: The first cottonseed oil plants in the United States. This historic industrial building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The mill finally closed in 2002. Gemiluth Chessed synagogue, built in 1892, had an active congregation when the town was thriving as the county seat and a trading center. It had attracted nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants from the German states and Alsace-Lorraine. After starting as peddlers,

300-525: The first African American students graduated from Chamberlain-Hunt. Port Gibson was the site of several clashes during the American Civil War and figured in Union General Ulysses S. Grant 's Vicksburg Campaign . He was attempting to gain control over the Mississippi River. The Battle of Port Gibson occurred on May 1, 1863, and resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Union and Confederate soldiers. The Confederate defeat resulted in their losing

320-567: The later generations of men became cotton brokers and merchants. This is the oldest synagogue and the only Moorish Revival building in the state. It is topped by a Russian-style dome. As the economy changed, the Jewish population gradually moved to larger cities and areas offering more opportunity, and none remain in Port Gibson. The Rabbit's Foot Company was established in 1900 by Pat Chappelle , an African-American theatre owner in Tampa, Florida . This

340-422: Was chartered that same year. To develop cotton plantations in the area after Indian Removal of the 1830s, planters who moved to the state brought with them or imported thousands of enslaved African Americans from the Upper South, disrupting many families. Well before the Civil War, the majority of the county's population were enslaved. Several notable people are natives of Port Gibson. The town saw action during

360-490: Was no longer considered "authentic". In 2002 the New York Times characterized Port Gibson as 80 percent black and poor, with 20 percent of families living on incomes of less than $ 10,000 a year, according to the 2000 Census . It also had an "entrenched population of whites, many of whom are related and have some historical connection to cotton". A Mississippi Blues Trail marker was placed in Port Gibson to commemorate

380-507: Was promoted as a Christian school in the late twentieth century. Nonetheless, it suffered declining enrollment and closed in 2014. Port Gibson Female College Port Gibson Female College was a female seminary , founded in Port Gibson, Mississippi , in 1843. It closed in 1908. The college was founded in 1843. In 1869 it was donated to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South . Unlike many small colleges in Mississippi,

400-508: Was the leading traveling vaudeville show in the southern states , with an all-black cast of singers, musicians, comedians, and entertainers. After Chappelle's death in 1911, the company was taken over by Fred Swift Wolcott , a white planter. After 1918, he based the touring company at his plantation near Port Gibson, with offices in town. He continued to manage it until 1950, when he sold it. The Rabbit's Foot Company remained popular, but as some white performers joined and used blackface , it

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