July 27, 2010

Yearlong Territorial Records Survey Underway

The MDAH Local Government Records Office (LGRO) has inventoried the courthouse records in nearly half of the state’s oldest counties as part of its yearlong project to help preserve these invaluable historical resources. In January the department received a grant of nearly $50,000 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission through the Mississippi Historical Records Advisory Board to identify and inventory historical records in Mississippi’s fourteen territorial counties.

Newsletter Changing to Quarterly Schedule

The Mississippi History Newsletter is changing from a monthly to a quarterly publication schedule. We will continue to keep everyone up to date with news from the department, its museums, and historic sites through more frequent email updates.

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MS Civil War History Subject of Next Brown Bag Program

As part of the History Is Lunch brown bag series, on Wednesday, August 4, Historian Timothy B. Smith talks about his new book Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front, the most recently published volume in the Heritage of Mississippi Series. Free of charge, noon in the Old Capitol Museum.

Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front is the first book in seventy years to examine the state’s civilians during the most difficult period of the state’s history. The Civil War, with its major invasions of Federal armies, wrecked Mississippi’s politics, military, economy, and infrastructure. There was also an inward decline of will among the people, with Unionists and African Americans rising up to challenge the Confederacy. Thus, the defeat of the Confederacy and the dismantling of the state had many causes: the arrival of the Union forces, the rampant destitution, and the loss of will among the state’s citizens. This complex cause-and-effect relationship took the state and her people out of the war and devastated Mississippi for decades to come.