Gifts from Friends of MDAH
| MacNeil
Bequeathal
The
Department has learned that the late Grace M. S. MacNeil bequeathed the sum of
$10,000 to MDAH for use in maintaining historic sites and materials in the Natchez/Adams
County area. Mrs. MacNeil was an outstanding steward of the state's cultural resources
and was primarily responsible for the preservation of the Grand Village of the
Natchez Indians, a National Historic Landmark property administered by MDAH. She
also spearheaded the movement to acquire and preserve as part of the Natchez National
Historical Park the William Johnson House and played a prominent role in organizing
the Historic Natchez Foundation, that has done so much to preserve the beauty
and the history of Natchez. "We were blessed in having had the opportunity to
know Mrs. MacNeil," said Elbert R. Hilliard, MDAH director, "whose acts of cultural
resource stewardship have been unsurpassed in our state's history. Mrs. MacNeil
was truly a remarkable lady." | | Pioneer
Settlers Papers
A
collection of eighteenth-century colonial documents and the nineteenth-century
letters and documents of the Bouton and Gibson families, pioneer settlers in north
Mississippi who resided in Tippah and Benton counties, has been donated to the
Department by Emma Rogers of New Albany. | | Suzie
V. Powell Papers
The
papers of Suzie V. Powell, Mississippi's first state home demonstration agent
and a leader in the temperance and women's suffrage movements, have been presented
to the Department by Katherine Hinds Smythe of Memphis. According to Ms. Smythe,
Miss Powell employed Eudora Welty to work on the WPA Federal Writers Project.
| | Woman's
College Diploma
A
diploma presented to Victoria Elizabeth Walton on May 19, 1903, by the Woman's
College at Oxford, Mississippi, has been donated by Van R. Burnham, M.D., of Clarksdale,
a member of the MDAH Board of Trustees. According to WPA accounts, the Oxford
Female College, founded in 1836, was rechartered in 1854 as the Union Female College,
which closed in 1898 during the yellow fever epidemic and did not reopen. "About
1901 or 1902," the account states, "Dr. Malone and McIntosh bought the college
form the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and established the Woman's College."
In 1905 the Woman's College in turn became the University Training School for
boys. With its three- or four-year history, the Woman's College probably issued
few diplomas; we appreciate Dr. Burnham's rescuing this one from a garbage can.
| | Winterville
Mounds Brochure Support
The
Department is indebted to the Greenville/Washington County Convention and Visitors
Bureau for contributing half of the cost of printing the Department's new promotional
brochure for Winterville Mounds, the newest MDAH site. The Winterville brochure
project was given high priority so that brochures would be ready for the Delta
Council's annual meeting on May 24. | |
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