View of Rainey Road looking east toward Candlestick Park. Call Number: PI/2000.0017 (MDAH Collection)
The Patterson (Joy D.) Slide Collection (PI/2000.0017) is now available to view online! The collection is comprised of seventy-nine color slides depicting the aftermath of the Candlestick Park Tornado (1966) and Hurricane Camille (1969). The link will take you to the list of catalog records for this collection, simply click “Link to Electronic Resource” to view the photographs.
State Fairgrounds in 1908. Call Number: PI/2000.0001 (MDAH Collection)
The State Fair begins this week! The first fair was held in 1858. This photograph from our collection shows the fair in 1908.
New Capitol shortly after completion of construction. Call Number: PI/STR/C36.456 (MDAH Collection)
The new state capitol of Mississippi was completed in July 1903, after almost three years of construction on the site of the old state penitentiary (which was built in 1840 by Old Capitol architect William Nichols). It cost $1,093,641 and was funded mainly through $1,000,000 in back taxes paid by the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley and the Gulf and Ship Island Railroads. State officials moved into the new building in September 1903 and legislators met there for the first time in January 1904. Here the New Capitol is shown after construction was completed but before grounds work had begun.
Theodore Link. Call Number: PI/PER/1982.0096 (MDAH Collection)
The New Capitol was designed by architect Theodore C. Link (1850-1923) of St. Louis, pictured at left. Link also oversaw the renovation of the Old Capitol into a state office building in 1916-1917.
Digital Archives related to the New Capitol:
Series 637: Minutes, 1900-1904 (of the State House Commission)
This body was charged with planning and overseeing the construction of the New Capitol.
Series 317: Photographs of New Capitol (State House Commission)
This album shows photographs of the construction of the New Capitol.
Source: John Ray Skates, Mississippi’s Old Capitol: Biography of a Building (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1990), 125-29.
We will be exploring Mississippi’s rich aviation history in this series. From early flight photographs to the moon landing and beyond, MDAH collections document this exciting part of our past.
The Dutchmen at Jackson Army Air Base. Call Number: Z/0839.001/S (MDAH Collection)
The story of the Flying Dutchmen has become a kind of legend in Jackson. It doesn’t show up in most history books, but if you ask any of our older residents, chances are they’ll tell you stories about them flying under power lines and the like. But what really happened in 1942? Who were the “Flying Dutchmen” of Jackson? Much of this information can be found in the MDAH collection! Here’s the story:
Near the beginning of World War II Hitler and Germany overran the Netherlands, and later its colony, the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) was conquered by the Japanese as they overran all of southeast Asia, the Philippines, and the Indonesian archipelago. The Dutch were without a home, and more importantly for the war effort, without training bases for their armed forces. This is where Jackson, Mississippi comes into the story. The Dutch needed a base for their air force flying school, and General Henry Arnold (head of the U.S. Army Air Force) obliged, choosing Jackson as the new home of the Royal Netherlands Military Flying School.
Old Terminal (c. 1936) at Hawkins Field in 2008
The city was already host to the Jackson Army Air Base at Hawkins Field when the Dutchmen arrived in May 1942, many with their wives and children in tow. Jackson became an international city literally overnight, as the foreign speaking Dutch and native Indonesians wandered the streets and explored their new home. They delighted in shopping and eating in restaurants, pleasures that were hard to come by in war ravaged Europe and the Pacific.
The Dutch fliers trained here for nearly two years, and during that time formed warm attachments with the locals, who reciprocated in kind. Some of the Dutchmen married Jackson girls, and settled down in Mississippi after the war. Over 30 Dutchmen who were killed in training accidents at the school are buried at Cedarlawn Cemetery in Jackson. Several of the Dutch fliers and one widow have been buried there in more recent years.
Memorial Day ceremony at Cedarlawn Cemetery in 2009
The monument at the Dutch plot reads: Voor Hen Die Vielen (For Those Who Fell) and lists the fliers killed in training accidents.
Their story has been somewhat forgotten in the annals of Mississippi history, but it is one of Jackson’s hidden treasures, documented here at the archives.
"Dutchman Row" street sign near Hawkins Field
Sources:
Barber (Bette E.) Photograph Collection. MDAH call number Z/0839.001/S.
The Clarion Ledger, 1942-44. On file at MDAH.
“Dutch in Jackson,” subject file, MDAH.
Jackson Army Air Base News, 1942-1944. On file at MDAH.
Lutgert, W.H., and R. de Winter. Voor Hen die Vielen. The Hague, Holland: Historical Section of the Netherlands Air Staff, 1992. MDAH call number 949.2/L973v/1992.
“Netherlands Flying School,” subject file, MDAH.
Remous: Organ of the Royal Netherlands Military Flying School. March-December 1943. MDAH call number OS/949.2/R81r/D.
Stubbs, Ben. The Dutch Fliers. Interview with Fred Streuding on January 17, 2000. MDAH call number 949.2/S932d/2000.
Van der Laan, 1st Lt. R., ed. Royal Netherlands Military Flying School in United States of
America. New York: E.W. Smith and Company, 1943. MDAH call number 949.2/R81.
We will be exploring Mississippi’s rich aviation history in this series. From early flight photographs to the moon landing and beyond, MDAH collections document this exciting part of our past.
Program from Lindbergh banquet. Call Number: B/L7425b/1927 (MDAH Collection)
In May 1927, Charles Lindbergh became an instant celebrity when he completed the first solo transatlantic flight. He then embarked on a tour of the United States to promote commercial aviation, which was still in its infancy at that time. Lindbergh arrived in Jackson, one of the tour stops, on October 7, 1927. One eyewitness described the landing at Davis Field (now Hawkins Field):
It was a pleasant, mild October afternoon. The Spirit of St. Louis came in from the west, passed the reviewing stand at a a few hundred feet, then pulled up sharply. The first wing dropped and the plane did a half-roll, then, having reversed course, glided, landed and rolled to a stop in front of the stands. It should be noted that the plane had no brakes. I knew enough about flying to recognize that Lindbergh had executed an Immelmann Turn, one of the most demanding of all flight acrobatics, one for which the Spirit of St. Louis was about as well-suited as a Model T Ford for barrel-jumping.1
It should also be noted that there were no front-facing windows on the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh had to turn to the side in order to see ahead of him!
Lindbergh rode on the backseat of car for a parade down Capitol Street and spoke to the crowd from the steps of the New Capitol. A banquet was given in his honor by the Jackson Chamber of Commerce that evening. The banquet program is pictured above. It was “Lindbergh Day” and his visit sparked aviation fever in Jackson and helped spur the city to construct the state’s first municipal airport at Hawkins Field in 1928.
1 William Ewing, “The day Lindy flew to Jackson,” Clarion-Ledger, October 7, 1988. From “Lindbergh, Charles Augustus 1902-1974″ subject file, MDAH.
