After conducting years of research on the actual events of Civil War Jones County and the legend that followed, I would speculate that your great aunt was descended from a family that was on the receiving end of the Knight Band’s anti-Confederate depredations and the inner civil war that erupted in Jones County. Stories from that time were surely passed on to her, with Newt Knight becoming ever larger than life as the symbol of all that was frightening to folks on the home front.

Thanks again for your comment!

Vikki

I am in Texas until mid-March, but will check my files on the McGilverys when I return home to Missouri. I don’t believe I have any more, however, than the following, which I documented in Free State of Jones, ch. five, footnote #66: 1860 census records show William McGilvery of Jones Co., MS, as 42 years old and the owner of six slaves. His personal estate was valued at $18,910; his real estate at $5,480.

I also concluded in my book that William, and not Angus McGilvery as claimed by Ethel Knight and Tom Knight, was killed by deserters (probably the Knight band) because of what I found in the censuses and in the 1868 bankruptcy papers of Amos Deason. Those papers show that Deason administered the estate of William McGilvery, who died in 1864. Censuses show that this William had a son named Angus, who, along with a second Angus McGilvery was still alive in 1870.

Hope this is helpful alongside whatever light Teresa Guthrie can shed on his life.

Vikki

I am a ggg grandson of William T. McGilvery, I would like to have any information you have on him and his family.

Joe.McDavid

I appreciate your commentary, which provides more information on the murder of William T. McGilvery than I have seen printed anywhere. I wish I had heard from you while I was writing The Free State of Jones! Your family is also typical in having members who supported opposite sides of the Civil War. (My own ancestors were similarly divided.)

Unless their graves were marked, tt is often impossible to determine where people from this era of history are buried. Sometimes oral histories are passed down, but I have never seen or heard any story about where Mr. McGilvery and his wife might be buried, Perhaps one of Renegade South’s readers might be able to help.

Good luck,
Vikki Bynum

Thanks for providing an insider’s perspective on Newt Knight and the Free State of Jones. Like you, I see Newt Knight as very much a product of his environment, one comprised mostly of nonslaveholding farmers who had everything to lose, in addition to their lives, in a long, protracted war. I too can understand why a good many Jones Countians opposed secession, or had turned against the Confederacy by late 1863, when the Knight Company was formed.

I do believe that the war changed Newt, turning him into a far stronger supporter of the Union than he likely was in 1861. I also think it’s likely that his relationship with Rachel, a product of wartime stress, changed his views about race. The fact that he and his parents did not own slaves indicates that they did not believe in slavery; it does not mean they believed in racial equality. Even the fact that Newt openly embraced his mixed-race descendants and provided property to them and their mothers (Rachel and her daughter, George Ann) does not mean that he embraced racial equality for all. We know that his views on race were not typical of white southerners, but we don’t know exactly what those views were.

For example, Newt tried to send his mixed-race descendants to a “white” school. He allegedly burned that school down when his descendants were turned away. Does that mean that he supported public school integration of all black and white children? Not according to a number of his descendants, such as Yvonne Bivins, who believes that Newt did not consider his descendants to be “black.” Racial identity is anything but monolithic among multiracial people.

Newt did work to protect the lives of blacks on behalf of the Adelbert Ames Administration after the war, indicating his commitment to the new order; one in which slavery was dead and black citizens were to enjoy certain civil rights. But the nation–North as well as South–was still far from agreeing that blacks would be equal. In fact, Southern Democrats could not have turned back Reconstruction without the acquiesence of powerful Northern leaders.

Newt Knight was caught up in this struggle; he served on the side of Adelbert Ames, who clearly fought for black rights. I credit Newt for taking his stand with the party of the Union after the war, but I think it would be a mistake to think that we know what he thought about racial equality.

Thank you for visiting Renegade South!

Vikki