Ed Payne, “Unionist Naming of Mississippi Children–Revisited”

In 2010, I published on Renegade South a study of the naming of white male Mississippi children during the period from 1861 through 1880, wondering if certain names might provide evidence of Civil War or post-Civil War Unionist sentiments.  Hundreds of African-American sons born during this period were given names reflective of the Union trinity of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman.  As might be expected, similar naming among white Mississippians was rare.  My initial inquiry produced a list of 54 persons.

After posting those results, I came across several more names, all associated with Ulysses S. Grant.  Why had these individuals been missed?  The answer lay in my failure to consider the many spelling permutations possible for ‘Ulysses.’  Parents and census enumerators proved highly inventive in rendering the name as Ulepes, Ulissus, Euilas, etc.  So I broadened the scope to encompass a wider array of spellings. I also extended my search for those possibly named after the three luminaries into the 1900 census, although I retained only those born within the study’s original 1861-1880 timeframe.

In addition to census data, I queried public family trees on Ancestry.com for Mississippians named after the Union trio.  Due to the dubious reliability of information found on public family trees, I only added those identifiable on a Mississippi census and whose public tree name could be verified through census or other records. The new searches yielded 42 additional individuals.

It bears repeating that the table provides a basis for exploring Unionist connections, but does not assert that such connections existed in every case.  It was common for nineteenth century Southerners to choose given names out of a store of family surnames.  Thus a given name of ‘Sherman’ or ‘Grant’ might simply reflect this tendency.  And since the name ‘Ulysses’ appears on pre-war censuses, it cannot be assumed to invariably denote Ulysses S. Grant thereafter.

Further research resulted in my deleting six names from the original 54 and making one substantial change.  (Note 1)  The revised table now consists of 90 names, of which 83 (93%) were native Mississippians. What follows are some of the stories that emerged from my research.  In all cases where only a county is cited, the state is Mississippi. (Note 2)

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The naming of sons sometimes offers tantalizing hints of post-war divisions within families.  Solomon Isaiah Durham was born in Georgia circa 1826 and migrated to Mississippi by 1850.  The 1860 Chickasaw County census listed him as the owner of three slaves: two males, age 37 and nine, and a female age 13.  His household included three sons, the middle of whom was Isaiah, born in 1855.  Although Solomon fell within the Confederate conscription age range, no Civil War military records have been located for him.  Still, in 1870 he named a son Robert Lee Durham.  This would hardly be worth noting except for the fact that eight years later Isaiah named his first-born son Ulysses Grant Durham.  It is unclear whether Solomon died before or after the birth of Ulysses.  The implied differences between father and son did not prevent Isaiah from naming another child, born in 1885, after his late father.  While in his early twenties, Ulysses Grant Durham moved to San Angelo, Texas, where he resided until his death in 1924.  His uncle Robert Lee Durham farmed in Winston County and died there in 1940.

Young white Mississippians who bore names associated with the trio of Union leaders must have endured verbal taunts or worse, whether or not their names were actually intended to honor those individuals or not.  As a result, name changes occasionally appear to have taken place.  Take the case of U. Grant Shumpert (transcribed by Ancestry.com as ‘N. Grant’).  The 1870 census for Itawamba County listed him as the two-year-old son of Bailey Shumpert, who owned five slaves in 1860.  Bailey’s election as policeman for his district in 1861 would have exempted him from Civil War military service.  We do not know what inspired Bailey to name his son “U. Grant” in December 1867, but by 1880 the census listed the same child as Daniel Shumpert.  When he died nine years later at age 21, his tombstone was inscribed ‘Daniel G. Shumpert.’  According to family genealogies, the middle initial stood for ‘Grant.’  Similarly, the 1880 census for Itawamba County showed Emily Butler with a son born circa 1872 named Ulysses Butler.  Two decades later, Emily lived in the household of a son who reported being born in October of 1871—but who now identified himself as Joseph T. Butler.

Despite the rising tide of Lost Cause sentiment, some sons maintained their birth names throughout their lives.  As previously noted, in 1867 Jasper Collins, a Jones County Unionist and member of the Knight Band, named his first son born after the war Ulysses Sherman Collins.  That appellation did not prevent U.S. Collins from holding several elective posts in his home county, where he was generally known by the nickname ‘Lyss.’  And he was far from the only white male in the central Piney Woods with a Unionist name.  Among his contemporaries were:  Sherman Beech (b 1868), Lincoln Bynum (b 1861), Sherman Cawley (b 1870), Ulysses Grant Landrum (b 1864), Abraham Lincoln Lee (b 1862), Ulysses P. Walters (b 1868), and Ulysses Grant Welborn (b 1865).

Given the mortality rates that existed in the nineteenth century, it’s not surprising that some of those listed only appear on one census.  Lincoln Bosman was a one-year-old when listed with his mother on the 1870 census of Tippah County.  A decade later, the mother and a sister appear in Benton County but Lincoln is no longer found in the household.  The same is true of Ulysses Campbell (1869, Alcorn County), Ulysses Cotton (1870, Carroll County), William T. Sherman Haws and Abraham Lincoln Haws (1870, Choctaw County), Ulysses Upchurch (1880, Calhoun County) and several others.

In one case, both the motive for the naming of a child and the circumstances of his early death have been preserved.  John A. Klein migrated from Virginia to Vicksburg in 1836, where he prospered first as a jeweler and subsequently in a host of business ventures.  Six years after his arrival, at age 30, he married 16-year-old Elizabeth Bartley Day and proceeded to build a lavish home called Cedar Grove.  In the summer of 1863 Vicksburg was besieged by Union forces and Cedar Grove, like the rest of the city, came under artillery fire.  A pregnant Elizabeth Klein had fled the city and taken shelter in a log house near the Big Black River.  There her path intersected with General William T. Sherman, who commanded forces in the area.  Sherman was related to Elizabeth by marriage.  His sister, Susan Denman Sherman, had wed one of Elizabeth’s maternal uncles.  The general offered Elizabeth safe passage to the East under the proviso that Cedar Grove would be utilized as a military hospital until the end of the war.  That September Elizabeth named her newborn son William T. Sherman Klein.  The Klein family eventually reunited and moved back to Cedar Grove.  Elizabeth suffered social ostracism owing to her relationship with Sherman and, as a not so subtle rejoinder, never removed a cannon ball lodged in a parlor wall.  In July of 1879, two months before he would have turned sixteen, William T.S. Klein suffered a fatal chest wound when a friend’s gun accidentally discharged.

Cedar Grove

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Roan L. Barrentine, the father of ‘Ulissus A. Barrentine,’ was born in Calhoun County in 1843.  He enlisted in Company K of the 30th MS Infantry at Carrolton on 27 February 1862, with his name recorded as ‘Roan L. Barentine.’  On 31 December 1862 he suffered a severe wound at the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee and, after hospitalization, was issued a surgeon’s furlough to return home and recuperate.  Family genealogies indicate he married Cecila Ann Dunn shortly thereafter.  Regimental muster rolls bear the notation “Deserted the CSA August 21, 1863,” while records on the federal side show him admitted to their lines at Bridgeport, Alabama on 9 November 1863.  Roan was forwarded to the Military Prison in Louisville, Kentucky where he took an oath of loyalty to the Union on November 16 and agreed to spend the remainder of the war north of the Ohio River.

R.L. Barrentine POW record

After the war Roan returned home and began a family.  He named his fourth son, born in September of 1874, Ulysses Adelbert Barrentine.  The name is doubly suggestive of Unionist/Republican sentiment.  Adelbert Ames, a native of Maine and Union major general, had been appointed provision military governor of Mississippi in 1868.  Two years later he was elected by the state legislature to serve as U.S. Senator.  He returned to Mississippi in 1873 to engage in a bitter struggle for the Governorship against fellow Republican James Lusk Alcorn.  Alcorn was an Illinois native who had moved to Mississippi in 1844 and served as a Confederate brigadier general.  He headed the moderate faction of the Republican Party while Ames led the Radical wing.  Alcorn succeeded Ames as governor and then briefly joined him in the Senate.  However, the two were implacable foes and made the 1874 gubernatorial contest their battleground.  Ames won the political battle for the governor’s office, but it ultimately cost his party the Reconstruction war.  As the Republican Party splintered, the Democrats united under the banner of white racial solidarity and took control of the state legislature in late 1875.  The legislature immediately drew up articles of impeachment against Ames.  Aware that President Ulysses S. Grant had turned a deaf ear to his pleas for federal troops, Ames resigned his office in March of 1876 in exchange for impeachment charges being dropped.

Adelbert Ames

Roan Barrentine’s choice of the names ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Adelbert’ for his son in 1874 hardly seems the action of a man oblivious to national and state politics.  No records have been found to indicate if Roan’s political leanings found expression other than in the naming of his son.  What is known is that Ulysses A. Barrentine, age eighteen, died on 12 June 1893.  The Greenwood Enterprise on 16 June 1893 carried this small news item on page 3:

Mr. R.L. Barrentine, of Hemingway, passed through Greenwood Wednesday morning for Coahoma county to have the remains of his son, John, removed to Carroll county.  The young man was either killed or took his own life.  There was a woman in the case.

Although the son was cited as ‘John’ in the article, cemetery records of the Centerville Baptist Cemetery in Carroll County make it clear that the victim was Ulysses.  Family lore, supported by census records, holds that after the death of Ulysses the woman in question found herself to be pregnant and married a much older man.  Dropping the ‘A’ from the father’s middle name, she named the child Delbert.

In his old age, Roan Barrentine recast himself as a steadfast soldier of the stars and bars.  He filed for a Mississippi Confederate pension in 1929, asserting his service until the war ended.  A year later he was admitted to Beauvoir, a retirement home for aged Confederate veterans on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Roan remained at Beauvoir until his death in May of 1934.  His body was returned to Greenwood and interred at the Poplar Springs Cemetery.  The change in loyalties reflected in his Civil War records and the provocative naming of his son were long forgotten.  His hometown Greenwood Commonwealth observed his passing with the usual encomiums reserved for the dwindling ranks of Confederate veterans.

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The 1880 census of Lafayette County listed ‘Eulsyses M. Wilson’ as an 11 year-old male in the household of ‘M. Wilson’ age 45.  M. Wilson—born Massmiller Price in Fayette County, Tennessee in 1835—was the son of Washington Price and his bride Rebecca Wilson.  However, Rebecca filed for divorce in 1837 and soon thereafter Washington Price wed Francis Harris.  Two years later Rebecca married Roderick Williams.  By the 1840s both couples had relocated to Lafayette County.  Washington Price drew upon his wealthy family connections in North Carolina to develop one of the largest cotton plantations in the county.  The 1850 census showed Price as the owner of 71 slaves and real estate valued at $40,000.  Roderick Williams owned no slaves and reported real estate worth $500.

Rebecca Wilson Williams died in the mid-1840s.  Massmiller assumed the Williams surname of his stepfather.  However, family researchers state that shortly after Massmiller married, Washington Price offered him a significant sum of money to change his surname.  This is supported by Lafayette County records which list a marriage between ‘M.N. Williams’ and Nancy Jane Lamb in January of 1854, followed by a second license between Nancy and ‘Massmiller Wilson’ (his mother’s maiden name) in December of 1855. Washington Price died in October of 1855.  After giving birth to two children, Nancy Lamb Wilson died in 1858.

When the Civil War came to north Mississippi, Massmiller is said to have sided with the Union and moved behind their lines.  He was a blacksmith and, since no military records have been found, he may have worked as a civilian farrier for the U.S. Army.  This would have been in keeping with the Quaker beliefs of his Lamb in-laws, who were said to have had a deep influence on him.  And Quaker objections to slavery may well have resonated with Massmiller as he compared his own yeoman upbringing with that of his plantation reared half-siblings.

Massmiller (‘Matt’) Wilson returned to Lafayette County after the war.  He had married Mary Elizabeth Thweatt in 1862 and they had ten children, including the son whose full name was Ulysses Monroe Wilson.  Beside his blacksmith work, Massmiller was a talented woodworker who constructed coffins, for which he always refused payment, whenever a death occurred in his section of the county.  Massmiller’s own death came in May 1898 at the age of 63.  The son he named Ulysses outlived him by a mere three years, dying in November 1901.

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My goal in compiling the table that follows is to provide an alternative means by which to explore Unionist sentiment in Mississippi.  Such sentiments sometimes turn up in places where one might least expect to find it.  Such is the case of Daniel W. McInnis, born around 1820 to early Piney Woods settler from Scotland named John McInnis.  In 1847 Daniel married Nancy Carr and established himself as a planter in Covington County.  By 1860, he had achieved considerable prosperity—at least by Piney Woods standards.  Daniel estimated his real estate as worth $2,500 and his personal property at $12,000.  The value of his personal property derived largely from slaves.  That year the census listed him with ten bondsmen: three in their twenties (two females and one male), two males age thirteen, and the remainder children ranging from two to nine years old.  Slavery and the cotton economy made only modest inroads in the Piney Woods compared to other areas of the state, so Daniel’s chattel property placed him among the top 30% of Covington County slave owners. (Note 4)

As a man entering his mid-forties, Daniel evidently did not taken up arms in the Civil War, even though he had a considerable stake in its outcome.  Therefore, his decision to name a son born on 22 September 1863 Ulysses Grant McInnis is a puzzling one.  It is possible that Daniel McInnis numbered himself among the pre-war Whigs who worried that a precipitous rush to secession would only insure the demise of the Peculiar Institution.  In such a case, the naming might have carried the implicit message:  ‘I told you so.’  Or perhaps Daniel had harbored moral qualms about slavery even while tied to its economic rewards.  If so, did the surrender of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant in July of 1863 produce some sense of relief that the question was no longer his to resolve?

The war divested Daniel of his slaves.  He relocated to neighboring Simpson County where in 1870 he reported his personal property as worth $2,500.  In 1880 he served a single term in the Mississippi House of Representatives.  Daniel McInnis continued to farm until his death in 1893.  His son Ulysses G. McInnis also farmed and ran a cotton gin before becoming a grocer late in life.  Ulysses died on 18 February 1942.  As census records and his death certificate confirm, he never sought to change the Unionist name given him by his slave-owning father.

Ulysses McInnis death certificate

This is only a small sampling of the stories beginning to emerge from inquiries into the background of Unionist named children.  I hope to provide more as my research continues.

— Ed Payne

Notes:

1.  Three persons were removed from the original list after World War I draft registration cards confirmed they were named after Sherman Parisot, the owner of a steamboat line during Reconstruction:  Sherman P. Kirkead, Sherman Parasot (aka Parisot), and Sherman P. Wilson.  Both Grant Robinson and Grant Thompson were removed when further research showed them to be African-American and thus outside the scope of this research.  Grant Taylor was eliminated when the full name of this father was found to be John Grant Taylor, making him a namesake.  The original table listed “William, Abraham L.” based upon an Ancestry transcription error.  The household surname was Haws, but the sibling listed above Abraham was recorded as “William, T.S.” and this erroneous surname applied to the next two persons.  The original census page image revealed that the individual’s actual name was William T.S. Haws.  Thus the Haws household in fact contained two children with Unionist names: one honoring William T. Sherman and the other Abraham Lincoln.  Both are listed in the revised table.

2.  Several sources are gratefully acknowledged.  For information on Cedar Grove and William T.S. Klein:  “Cedar Grove, A Man’s Monument” by Paul Duval and “Cedar Grove: National Register of Historical Places Inventory—Nomination Form.”  Both are located in the vertical file folder “Cedar Grove” at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.  For information on Massmiller Wilson: genealogical file compiled by Mary Lois S. Ragland dated 07/29/1995 and posted on the Ancestry Public Tree ‘Lewis & Bradford Family Tree’; and communications with descendant Patricia Williams.  For information on Washington R. Price: biographical sketch by Eva Crocket posted on “Find A Grave” 08/29/2006, Memorial # 15551855.  A balanced account of the rivalry between Adelbert Ames and John Lusk Alcorn, and its political consequences, can be found in Warren A. Ellem, “The Overthrow of Reconstruction in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History, 1992 54(2), 175-201.

3. A different Daniel McInnis (1845-1926) enlisted in the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry in 1864.  His full name was Daniel Henry Clay McInnis and he was the son of John (“Jack”) McInnis (1816-1899) who migrated into the Piney Woods from North Carolina.  Daniel W. McInnis, on the other hand, consistently reportedly that his father had been born in Scotland.  While both families are said to have originated in Argyllshire, Scotland, any relationship would have been distant.

4.  In 1860 there were 204 slave owners in Covington County among a free white population of 2,845.  Slaves comprised 35.5% of the county’s population compared with a statewide average of 55.2%.  Of the 204 slave owners, 145 (71.1%) held nine or few bondsmen.

Unionist naming – revised (90 names)

Last revised:  03/06/2012

Cns	YoB	County	Name as listed	Name corrected
1870	1869	Leake	Ulysses Atkinson	Ulysses Atkinson
1880	1875	Carroll	Ulissus A. Barrentine	Ulysses A. Barrentine
1870	1868	Jones	Sherman Beech	Sherman Beech
1880	1880	Lawrence	Eulislus S. Berry	Ulysses S. Berry
1880	1879	Pike	Euilas Berryhill	Ulysses Berryhill
1870	1868	Monroe	Grant Bibb	William Grant Bibb
1870	1866	DeSoto	Eulisa Billingsly	Ulysses Billingsly
1870	1869	Tippah	Lincoln Bosman	Lincoln Bosman
1870	1864	Clarke	Lincoln Brannon	Lincoln Brannan
1870	1868	Jasper	Sherman Bunnsaw	Sherman Bunnsaw
1880	1872	Itawamba	Ulysses Butler	Ulysses Butler
1870	1861	Jones	Lincoln Bynum	Lincoln Bynum
1870	1869	Alcorn	Ulissas Campbell	Ulysses Campbell
1880	1870	Jones	Sherman Cawley	Sherman Corley
1870	1868	Jones	Ulysses S. Collins	Ulysses S. Collins
1880	1880	Pontotoc	Oaker Grant Conlee	Oscar Grant Conlee
1870	1869	Monroe	Ulyssis Coon	Ulysses Coon
1870	1870	Carroll	Ulyssus Cotton	Ulysses Cotton
1880	1868	Lauderdale	U.S. Grant Creel	U.S. Grant Creel
1870	1867	Smith	Ulissus B. Currie	Ulysses B. Currie
1870	1868	Rankin	Sherman L. Davis	Sherman L. Davis
1870	1869	Tishomingo	Ulysees G. Dexter	Ulysses G. Dexter
1880	1876	Lincoln	Sherman Dunaway	Sherman Dunaway
1880	1878	Clay	Ulyses G. Durham	Ulysses G. Durham
1880	1880	Hinds	Sherman C. Eddy	Sherman C. Eddy
1880	1875	Panola	Uliseese Fills	Ulysses Fills
1880	1874	Lee	U.S. Ford	U.S. Ford
1880	1879	Grenada	Sherman George	Sherman George
1870	1865	Carroll	Ulyssus Hall	Ulysses Hall
1870	1866	Tippah	Ulyssus T. Hamlin	Ulysses T. Hamlin
1870	1869	Choctaw	Abraham L. Haws	Abraham L. Haws
1870	1868	Choctaw	William T.S. Haws	William T.S. Haws
1870	1869	Calhoun	U.S. Grant Hillhouse	U.S. Grant Hillhouse
1870	1866	Oktibbeha	Abraham L. Holland	Abraham L. Holland
1880	1872	Leake	Isac G. Horne	Isaac U.G. Horne
1880	1872	Tishomingo	James Grant Hutson	James Grant Hutson
1870	1870	Itawamba	Sherman Jammison	Sherman Jamison
1880	1865	Union	Abe Lincoln Kennedy	Abe Lincoln Kennedy
1870	1869	Marion	Ulysses S. King	Ulysses S. King
1900	1878	Greene	Ulississ L. Kittrell	Ulysses L. Kittrell
1870	1864	Warren	Wm Klem	William T.S. Klein
1870	1864	Jones	Ulysses Landrum	Ulysses Landrum
1870	1863	Jones	Abraham Lard	Abraham L. Laird
1870	1863	Jones	Abraham L. Lee	Abraham L. Lee
1900	1878	Itawamba	Ulyses E. Little	Ulysses E. Little
1880	1879	Choctaw	Abe Livingston	Abraham L. Livingston
1870	1865	Tippah	Sherman Lee Lominick	Sherman Lee Lominick
1880	1872	Grenada	Grant Luten	Ulysses Grant Litten
1870	1869	Copiah	U.S.G. Matthews	Ulysses S.G. Matthews
1880	1866	Pike	Allines May	Ulysses May
1880	1880	Kemper	Grant McDade	Grant McDade
1880	1878	Attala	Ulisses McDaniel	Ulysses McDaniel
1870	1869	Oktibbeha	William Grant McDowel	William Grant McDowell
1870	1868	Pike	Grant McEwin	Grant McEwin
1870	1864	Simpson	Uless McInnis	Ulysses McInnis
1870	1866	Newton	Grant W. Millan	Grant W. Milling
1880	1866	Tippah	Ulyssus L. Miller	Ulysses L. Miller
1880	1865	Jefferson	U. Grant Mingee	U. Grant Mingee
1870	1863	Holmes	Grant Nelson	Grant Nelson
1880	1877	(Hays, TX)	Ulissis Oglesby	Ulysses Oglesby
1870	1868	Prentiss	Eulissus Owens	Ulysses Owens
1870	1870	Chickasaw	Grant Perry	Grant Perry
1870	1861	Carroll	Abraham Porter	Abraham L. Porter
1870	1868	Lee	Ulesses O. Potts	Ulysses O. Potts
1880	1873	Pontotoc	William Grant Pritchard	William Grant Pritchard
1880	1878	Monroe	Eulis Davis Ritter	Ulysses Davis Ritter
1870	1869	Jackson	Ulysses Rouse	Ulysses Rouse
1870	1863	Calhoun	William L. Ryan	William Sherman Ryan
1880	1874	Pontotoc	Ulysis Sappington	Ulysses Sappington
1870	1864	Smith	William S. Searcy	William Sherman Searcy
1880	1870	Tippah	Ulissis G. Shelly	Ulysses G. Shelly
1870	1868	Itawamba	U. Grant Shumpert	U. Grant Shumpert
1870	1866	Harrison	Sherman Sivilly	Sherman Swilly
1870	1865	Jackson	Sherman Smith	Sherman Smith
1870	1869	Pike	Sherman Spence	Sherman Spence
1900	1875	Pontotoc	Lis Step	Ulysses Stepp
1870	1869	Monroe	Ulyssus Sulivan	Ulysses Sullivan
1870	1865	Pontotoc	Sherman Swords	Sherman Swords
1870	1866	Calhoun	Grant Tacket	Grant Tackett
1870	1869	Lincoln	U.S. Grant Townsend	U.S. Grant Townsend
1880	1878	Calhoun	Uleious Upchurch	Ulysses Upchurch
1870	1864	Prentiss	Sherman Walden	Sherman Walden
1880	1878	Chickasaw	Grant L. Walker	Grant L. Walker
1900	1868	Jones	Ulysses P. Walters	Ulysses P. Walters
1900	1880	Attala	Ulissis Wasson	Ulysses Wasson
1800	1874	Holmes	William S. Weems	William Sherman Weems
1870	1866	Jones	Sherman Welborn	Sherman Welborn
1900	1880	Claiborne	Ulysses Whatley	Ulysses Whatley
1870	1865	Jasper	Ulepes Grant Willborn	Ulysses Grant Welborn
1880	1869	Lafayette	Eulsyses Wilson	Ulysses Monroe Wilson

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