Blues Locations – Mississippi – Edwards

Themed Photo Gallery and Information: Edwards, Mississippi

Historical Background

The Town of Edwards is located in the western portion of Hinds County, about 2 miles west of Jackson, Mississippi, the State Capital, and 15 miles east of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Emigrants mostly from the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee first settled the Edwards community in the period 1820-1830. The first town in the Edwards community was known as Amsterdam and was located about two miles northwest of the present town of Edwards. The town of Amsterdam flourished during the 1830’s and then just faded away. An epidemic of the cholera about 1832 and the fact that the Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad missed it by about two miles caused the death of the town.

Edwards had its beginning as a plantation settlement. R.O. (Dick) Edwards, for whom the Edwards Hotel in Jackson is named, owned the plantation, and with the coming of the Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad in 1839, it was know as Edwards Depot. The first depot was located about where the present Livestock Arena is located. The Yankees burned the depot in 1863 and the present location of the depot is about a quarter of a mile east of the old site.

The removal of the town to its present site was made in 1866 and at once became a commercial center. The records show that as many as twenty thousand bales of cotton have been shipped from this point in a single season.

The Town of Edwards was incorporated in 1871. It is located on the Illinois Central Railroad and is 28 miles west of Jackson and 16 miles east of Vicksburg.

Edwards is the heart of a section of the country that is most splendidly adapted to general farming and the raising of fine cattle.

Edwards has some very fine old antebellum homes in its community. Many of these gracious old homes are still in excellent condition.

Edwards’ first newspaper was The Echo, a weekly, established in 1900. The disastrous Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1897 greatly reduced the town’s population. In some families, every member was ill at the same time and some members died and were buried without the others finding out.

Some of the early personalities, to mention a few, include R.O. Edwards, for whom the town was named. Colonel W.A. Montgomery, early citizen, soldier and statesman; Dr. Estus, a native of the town, who turned his home into a hospital for southern soldiers during the Civil War.

The Southern Christian Institute, a black educational institution, was built near Edwards in 1882. Undoubtedly, this brought many new people to the area and stimulated the town’s economy. The Christian Church with the intention of making available “higher learning opportunities” for the black people established the college. It was later rebuilt but the name was changed to Bonner-Campbell College.

Source: http://www.townofedwards.com/history.htm

Charlie Patton Birthplace – Herring’s Place (between Edwards and Bolton, MS)

Full text:

Mississippi blues master Charley Patton was born on this property when it was known as Herring’s Place, according to Bolton bluesman Sam Chatmon. Patton’s birthdate has often been reported as April 1891, but other sources cite earlier dates, including 1881, 1885, and 1887. (Birth certificates were not required in Mississippi until 1912.) Patton’s astounding body of recorded work (1929-1934) remains unparalleled, and his live performances were reportedly even more awe-inspiring. Patton died on April 29, 1934.

Charley Patton was the most important recording artist, creative musician and crowd-pleasing entertainer in Mississippi blues during his lifetime. He developed his blues in the Delta but drew earlier inspiration from musicians around Bolton, Edwards and Raymond, absorbing a pre-blues repertoire that was still evident in the songs he began recording in 1929.

Patton’s pivotal stature and vaunted musicianship inspired renowned guitar virtuoso John Fahey to undertake a fact-finding journey to Mississippi in 1958. His book Charley Patton was published in 1970. Other seminal Patton researchers were Gayle Dean Wardlow and Stephen Calt, who co-authored King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton(1988), Bernard Klatzko, and David Evans, author of several works on Mississippi blues. A confusing web of oral histories and conflicting documentary data evolved, and scholars’ interpretations varied widely. Debates continue over details of Patton’s life, death and music–even the spelling of his name (Charley vs. Charlie).

Patton’s sister Viola Cannon gave his birth date as 1881 to one researcher and 1887 to another; April 1891 was cited in the 1900 census (consistent with his 1934 death certificate); and July 12, 1885, was entered on his World War I draft registration card. The Patton family usually said he was born between Bolton and Edwards, but another reported birthplace, called “Heron’s Place” in the Calt-Wardlow book, has become widely accepted today. This is the site of farmland once owned by Samuel Lycurgus “Sam” Herring (1839-1904) along the road named in his honor. The source of this report was Sam Chatmon (c. 1899-1983), a noted blues musician from Bolton who knew Patton from an early age and even sometimes said they were half-brothers. The string band music of the popular and prodigious Chatmon musical clan was likely some of the first music Patton heard.

Chatmon, whose parents gave him a name he disdained, Vivian, renamed himself in honor of Sam Herring and claimed some kinship with him. Chatmon recalled the Herring place for its cotton and corn crops, horse races, mechanical rocking horses, commissary, jukehouse for gambling and dancing, and a resident guitarist Patton may have heard, Lem Nichols (born c. 1875). However, Henry Sloan (born c. 1870) was the musician most often cited for his impact on Patton. By Chatmon’s account, Patton lived with two sisters and their mother Annie, apart from her husband Bill, on the Herring farm in the 1890s. In the 1900 census they all resided with Bill Patton and other siblings on land west of Bolton, where Sloan also lived, and by 1902 the Pattons had moved to Will Dockery’s plantation in Sunflower County; Sloan moved there as well. By 1910, Patton was purported to already be the Delta’s leading figure in the developing musical form that came to be called the blues.

Source: http://msbluestrail.org/