Page one of the Mississippi Constitution of 1832. Call Number: Series 549 (MDAH Collection)

The Mississippi Constitutions of 1817, 1832, 1868, and 1890 are now available to view online! Access them at http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/constitutions/.

"Leake County." Three unidentified men. Call Number: PI/2010.0002, item 328 (MDAH Collection)

Photographs from Series I of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation Collection (PI/2010.0002) are now available online! This collection was donated by the MFBF Public Affairs Office in 2010. Series I consists of photographs documenting Mississippi farms and the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation from the 1850s through 2003 mounted on 1,456 boards with captions. The photographs are grouped into subject categories assigned by MFBF staff and include: beauty pageants, boards of directors, county agents, crops, conventions, farmers, meetings (county, state, local), natural disasters, politicians, staff, social functions, talent shows, women’s activities within the organization, and Southern Farm Bureau in its formative years.

View Series I of the MFBF Collection at http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/series/mfb.

Beekeepers in Bolivar County, 1960. Call Number: PI/2010.0002, item 36 (MDAH Collection)

Sales tax tokens. Accession Numbers: 1966.13.2, 1966.13.3, 1966.13.8, 1966.13.9 (Museum Division Collection)

In order to ease Mississippi’s $13 million deficit, Governor Martin Connor (1891-1950) proposed and the legislature passed the state’s first sales tax in 1932. Beginning in 1936, merchants used tax tokens to make change for the newly levied sales tax.  The first ones were one-mill and five-mill tokens made of aluminum and brass. However, due to the shortage of metal during World War II, the material used to make the tokens was changed from metal to fiber and then later to plastic.  The state abolished the use of tax tokens in 1952. Pictured above are examples of tax tokens made from 1936 to 1952.

Artifacts from the Museum Division collection that are not on exhibit are available for viewing by appointment. Please contact Nan Prince, Assistant Director of Collections, by email to schedule an appointment.

Sources:

MDAH, “May 1, 1932: State sales tax of 2% goes into effect on retail goods,” Mississippi History Timeline, http://mdah.state.ms.us/timeline/zone/1932/.

V.B. Wheeless, The Sales Tax Token in Mississippi, Mississippi State Tax Commission.

Major Butt is pictured on bottom row, second from left, with other prominent Titanic passengers. Biloxi Daily Herald, April 23, 2012.

Major Archibald Willingham Butt wasn’t a Mississippian, but he had Mississippi connections. The prominent Titanic victim had at least one family member and several former classmates who were Mississippi residents.

Born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 26, 1865, Butt graduated from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1888. Following graduation, he spent several years working as a journalist. He eventually moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a correspondent for several southern newspapers, including The Louisville Post, The Atlanta Constitution, The Nashville Banner, The Augusta Chronicle, and The Savannah News. He suspended his journalistic career to accept a position in the Mexican Embassy and later joined the military during the Spanish-American War. He also served in the Philippines and Cuba before becoming an aide to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. When President William Howard Taft took office in 1909, Butt remained in Washington as a personal advisor to the president.¹

Following the Titanic disaster, one of Butt’s relatives, Robert Boggs of Long Beach, Mississippi, received a letter from President Taft. Charles L. Hilles, secretary to the president, sent Boggs a signed copy of the statement that Taft issued regarding Butt’s death:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington, April 1912

Major Archie Butt was my Military Aide. He was like a member of my family, and I feel his loss as if he had been a younger brother. The chief trait of his character was loyalty to his ideas, his cloth and his friends. His character was a simple one in the sense that he was incapable of intrigue or insincerity. He was gentle and considerate to everyone, high and low, he never lost, under any conditions, his sense of proper regard to what he considered the respect due to constitute authority. He was an earnest member of the Episcopal church, and loved that communion. He was a soldier, ever inch of him, a most compitent [sic] and successful quartermaster, and a devotee of his profession.

After I heard that part of the ship’s company had gone down, I gave up hope for the rescue of Major Butt, unless by accident. I knew that he would certainly remain on the ship’s deck until every duty had been performed and every sacrifice made that properly fell on the charged, as he would feel himself charged, with responsibility for the rescue of others.

He leaves the widest circle of friends, whose memory of him is sweet in every particular

Wm. H. Taft ²

Several Mississippians were college classmates of Major Butt at The University of the South at Sewanee. Among them were Bishop Theodore du Bose Bratton, Rev. William Mercer, Rev. Edward McCready, Dr. T.O. Hunter, and J.D. Ferguson.

From the Daily Herald of Biloxi:

From classmates residing at Biloxi, it is learned that Major Butt was always popular with his schoolmates, and always maintained a good standard of scholarship in college. Later when he went to Washington in the journalistic field and even when he became a busy attaché of the president, he always had time to greet old college friends. ³

History has regarded Butt as a hero. He has been memorialized in several ways, including the Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain erected in 1913 in Washington, D.C., to honor him and his long-time friend Francis Millet, who also perished in the sinking; and the Butt Memorial Bridge in Augusta, Georgia, dedicated by President Taft in 1914. The fact that his death was felt even in Mississippi shows the strength of his relationships and the magnitude of the Titanic disaster.

² “Long Beach Kinsman Major Butt Receives Autograph Letter,” The Daily Herald, May 15, 1912.

³ “Biloxians Were Among Classmates of the Late Major Archie W. Butt,” The Daily Herald, April 20, 1912.

Jackson Daily News, April 16, 1912 (MDAH Collection)

In April of 1912, the Titanic disaster dominated newspaper headlines around the country and the world, but it wasn’t the only newsworthy occurrence during this time. In fact, there was another big news event happening right here in Mississippi at the same time. During the spring of 1912, the Mississippi Valley region suffered a severe flood. Often overshadowed by the 1927 flood, the flood of 1912 killed 200 people and caused $45 million in damage.¹

The newspaper image above shows how the Titanic and Mississippi River flood disasters received side-by-side coverage on the front page.

Other notable events of April 1912:

April 10 – The French ship Niagra struck ice on the way from Le Havre, France, to New York. The ship’s crew was able to repair the damage.

April 12 – Clara Barton, nurse and founder of the American Red Cross, died.

April 16 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel

April 17 – Julia Lathrop became the first woman to head a U.S. federal government agency. She was appointed by President Taft to direct the U.S. Children’s Bureau.

April 17 – Solar eclipse

April 20 – Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, died at the age of 64.

April 20 – Boston’s Fenway Park and Detroit’s Tiger Stadium both officially opened²

Mississippi River Flood of 1912, Cooper Postcard Collection. Call Number: PI/1992.0001, item 3125 (MDAH Collection)

² List of events compiled using “Today in History for April 1912,” http://www.historyorb.com/date/1912/april, and “April 1912,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_1912.

Coverage of the 1912 flood and the Titanic in the Vicksburg Evening Post, April 17, 1912, page 1, microfilm #31187 (MDAH)

The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has received extensive coverage in the history blogosphere. Read more below:

The National Archives (NARA) has been blogging about the Titanic:

• Read about the Titanic’s mail room and transatlantic mail service in this post from Prologue: Pieces of History.
• Watch a video of NARA staff discussing their favorite Titanic holdings on YouTube.

• The story of one Titanic survivor and her lost luggage is also from Prologue: Pieces of History.

• The National Archives at New York showcases holdings related to the Titanic on its Facebook page for “Titanic Tuesday.”
• Join the Citizen Archivist initiative and tag images related to Titanic at NARA.

The Library of Congress (LOC) featured extensive coverage of the Titanic and related collections:

• The “Picture This” blog at the Library of Congress covers the story of the Navratil boys, who survived the Titanic’s sinking though their father perished. They were later reunited with their mother thanks to news reports about them.
• The sinking of the Titanic bears eerie resemblance to a fictional sinking described in a book published in 1898. Read more and view the book at the Library of Congress Blog.
• The LOC “In the Muse: Performing Arts” blog explores sheet music related to the Titanic in this post.

The Smithsonian Institution looked at:

• The Titanic Memorial in Washington, D.C., was featured in two posts: “Sneak Peek from the Stacks” and the female sculptor who crafted the memorial on the Potomac River is the subject of this post from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

One of the newest theories about the sinking is that the cold temperatures caused a mirage effect which distorted objects in the distance. Read more at the NASA “Astronomy Picture of the Day” page entitled “Fata Morgana: A Possibly Titanic Mirage,” April 15, 2012.

"Vicksburger Who Experienced Collision with Iceberg Discusses Sinking of Giant Titanic," Vicksburg Evening Post, April 17, 1912.

Two ships hit an iceberg in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic. One, the Anchor Liner Columbia, survives; but the other, the White Star Liner Titanic, sinks. The similarities between the Titanic and the Columbia are notable, but the key to their individual fates lies in their differences from each other.

Vicksburg resident E.M. Durham didn’t sail on the Titanic, but his experience aboard the Columbia was enough to get the attention of the Vicksburg Evening Post newspaper shortly after the Titanic disaster. During August of 1911, the Columbia struck an iceberg not far from where the Titanic wreck occurred.¹ Read Durham’s account and our analysis below:

“Vicksburger Who Experienced Collision with Iceberg Discusses Sinking of Giant Titanic”

Vicksburg Evening Post

April 17, 1912

“The Titanic was proceeding at a reckless rate of speed. She ran into an iceberg while proceeding full speed ahead and going at a rate of 25 miles an hour or more. The impact doubtless jarred loose the rivets in all her plates, and her water tight compartments were rendered valueless, for the vessel leaked at every seam. I think the Titanic had an inadequate supply of life boats, for she was considered unsinkable, and was unsinkable as far as collisions with steamers concerned.”

Mr. E.M. Durham spoke to this effect this morning. Mr. Durham, together with his wife, went through an experience, similar but less harrowing than the one that happened to the Titanic. This happened last September when Mr. and Mrs. Durham were returning from abroad. They made the cross ocean westward trip aboard the 10,000-ton Columbia, which crashed into an iceberg almost in exactly the same neighborhood where the Titanic rammed an iceberg.

Mr. Durham spoke interestingly this morning about his experiences. “My wife and I know in a measure how to sympathize with the terrible ordeal the pasengers of the Titanic went through. The Columbia collided with an iceberg about 7 o’clock one evening. It was still light. The captain of our vessel knew he was in the vicinity of an iceberg or icebergs, and for some time had been proceeding forward very slowly, going only about five or six miles per hour. Suddenly the iceberg loomed dead ahead, and the screws were reversed, but too late to prevent the collision.

“The Columbia hit the berg with terrible force. We were seated at the dining table. The chairs, fastened to the floor, were snapped loose, and we were thrown to the floor. Everything on the table was knocked off.

“The passengers were greatly alarmed, and rushed to the deck. The officers, however, reassured us, and told us we were in no immediate danger.

“We proceeded forward. Our bow had been smashed in, and two of the forward water tight compartments were flooded, but the other compartments stood the shock and held out the water.

“It took us four days to reach New York. We stopped once in order that canvass [sic] might be stretched over the gaping wound in our bow.

“All of us were intensely anxious, and we could scarcely sleep at night for our fears. Fortunately the weather was calm, otherwise our boat might have gone to the bottom.

“Our captain did not, under the circumstances, think it necessary to wire for aid, though we were equipped with wireless.

“Had we been proceeding under full speed when we struck the iceberg we would certainly have gone down in a few seconds.

“The big boats, however, have but one thing in view and that is speed. They do not care if they crash into smaller vessels, thinking that the small vessels will be the ones to suffer.

“They take their chances with icebergs, and keep up full speed in spite of storms or fog.

“Our boat had more than enough life boats aboard to provide for all the passengers and crew. After our collission [sic] we figured on the matter and were reassured.

“The scenes that must have happened aboard the ill-fated Titanic are beyond conjecture. I have thought what would have occurred on the Columbia, with her scores of women and little children had she foundered. The Columbia had a passenger list of about 900 persons, and carried a crew of 500 men. She is a monster, though considered a small boat in these days.

“Though the captain was proceeding cautiously when the Columbia hit the berg, the officer was subsequently reduced in rank for permitting the accident.”

The Columbia event was similar to what happened to the Titanic, albeit with a very different outcome. Several key differences between the two ships contribute to the diverging fates of the two voyages.

Size

The Columbia was a 10,000-ton ship with 1,400 passengers and crew members onboard, according to Durham. The Titanic weighed in at 46,000 tons and carried 2,200 passengers and crew. At the time of both incidents, the British Board of Trade, the regulatory body for seafaring ships, mandated that ships over 10,000 tons carry at least sixteen lifeboats with capacity for 962 people. Since the Board of Trade only required sixteen boats, both ships met the legal requirements for lifesaving equipment, and the Titanic actually exceeded the requirement by including a total of twenty boats.

The Collision

The Titanic and the Columbia both hit an iceberg in the north Atlantic, but the damage sustained by each ship differed significantly. When the Columbia wreck occurred, the ship had slowed to five or six miles-per-hour because of fog. At this speed, the ship was creeping along, but according to Durham’s report, the impact was supposedly hard enough to knock passengers to the floor. The bow crumpled, but the ship remained afloat and was able to complete its trip to New York.

The Titanic, on the other hand, was traveling at twenty-two knots (about twenty-five mph) when lookouts first spotted a berg. The ship slowed slightly when engines were thrown into reverse but was still moving pretty swiftly as it side-swiped the berg and scraped alongside, breaching at least five watertight compartments beneath the waterline. The Titanic contained sixteen water-tight compartments, and was designed to remain afloat with any two compartments breached or, alternately, with the first four breached. With five compartments damaged, the rate of the flooding and the weight of the water pulled the ship down by the bow, causing water to flow over the tops of the bulkheads into the next compartments in much the same way that water moves in an ice tray. This process continued until the structural integrity of the ship failed and it sank.

Though no one knows for sure, there’s plenty of speculation regarding the sinking, including one theory that the Titanic would have survived had she rammed the iceberg head-on rather than trying to alter course to miss it. The reasoning behind that line of thinking is rooted in the ship’s watertight design. Supposedly, a head-on collision would likely have damaged only one or two of the forward bulkheads (similar to what happened to the Columbia), and the rate of the flooding would not have been as severe. Edward Wilding, one of the Titanic’s designers, testified during the British inquiry into the disaster that the Titanic would have even been able to make it into port after sustaining this type of damage.² The Columbia did exactly this after stretching canvas over the damaged bow section.

The Aftermath

The Columbia struck an iceberg, sustained heavy damage, and survived. She completed her voyage with no loss of life and few injuries onboard, but there were still consequences to be faced. When the ship reached port and the smoke cleared, the Columbia’s captain was demoted according to Durham.

The Titanic struck an iceberg, sustained heavy damage, and foundered with a large loss of life. Only 700 of her passengers and crew completed the voyage to New York. Captain E.J. Smith, the Titanic’s commander, did not survive. Had he lived, Smith’s fate would likely have differed from that of the Columbia’s captain and not in a good way.

Smith was highly respected among his colleagues and very popular with passengers. In fact, many passengers planned their voyages so that they could sail on the ship he was assigned to at the time. Following his death on the Titanic, he was generally regarded as a hero by survivors and society at large. He was slated to retire following the Titanic’s maiden voyage, so had he survived, demotion probably wouldn’t have been an issue. But given that so many passengers, particularly women and children, perished, Smith’s fate might have paralleled that of J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line. Ismay was onboard the Titanic, and he survived by stepping into a lifeboat as it was being lowered into the water. As Ismay recounted, he happened to be standing next to the boat as it was being loaded. Once loading was complete, there were no more passengers in the area, so he stepped in. This was only the beginning of his ordeal. To say that his life was never the same is an understatement. The press vilified him for having survived and even blamed him for the entire incident. Society shunned him, and he spent his remaining years as a recluse in England.

Any similarities between the Columbia and the Titanic ended at the collision. E.M. Durham’s account provides a first person account of an iceberg collision and gives readers a partial conception of the experience for those aboard the Titanic. It also provides another Mississippi connection to the Titanic and an interesting hypothetical situation that could have produced a happier ending on the night of April 14-15, 1912. Whether the Titanic would have shared the Columbia’s fate (or vice versa) had circumstances been different is something that will likely never be proved or disproved. It’s one of the many healthy, ongoing debates that help fuel the perpetual interest in the Titanic.

² British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, Day 19, “Testimony of Edward Wilding,” Titanic Inquiry Project, http://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq19Wilding01.php.

Civil War battle flag. Accession Number: 1960.202.1 (Museum Division Collection)

The Battle of Shiloh in southern Tennessee began on April 6, 1862, and became the bloodiest battle of the Civil War up to that point with almost 24,000 casualties. This flag, which has been stored in the candy jar since before it was sent to the Department of Archives and History in the early 1900s, was reputedly carried by the 6th Mississippi Regiment during the battle. A label inside the jar with the flag states that seven color-bearers were killed or wounded while carrying this flag during the battle. The 6th Mississippi sustained horrific casualties during the first day’s fighting at Shiloh. According to General Cleburne’s report in the Official Records, the 6th suffered 300 casualties of the 425 men it carried into the battle, earning the unit the nickname of the “Bloody Sixth.”

Sword of scabbard of Col. John J. Thornton, carried at Shiloh. Accession Number: 1960.131.1ab (Museum Division Collection)

Colonel John Jones Thornton commanded the 6th Mississippi at the Battle of Shiloh. A Unionist, Thornton was sent by Rankin County to the Secession Convention  in January 1861, and, though it overwhelmingly passed, he refused to sign the Ordinance of Secession. However, once Mississippi seceded, Thornton was an ardent supporter of his state. He reorganized the Rankin Guards into the Rankin Greys and when they joined the 6th Mississippi, he was elected colonel of the regiment and led them into battle at Shiloh. While carrying the sword and scabbard pictured above, Thornton was critically wounded on the first day of the battle. The scabbard has been patched where it was perforated by a bullet. Due to his injuries, Thornton was forced to resign his commission on May 25, 1862.

Now on Display

This flag is currently on display through April 29, 2012, in the exhibit A Walk Through History in the Old Capitol Museum. Hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 9-5 and Sunday 1-5 p.m.

Artifacts from the Museum Division collection that are not on exhibit are available for viewing by appointment. Please contact Nan Prince, Assistant Director of Collections, by email to schedule an appointment.

Sources:

Grady Howell, Jr., “Col. John Jones Thornton, M.D.: A Sparrow Along Upon the Housetop” (1988), from the personal papers of the author.

Robert N. Scott (United States War Dept.), The War of the Rebellion, Series 1: Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, vol. 10, part 1 (Gettysburg, PA: The National Historical Society, 1972), 580-84.

National Park Service, Shiloh National Military Park website, http://www.nps.gov/shil/historyculture/shiloh.htm.

Headlines from Daily Clarion-Ledger, April 16, 1912

Just about everyone knows the story of the Titanic, the large, luxurious ocean liner that sank in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage. Most of us know that the ship was thought to be unsinkable, that there weren’t enough lifeboats onboard, that two-thirds of the 2,200 people onboard died in the icy waters of the Atlantic. But how many people know that a Mississippian was among those unfortunate passengers?

For weeks after the disaster, the Titanic and her passengers dominated the front pages of newspapers across the country, including papers in Mississippi. Titanic’s first class was filled with wealthy Americans, who were the celebrities of their day, and many prominent passengers perished, sending shockwaves throughout society. The drama of the events of April 14 captured the imagination of the American public in 1912 and has maintained its hold, more or less, for a century.

Coverage of the sinking in Mississippi mostly consisted of reports from the country’s news wire agencies. However, nestled among the wire reports regarding the aftermath of the sinking is a short piece of original reporting appearing in the April 23, 1912, issue of the Biloxi Daily Herald newspaper. The article is about a Mississippian named A.N. Lahaud, who may have been aboard the Titanic. Lahaud, a Biloxi resident originally from Syria, had been visiting his childhood home and had intended to leave Europe to return to Mississippi around the same time that Titanic sailed for the United States. When lists of survivors and victims began appearing after the wreck, an individual named Sekas Lahoud appeared on listings of those who were not saved. Lahaud’s parents, also residents of Biloxi, began to suspect that this individual may be their son.¹

"One Mississippian Lost," Jackson Daily News, April 27, 1912

Passenger lists found online feature Sarkis Lahoud/Lahowd as a passenger in third class, though the spellings of the name vary to some degree, and none of the lists feature a Lahoud alongside the initials ‘A.N.’² An article appearing in the April 27^th edition of the Jackson Daily News seems clear up the confusion. The article reports that the Lahauds received positive confirmation from a daughter living in Philadelphia that their son was aboard the Titanic and that his name wasn’t on any of the lists of those who were saved.³ Mr. Lahaud’s body was not among the 328 recovered from the wreck site. It appears that ‘A.N.’ and ‘Sarkis’ were the same person.

So far, Mr. Lahaud is the only passenger we’ve discovered with a direct connection to Mississippi, though there were other passengers with indirect links to the state. This series will investigate those passengers and explore Mississippi’s news coverage of the Titanic, which occurred in the same context as the Mississippi River Flood of 1912.

² Encyclopedia Titanica, “Comprehensive list of RMS Titanic third class (steerage) passengers, with full biographies,” accessed March 30, 2012, http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-third-class-passengers/ and Library of Virginia, “Titanic’s Passenger List,” accessed March 30, 2012, http://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/titanic/p2.htm.

³ “One Mississippian Lost,” Jackson Daily News, April 27, 1912, Jackson, Mississippi.