Big Level Revisited

“I was born and raised in Big Level. I went to school in Big Level. I went to church in Big Level. All of my first friends were in Big Level. My daddy was born in Big Level, as was my granddaddy, as was my great-granddaddy. My history runs bone-deep and blood-rich in Big Level. I spent my first nineteen years there. I learned a lot about life and love there. My Lott, Bond, and Breland great-great-grandparents settled there in the 1820s, ’30s, and ’40s, attracted by the richness of the prime real estate just opening up in the area, with its flat and fertile soil, numerous creeks and streams, teeming wildlife, and its abundant stands of virgin pine and hardwood timber. There is an abounding pride of place and an abiding sense of belonging to be found among the fine, simple, country folk who’ve spent generations building their lives and raising their families there: the Lotts, Bonds, and Brelands, the Batsons, Hattens, and Hickmans, the O’Neals, Taylors, Whites, and Whittingtons—just to name a few—all of whom I’m related to, by both roots of blood and marriage, roots planted deep within this bonny Big Level land.”

I wrote those words three years ago. They formed the opening paragraph of my very first blog post as a way of introducing My Back Pages and the community on the eastern side of Stone County, Mississippi, that has embraced my familial roots for several generations, almost 200 years. While I’ve written most about my growing up in Big Level in the 1950s and ’60s, it is the community’s earlier history that has occupied most of my attention of late. In fact, I’ve recently spent so much of my spare time in my quest to learn as much as I can about Big Level’s early years that I’ve neglected my blog postings. So few have been my posts in these past several months that some of you have been asking what’s wrong. As Martha, a long-time friend and loyal reader, put it last week in a Facebook post, “Where you at??? You are not writing enough!” I took that to mean that she was not only concerned about the dearth of my postings, but she was wondering where my head has been lately. Both takes are fair enough.

Well, Martha and other loyal readers, I have to confess that for well over a year now my head has been buried in the Newspaper Archive website, as I’ve spent many, many hours—more than I’m willing to admit—digging through the old newspaper issues that were published on the Mississippi Gulf Coast back 120, 130, and 140 years ago. More specifically, I’ve been on a quest, searching for the earliest mention of the term “Big Level” in print. You see, a few years ago I read that my great-great-uncle Crab Breland coined the term, and now with this extensive online resource at my disposal, I’ve been obsessed with trying to verify the accuracy of that statement. Finally, after months of research, I think I’ve found it. Published in the Pascagoula Democrat-Star in January of 1888, in his periodic “Letter from Flint Creek,” Uncle Crab wrote:

There has been considerable traffic in real estate here lately, and the surveyor’s chain has been dragged in our midst by strange hands. Soon we think the time will come when front lots in this “city” will command a good price, and lucky will he be considered who holds a patent right on a tract of this beautiful table land, the “big level.”

With this item, and several others I’ve discovered along the way, I feel it’s time to revisit and update my earlier piece on Big Level. I can’t wait to start sharing some of these finds with you.

As I’ve written before, Big Level, encompassing almost the full northeastern quadrant of Stone County, is topologically flat, comparatively speaking, and thus it is aptly named. It is both big and level. This sprawling community is bounded on the north up Oil Well Road to the Perry County line and along Black Creek, on the south down City Bridge Road to Red Creek, on the west by the Inda Community and the outskirts of the town of Wiggins, and on the east by the Deep Creek, New Zion, and Ramsey Springs Communities. While these are its approximate confines, and some might quibble on a point or two, all would agree that the heart of Big Level lies along City Bridge Road from White’s Crossing on Highway 26 down by the old Home School and Big Level Baptist Church to the Big Level Grocery where City Bridge Road intersects with King Bee Road.

My wife, Gena, purchased this delightful piece of artwork for me direct from the artist, Karen S. Bryant, after I learned of it from my high school classmate and cousin, Carmen White Caldwell. The fact that it shows both Upper Big Level and Lower Big Level resonated with me immediately when I first saw it.

I’ve also mentioned in a few prior posts my great-great-uncle Crab Breland, one of my great-grandmother Lott’s brothers. He was born in 1861, just three months following the outbreak of the U. S. Civil War. Though his real name was Bostick Hanson Breland, he was known in his boyhood as “Crabapple,” a nickname hung on him by his teasing friends and relatives after a girl accused him of being the sourest person she knew—as “sour as a crabapple.” This was soon shortened to just Crab, an appellation he proudly wore for a lifetime and adopted as his penname. He held several jobs during his lifetime, but through his entire adult years he was also a newspaperman. Beginning 1884, while still in his early 20s, his occasional submissions were published in the Handsboro Advertiser, the coastal weekly that became the Handsboro Democrat and later the Pascagoula Democrat-Star, two predecessors of the Mississippi Press. Then, in 1914, the publisher of the Biloxi-Gulfport Daily Herald offered him space for a weekly column, which he continued until 1947, retiring only two years before his death at age 87. Called “Crab-ology,” it was widely read for four decades.

Click this image to read my earlier post on “Crab-ology.”
My Back Pages, 2 Sep 2020.

At the time Crab was born, Big Level was still populated by its earliest pioneer settlers, and their few farms and clearings were surrounded by vast tracts of virgin pine timber. The community was within the jurisdiction of Harrison County, which had been formed in 1841 out of Hancock and Jackson Counties. The county seat was on the coast at Mississippi City, a small town with a grandiose name that lost its identity when Gulfport was formed in the 1890s and swallowed it up. Stone County had not yet been formed (that came in 1916), neither had Forrest County (it was carved out of Perry in 1906). Wiggins and Perkinston did not exist, nor did Hattiesburg or Gulfport or any of the other small towns and villages up and down the railroad. For that matter, the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad did not exist, nor any of the highways that cross the area today. There were only two main roads, unimproved wagon trails actually. There was the City Road from the old town of Augusta in Perry County down to Mississippi City and parallel to it was the road from Enon to Pass Christian. (Enon was another old Perry County community at a crossroads just south of where Hattiesburg was later formed.)

In those long-ago days, to get his periodic correspondences to the newspapers on the coast, Crab would carry his letters (on horseback) to the Flint Creek post office, the only postal point serving Big Level. This old pioneer post office was originally located at the home of another of my great-great-uncles, Nathan A. Lott (1832-1889), the son of my Great-great-grandfather, Absalom Nathan Lott (1806-1887). Nathan, like Crab, lived along Flint Creek, a stream that runs from above present-day Wiggins through much of Big Level and down to Red Creek. The Flint Creek post office moved around quite a bit as it came under the charge of different postmasters, but it eventually found a permanent location along the City Road at White’s Crossing and was renamed as Wisdom post office. I probably shouldn’t have to say it, but in those early days before rural free delivery, mail service was at best sporadic and at worst nonexistent. Crab would sometimes have to travel considerable distances to post his letters, sometimes down to Perkins (the community that later became the town of Perkinston) and occasionally as far away as Stonewall, a community in Harrison County in what is now Woolmarket.

It is difficult for me to put into words how wonderfully rich this treasure trove of Crab’s writings feels to me. With every column I find something that adds to my understanding of the history and development of the area and of the doings of my forebears. These articles are filled with the happenings of Big Level, Wiggins, and the whole of Stone and Harrison Counties and surrounding areas in their early years. Crab reported on who visited whom, who was sick, who got married, who died, or who just had a new baby, and much more. He had much to say about the courts and local politics. He described the new technologies of telephones and automobiles, radios and rural electrification. He told about the local farming and cattle operations, the schools, the churches, the timber industry and other Big Level enterprises. At times humorous, at others poetic and eloquent, Crab’s columns were always written in a manner that clearly showed his affection for the area and for the people who were his friends, neighbors, and kinfolk. What follows is a small sampling of some of the things that were either new to me or confirmed what I already knew or suspected.

First up is Crab’s 1919 article about “Old Times and Old People.” Though I’ve long known that several of my ancestral family lines include pioneers who settled Big Level and the surrounding communities, this item confirms so vividly what I had not heretofore realized: I’m related to almost every one of those first settlers.

We paid a visit the other day to our friend Marion Bond on lower Big Level for the purpose of digging up a sure enough old story. “Uncle Bud,” as he is known, is one of the oldest men in Stone County. He is 82 years old, but is as spry and lively as a four-year-old colt shod all around. We asked him to tell us about the time that he acted as deputy census enumerator in Harrison County. He said that was in 1860 when he was 23 years old, and that he was appointed by Christopher Quave, who was then Sheriff in Harrison County and whose home was on the Back Bay of Biloxi. He was assigned to work Beats 4 and 5, all of which territory is now embraced in Stone County, except for a few square miles on the southern border. At that time there were only three roads in what is now Stone County. These were the Mississippi City to Augusta road and the Pass Christian to Enon road that both run north and south, and the old Wire road running east and west. He traveled on horseback, and did not know the length of time that it took him, nor the exact population in his district. He said there were somewhere about twenty families living in the two beats at that time, and gave us the names of the heads of all of these that he could recall. Following is the list of names that he called over to us. Absalom Lott, L. M. Breland, Mylls Taylor, James O’Neal, William Tucker, Daniel Walker, John Alexander, W. E. Whittington, John Dale, James Davis, Thomas Evans, Russel Bond, Edmond Hester, William Hickman, Fredric Rester, Elisha Bond, J. L. Lastinger, Peter Hatten, John Bond, and Thomas Bond. The last two, John and Tom Bond, were older brothers of Uncle Bud, who had married and settled in homes of their own, there being seven brothers in all, the sons of Elisha Bond above named. Of the above list, four, L. M. Breland, J. L. Lastinger, John Bond, and W. E. Whittington served Beat 5 as members of the Board of Supervisors, or “Board of Police.” Of the entire list, none are left to tell the tale but Uncle Bud, the enumerator whom we hope will live to tell us many more tales of the old days.

I find it remarkable that of the 20 names listed, 21 counting Uncle Bud, there is only one man, Frederick Rester (1815-1870), for whom I have not yet uncovered a kinship relationship. Two of these men are my great-great-grandfathers, Absalom Nathan Lott (1806-1887) and Lemuel M. Breland (1811-1880). The others are all great uncles and first cousins. And if you are related to any of these people, too—and I know many of my readers have Big Level roots—then you and I are also cousins.

From several different articles, I was amazed to discover that Big Level started its own telephone company in 1913 and operated it locally until it was merged a few years later with the Cumberland Telephone Co. I was particularly taken with this column from 1917 which was written soon after the U.S. entered WWI:

Not being able at this time to furnish the Herald readers with a list of the Stone County soldier boys, and feeling that next to those who serve in the trenches behind the guns, interest and importance attaches to those who serve in the furrow behind the plow, we conceived the idea some weeks ago of getting up some data on the two leading crops in the Big Level territory, corn and sweet potatoes. We appealed to Judge R. W. Hatten to help us, which he cheerfully agreed to do, and in fact done did the work of collecting statistics for us. You see, Judge Hatten manages the switchboard of the Big Level telephone company and is connected by wire with all of the forty or more subscribers, and when he talks it might be said that he could be heard practically all over the eastern half of Stone County, and even over the line into Perry. Our inquiry, the result of which is given below, is confined to the members of the telephone company who have a phone in their home, and applies to corn and potatoes alone. We regret that it could not include many other farmers in the territory who have extensive crops, and include also many other things that are being grown for food this year. It is the opinion of Judge Hatten that these figures will cover no more than half of the crop of corn and potatoes being grown in the territory embraced.
Following is the list of names, together with the acres of each in cultivation, and it might be added that the corn is, as a rule, planted to velvet beans and cowpeas. The first figure following each name applies to corn and potatoes the latter:

A. H. Bond, 10, 2
Lamar Bond, 7, 1
W. J. Taylor, 18, 4
Mrs. A. F. Breland, 20, 8
L. R. Bond, 20, 31
A. J. Bond, 16, 2
J. O. Hawk, 12, 3
W. A. Preston, 10, 4
J. A. O’Neal, 30, 3
A. E. O’Neal, 18, 3
M. J. E. O’Neal, 14, 3
P. A. O’Neal, 7, 1
T. L. Bond, 40, 8
J. J. Bond, 13, 9
W. B. Moore, 65, 9
W. P. O’Neal, 14, 2
Mrs. J. S. O’Neal, 15, 2
J. L. Bond, 18, 4 
J. A. Lott, 20, 2
J. B.. Hatten, 12, 3
J. V. Jacobs, 6, ½

D. A. Breland, 33, 9
A. P. Clayton, 20, 2
J. W. White, 40, 3
E. N. Miles, 25, 6
Q. A. Breland, 16, 6
I. A. McMurphy, 80, 2
Dolph Lott, 15, 3
J. F. Cooper, 30, 2½
W. I. Moore, 30, 1½
T. C. Hickman, 14, 1½
G. J. Alexander, 8, 1
Mrs. F. G. Breland, 20, 2
S. A. Berry, 15, 2
Jim  O’Neal, 12, 1
N. J. O’Neal, 20, ½
A. P. Hatten, 35, 4
J. A. McMurphy, 65, 2½
M. L. Hatten, 15, 11
E. R. Smith, 5, 2
R. W. Hatten, 20, 2½

I find this list of 41 Big Level farmers to be a wonderful bit of history for several reasons. For one, the Big Level Telephone Co. had only been operating for four years, no doubt with many of these being among its 18 initial subscribers. This data shows how rapidly the home telephone had been adopted in this rural area in those four years. Another reason I love this list is that it includes both of my grandfathers, Dolph Lott and Lamar Bond. In that year, 1917, they were both 20-year-old young men who had not yet married. Their fathers had each died several years before, and here they were carrying on with their farming tradition. And then maybe the most exciting discovery for me is that John Lampkin Bond was also included in the list. He was the homesteader who patented the land where I grew up. Not only was he an early adopter of the telephone, he had one installed in the very house where I grew up. Learning this shattered a long-held prior assumption. There was no phone in that old house when Daddy and Mama bought it in 1953, the year I was born. And it wasn’t until 1957 or ’58, when I was about 4 years old that they had one installed. I had taken it for granted that that was the first time the old house ever had a phone. We were on a party line with 6 of our neighbors. I still have vivid memories of trying to learn that incoming calls to our house were announced with three long rings. By the way, we were on the Walnut-8 exchange. Our number was WA8-3777.

Crab often included in his reporting little snippets about his neighbors and extended family, many of whom are my family, too. I take particular delight in finding these, as they add texture and vibrancy to the people who would otherwise just be names and birth/death dates in my family tree. Here’s one from 1917 about my granddaddy, Dolph Lott, who had just turned 20 and was not yet married. Keep in mind that automobiles were just becoming affordable at this time, particularly Ford Model Ts. Furthermore, there were no paved streets in Wiggins at the time, or anywhere else in the county. Even the Dixie Highway that ran from Gulfport through Hattiesburg to Jackson (later to be a part of U.S. 49) was just a graded gravel road. It would not see asphalt until the 1920s.

Dolph Lott, who was one of an automobile party from Big Level, came near meeting with a serious accident in Wiggins yesterday evening. A number of young people had gone to Hattiesburg for a day’s outing and on reaching Wiggins a halt was made and all had left the car except Dolph Lott, his sister Minnie, and another young lady, Miss Bertha Hatten. Young Lott started the car up for a short spin on his own account, and not being accustomed to driving, he attempted to round a corner at too great a speed when the car was turned over, but fortunately neither he or either of the young ladies with him at the time were hurt. The car itself was only damaged to the extent of a broken wind shield.

In sharing this item with my brothers, we laughed while recalling some of the foolish antics we each had done as teens while in our cars and on our motorcycles. We each agreed that we were glad that our mishaps and shenanigans weren’t published in the newspaper, in one of the most widely-read columns on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Even so, it pleases me to think that I got a bit more than my picky-eating gene from Granddaddy.

And finally, here’s a piece from 1920 that charms me greatly. Like Crab, it confirms something that I and many a Big Level boy already knew:

“Wiggins, Miss., March 24—J. Cecil Hammond, New York artist and illustrator, who recently passed through this section of South Mississippi in search of new types of beauty, stated that on Big Level, a large strip of farming land near here, he found a great number of girls whose facial beauty rivaled that of the famous Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Mr. Hammond gave the names of the daughters of several prominent farmers as proof of his assertion. Sketches were made of several faces and, if Mr. Hammond has his way, the faces of Big Level girls will soon be adoring advertising posters and placards in Gotham.”
  The above item is front page stuff from the New Orleans Times-Picayune of March 25, and reveals a wealth that some people did not know the Big Level had. We’ve known it all the time, but through a spirit of modesty have said nothing about it. But since the secret is out, girls, you better pertten up and take notice, give your hair an extra brush or two, be on your guard, have your Sunday smile always ready, and live up to the standard that has been set. We know not J. Cecil Hammond, we know not art, but we know beauty when we see it, and we know our Big Level girls have it in abundance.

Uncle Crab may or may not have coined the term “Big Level”—I like to think he did—but there is no doubt that, through his writings, he did more than anybody to put this beloved community on the map, and as this last item indicates, a pretty wide map at that.
 

A Word to Ponder

pret·ty (adj.): attractive in a delicate way. (adv.): to a moderately high degree.
From Middle English prety, preti, praty, prati, from Old English prættiġ (tricky, crafty, sly, cunning, wily, astute), from Proto-Germanic prattugaz, corresponding to prat (trick) +‎ y.
The meaning had expanded by c. 1400 to “ingeniously or cleverly made” and to “fine, pleasing to the aesthetic sense.”
www.etymonline.com

Song of the Day

“California Girls” by the Beach Boys, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), 1965

“And the Southern girls, with the way they talk
They knock me out when I'm down there”