War News Stories for Chickasaw County, MS

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War News Stories for Chickasaw County, MS

Real Romance - A War Story from Chickasaw County. How a Man Found His Son
Date: 1904-04-28; Paper: The Biloxi Daily Herald

Jackson, April 27 – Henry Lacey, assistant secretary of the board of control of the state penitentiary, has returned from a visit to his home in Okolona, and brings back a story that sounds like a page torn from the pages of romance. When the war between the states broke out there lived in Spartanburg, S.C., one J. T. West who, like all good, brave man of the south, joined the army that was --- in Virginia for her defense, leaving a wife and little baby boy behind in South Carolina. At one of the battles West was shot and was left on the field for dead. One of his comrades took the sad message to his wife and baby. The wife left Carolina and started for California, where she had a brother living, but she stopped in Chickasaw county, near Okolona and liked it so much that she concluded to remain there for life. The husband, supposed to have been killed, was not dead, but was taken by the Yankees into a hospital and nursed back to life, and a year after the war had closed returned to his old home in South Carolina, only to find his wife and baby one as he supposed, to another town in South Carolina but investigation proved they were not there, and several years of weary research failed to locate them. West, thinking his wife was dead, afterwards married. A short while ago Alex West, who was a baby when his father left home for the war, wrote from his home in Okolona to the clerk of the chancery court of Spartanburg, S. C. to inquire about some land that he said belonged to his father, J. T. West, who, he told the clerk, was killed during the war. The letter was shown to J. T. West, and the father and son saw each other for the first time in forty years. [Submitted by Debbie Personette]

We see it state in a letter from Houston, Mississippi, to the Mobile News that the records of Chickasaw county were destroyed during the late Yankee raid. An attempt was made to save them, but eight miles from town they were captured and burned by the enemy. [22 May 1863, Macon Daily Telegraph - Submitted by Debbie Personette]