Thirty years the lights and shadows have fallen over these fertile fields and softly swelling hills, then changed into a Death Valley. Most of those who wept so bitterly in those dark days have joined their loved ones where there are no more tears. A new generation has arisen to guide the affairs of this fair Southern land. A few remain who witnessed all this desolation, whose youth was clouded with gloom from that experience of sorrow and anxiety. Time mercifully throws a veil over the past, but they would transmit the story to their children's children as a record of magnanimity and self-sacrifice, only equaled by the suffering endured. Even the words, 1878, will bring a shiver of horror until life's latest day. The scourge extended far up into West Tennessee, throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, touching many places in Arkansas and Alabama. The history of one town is much like that of another, varying only in the length of time affected. Grenada and Holly Springs were perhaps the greatest sufferers, because the outbreak was earlier and more unexpected, and they were less prepared for defense against the disease. These pages are the record of what took place in Holly Springs, and to those who lived through that dreadful season they are as fresh as though 'twere yesterday, coming back with painful distinctness with each recurring autumn. They are written from a familiarity with the place and people, and from two thrilling accounts published at the time. One of these is a pamphlet written by Mrs. John N. Craig, wife of the beloved pastor of the Presbyterian Church. The other is an article published in the Youth's Companion of April 3, 1879, under the title "The Yellow Plague of '78—a Record of Horror and Heroism," from the pen of Mrs. Kate McDowell, known in literature as Sherwood Bonner, author of Dialed Tales and other Southern stories. She came from Boston, where she was then living, to persuade her loved ones to go with her to a place of safety, and when her father and brother fell among the first victims she sent her child and the rest of the family away and heroically remained until the two so dear to her were in their graves, and pitying friends hurried her away. In most instances the exact words of these two friends are used, being too graphic to change. Theirs was a bitter, sacred, and awful experience, and only those could do justice to these scenes who, fitted for it by knowledge, love, and sorrow, make it a living picture. It seems almost a duty to tell of "the golden deeds that shone through the darkness of that sorrowful time, like rifts of light that pierce a cloud bank." Holly Springs is a pretty, wholesome town, situated near the Tennessee line. It took its name from the natural surroundings in the days of the Indian and the canebrake. It soon became the center of a refined society, noted for its schools, and sought for its healthfulness, built on high ground, set among hills, overrun with flowers. Here in comfort and contentment a population of some four thousand people found all that we are accustomed to hold dear in the name of home. Here all the attractions of village life, refined by social culture, abounded. No epidemic had ever visited the place, though epidemics had often raged in Memphis, fifty miles away. In the summer of 1878 the sun had burned with unwonted fierceness, after a winter extremely mild, but to this town it brought only blessed health. When news came of the alarming spread of yellow fever in Memphis and New Orleans, and other places began to bar their doors against terrified refugees fleeing, they knew not whither, so that the fatal plague might not reach them, the people of Holly Springs, declining to quarantine, became a society for relief, They gave of their abundance to assist their smitten neighbor, Grenada, eighty miles below on the same line of railroad, where fever had broken out with frightful violence. Such a passion of sympathy was aroused for these stricken ones that two of our young men, William Wooten and W. J. L. Holland, took their lives in their hands and visited the town when the pestilence was at its worst.

"They come back, telling a pitiful tale of their melancholy ride into the village and the scenes there witnessed—of burying the dead in the night's darkness by the glare of the torchlight, of hasty graves dug at the very doorstep, or in gardens—of old men and little children dying alone—of one young girl, who, when hope was ended, and she too, alone, realizing the worst, dragged herself from the bed. and opening her bureau drawer, where her delicate underclothing was folded away, managed, when the weakness of approaching death was upon her, to dress herself in fresh linen before she fell lifeless upon the floor. All this melted hearts with Pity."

The people here could talk or think of little else save these unfortunates. It now became a vital question whether we should quarantine or not. It was discussed at meetings of the city officials, and the town was divided against itself. There were a few who argued against opening the doors, but they were out-numbered by ardent and generous spirits and it was a sad coincidence that almost without exception those most eager to receive these homeless and plague stricken people, either fell themselves or suffered grievous loss in their families. Pointing to our exemption in the past they had no fear for the future, and if risk there were, they were willing to take it for humanity's sake. So it was almost with one voice that they said "Come." It may have been madness thus to tempt the destroyer, but it did not occur to them that the path of duty lay in any other direction. In addition to a number who had some time before come here from Memphis, a little pitiful band of refugees from Grenada came to us, and with recklessness born of sympathy were taken to the very heart of the town, the unselfish Will Holland vacating his room for the men who were faithfully nursed, and cared for by our best and bravest. "Sunday morning, August 15th, was announced with the usual chime of bells, calling the worshipers to the place of prayer. That morning they gave out a brief warning sound, but met no glad response, and only a few devout hearts bowed in the sanctuary. Groups of men stood here and there on the comers of the streets, where one who felt assured of safety tried to assure others whose confidence was shaken. Each face looked into every other face it met. and every sound of joy and hope was hushed in eager questioning for news. The very air, which seemed so health-giving, was filled with a solemn awe, and dread un-named fear possessed every heart, lest in the death of the refugee, who had been buried in the darkness of the night before, the seeds of the 'yellow death' had been sown." Among those who had fled from Grenada was a beautiful young girl who was tenderly cared for at the home of Dr. McKie. She had seen father, mother, brothers, sister, and lover all die. After some days of stony grief she laid her poor young head upon the pillow where it soon rested in death. Kind hands tended her to the last. A minister, one of those noble men to whom the sacred name seemed most fit, was by her side when she asked for him, and at her burial, though it was night and a misty rain added to the danger and gloom, a reverent band of young men stood with heads uncovered to see her body committed to the grave. It was a fatal step for them—the exposure to air already being poisoned, though they knew it not. Other deaths followed, but still there were no cases among our townspeople, though the existence of several cases of supposed bilious fever caused many citizens to leave town. Some read aright the warnings that came from day to day. Late one evening the sky was lighted by a yellow glare, and with a gust of wind a peculiar and horrible odor was wafted through the town. A bonfire had been made of the clothing and bedding of the Grenada fever patients. Many at that moment felt their hearts die within them. "The pestilence is coming upon us," they murmured, but under their breath, for the sentiment of the town was against them. We know now, that refusing to quarantine was our first mistake; burning the bedding was.the second, and as the smoke rolled in black volumes over the town, death lurked in every wave. As Sher-wood Bonner says: "Alt our prophets were Cassandras. You remember, it was her doom always to foresee calamity, but never to be able to arrest it, because her warnings were never believed." On the 31st of August Col. A. W. Goodrich, one of the best known citizens, who had been Mayor of the town many years, died after a short illness, attended, the medical men said, by "suspicious circumstances." What this might mean even the boldest scarce dared express. The very name of yellow fever was forbidden, and by some called "bilious derangement." He was buried two hours after death. Again quoting Sherwood Bonner:

"Everyone seemed eager to explain this quick burial, so opposed to all our ideas of Christian sepulture, by any cause but the right one. Again and again it was repeated that fever could not come to our high level, our pure atmosphere. We made a jest of fear; but a tremulous electric excitement agitated every heart, and was communicated from one to another People collected in little groups on the streets, or at the gate of friends, chatting together nervously, and telling the latest rumor or bit of news. Someone said, scoffingly, "Colonel Goodrich no more had yellow fever than Dr. Craig has it." It was Dr. Craig who attended Miss Lake, the young girl from Grenada, in her mortal illness. It was said he had taken cold the stormy night when she was buried, and had not been well since. It was little dreamed that eight weeks from that time he would just be able to creep from his bed. after a violent attack of the fever, saved by his indomitable will and the devoted care of his wife, whose beautiful spirit was a fit match for his own. "Sunday, the first day of September, was a bright, beautiful day. Some friends visiting us showed us a list of thirty-five names of those stricken down within the last twenty-four hours. 'Stricken down with what?' we cried. "It doesn't seem to be anything serious," was the answer. They all have a chill, more or less violent, followed by a little fever. It is one-tenth sickness and nine-tenths scare." "We were sitting out under the trees, I remember, and the birds were singing around us. The sun shone, the sky was blue, the breeze was pleasantly cool, and the flowers had never bloomed with such a wealth of color. The idea of pestilence here seemed something to smile at." But the number of cases increased to forty, fifty,'sixty, and death began to deal relentlessly. Hope gave way to terror. On the fourth day of September, yellow fever was declared epidemic in Holly Springs and the panic was complete. "Men, women and children struggled in one mighty effort at the flight from the presence of an unseen foe. Trunks were packed hastily with such articles as came nearest to hand. The streets leading to the depot were crowded; while every available vehicle was filled with baggage and human beings in one confused rush of frantic fear lest the outgoing train should leave them, and every moment of detention had in it the tick of death." The train was not allowed to stop here for fear of infecting the passengers from the South, and the march was therefore longer to a three-mile crossing. "There was hurried clasping of hands that never hoped to touch each other again on this side of the River; wild farewells were spoken; tender embraces and many a fervent 'God bless you' given between friends beloved. There were tears of anguish, tears of parting, tears of bitter bereavement and heart-breaking sorrow, until the fountain of tears seemed dry; and in their stead a paralysing terror reigned. The tenderest ties were sundered. Wives were hurried from the pale, cold forms of their husbands—hurried away in the despairing effort to save the dear little children. What a freight of mingled human emotions did that morning's train carry! While buggies, wagons—anything on wheels— hastened along loaded with those who for lack of money or other reasons could not get away by rail. I believe there is not a single instance where any of the sick said 'Stay.' The one effort, the one prayer, seemed to be that those untouched might escape while there was yet time."

So the town was left with the sick, the dying, the poor who could not leave, and the few who would not. Not a physician in town had ever seen a case of yellow fever before, and worked in blind ignorance; even one of them stayed and worked faithfully until taken himself. Of the first one hundred cases ten only survived. Within a few days doctors and nurses came from New Orleans, and later from Texas and other places. They threw themselves with ardor into their work, and even then the residents thought the worst was over, for they could not realize that the pestilence could rage here as it had done in the cities and in Grenada.

To many in the fated town, realization was slow in coming. There was a strangeness about it all that made them say "It is impossible." It seemed a nightmare from which they must awake. They looked upon the sunshine and the flowers which fairly glowed with color: you could not count the blooms. The night air was as deadly as a foul mine, and few escaped who were exposed to its fatal miasma. Dogs and cats, with a few devoted exceptions among the former, left the place. Even rats and mice ran away, and the mosquitoes, which for weeks had been almost like a cloud in the air, entirely disappeared. Every day seemed instinct with dread.

One who remained for many weeks by the side of stricken friends thus writes:
"Nothing upheld me in that maelstrom of anguish and unutterable gloom but the Everlasting Arms. My children were gone, perhaps carrying with them the seeds of the fatal poison. It seemed to me that if my heart could break it would have broken that morning, when I led them to take what I then felt was the last look upon their father's face; clasped them, as I believed, for the last time on earth in my own arms, committed them to the care of my covenant-keeping God. and gave them into the hands of my dear friends. Every nerve became a living pain; fear and anguish alternated between hope and faith, while in the loneli-ness and gloom I seemed that night to be staggering upon the edge of a world that was fast slipping away from under my feet' My husband was very ill—no human voice could comfort me—no human power uplift my fainting heart." Mrs. Craig was one of the few who remained well until the last, and her senses were fully alive to what was around her. She thus describes the fearful situation:

"Deep gloom gathered with the night, and seemed to be shutting us up in a vast prison-house of death. The face of the next morning looked drearily down upon me as 1 sat by the open window, where, through the long hours of a sleepless night, I had gazed into the heavens whose very stars seemed to have gone out. The morning's rays fell upon a pestilence-stricken town, The hurry and confusion of panic had ceased. There were no feet hurrying to and fro—only now and then someone could be seen, in anxious haste, in search of help or a physician, his speed increased by the sound of his own footsteps as it rang a hollow echo through the empty town. Every thoroughfare was silent; every store and shop and office and place of business was closed except one drugstore. Not a sound of traffic was heard save at the under-taker's—where death made the demand and the ghastly articles of exchange were coffins. Whole streets had not a dwelling open. The express agent and the telegraph operator were gone. The postmaster and assistants were prostrate with fever; some of the resident physicians were sick, and those on duty were utterly unable to attend all the stricken. We were without experienced nurses, without supplies; cut off from 'a terror-stricken world without, and awaiting in mute dismay the horrors from which we shuddered, yet which stared us in the face as though exulting over our impotence to withstand them."

In this hour of dreadful extremity, when they seemed drifting upon a sea of uncertainty and despair, a few brave men met and organized a Relief Committee, with W. J. L. Holland, one of the editors of the Holly Springs Reporter, as chairman. In the confusion of the panic, one telegram had been sent out appealing for help, which met a prompt response from the Howard Association of New Orleans, and, on September the 5th, doctors and nurses, a telegraph operator, druggist, and assistants arrived. A hospital was established in the courthouse, and this timely aid, with the supplies and words of sympathy which began to pour in from all quarters, began to inspire new hope. In all the land no niggard hand was found, and a nation's charity attested a nation's effort to succor the afflicted, and with the lesson thus taught came a clearer recognition of the generous impulse which always lavishes present help in time of need. To quote again from Sherwood Bonner:

"At the beginning of the epidemic, a band of noble spirits, for the most part young men. decided not to leave the town. These were not among the number of those who had relatives or near ties to keep them at their posts. But the cry of humanity was to them like a bugle call to action. Simply, reverently, they made up their minds to stay. I choke with tears as I write, for few indeed are left to tell the tale. Death took them, one by one, the very cream and flower of our town. Yet I do not believe that among them all one ever said, 'I am sorry that I did not go away.' There was sore need of them and their services, and they only worked the harder as their ranks grew thinner. They parted at night with hard hand-grasps that meant Good-bye,' and told over their number each morning with heavy hearts, as one after another dropped out of that noble roll-call. No act of service was too hard for them. One true hearted youth, scarcely out of boyhood, conveyed food in a wheelbarrow from house to house through the burning sun. He lived but one week." Daily the desolation deepened. In the streets there was no sound save perhaps the frantic clatter of a horse's hoof, as some one from the country rode in to implore the attendance of a doctor, or the rapid roll of the hearse wheels as a corpse, followed by no mourners, was borne to its grave. Very ghastly and shocking were some of the scenes enacted day by day in each house where heartless hirelings, here only for gain, reveled in the very presence of death. The fatality extended among those seeking refuge in the immediate country, and in some instances only a few nearest relatives were-present to turn the sod with their own hands.

Mrs. Craig writes:
"The plague had asserted itself throughout the entire town, and left absolute desolation in its track. There were no sounds of lamentation, for grief was beyond expression in voice or tears; no tolling of bells announced the lonely, unattended funerals, and a settled gloom seemed to have fallen upon every heart. At first there were a few friends who came at intervals to drop a word of cheer, but daily the number grew less; for a day one face was missing, then another, and the silence which followed where footsteps had been, told its own fearful story, until at length the town and its sufferers were entirely in the hands of strangers."

Many of these were indeed ministering angels, though there were some whose greed of gain overmastered the fear of God and man. Some offered as nurses only for money, and their patients suffered and died from sheer neglect, or worse, from gross mistreatment. Did space permit, it would be well to mention the names of those who stood so nobly by the side of stricken strangers, weeping tears of sympathy, when their skill no longer could avail, but it would be unjust not to hand down the names of a few to posterity. Prominent among those are Dr. Walter Baity and Dr. A. R. Gourrier, of New Orleans; Dr. R. M. Swearinger, of Texas, and Dr. J. W. Ross, of the TJ. S. Navy; Drs. Manning and Lewis, of Texas, who died during the first weeks. All these have the lasting gratitude of this people. In the hospital where black and white often lay side by side, the nurses were the Sisters of Charity from the local Roman Catholic School, Bethlehem Academy. Like angels of mercy, they hovered over the loathsome spot day and night, caring not who the patient might be if only his life could be spared. One by one these sisters fell until six of them, with the faithful priest. Father Oberti, lay dead. A suitable monument marks the sacred spot with their names and this inscription:
"The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep."


On the walls of a ward in the hospital a physician who had watched her fidelity inscribed this tribute to Sister Corinthia:

"She needs no Parian marble.
With white and ghastly head,
To tell the wanderers in the valley
The virtues of the dead!
Let the lily be her tombstone.
And the dewdrop. pure and white,
The epitaph the angels write
In the stillness of the night."

It can still be seen on the courthouse wall, and has been copied many times by sympathetic visitors.
"The world will never know all the horrors of this dreadful visitation which graced with the crown of martyrdom the fairest and best of a people whose labors and lives were given in the effort to save others. It only sees their characters in magnificent outline as they stood with sublime courage and dauntless self-sacrifice in the midst of dangers and terrors. Many of them were brave men, who had. 'mid dangers seen, pressed forward to the cannon's mouth; and there were timid, gentle women, whose heroism took its color from endurance, and whose lives received, through acquiescence in the divine will, a beauty and strength which they never had before.

"There were ministers of the Gospel here and elsewhere who went down to the very gates of death, fighting under the banner of the Prince of Peace, upon which is inscribed. "We will die to save!' What sublime words were those of the Baptist minister. Haddick, who fell at Grenada. In the silence of his chamber, as he weighed death against life, he wrote,
'I came home because I felt it to be my duty to be in the midst of my afflicted, suffering and dying flock; I leave the result with God.' It pleased the Lord to call him higher up, as He did also the Presbyterian minister at Grenada. Dr. McCampbell. After weeks of watching and praying with the sick, he fell an easy prey to the fever, and was driven by a drunken hearse-driver to his grave.' The crown and climax of suffering in Holly Springs seemed to have been reached in that home across whose threshold within one week Colonel Walter and his three sons were borne to return no more. H. W. Walter was distinguished throughout the State for his brilliant eloquence, his large humanity, and his generous hospitality. He stood high as a soldier, as a lawyer, as a gentleman, and as a Mason.

"It was no new thing for Colonel Walter to make sacrifices, it was but the outbursting of that daily spring of action which had made him, for forty years, the friend of every man in the community. His piercing eyes through all these years had glowed with all the fire and enthusiasm of youth, upon every scene of pleasure; his thrilling voice had often kindled new hope in the breasts of his companions. His willing hand was ever ready to bestow substantial aid wherever it was needed. There was never a scene of joy or sorrow where he was not found, rejoicing with those who rejoiced or weeping with those who wept. It is riot strange that we find in this closing scene the grandest act of his life, as with a kindly smile, a cheery word and sympathetic touch, he moved amid the sick and dying, from the richest to the poorest; and then lay down himself to die with, and for, tho people whom he loved," "Perhaps no one went down to his martyr-hero's grave with more to live for than Frank Walter, his oldest son. He was so joyous, so filled with all the pride and hope of manhood's first ambition; life's brimming chalice was just touching his eager lips, and how natural that he shrank from the death whose terrible form so suddenly rose before him I Yet he faced it unflinchingly. He heard the cry of the sick stranger, and visited him, not from ambition to hear his name noised abroad, not from a reckless disregard for his own life, which an older, more careworn life might have had, but from pure humanity."

One day a friend said to him: "You and Mr. P. should die right now, while your laurels are fresh. You will never be such heroes again."
He replied:
"I would rather be Frank Walter alive than a dead hero!" There are those living to-day who can attest how he constantly preferred and accepted as his post of duty that which lay nearest to the foe—how he supported and rested upon his own bosom the forms of friends who tossed mid the raging madness of the fever. It was a touching sight when the noble father was laid to rest by his two sons, while a third lay dying at home. A week later these young lives, with all their hopeful brightness, also passed from the earth and two coffins were lowered together beneath the sod. A pale sufferer gazed from a sick chamber upon the scene, the only visible mourner, and mingled with tears for the dead, prayers for the heart-broken, widowed mother, who, with her little girls and the youngest son, had been sent to another State.

About the same time that the Walters died two other young men were taken whose loss to the town and to the State was irreparable. The "Falconer Brothers," as the law firm was known, were united in a love for each other rarely seen among men. Howard Falconer, known and honored and beloved by every one, eminent for his studious habits and social attractions, was the first to make the sacrifice, to risk his life and surrender it upon the altar of benevolence, by administering to the com-fort and relieving the wants of strangers in distress.

Kinloch Falconer, the able and distinguished Secretary of State, had risen by gradations to this post of honor. He was the son of a prominent journalist, and after learning the printing business in his father's office, had been editor of the Holly Springs Reporter and Mayor of Holly Springs before beginning the practice of law. In 1868 he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Mississippi, though not allowed to take his seat. He left Jackson as soon as he heard of the illness of his venerated father, and his own life was the price of that filial devotion. On September 26th Mr. Holland's press dispatch read: "The situation is growing worse. The two hospitals are full, and it looks as though every man must go down. After being recruited five times the relief committee numbered one. Five hundred persons now lie stricken with the fever, and there arc yet five hundred more to take it; we pray for friends and frost." By the end of the first week in October the fever began to die out for want of victims. Now, for the first time, there were as many nurses as were needed. Great destitution prevailed; the convalescents being without clothing or bedding, and the demand for provisions hard to supply. Mr. Holland now stood almost alone amid the wreck through which he had thus far been spared, and in a letter to a friend thus describes the situation at that time:, "The clerks in all departments, one by one. have fallen; all have had the fever, almost half of them have died. Of the relief committee, I alone am left of the first and second body. It has been recruited seven times, and still there are only three who nave not had the fever and two of these are from New Orleans and acclimated. In one house, having twenty-seven inmates, all had the fever, eight died. In other families, there are none left save perhaps a lonely little orphan, whose tears would melt a heart of stone. In all this revel of disease and death it has been ours to witness some of the grandest examples of manly and womanly virtue possible to see. We have now but three or four citizens on duty, balance strangers."

But the end was not yet. The hero of the epidemic was yet to send one more telegram over the wires which had already quivered with so many messages of sorrow. No one but him-self ever knew the struggle that went on in that heart, so brave to the last, as on October 19th he sent the following message:

"To-day there are six new cases and one death. Your correspondent happens to be one of the new cases, after having struggled with 'Yellow Jack' from the beginning of the epidemic. He desires, through you, in the name of this people, to express our lasting gratitude to our friends in every part of the Union who have so generously and nobly contributed to us in so many ways."

With the same forgetfulness of self he continued to give directions for relief work until no longer conscious. On the morning of October 25th the first funeral notice that had appeared since the epidemic began announced:

"W. J. L. Holland, late chairman of the relief committee, departed this life at 2:30 a. M.; aged thirty-six years."

This young man, gentle, generous, popular, with everything to make life worth living, was a nephew of Commodore Maury, and was at the time of the epidemic editor of the Holly Springs Reporter. He took a place at once that no one else could fill. In that time of wild confusion and demoralization, his services were invaluable. It is no exaggeration to say that he saved the town from utter disaster. He never lost calmness or courage. He organized and disciplined his little band with exactness. He forgot nothing. The anxiety of the absent was remembered and relieved so far as letters and telegrams could do it.
The money which poured in was judiciously used. Those who had buried their dead were persuaded to leave.
"He died as he had lived; bravely, cheerfully, regretting not that he had given his life, though confessing that it was hard to die. Verily the thought of such a death makes godlike the poor human nature we are accustomed to abuse."

He is buried in a beautiful lot in our cemetery, Hill Crest, and on the same lot the Press of Mississippi erected a simple but handsome shaft inscribed with the names of the six editors who fell in this State with the fever.
They are: J. P. Allen, of the Meridian Gazette, at the time of his death editor of the Vicksburg Herald; Singleton Garrett, of the Canton Mail; O. V. Shearer, of the New Orleans Times, W. J. Adams, of the Enterprise-Courier, and Kinloch Falconer and W. J. L. Holland, of the Holly Springs Reporter, It was dedicated with appropriate ceremonies in June, 1880.

On November 1st the report went out:
"Four new cases, no deaths; heavy frost last night, and prospect of another to-night. The hospital was closed to-day. Many business houses are open."

Thus ended this chapter in the history of human woe. For eight weeks fourteen hundred souls struggled with the "yellow death," and three hundred and fifty graves tell who was the victor in the unequal strife. A heritage of sorrow fell upon Holly Springs, from which it has never recovered. A great gap in its citizenship tells that the places of those splendid young men who went to their death were never filled. But their names will live in story long after those who mourned them have forgotten the burning pestilence in the realms of light.

¹Helen Craft Anderson, the youngest child of Hugh Craft and Elisabeth Robinson Collier, was bora in Holly Springs, Miss. Her father was a Marylander by birth. On a stretch of land, known as "Craft's Neck," about four miles from Vienna, Md., there are a number of houses built by members of the Craft family, which bear the dates of erection on the chimneys. Up to 1780, twenty-years before Hugh Craft was born, the on old deeds, dated 1699. Hugh Craft was the owner of the fugitive slaves, William and Ellen Craft, who afterwards gained such notoriety as being among the first to escape from slavery. They went to Boston, where they were shielded from the law by Theodore Parker. They were extensively fitted out, and sent to London. Eng., where they became the proteges of Lord Brougham and Lady Byron, by whom they were well educated. They eventually drifted back to the South, after the war, and established there colored agricultural schools, the funds for which were mostly subscribed in Boston. generation. Being large and centrally located this building was frequently used as headquarters for the Federal officers in the War of Succession. At the time of Van Dorn's famous raid in December 1862, the Commandant of the post was domiciled there, though he was captured on the outskirts of town. The Federal officers gave their protection to the family during the frightful days of the retreat of Grant'sarmy, which followed this brilliant cavalry dash of the Confederates. Mr. Craft was one of the substantial citizens of Holly Springs. He was especially active in everything that pertained to the educational interests of his community. His wife being a woman of culture and refinement, their home was noted for its hospitality and for the abundance of books, flowers and music. The education of the youngest daughter, with that of Sherwood Bonner, author of Dialect Tales, was completed in 1866 under the direction of a daughter of Judge J. W. C. Watson, of Holly Springs. After teaching several years in the Huntsvilte (Ala.) Seminary, the subject of this sketch was married in.iSSo to William Albert Anderson. Her husband taught for forty consecutive years in Holly Springs and is now City Clerk and Tax Collector of that municipality. Mrs. Anderson is deeply interested in Sunday-school work, having seen twenty-six years of continuous service as principal of the primary department in the Presbyterian Sunday-schools of the town. She has also taken great interest in the work of her literary club, of which she is now Vice-President. She has devoted much time to collecting and preserving facts pertaining to the history of Holly Springs. There is a tradition that the stately brick mansion in which Mr. and Mrs. Anderson live, formerly known as Chalmers' Institute, was erected with the expectation that it would become one of the buildings of the University of Mississippi at the time that Holly Springs was a formidable competitor for the location of that institution.—Editor.-

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