Calviton Plantation



Overview

Location

Calviton was in Jefferson County on the north side of Coles Creek about three miles north west of Greenville, MS (now extinct). It adjoined Woodlawn Plantation MS. Good maps of this area are at the County Highway Maps at the following link: http://www.gomdot.com. The plantation was at T9N-R1W, and probably covered all of section 47. After viewing the previous map, find the same land with a map search at www.google.com. Look at the hybrid view to see the fields and forests. The plantation land today would be on the south side of Frazier Road near Johnson Road.

 

The land that this plantation was on as well as other land owned by Thomas Calvit (Calviton's founder) and land of his relatives is shown on the original land survey at: http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/SurveySearch/Survey_Detail.asp?dmid=74216&Index=5&QryID=62314%2E13&DetailTab=3

From this survey, it appears that Calviton may have also have been in section 46.

 

The original land survey of T9N-R1W is at the following link. http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/SurveySearch/Survey_Detail.asp?dmid=74204&Index=7&QryID=34.402

From this survey, it appears that some of the Calviton land was also in section 10.

 

 

Date Constructed/ Founded

About 1800

Associated Surnames

Calvit, Hunt, Wood

Historical notes

Calviton was an approximately 1,050 acre plantation owned by Thomas Calvit. He bought this and other land in the area in about 1800. Mr. Calvit donated the land that the town of Rodney, MS was built on. After his death, the plantation was eventually purchased by David Hunt who had been married to Thomas' daughter Mary Ann. David gave the plantation to the widow of his son Abijah and her second husband Edgar C. Wood. They raised David's grandchildren by his son Abijah there.

 

Calviton had what David Hunt's son Dunbar described as a small frame house. He stated that the house was moved to another location after the Civil War for a tenant farmer to live in. Dunbar was probably comparing the Calviton house to the Woodlawn Plantation house. If this is ture, then the house on Calviton would have probably been about the same size as one that an absentee plantation owner would have constructed for a plantation manager to live in - only slightly more elegant because it was lived in by the plantation owner in this case. A link to a photo of a possibly similar house is at: http://www.crt.state.la.us/hp/nhl/search_results.asp?search_type=property%5Ftype&value=Plantation+House&pageno=24 In this case it would have been lived in by the Thomas Calvit family and then by David Hunt's son Abijah's widow (Mary Agnes Walton) and their children and Mary's second husband Edgar Wood.

 

The slave houses were most likely laid out in a couple of rows behind this house with maybe a barn, chicken house, smoke house, and the other usual plantation out buildings off to the sides.

 

David Hunt's home plantation Woodlawn Plantation MS was right next door to Calviton. Since Calviton eventually passed from the Calvit family into the Hunt family, this plantation has the cemetery where some of the slaves, David Hunt, his first wife Mary Ann Calvit, and his second wife Ann Ferguson were buried.

 

In the first decade of the 1800s the third Vice President of the U.S., Aaron Burr, was arrested for treason near the mouth of Cole's Creek where it empties into the MS River. According to David Hunt's son Dunbar, David told him that Burr was brought to Thomas Calvit's small frame house on Calviton Plantation at the time of the arrest. Dunbar went on to write that the small house was relocated to another part of Calviton after the Civil War for a black tenant farmer to live in.

Associated Slave Workplaces


Associated Free Persons


Associated Enslaved Persons

*From the Will of Thomas Calvit (Thomas died in 1820): Maria, Maria’s brother Jacob, boy Ruben, young Lonz, Bill, Jabez, Jabez’s wife Chanty, and Fanny the daughter of Kitty

*From the 1860 Slave Schedule, Edgar Wood had 88 slaves on Calviton Plantation.

 

Research Leads and Plantation Records


Miscellaneous Information


References

*The Hunt Family of Jefferson County, by Andy-McMillion. http://jeffersoncountyms.org/hunt_family.htm

*"Early Settlers of Mississippi," by Walter Lowrie, Southern Historical Press, Inc. 1986.

*Linda Durr Rudd , “1860 Jefferson County Slave Schedule – Mississippi,” anglefire, n.d., (3 Nov 2005) (Note – the census transcription says Edgar G. Wood – but this is possibly some sort of error along the way – and it should possibly read Edgar C. Wood.) http://www.angelfire.com/folk/gljmr/1860JeffersonS.html

*Thomas Watson, "The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson" p.450, D. Appleton & Co., NY, 1903, http://books.google.com/books?id=wJPcf0pQGlwC&pg=PA1&dq=%22The+Life+and+Times+of+Thomas+Jefferson%22


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