Rodney, Mississippi

Rodney is a ghost town in Jefferson County, Mississippi, United States. Most of the buildings are gone, and the remaining structures are in various states of disrepair. The town floods regularly, and buildings have extensive flood damage. The Rodney History And Preservation Society is restoring Rodney Presbyterian Church. Damage to the church's facade from the American Civil War has been maintained as part of the historical preservation, including a replica cannonball embedded above the balcony windows. The Rodney Center Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The town is approximately 32 mi northeast of Natchez. It is currently about two miles inland from the Mississippi River. Between the town and the Mississippi are wetlands, including a lake that roughly follows the river's former course. Atop the loess bluffs behind Rodney are its cemetery and Confederate earthworks from the Civil War.

Rodney was a cultural center of the region in the early 1800s. In 1817, it was three votes away from becoming the capital of Mississippi. An important hybrid strain of cotton called Petit Gulf cotton and innovations to the cotton gin were developed in Rodney by Rush Nutt. Rodney was incorporated in 1828 and became the primary port for the surrounding area, with a population in the thousands. By 1860, the town was home to a variety of businesses, multiple newspapers, and Oakland College. During the Civil War, Confederate States Army cavalry captured the crew of a Union Army ship who were attending service in Rodney Presbyterian Church, resulting in the shelling of the city. After the war, the Mississippi River changed course, the railroad bypassed the area, and nearly all buildings burned down. The population declined until the town was disincorporated in 1930. By 2010, only "a hand full of people" were reported to live in Rodney.

History
Rodney's landing site was a key waypoint on Native American routes around the Mississippi Delta region. Native American artifacts have been unearthed between the Natchez Trace overland route and Rodney. The Natchez people likely used the area as a portage between the Mississippi River and White Apple Village.

The area was claimed by the French in January 1763 as "Petite Gulf" in contrast to Grand Gulf, Mississippi upriver. The name referred to an inlet, or narrow bend in the river, downstream from Bayou Pierre. After the French and Indian War, the region was ceded to Great Britain. The earliest known land grant was to a Mr. Campbell in 1772. Spain took control in 1781, and gave many land grants in West Florida to Anglo immigrants. American settlers, including the Nutt and Calvit families, moved into the area that would become Rodney. Spain lost control of the area in 1798, and on April 2, 1799, the Mississippi Territory was organized as a part of the United States. Three years later, Delaware magistrate Thomas Rodney was sent to Jefferson County as a Territorial Judge.

In 1807, Secretary of the Mississippi Territory Cowles Mead assembled a militia to capture Aaron Burr at Coles Creek, just south of Rodney. Burr was held at Thomas Calvit's home while under investigation for treason. Thomas Rodney presided over the Aaron Burr conspiracy trial and became Chief Justice of the Mississippi Territory. The town was renamed after him in 1814. Rodney was more significant to the region than Vicksburg or Natchez in the early 1800s. In 1817, the Mississippi Territory was being admitted as a state, and Rodney came three votes short of becoming the capital.

Growth


Rodney emerged as a thriving river port. The town was right on the water with the river running parallel to its major streets. It was the primary shipping location for a broad swath of Mississippi, especially for cotton. According to historian Keri Watson, enslaved dockworkers loaded "millions of pounds of cotton" onto steamboats bound for New Orleans. Due to a shortage of legal tender, cotton receipts became de facto currency. During this period, many of the coins that were available were Spanish picayunes and bits.

Rodney became a cultural center and incorporated in 1828. Rodney resident Rush Nutt demonstrated effective methods to power cotton gins with steam engines in 1830. The importation of different types of cotton seeds resulted in the breeding of a disease-resistant and easy-to-harvest hybrid that became known as Petit Gulf cotton. The development of Petit Gulf cotton and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 spurred a westward land rush. Many early settlers of Texas crossed through Rodney. Their wagons were poled across the water on flatboat ferries to St. Joseph, Louisiana. From 1820 to 1830, Rodney was the primary Mississippi River crossing for Americans migrating to the Southwest.

Several historical structures were built during this time including Rodney Presbyterian Church, U.S. president Zachary Taylor's plantation, and portions of Alcorn University, originally a Presbyterian college. The initial building that had been used for church services in town doubled as a tavern, serving alcohol outside of Sunday. In 1829, the first steps were taken to erect the red-brick Presbyterian church. One year later, the Presbyterian Oakland College was chartered. The college was built on 250 acre near the town. In its first few years, the college operated from six cottages north of Rodney. Construction began on the college's main building, the Greek-revival Oakland Memorial Chapel in 1838. Zachary Taylor's Cypress Grove Plantation, Nutt's Laurel Hill, and other plantation homes were built around Rodney during this period. Before the Civil War, the town had two major newspapers, The Southern Telegraph and Rodney Gazette. In 1836, the tagline of The Southern Telegraph was "He that will not reason, is a bigot; he that cannot, is a fool; and he that dare not, is a slave."

However, growth was already slowing by the 1840s when a Mississippi guidebook stated, "Its progress, some years ago, was very rapid, and much improvement was made, but it has been reputed to be very unhealthy, and, of late years, it has improved but very little." Still, it had several stores and "commission houses," a grist mill, a saw mill, and a church.

Civil War


During the Civil War, a group of Union Army soldiers were captured at Rodney's Presbyterian Church. Part of the Union's strategy during the Civil War was their plan to advance down the Mississippi River, dividing the Confederacy in half. The Union's USS Rattler was a side-wheel steamboat, retrofitted into a lightly armored warship. After the Union captured the fortress city of Vicksburg, they took control of river traffic on the Mississippi. Rattler was one of many ships tasked with maintaining this control by preventing Confederate crossings. Rattler was anchored in the river near Rodney's landing in September 1863. Much of the town, including the surviving red-brick church, was directly visible from the water at that time.

When Reverend Baker from the Red Lick Presbyterian Church traveled to Rodney via steamboat, he invited Rattler crew to come ashore and attend services in what was still Confederate territory. On Sunday, September 13, 1863, seventeen men departed from Rattler to attend the 11am service. Only a single crewmember brought a firearm to the service. Confederate cavalry surrounded the building when the volume of the music was loud enough to cover their approach. The troops entered the building and quickly captured the Northern soldiers with some assistance from members of the congregation.

When reports reached the ship, Rattler began to fire upon the town; a cannonball lodged into the church above the balcony window. The shelling ceased when Confederate soldiers threatened to execute their Union prisoners. Lt. Commander James A. Greer aboard the USS Benton anchored upstream near Natchez, admonished Rattler captain for acting as a civilian during a time of war. He issued orders to arrest any officer found "leaving his vessel to go on shore under any circumstances".

Decline


Rodney gradually went from a major port to a ghost town after the river changed course. In 1860, Rodney was home to banks, newspapers, schools, a lecture hall, Mississippi's first opera house, a hotel, and over 35 stores. At its peak, thousands of people resided in the town.



During the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi River began to change course. A sand bar developed upstream and pushed the river west. Rodney's former shipping channel transformed into a swamp. The Rodney Landing was relocated several miles away from the town itself. Many male residents who left the town during the war never returned, and many businesses that closed, never reopened. In 1869, a fire consumed most of the buildings in town; the Presbyterian church survived. In 1880, German and Irish immigrants arrived and opened new businesses. The town endured multiple yellow fever outbreaks. The railroad bypassed the town. The rail line ran through Jefferson County's seat of government, Fayette, and Rodney's landing was abandoned. There are no records of any boats using the landing after 1900. In 1930, Governor Theodore G. Bilbo disincorporated Rodney. By 1938, Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State described Rodney as "a ghost river town" that had died when the railroad passed it by.

It was in this state of decline that novelist Eudora Welty found the town. Rodney became a setting in Welty's works including the novella The Robber Bridegroom. Welty wrote, "The river had gone, three miles away, beyond sight and smell, beyond the dense trees. It came back only in flood." Photographer Marion Post Wolcott documented Rodney for the Farm Security Administration circa 1940 and described it as a "fantastic deserted town".

Extant structures


A ruined cemetery, several stores, a couple of churches, and few houses remain, in various states of disrepair. The red-brick Rodney Presbyterian Church, built in 1832, is a federal-style church and the oldest remaining building in Rodney. The Presbyterian church has fanlights above the doors similar to federal-style homes in Mississippi, like Rosalie Mansion. The church's interior was lit with oil lamps and heated with a pair of stoves. A slave gallery in the rear can be accessed by a side door leading into a narrow, winding staircase. It was built on on ground high enough to escape the town's regular flooding and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972. The Rodney History and Preservation Society purchased the church to conduct repairs. When the church was being restored, the hole created by Union cannonfire during the Civil War was retained and a replica cannonball was placed in the exterior wall. Atop the hill adjacent to the church is a cemetery with graves dating back over a century. It contains the graves of many early settlers from across the river in Louisiana who brought their dead to be buried on high ground above the floodplain.



Mt. Zion Baptist Church was built in 1851. It uses a combination of architectural styles. The pointed arches are Greek Revival, the pedimented gable is Gothic Revival, and the domed cupola is federal-style. Mt. Zion Baptist originally had a white congregation, became a predominantly African American church after the white population began to abandon the town, and is now completely abandoned. Changes in the course of the Mississippi River have resulted in repeated flooding. The structure shows clear signs of flood damage including water lines and rotted floors. The road sign pointing towards the church becomes visible in autumn when the leaves fall away from the vines overgrowing the signpost. Surviving members of the church formed the Greater Mount Zion church several miles away and outside of the flood zone.



Alston's Grocery, built circa 1840, is south of the Presbyterian Church at what was once the intersection of Commerce Street and Rodney Road. The Sacred Heart Catholic Church, was built in Rodney circa 1868, and the entire building was relocated to Grand Gulf Military State Park in 1983. The gable-front Masonic lodge was built circa 1890. Only a small handful of people still live in the area, and most of the remaining buildings are abandoned.

Geography
Rodney is located near the southern end of the Natchez Trace, a forest trail that stretches for hundreds of miles across North America. The Trace was started by animal migration along a geologic ridge line. The town is approximately 32 mi northeast of Natchez, south of Bayou Pierre (Mississippi), and about 2 miles inland from the east bank of the Mississippi River. It is situated on loess bluffs that are within the Mississippi River watershed and that were once adjacent to the river. Wetlands including a lake that roughly follows the river's old course are immediately west of the town. The town is at a relatively low elevation, and prone to seasonal flooding. When the river ran past Rodney, its position on the lower bluffs above steep river banks created an ideal position for a river landing. Civil War–era earthworks are still present atop the bluffs that rise above the town.

Notable people

 * James Cessor, member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1871 to 1877
 * Thomas Hinds Duggan, former member of the Texas Senate
 * Bill Foster, member of the Baseball Hall of Fame
 * Charles Pasquale Greco, Bishop of Alexandria in Louisiana from 1946 to 1973 and Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus from 1961 to 1987
 * Reuben C. Weddington, former member of the Arkansas House of Representatives
 * Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States built his Buena Vista plantation just south of Rodney.