Bruinsburg, Mississippi

Bruinsburg, Mississippi
Ghost town
1986 USGS map of St. Joseph quadrangle showing location of Bruinsburg
Bruinsburg Location of Bruinsburg Show map of Mississippi Bruinsburg Bruinsburg (the United States) Show map of the United States
Coordinates: 31°56′33″N 91°09′26″W / 31.94250°N 91.15722°W / 31.94250; -91.15722
Country	United States
State	Mississippi
County	Claiborne
Elevation	24 m (79 ft)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
GNIS feature ID	691732[1]

Bruinsburg is an extinct settlement in Claiborne County, Mississippi, United States.^[1] Founded when the Natchez District was part of West Florida, the settlement was one of the end points of the Natchez Trace land route from Nashville to the lower Mississippi River valley.

It was located on the south bank of Bayou Pierre, 3.0 mi (4.8 km) east of the Mississippi River. The town's port, Bruinsburg Landing, was located directly on the Mississippi River, just south of the mouth of the Bayou Pierre.

Once an important commercial and military location, nothing remains today of the village or its port.^[2]

Bruinsburg is named for Peter Bryan Bruin, who emigrated from Ireland to Virginia in 1756, and later fought as a lieutenant during the American Revolution. Following the war, Bruin's father received 1,200 acres (490 ha) of land in Mississippi in a grant from Don Diego de Gardoqui, a Spanish minister who controlled what was then Spanish West Florida. Peter Bruin's family, along with 12 other families, moved to the Natchez District in 1778. The Bruins built their residence atop an Indian mound near the confluence of Bayou Pierre and the Mississippi River.^[3] The land grant required the settlers to survey the land, clear trees, build cabins, and plant crops. The settlers were soon growing corn, cotton, tobacco, indigo, fruits and vegetables. Bruin's settlement was "most northern settlement of the district at that time."^[3] In 1794 Bruin signed contracts arranging for a sawmill to be constructed at Bayou Pierre by four hired slaves: "Stephen, Ben, Ben (mulatto), and Peter."^[4] There had previously been a gristmill at the location.^[4]

The community was a Mississippi River port, and future U.S. President Andrew Jackson set up a trading post there during the 1790s.^[2] Bruinsburg was where Jackson worked as a slave trader, receiving coffles sent down the Natchez Trace from Nashville, selling in both the Natchez District and forwarding some people on to New Orleans when the time and price were right.^[5] A resident of Rodney, Mississippi, publishing in the 1850s, wrote that in those early days, Jackson "often in company with Bruin, Price, Crane, Freeland, Harmon and others, would engage in running races, wrestling and all those manly exercises common to new countries."^[6]

According to a history published in the Port Gibson Reveille newspaper in 1890, "A tiny village grew up [at Bruinsburg] containing several stores, a tavern, &c., and the place became a lively trading point for the interior country."^[7] After the southern lands near the Mississippi River became American possessions, Bruin was appointed a judge. In 1807, former Vice-President Aaron Burr, who at the time was wanted on a charge of treason, visited Bruin while fleeing federal agents. A traveler of 1808 reported that Bruin had recently sold "Bruinsbury [sic]...together with a claim to about three thousand acres of the surrounding land to Messrs. Evans and Overaker of Natchez, reserving to himself his house, offices and garden. It is a mile below the mouth of bayau Pierre, the banks of which being low and swampy, and always annually overflowed in the spring, he projected the intended town of Bruinsbury, where there was a tolerably high bank and a good landing which has only been productive of a cotton gin, a tavern, and an overseer's house for Mr. Evans' plantation, exclusive of the judge's own dwelling house, and it will probably never now become a town notwithstanding many town lots were purchased, as Mr. Evans means to plant all the unappropriated lots, preferring the produce in cotton to the produce in houses."^[8][9]

There was a cotton gin and farmland at Bruinsburg in 1822, when two boatmen stopped there on the way down from Cincinnati. One of the boatmen recorded in his journal, "...after some enquiry we got lodging with one Mr. Foot who appeared to have the charge of a cotton gin owned by Evans at a settlement called Bruinsburg. Foot informed me that Judge Bruins the former owner of the farm had laid out considerable of a town here & sold the lots at auction but the purchasers neglecting to enter their claims it returned back to the proprietor who sold it to the present owner & purchased a farm adjacent. Met three Boats going up the Buyo [bayou] loaded with various kinds of provision such as, flour, lard, butter, corn, venison, potatoes, pork, &c."^[10] One "R Brasher...quite hearty & rugged" lived "near Bruinsburgh at the mouth of Buyo Pierre..." at that time.^[11]

In 1841, Rice C. Ballard was the trustee selling the 2,300-acre Bruinsburg plantation in Claiborne County and the enslaved people who worked the land in order "to pay three promissory notes" that were owed Rowan & Harris, a major slave-trading firm in Natchez.^[12] The land owners at that time were Robert C. Evans, Thomas L. Evans, and Anna C. Evans.^[13] Enslaved residents of Bruinsburg Plantation in 1841 were 90 older children, teens, and adults (Jim Kelly, Nathan, Peter David, Buky, Condorus, Joe, Tom Kelly, Green, Dave, George B, Henry Jeff, Simeon Brown, Jim, Jacob, John Doyle, Isaac, Adam, John B, Nelson, Ralph, George, Aaron Carter, Grandison, Peter Sterne, Grandison, Reason, Washington, Bill Cole, Gaunay, Bill Gray, John Goslin, Jerry, Tom, Joe, Charlotte, Anny, Dinah, Caroline B, Nancy, Betsey, Nelly, Mary, Mary Ann, Hannah, Daphen, Silvey, Anna, Lucy, Melinda, Mary W, Rachael W, Caroline, Beckey, Ann J, Rachael, Ellen, Nancy, Viney, Margaret, Eliza, Ann Mott, Mary J. Jefferson, Beverly, Bill, Milton, Anthony, Lize, Thornton, Peyton, Matthew, Wilson, Daniel, John Smith, Thos Hall, Henry J, Henry P, W. Duckett, George W, Madison N, John, Alfred, Critty, Susan, Henry, Mary B, Emeline B, Peggy N, Sophia, Rachael N, and Kate) and 23 children eight years old and younger.^[13]

By 1848 it was noted in a river guide for steamboat people as only a "small place, on the lower side of Bayou Pierre."^[14] According to the 1890 Port Gibson history, Bruinsburg had "relapsed into a semi-wilderness long before the civil war."^[7]

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According to Henry Watkins Allen, the Confederate governor of Louisiana, at the time of the civil war, Bruinsburg was more plantation than settlement. He commented, "All estates in the South have names given them, for the convenience of marking cotton bales; also, I suppose, from a feeling of pride in the landowners, being a remnant of Anglo-Saxon customs, Bruinsburg belonged to the Evans' estate, a family whose ancestor had not been undistinguished in the war of 1814."^[15]

Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant was planning a massive assault on the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi. After having failed to land his army at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, he arrived on April 29, 1863, at Disharoon's Plantation in Louisiana, about 5 mi (8.0 km) north of Bruinsburg on the opposite bank of the Mississippi River. Grant made a plan to land his troops at Rodney, Mississippi, about 12 mi (19 km) downstream, until late that night, an escaped slave told Grant about the much nearer port of Bruinsburg, which had an excellent steamboat landing, and a good road ascending the bluffs east of the river.

The following day, 17,000 Union soldiers began landing at Bruinsburg, marking the beginning of the Battle of Port Gibson, part of the larger Vicksburg Campaign. Because river traffic had diminished through the war, when the soldiers arrived at Bruinsburg the port was nearly deserted, and the sole witness to the invasion was a farmer who appeared too confused to flee. The port proved to have a good solid bank, and space for many boats. It was the largest amphibious operation in American military history until the Allied invasion of Normandy.

When this was accomplished I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since. Vicksburg was not yet taken it is true...but, I was on dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy.

— Ulysses S. Grant, ^[16]: 105

The soldiers moved east along the dusty wagon trails from Bruinsburg, and then rested under the trees of the nearby Windsor Plantation. That evening, they began their march north.

There was still a boat landing and a post office at Bruinsburg circa 1913.^[17] The former town and its landing are now located on private property. A historic plaque commemorating Bruinsburg is located on Church Street in Port Gibson.^{[2][18][19][20]}

Eudora Welty wrote about the place in Some Notes on River Country, first published in 1944: "Two miles beyond, at the end of a dim jungle track where you can walk, is the river, immensely wide and vacant, its bluff occupied sometimes by a casual camp of fishermen under the willow trees, where dirty children playing about and nets drying have a look of timeless roaming and poverty and sameness....Go till you find the hazy shore where the Bayou Pierre, dividing in two, reaches around the swamp to meet the river. It is a gray-green land, softly flowered, hung with stillness, Houseboats will be tied there among the cypresses under falls of long moss, all of a color. Aaron Burr's 'flotilla' tied up there, too, for this is Bruinsburg Landing, where the boats were seized one wild day of apprehension. Bruinsburg grew to be a rich, gay place in cotton days. It is almost as if a wand had turned a noisy cotton port into a handful of shanty boats. Yet Bruinsburg Landing has not vanished: it is this."^[21]

• Bagley, Barbara Allen (April 28, 1993) [1957-07-19]. "The story of Grant's March through Tensas re-told". Section II (150th Anniversary Edition: Tensas Parish Celebrates Sesquicentennial). The Tensas Gazette (Part 1 of 3). Vol. 140, no. 17. St. Joseph, Louisiana. p. 5. & "March" (Part 2 of 3). p. 12. & "March" (Part 3 of 3). p. 13. ISSN 2166-7896. LCCN sn87090131. OCLC 15152037.
• Klett, Guy S., ed. (1943). "A DIARY OF A JOURNEY: from Cincinnati to Natches in a flat boat about 60 feet long & eight Do wide built skow fashion, the loading furniture, owned by Graves & McAlpin, who were both along". Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society. 21 (4): 167–185. ISSN 0147-3735.
• Claiborne County (PDF). Source Material for Mississippi History, Volume XXXI. WPA Statewide Historical Research Project. 1938 – via mlc.lib.ms.us.