Itawamba County Mississippi

Van Buren³⁷ The village of Van Buren was situated on a high bluff on the Tombigbee river. Its history begins with the year 1838, when Mr. Winfield Walker, a nephew of Gen. Winfield Scott, began a mercantile business at this place. The year following W. C. Thomas and Brother also began business there. The latter firm having removed from that place in 1842, Mr. Dines, from New York, engaged in business there two years later. Shortly afterwards other mercantile enterprises were established at Van Buren. These were owned by Jno. W. Lindsey, J. C. Ritchie, H. W. Bates, Elijah B. Harber, _____ Weaks, and E. Moore. The place reached its greatest prosperity about the year 1845-6. Dr. Bourland says, in writing of its inhabitants, "after that time, say '57 or '58, they went east and left it without a store or a business of any kind." Mr. R. F. Shannon sold goods there for several years (18571870) and then moved to Cardsville. This was the last business enterprise that flourished at old Van Buren. The Mobile and Ohio railroad caused the place to decay. Dr. Bourland writes that Jno. W. Lindsey began business at this place "with one hundred dollars and left there with thirty thousand." The site of old Van Buren is now in cultivation.

Wheeling The town of Wheeling was situated on the Tombigbee River, three miles below Van Buren. It was laid off into lots soon after the Chickasaw land sales. Jefferson Foster built a hotel there. The place had only two business houses, which belonged to Jowers and Holcomb and to R. P. Snow. The village disappeared in two or three years, its business being absorbed by the rising town of Van Buren, only three miles up the river.

West Fulton and Ironwood Bluff. The following extract, from a letter written by Mr. Eli Phillips, of Fulton, Miss., contains all the information the writer could get with reference to old West Fulton and Ironwood Bluff:

"Old West Fulton was on the west side of the Tombigbee river, two and one-fourth miles from Fulton, the county site, and Ironwood Bluff was about ten miles south of West Fulton and on the same river and same side. The places both went down about the close of the War Between the States. They were neither of them places of much note and both just died out. Col. D. N. Cayce once did a mercantile business at West Fulton and I clerked for him there. I am now seventy-six years old and cannot remember the events in the history of these places."

Extinct Towns| AHGP Mississippi

Footnotes:
37. The sketches of the extinct towns of Itawamba County are based upon information received from Dr. E. C. Bourland and Mr. R. F. Shannon, of Cardsville, Mississippi.

Source: The Mississippi Historical Commission Publications, Volume V, Edited by Franklin L. Riley,
Secretary, 1902.