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 Washington, Territory Capital

The following account of Washington as it was in 1805 is taken from Claiborne's Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, pages 258-260:

"The town of Washington, six miles east of Natchez, in a rich, elevated and picturesque country, was then the seat of government. The land office, the Surveyor Generals office, the office of the Commissioners of Claims, the Courts of the United States, were all there. In the immediate vicinity was Fort Dearborn and a permanent cantonment of the United States troops. The high officials of the Territory made it their residence, and many gentlemen of fortune, attracted by its advantages, went there to reside. There were three large hotels, and the academical department of Jefferson College, inaugurated by Governor Claiborne, was in successful operation. The society was highly cultured and refined.

The conflicting land titles had drawn a crowd of lawyers, generally young men of fine attainments and brilliant talents. The medical profession was equally well represented, at the head of which was Dr. Daniel Rawlings, a native of Calvert County, Maryland, a man of high moral character arid exalted patriotism, eminent in his profession, and who, as a vigorous writer and acute reasoner, had no superior and few equals. The immigration from Maryland, chiefly from Calvert, Prince George and Montgomery counties consisted, for the most part, of educated and wealthy planters the Covingtons, Graysons, Chews, Calvits, Wilkinsons, Freelands, Wailes, Bowies, and Magruders; and the Winstons, Dangerfields, and others from Virginia, who for a long time gave tone to the society of the Territorial capital.

It was a gay and fashionable place, compactly built for a mile or more from east to west, every hill in the neighborhood occupied by some gentleman's chateau. The presence of the military had its influence on society; punctilio and ceremony, parades and public entertainments were the features of the place. It was, of course, the haunt of politicians and office hunters: the center of political intrigue; the point to which all persons in pursuit of land or occupation first came. Was famous for its wine parties and dinners, usually enlivened by one or more duels directly afterward. Such was this now deserted and forlorn looking village, during Territorial organization.

In its forums there was more oratory, in its salons more wit and beauty than we have ever witnessed since, all now moldering, neglected and forgotten, in the desolate graveyard of the ancient capital."

Extinct Towns| AHGP Mississippi

Footnotes:
1. The fate of the town of Washington, which was a station on the old Natchez Trace, illustrates this point. Although the town can hardly be spoken of as extinct, it now retains only a fragment of its former greatness, the buildings of Jefferson College and a few other houses being the only structures left out of the large number of imposing edifices of former years.

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

 

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