Alphabet File page 292

W. A. seals, Varnado,  (Bill)

O. Silverstein.  (left country)

W. H. Slaydon

Warren Pierce

F. Tate

H. Q. Parker

Q. T. Walter, Varnadeo, La.

L. C. Mitchell, Lees Creek

H. Levy Holloway

W. W. Penton, McNiel, Miss

N. H. Tally, Tally, La.

M. Wheat, Poplarville

R. D. Fornea, Varnado, La.

Thomas & Mitchell, Warren * Thomas

Amacker & Harvey

Abrams & Abrams, Odell, Marion Co. Miss.

Dr. T. S. Connerly

W. A. Taylor

Hemp Magee

J. W. Valliant, Ophelia, La.

F. P. Amacker, Poplarville,

M. M. Penton, Lacey, Miss.

Sylvester L. Jarrell, Jr., Cinquapin

Lewis Jefferson, Spring Cottage, Miss

Wayne NcGahee

John Hickman

Mose Daniels & Ratliff, Varnado

Ed. Ratliff, Varnado, (sign for Adams)

J. W. Mizell, Sun, La.

Anderson Mill Co.

Tyner Jenkins, Sun, La.    (West of Brister) (sp)

 

Poitevent & Favre Lumber Co.  (Mention SCE 5 Sep 1903. pg 4).

Favre, Capt. Jos. A., (Pearlington) vice-president of the Poitevent and Favre Lumber Co. left this week for Progresso, Mexico, where he will spend several weeks looking after business matters. (SCE 12/10/1892)

 

 Hewit, Mr., of the firm of W.D. Wheelwright & Co., of New York, is spending a few days here in Pearlington and is the guest of Capt. John Poitevent.  (SCE 02/25/1893)

 

Poitevent, Messrs. T. and J. A., were on a big hunt in the woods around Pearlington during Christmas week.  It is believed they were very successful. (SCE 1-13-1894)

 

Poitevent & Favre;  The following vessels, consigned to the above, have entered Ship West port:  Br. Bark Tanjore, 916 tons, (?) Santos;  Br. Brig Rosella Smith, 400 tons, from Carthagena;  Br. Brig Ar (?), 314 tons, from Las Palmas.  (SCE, 1-28-1893)

 

Poitevent, Guittirez &.  Old places mentioned (booklet VF Hursey).

 

Poitevent, Capt. A. - John Peterman, Esq., of Osyke, Miss., intends to locate a box factory at Gainesville and it is learned that he has leased three acres of land on Pearl river near the warehouse, from Capt. A. Poitevent.  This enterprise will greatly benefit the town in more than one. (SCE 10/29/1892)

 

Poitevent, Elizabeth (Mrs. George Nicholson) aka Pearl Rivers.

 

  Eliza Jane Poitevent was born on March 11, 1849, in Pearlington, Hancock County, Mississippi, on the banks of the Pearl River.  Her father was Capt. J. W. Poitevent, a lumberman and steamship builder, descended from French Huguenots who made their way to America after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  On her mother's side came of sturdy old-American stock.

 

  Due to the ill health of Mrs. Poitevent,  Eliza Jane was virtually adopted by an aunt, Mrs. Leonard Kimball, who had no children.  Thus, although she was one of a large family, this way she came to have the unusually strong adult influence, opportunities for greater imaginative development, and the occasional loneliness that are the lot of an only child.  She grew up near her birthplace, the single white child on a vast ante-bellum plantation.

 

  Whimsical fantasies flitted through her mind as she played quietly by herself in the flower-bright yard of the "big house", or wandered through the beautiful country of pines and streams that surrounded her home.  Birds and animals became not merely friends, but possessed of such definite personalities that she could never in later life treat them with unconcern.  Even the commonest article of every-day life had their feelings and their rights in her eyes, and continued to have feelings and rights through the years.

 

   The child felt sorry for a broken plaything or a worn out glove.  The grown woman refused to throw away anything ­even a pencil stub or a scrap of paper - while on a journey lest such things be lonesome when abandoned in strange surroundings.  To her the story-book fairies and goblins must have seemed more real than to most children. 

 

  As a staid publisher she could, on occasion, revert to the mood of vanished days and tall stories of pixies and elves, half-believed, who lived in flowers or under the shade of moss-draped trees.

 

  Yet, dreams and fancies were only a part of her well­ rounded life.  She hunted for fairies and "doddles" with equal zest.  Hers was first-hand knowledge of nature. Broomstraw and pink and marigold burrs, "Spanish-needles" and "heart-leaves" were familiar friends, as well as the lilly and the rose.  Snails and crickets and caterpillars, "daddy-long-legs", red ants and the lowly toad, all the little creatures of the grasses and streams, were as well known as the dogs and horses that to her seemed as good as humans.

 

  She attended the Amite Female Seminary, Amite, Louisiana.

 

   She had been instructed in local grammar schools and at home.  The Seminary was a boarding school familiar to the times. Miss Poitevent did not particularly distinguish herself at the Seminary.  The change from an active outdoor life was by no means welcome.  Moreover, she was already absorbed in a new-found ability to write verse. 

 

  Her earliest poems had Been written at the age of 14.  During her years in the Seminary she was much more interested in exercising and developing her ability in this direction than in working very hard at set lessons. 

 

  "March Month" sounded her protest:

 

  What's the use of all this reading?

  Not a line is understood;

  I cannot keep my heart from heeding

  All the new sounds in the wood.

  Out upon you!  Grim old Gibbon,

  Striving hard to make me wise;

 Scowling at me from these pages;

  Fresher knowledge round me lies.

 

  An opportunity to practice clear and apt expression in prose seems to have been the main advantage gained in school.  She was graduated July 5, 1867.

 

  Free from hindrance, the young author turned more seriously to her work.  She had begun to use regularly the pen name "Pearl Rivers" as a tribute to her birthplace. Some of her earliest work was published in the "New York Journal" edited by the sympathetic Nathaniel P. Willis.

 

  Another encouraging friend was John W. Overall, himself a poet who had gained some recognition.  At this time he edited "The South" to which Pearl Rivers became a regular contributor.  The "New Orleans Times", the "New Orleans Daily Picayune" and occasionally a paper elsewhere accepted her work.

 

  While visiting her grandfather, Samuel Potter Russ, in New Orleans, Pearl Rivers became acquainted with Col. Alva Morris Holbrook, who at that time had been owner of the "Picayune" for about a year following the death of George Wilkins Kendall, last of the original founders of the paper.  The "Picayune" had published some of her poems, but Colonel Holbrook knew also of her ability to write prose. Shortly after Miss Poitevent had returned home she received a letter offering her the position of Literary Editor of the "Picayune" at $25 a week.

 

  Across the interval of more than a century it is still possible to get a glimpse of the black cloud of family disapproval that overshadowed this offer.  It was doubly unworthy in the sight of the Potievents.  Scarcely a Southern woman worked outside her home, and then only because of necessity.  Certainly no Southern lady of good family, with a father and brothers living, was expected to take an outside position, however dignified.  And never, as far as any of them knew, had a woman been attached to the regular staff of any Southern newspaper.  To contribute occasional verse, written at home was perfectly proper.  To work among men in an office - unthinkable!

 

To do the Poitevents justice, their anxieties about her safety in the city were founded on something much more substantial than mere high-flown notions.  New Orleans in the 1860's was a captive city, under the domination of Federal Bayonets.