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Boardman, Aleck Dixon, Henry Devlin, Francis Barrett
Boardman, Aleck, judge United States district court for Louisiana, was born Dec. 10, 1839, in Yazoo City, Miss. He was educated in the Kentucky military college. He served throughout the war as an officer in the confederate army from Manassas to Appomattox. He began to practice law in 1866; and settled in Louisiana. He was a representative from Louisiana to the forty-second congress to fill a vacancy; and was judge of the state district court for one term. Since 1881 he has been judge of the United States district court for the western district of Louisiana for life term; and resides in Shreveport, La.
[Source: Progressive Americans of the Twentieth Century:By The Progressive Publishing Co.; Publ. 1910; Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack.]
From: Vernon Clipper (Lamar County, AL), Sept 5, 1879 - Transcribed and submitted by Veneta McKinney
THE DIXON AFFAIRS
SPECIAL TO THE VICKSBURG (MISS) COM.
Yazoo City, August 20 - HENRY DIXON, who was shot by JAS. A. BARKSDALE, yesterday, died at four o'clock last evening. The following are the particulars of the affair:
HENRY DIXON was coming down the east side of Main street, about half past nine o'clock yesterday morning, and when he reached Housman's Saloon, Barksdale walked to the middle of the street, from the west side, with a double-barrel shot gun in his hands and hailed him. Dixon turned and saw his antagonist for the first time. he (Dixon) clapped his right hand to his pistol and Barksdale at the same time threw his gun to his shoulder and fired. Dixon turned just as Barksdale's gun was discharged and received four buckshot in the back. Dixon then ran into the hall, and turned and fired five shots at Barksdale, but without effect. At his third or fourth shot Barksdale fired his second shot, missing Dixon. The smoke was so dense in the stair way that the combatants were unable to see each other. Dixon bled internally and died about half past four o'clock last evening.
The cause of the difficulty was Dixon's abuse of Barksdale, who is the Democratic nominee for Chancery Clerk. The nature of the abuse did not only extend to Barksdale, but to his friends and relatives, and was extremely vile.
Barksdale will have a preliminary examination tomorrow. Mayor J. H. Holt and J. C. Prewett, Esq. have been retained to defend him.
[Vernon CLipper Sept 5, 1879 - Submitted by Veneta McKinney]
We may never know what prompted Georgina's father, John Michael Barrett, in 1836 to bring his family from London, England, where he was a barrister, to America. Georgina's older brother, Michael, was already living in Canada, and that is where they first went. However, within six months the family traveled to Natchez, Mississippi, where they lived until the father's death in 1844. At that point, Michael and his brother Robert moved back to Canada and shortly afterwards, Georgina, her mother, and her brother William moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi - and the reason for this move is equally unknown. Georgina was at this time nineteen, her brother seventeen, and their mother fifty.
Georgina began to record the details of her life in her journals in 1852. By this time she was twenty-seven and married to James Devlin, "South Carolinian," and had two children, a son named William, age four one a daughter named Julia, four months old. Another son and daughter, Frances and John, would be born within the next two years. Mr. Devlin, and she almost always referred to him in her diaries, was a cotton factor and had a store and his sons eventually helped him in the store.
With the onset of the Civil War, however, and especially after Union forces entered Yazoo County, their world was turned upside down. Soldiers entered their yard and frightened Georgina enough that she and the children ran and hid in the woods. And most traumatic of all, her brother William, who had married and had two children, was "shot through the bowels" by Union soldiers. The economy was devastated, and after Mr. Devlin's store burned, in 1868, the family moved to Winona, Mississippi, to start anew. They lived there for just eleven years, until 1879, but during that period there were many changes in the family. First William and then Julia married, and Julia moved back to Yazoo City. Georgina's aged mother, who had lived with them in both Yazoo City and Winona, died in 1876, Mr. Devlin died in 1878. and her son William, who also lived in Winona, died in 1879, leaving his wife and two children.
At this point, with no family left in Winona, Georgina moved to Yazoo City to live with her daughter Julia and her husband, Col. I. N. Gilruth. He had been a Union soldier during the war, and was thus a "carpetbagger," but he was very successful in business and eventually was quite wealthy, owning a cotton warehouse and several plantations.
Georgina, having sold the home in Winona, as well as her husband's store, eventually was the owner of several small rental houses in Yazoo City. She proved a good businesswoman, supporting herself with the income from these properties. As the years passed, her diaries are full of concerns for her children, grandchildren, and her great grandchildren; her aches and pains and the medication she took for them; and her interest in the spiritual philosophies of the day. In her diaries, she told of events of the lawless reconstruction years, seeing Haley's Comet, and riding in her son-in-law's new "large automobile"
By the time she died, in 1914 she had lived a life of eighty-nine years years that saw tremendous changes in society. She recorded that life diligently in her diaries for over sixty years, and it is amazing that these records are available for us today.
[Submitted by Kay Jones]
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