Milliken's Bend, Louisiana

Milliken's Bend is an extinct settlement that was located along the Mississippi River in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States for about 100 years. In its heyday, the village had a boat landing, two streets of businesses, residences, churches, a four-room schoolhouse, a ferryman, and roads connecting it to Lake Providence, and Tallulah.

History

The settlement and the bend in the river were named for Major John Milliken. According to one source, Milliken was "an early settler supposed to have been a member of the pirate band of Captain Bunch" that gave its name to Bunch's Bend (or Bunches Bend). According to a family history, "He studied surveying when a young man, and going to Kentucky with others of the family found employment under the State government, and was rewarded by a grant of land in Louisiana, where he cleared a large and valuable plantation, which was called Milliken's Bend, it being on a loop of the Mississippi River. He owned many slaves, and acquired wealth." Milliken is believed to have made his settlement slightly after 1813. He eventually owned a vast area between Morancy Plantation and Cabin Teele Plantation. Millikin's Settlement was present on Mississippi River guide books intended for use by boat pilots as early as 1827. There is a record in the Madison Parish registers for a slave sale from L. Hyland to John Milliken on July 13, 1832.

Milliken's Bend had regular packet boat service by 1840. According to a history of Methodism in Mississippi, "Our colored missions were growing in importance and popularity, and about 1842 several wealthy planters in the vicinity of Milliken's Bend, in Madison Parish, La., became anxious to have regular ministerial services among their numerous colored people. Mr. obert D.Smith, who had married Miss Ann Mariah McClure in Vicksburg on the 11th of November, 1833, and who now had his home there, was selected for this important missionary field, as it was within twenty-five miles of his place of residence, so that he was not under the necessity of taking his family to the Swamp." Milliken's Bend hosted an official U.S. post office as of 1846. Epidemic cholera killed six people enslaved by Dr. Parker of Milliken's Bend in 1849. The cotton crop in the vicinity of Milliken's Bend suffered badly from the boll weevil in 1852. In 1855 the clerk of the Cavalier & Rathman store at Milliken's Bend got into a shootout with a local plantation overseer over a shipment of freight; the overseer was killed, the clerk was expected to survive his multiple gunshot wounds.

The local cotton plantations shipped 19,000 bales out of Milliken's Bend in 1857. The settlement supported a dry-goods store in 1857, and a French-language travel guide published 1859 described it as a colony of planters, a similar to the nearby Tompkin's Settlement, but more important. There was a schoolhouse "with four large and commodious rooms, play ground, &c" in Milliken's Bend in 1860. The town also supported a Catholic Church, two streets of businesses, and had several roads connecting it to nearby settlements. According to a history of Milliken's Bend written by a Louisiana Tech student in 1941, Milliken's Bend was also accessible from Eagle Bend by "the ferry, operated by old Ned Thompson, a Negro, that made regular trips across the River."

The town formally incorporated in 1861. During the American Civil War, William T. Sherman used Milliken's Bend as his base for "his ill-fated attempt to storm Chickasaw Bluffs and capture Vicksburg." John McClernand's XIII Corps camped at Milliken's Bend in March 1863. In 1863 Milliken's Bend was the site of the Battle of Milliken's Bend, when Confederate general Dick Taylor, son of former U.S. president Zachary Taylor, and H. E. McCulloch's Texas Division unsuccessfully attacked the post. There was a U.S. Army hospital there in 1864.

After the end of Reconstruction, Milliken's Bend was a departure point for black families migrating to Kansas. This group of mass migrants are today known as the Exodusters. According to P. B. S. Pinchback:

By 1880, the Mississippi was eroding the ground on which the town stood, so it was moved wholesale about a mile inland. This new location was reasonably called "New Bend". An Episcopal Church was added to the village. The New Bend, however, was flooded in 1882, and then bypassed by the railroads that were coming through, and 1910 New Bend supported only a small store and a boat landing, and those were gone by the end of the decade. There was a Rosenwald School in the vicinity of Milliken's Bend in the first half of the 20th century.

According to the Friends of the Vicksburg Campaign Trail, the site of Milliken's Bend's can be found at the end of Thomaston Road.

See also

* Goodrich's Landing
* Skipwith's Landing
* Gaines Landing
* Columbia, Arkansas
* Mississippi River in the American Civil War

References

External links

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{{coord, 32, 27, 21, N, 91, 06, 17, W, type:city_region:US-LA, display=title

Madison Parish, Louisiana
Louisiana in the American Civil War
Plantations in Louisiana
Louisiana populated places on the Mississippi River