Historic Bemis

Bemis was designed to look as if it had grown over time. Albert Farwell Bemis, who graduated from M.I.T. in civil engineering in 1893, planned the town with college friends and the school's resources, laying out varied neighborhoods on wide, tree-lined streets rather than the sameness of most mill villages. His father, Judson Moss Bemis, wanted a mill in cotton country with its own gin on the Illinois Central line, so the company could buy from farmers and skip brokers' fees. Sixty to seventy-five worker houses rose north of the mill, in what became Old Bemis.

What the plaque says

Historic Bemis Founded in 1900 by Judson Moss Bemis, president of Bemis Brothers Bag Company. Bemis was a cotton mill town, planned by Albert Farwell Bemis and renowned architects Andrew Hepburn and Arthur Shurcliff. A self-contained town, Bemis consisted of a four-story mill, worker housing, church, auditorium-theater, schools, company store, YMCA, public bath house, park, post office, and other commercial facilities. In the 1940s, Bemis' population was approximately 4,000. In June 1968, the company began selling houses. The City of Jackson annexed Bemis on December 29, 1977. Three years later the Bemis Company sold the mill. Bemis ceased being a cotton mill town when the mill closed on August 1, 1991. On December 16, 1991, Bemis was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park — 9.0 mi
  The largest group of Middle Woodland mounds in the United States, about two thousand years old, with the second tallest mound in the country, a museum and paved trails.
• Tina Turner Museum at Flagg Grove School — 24 mi
  The one-room Black school Tina Turner attended in Nutbush, moved to Brownsville in 2012 and opened as a museum in 2014 beside Sleepy John Estes's house.

More markers nearby

• John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson — 2.0 mi
• Mabel Louise "Big Maybelle" Smith — 2.3 mi
• Mother Liberty CME Church — 2.4 mi
• Monroe Dunaway Anderson / Anderson, Clayton & Company — 2.7 mi