Mississippi Central R.R. Campaign

Before the war the Jones, McElwain and Company foundry cast iron railings that survive at Hillcrest Cemetery and in New Orleans, and it also made iron used on slave plantations. In 1861 Wallace McElwain turned it into an armory, and the Confederacy commissioned 20,000 rifles, 10,000 muskets and 5,000 rifles for Mississippi. No arms bearing its marks have been found, so it probably only repaired and converted weapons. Its equipment went to Macon, Georgia. Union Major Horace Witz made it a hospital in November 1862; Van Dorn burned it a month later. The ruins lay untouched until 1971.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum — 0.5 mi
  The house in Holly Springs where Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862, now a museum of African American history, art and culture.
• Rust College — 0.7 mi
  The first historically Black college founded in Mississippi, started in 1866 in a Holly Springs church by a formerly enslaved minister and a white Methodist clergyman.

More markers nearby

• Sherwood Bonner (McDowell) — steps away
• Airliewood — steps away
• Walthall Home — 0.4 mi
• R. L. Burnside — 0.7 mi