Pearl Rivers

Eliza Jane Poitevent was born in Gainesville, Hancock County, in 1843 and took the pen name Pearl Rivers from the river near her home. Her poems ran in the New Orleans Daily Picayune from 1866, and its co-owner Alva Holbrook hired her as literary editor before they married in 1872. She became managing editor in 1880. In 1884 she was first president of the National Woman's Press Association, and in 1888 she helped found the New Orleans SPCA. She and her second husband, George Nicholson, died of influenza eleven days apart in 1896.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• INFINITY Science Center — 15 mi
  NASA's visitor center for Stennis Space Center, at the Mississippi welcome center near the Louisiana line, with a Saturn V booster outside and a story of five river towns that were moved.
• Crosby Arboretum — 24 mi
  A Mississippi State University arboretum in Picayune showing the plants of the Pearl River basin, with Fay Jones's Pinecote Pavilion among the pitcher plant savanna and pines.
• Ship Island and Fort Massachusetts — 24 mi
  A barrier island twelve miles off the Mississippi coast with a brick fort burned half-built in 1861, a Union prison camp, and the garrison post of the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard.
• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 28 mi
  The beachfront parking lot beside the Biloxi Lighthouse where state markers recall the 1959 and 1960 wade-ins that opened Mississippi's public beaches to Black residents.

More markers nearby

• 100 Men D.B.A. Hall — 1.9 mi
• St. Stanislaus College — 2.1 mi
• Old Shieldsboro — 2.1 mi
• Brown's Vineyard — 2.3 mi