Reuben Kemper

Reuben Kemper's West Florida adventure began as a debt quarrel. He and his brothers Nathan and Samuel had managed a store for Senator John Smith of Ohio, and when it failed Smith tried in 1804 to evict them over roughly 4,800 pesos Reuben owed. The brothers resisted, raided Spanish territory for cattle and slaves, and in August carried a declaration of independence and a flag across the line. Spanish militia seized Nathan and Samuel in their beds in Mississippi, and a raiding party freed them. One historian of the episode calls it border raiding, not rebellion.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty Site — 18 mi
  A National Historic Landmark in rural Noxubee County where the Choctaw Nation signed away its last Mississippi land on September 27, 1830.
• Mount Zion Methodist Church — 20 mi
  The Black church in Longdale burned by the Klan on June 16, 1964, rebuilt by its congregation, and the place Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had gone to visit when they were murdered.
• Nanih Waiya — 20 mi
  The Mother Mound of the Choctaw in Winston County, a sacred origin place returned to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians in 2008.
• Old Neshoba County Jail — 27 mi
  The 1955 jail in downtown Philadelphia where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were held on June 21, 1964, hours before they were murdered.

More markers nearby

• John C. Stennis — steps away
• DeKalb — 0.6 mi
• Gen. Sam Dale — 14 mi
• Ross Alexander Collins — 22 mi