The Chatmon Family

The Mississippi Sheiks were built from a household. Henderson Chatmon, born in 1850, fathered at least thirteen children, and most learned an instrument. Around World War I seven sons formed a string band that played square dances and social gatherings around Bolton for Black and white audiences, with Lonnie, a superb dance fiddler, in the lead. Between 1930 and 1935 the Sheiks recorded country blues, waltzes, fox-trots, pop songs and hokum, including "Sitting on Top of the World," written by neighbor Walter Vincson. The marker stands on Texas Street, near where the family lived in 1900.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 14 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.
• Farish Street Historic District — 16 mi
  Jackson's Black business and cultural center, where Medgar Evers kept the NAACP office and furniture-store owners recorded the blues, now a quiet National Register district.
• Old Capitol Museum — 17 mi
  Mississippi's Greek Revival statehouse of 1839, where the legislature voted to secede, Hiram Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate and the 1890 constitution was written, now a free state museum.
• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum — 17 mi
  A state museum in downtown Jackson, opened in 2017 beside the Museum of Mississippi History, that tells the movement from 1945 to 1970 through the people who made it.

More markers nearby

• Champion's Hill — 0.3 mi
• McCoy Brothers — 6.8 mi
• Confederate Cemetery — 7.0 mi
• Clinton's Blues Legacy — 7.1 mi