Jones County was Choctaw land before the treaties of Mount Dexter, Doak's Stand and Dancing Rabbit Creek passed it to the United States. The Amos Deason House stands in Ellisville, one of the county's two seats, on the corner of Deason and Anderson streets. It is a one-story frame Greek Revival house with siding notched to look like cut stone, and family tradition says sand was added to the paint to deepen the effect. A full-width gallery with a semi-octagonal bay fronts it. The Tallahala Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution owns it. Local accounts date it to 1845, while the National Register nomination dates its style to 1855 to 1860.
On October 5, 1863, Confederate Major Amos McLemore, sent to round up deserters, was shot dead inside. Most people believed Newton Knight fired. Knight and his company of about 125 men from Jones, Jasper, Covington and Smith counties hid in swamps and sheltered with sympathizers, and an enslaved woman named Rachel helped feed them.
The legend says the county seceded and set up a free state. The record is plainer. Enslaved people were only 12 percent of Jones County's population in 1860, the lowest share in Mississippi, and no document survives showing a formal secession. Colonel Robert Lowry's expedition in April 1864 hanged suspected deserters. After the war Knight lived with Rachel, and their descendants' community survives.
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