Brodie S. Crump Family Papers

Brodie Strachan Crump was born in Morristown, Tennessee, on October 17, 1898, the only child of William Lewis Crump (1867-1944) and Lula Kenner Cain Crump (1872-1959). His parents were living in Helena, Arkansas, at the time but his mother had returned to her parents’ home for the birth. Brodie often spent his childhood vacations with his Cain grandparents. William Crump’s family moved from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in the 1830s to Marshall County, Mississippi to plant cotton. His father was Brodie Strachan Crump (1833-1878), who graduated from the University of Mississippi before serving in the Civil War, rising to the rank of major. Brodie married Helen Louisa Edmondson (1842-1871) in 1864. He worked with his brother William (1836-1878) in the mercantile business, becoming cashier of the Holly Springs Savings and Insurance Company and the first president of the Bank of Holly Springs. Brodie, William, and another brother, Edward Hull Crump (1838-1878) died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. Edward was the father of Edward Hull Crump (1874-1954), the mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, and U.S. congressman.

William and Lula Crump moved to Greenville, Mississippi, the year after Brodie was born. William was a cotton broker who became vice-president of the Greenville Compress Company established by planters and cotton men in 1918. He was involved in civic events, such as the Delta Fair in 1909, and local politics. He contested the first local postmaster election in 1913 but was best-known for his role as LeRoy Percy’s campaign manager in the races for the U.S. senate in 1910 and 1912 against James Vardaman. He was Senator Percy’s secretary in Washington in 1912 and remained close to the family after Percy’s defeat.

Brodie Crump attended Central School and Greenville High School. He enrolled at Mississippi A&M College in 1914 and graduated with a BS in 1917. He then obtained a BA from Cornell University in 1918 before joining the Marine Corps. Crump trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but the war ended before he could serve. After his return to Greenville, Crump joined his father’s small cotton buying business but had to clerk at a cotton compress for three years during the cotton slump of early twenties. He became a partner in the Crump Cotton Company with his father and around 1923 they bought the 50 acre Peacedale farm. Crump lived there with his parents and his first wife Mary Augusta Gee (1904-1992). A daughter, Mary Augusta Crump, was born in 1926. During the flood of 1927, which inundated the farm, Mary took their daughter back to live with her parents in Carrollton, Mississippi. Crump had little contact with his daughter after the marriage broke down. Mary married an Air Force officer, Samuel B. Adams, and it was not until the late 1950s that Crump re-established regular contact with Mary and her family.

In 1938 Crump married Louise Worthington Eskrigge (1903-1968), who had a son, Richard Eskrigge (1928-1995) from a previous marriage to William R. Smith. Louise had worked for the Delta Star newspaper since 1936 and then became woman’s editor for the Delta Democrat-Times established by Hodding Carter in 1938 until her retirement in 1965. Active in civic affairs, she founded the Greenville Junior Auxiliary in 1935, and was elected president of the national organization in 1941. She was also a supporter of local literary and drama organizations. Louise wrote two novels: Helen Templeton’s Daughter, 1952, and The Face of Fear, 1954.

The Crump family continued to live at Peacedale until their house burned down in 1944 when they moved back to town. By 1946 Crump had retired from the cotton business and was farming 250 acres. He had a small beef cattle herd but rented out much of the farm under the government cotton allotment scheme. He occasionally wrote Louise’s 'Delta Scene' column and in 1946 Carter offered him his own thrice-weekly column which Crump began writing in December. Originally called ‘Mostly Old Stuff’, later ‘Old Stuff’, the column focused on the activities of local people and related incidents both contemporary and historical about the town and Washington County until Crump’s retirement in 1980. Describing himself as an “old time southerner”, he held conservative ideas about politics and race which did not accord with those of Carter or his son. Crump won the Mississippi Press Association best original column award in 1956. He became an institution in Greenville, famous for driving his old truck around town reputedly at a top speed of 10 mph. He acted in local productions of the Twin City Theatre Guild and the Little Theater and had a small part in the 1956 movie ‘Baby Doll’ shot in Benoit, Mississippi. As a member of the Red Cross, he taught first aid classes to student nurses at King’s Daughters Hospital, and was a weather observer for many years. He loved dogs, playing the banjo, and was a proud Presbyterian.

Louise died in 1968 and the following year Crump married Mary Alice Adams (1929-1995). Mary was the daughter of teacher Everett Louis Adams and Ruth Riley Adams and had two sisters, Betty and Dorothy, and three brothers, Charles, William and Everett, Jr. She attended Kosciusko High School and trained at King’s Daughters Hospital Nursing School in Greenville and the Charity Hospital Nursing School in New Orleans, Louisiana, before qualifying as a registered nurse in 1950. Mary was living in Greenwood, Mississippi, when she married Crump and moved to Greenville. Crump sold most of his farm in the 1970s but continued to raise a few cattle on the land he retained until the end of the decade. On his 80th birthday the mayor of Greenville proclaimed ‘Brodie Crump Day’. He died on May 30, 1990, after being in declining health for some years.

Sources:

Brodie S. Crump family papers

Brodie S. Crump Oral History, 2/26/1974. Interviewed by Dr Orley B. Caudill. Center for Oral History and Cultural History, University of Southern Mississippi.



Baker, Lewis. The Percys of Mississippi: Politics and Literature in the New South, 1983, pp. 41, 52-53.

Halloran, Mary Helen Griffin. A Mississippi Family: The Griffins of Magnolia Terrace, Griffins Refuge, 2009, pp.228-230.

Lloyd , James B. (ed.) Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967.



Nowell, Princella W. A Closer Look: A History and Guide to The Greenville Cemetery, 2004, pp. 16-17.