Lenoir Plantation records

The Hope Hull Lenoir (1786-1865) and Absalom Blanchard (1771-1854) families came to Marion County, Mississippi in the 1830s from Camden, South Carolina, via Alabama. Hope Lenoir and Absalom Blanchard were half-brothers; their mother Mary (d.1788) was the second wife of Hope’s father, Thomas Lenoir (1741-1816) who was born in Virginia of French Huguenot stock. The family name, LeNoir, was anglicized after the move to America. Hope Lenoir settled first at Cooter’s Bluff on the east side of the Pearl River and then moved to White Bluff near the home of his brother William Thomas (1785-1845) at Red Bluff.

Hope’s son, William Thomas Lenoir (1811-1860) and Absalom Blanchard’s son, William Adolphus Blanchard (1812-1862) attended LaGrange (Methodist) College in north Alabama. William Lenoir married Mary Elizabeth Blanchard (1810-1894), the daughter of Absalom Blanchard, in 1840. William and Mary Lenoir moved to Monroe County, Mississippi in 1845, having purchased 3,500 acres of the land owned by speculator Richard W. Anderson of Huntsville, Alabama, on the recommendation of Mary’s brother. William A. Blanchard had already moved to Columbus, Mississippi, and set up a law practice there. Absalom Blanchard purchased land in Monroe County from John and Martha Whitsitt of Sumter County, Alabama in 1842 and 1845 while his son also bought land from Anderson there in 1845 and 1855, with further purchases after his father’s death. The Lenoirs prospered in the cotton trade, expanding their holdings by buying land in 1855 from James Edward Harrison, who moved to Texas. According to family history, around 1847 William and Mary Lenoir began building what became the Lenoir Plantation house which still stands at Prairie, Mississippi. Building such a large house on their plantation was unusual since many planters preferred to build their grand homes in town while living in much more modest quarters on their land. The Lenoirs also owned over 5,000 acres on the Brazos River near Marlin, Falls County, Texas. William Lenoir was in Texas as early as 1837 and records show him buying property there through the 1850s. On the deaths of Absalom and William Blanchard, the Lenoirs inherited their Mississippi lands.

William and Mary Lenoir’s oldest surviving son, William Smith Lenoir, Sr. (1842-1911) attended the Greene Springs School for Boys in Alabama but left before completing his education to join the Confederate army. He did not serve very long before being discharged with some form of disability but he volunteered again and fought at Tupelo, Mississippi. He married Julia Paine (1851-1918) in 1868. Julia’s father, Sterling L. Paine (1824-1890), was a doctor who practiced in Aberdeen, Mississippi, from 1847 and took care of Confederate wounded during the Civil War. He was the half-brother of Bishop Robert Paine (1799-1882) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who was president of LaGrange College from1830 to1846 and then moved to Aberdeen. Robert Paine’s son, George Carter Paine (1855-1936), and grandson, Thomas Fite Paine (1887-1956), were lawyers for the Lenoir family. Another of William and Mary Lenoir’s sons, James Lawrence Lenoir (b.1844), also attended the Greene Springs School for Boys for a time. After entering the army, James was captured at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, imprisoned at Camp Douglas, Chicago, for a year before returning to fight in Georgia. He married Caroline Watkins Hoskins (b.1840), a first cousin of Julia Paine Lenoir, in 1865. Mary Lenoir ran the plantations after the deaths of her husband and brother, a task made more difficult because her sons were away in the army. The Lenoir home was raided by Union soldiers in 1864 but it was not burned. Family legend records that a youthful portrait of William S. Lenoir, Sr. and his two brothers was damaged by a Union bayonet or sword during the raid. After the war, planters William and James Lenoir between them held property in five counties in Mississippi and in Falls County, Texas. James’ son William T. Lenoir (1866-1920) moved to Texas in the 1890s to manage the family lands. It is possible James joined him after giving up his interest in most of the Mississippi properties to his brother William in exchange for cash and Texas land. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the cotton business was profitable once again but the Lenoir estates also produced hay and corn. In the 1910s the family sold some Texas land to pay for the refurbishment of the Lenoir Plantation house by Aberdeen builder Addison Brannin.

The children of William S. Lenoir, Sr., including William Smith Lenoir, Jr. (1875-1944), Ruth Paine Lenoir (1882-1967), Sterling Paine Lenoir (1887-1961), and Whitman Hill Lenoir (1891-1928), inherited Lenoir Plantation and some Texas land. Ruth and her older sister, Julia Paine Lenoir (1879-1897), attended the Industrial Institute and College in Columbus, Mississippi. William S., Jr. and Ruth travelled to Europe in 1900. Sterling went to Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi in 1905-1906, and then transferred to Mississippi A&M College, Starkville, in 1907 for his sophomore and junior years. Whitman attended Branham and Hughes School in Spring Hill, Tennessee from 1908 to1910, and later joined the army in World War I and trained as a pilot. He died in 1928 in Marlin, Texas, where he had gone to recover his failing health. Despite difficult economic conditions for planters like the Lenoirs during the 1930s and 1940s, they managed to hold on to most of their property. Ruth Lenoir noted in 1940 that her family still owned 1400 acres of Texas land and all of the original Monroe County land. Sterling P. Lenoir’s son, Whitman Hill Lenoir III (1929-2013), took over the Lenoir Plantation of just over 1000 acres in 1968 and farmed there until it was sold in 2000.