Portrait of a Scientific Racist: Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi

5 THE BUSINESS OF RAISING COTTON

62 1. Stone to Willcox, January 10, 1902, WFWP; Historical Catalogue of the University of Mississippi , 1849–1909 (Nashville, TN: Marshall and Bruce, 1910), 228. The formal title of Stone’s degree was bachelor of laws. In March 1955, two months before his death, Stone was recognized as the oldest living alumnus of the law school in conjunction with the school’s centennial (Michael De L. Landon, The University of Mississippi School of Law: A Sesquicentennial History [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi for the University of Mississippi School of Law, 2006], 90). 2. Stone, “The Constitution of 1890,” 4. The Mississippi Bar has no record of Stone’s being admitted to membership (personal communication [e-mail] from Theresa S. Robinson, membership records administrator, June 24, 2005). 3. Purchase of lot on Blantonia Plantation from H[arriet] B. Theobald by Captain Stone and Ferguson Maury, January 27, 1866 (Deed book S, 478, WCCH). 5 THE BUSINESS OF RAISING COTTON Alfred Holt Stone read law in Judge Harris’s office for eighteen months before returning to the University of Mississippi, where he completed requirements for a law degree at the end of the 1890–91 session.1 Nevertheless, Stone did not practice law because he had something else on his mind— cotton.2 Stone’s father may have been the state auditor, but he was a speculator in Delta land too. Captain Stone’s career in real estate had begun in 1866 when he bought a lot in Greenville shortly after arriving in Mississippi.3 Within three years, he had leased Ararat Plantation on Deer Creek near Leland and started growing cotton. By 1874, Captain Stone moved his family to a new plantation, Sligo, which is where they lived when their house burned down two years later. It is unclear from surviving records whether Captain Stone was making much money, but it is clear that he was very active in leasing, buying, and selling real estate. By 1882, the family was situated on Camellia Plantation, a larger version of Ararat located at the same place. Although 63 THE BUSINESS OF RAISING COTTON 4. Various transactions recorded in deed books U (pp. 97, 490), E-2 (p. 272), F-2 (p. 517), G-2 (p. 484), M-2 (p. 135), and N-2 (p. 654), WCCH. W. W. Stone returned to the real estate business after his tenure as the state auditor (see letterhead of W. W. Stone’s letter to a state representative from Glen Allan, Mississippi, dated May 9, 1906, PFP [box 1, folder 9].) 5. Section 4 of township 18 north, range 6 west (Deed book G-3, 381, WCCH). 6. The intricate trail of transactions that allowed the Stones to develop Dunleith as a plantation can be found in the deed books for Washington County, notably books P-2 (p. 790), R-2 (p. 754), G-3 (pp. 381, 531), F-3 (pp. 410, 569), I-3 (pp. 30, 136), L-3 (p. 660), and M-3 (p. 541). Anne Lipscomb Webster reviewed the plat record for section 4 and found fifty-eight entries for that section alone between 1888 and 1913. 7. By the time Stone became the state tax commissioner in 1932, Dunleith had grown to 3,900 acres (Deed book 245, 71 [WCCH]). Hollyknowe was owned by William B. Swain, one of Captain Stone’s real estate partners (History of Mississippi: The Heart of the South [Spartanburg , SC: Reprint Co., 1978], 3: 76). See also deed book D-3, 430 for a transaction involving Ella Stone, Mr. Swain, and his mother, Harriett. 8. James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 43. Captain Stone’s election as state auditor in 1885 ended his direct involvement in growing cotton, he continued to speculate in Delta real estate.4 The end of Captain Stone’s career as a cotton grower marked a beginning for his son. On April 21, 1892, Walter Wilson Stone deeded Alfred Holt Stone a half interest in a section of land ten miles east of Greenville.5 The section was a valuable piece of property because the Greenville, Columbus, and Birmingham Railroad ran right through it. It was to become the nucleus for Dunleith Plantation, which Stone was to call home for more than forty years. Dunleith was not an established plantation when Captain Stone and his wife, Ella, started acquiring land for it in 1884. It...