Appalachian Community Histories – Barton, Marshall County: From Oak Grove to the Mosley Homestead and Civil War Legends
In the northwestern corner of Marshall County, Mississippi, near the Tennessee state line, lies the historic rural community of Barton. Situated approximately six miles north of Byhalia and eighteen miles from Holly Springs, the county seat, Barton developed as a small agricultural settlement during the nineteenth century. Although it never became a major commercial center, its history reflects the settlement of northern Mississippi, the disruptions of the Civil War, and the importance of family homesteads, churches, and rural communities that helped shape the region.
Originally associated with the name Oak Grove, the settlement appeared in nineteenth-century geographical records as a small postal community whose residents depended upon surrounding farms and nearby towns for trade and transportation. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Barton had a reported population of just forty-five residents, a modest figure that contrasted with the larger communities of Holly Springs and Byhalia.
Much of Barton’s recorded history survives through local newspaper accounts, family traditions, and the remains of nineteenth-century homesteads. Among these, the Mosley family residence became particularly important, preserving architectural features and stories associated with the community’s earliest settlers. A detailed investigation published in The South Reporter on September 8, 1988, brought renewed attention to the property and the families who had called Barton home for generations.
Early Settlement and the Formation of Barton
Long before Barton emerged as a rural settlement, the surrounding region formed part of the traditional homeland of the Chickasaw people. During the early nineteenth century, increasing pressure from the United States government and incoming settlers led to treaties that transferred Indigenous lands into federal control. The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek, signed in October 1832, opened much of northern Mississippi to land sales and ultimately contributed to the forced removal of the Chickasaw Nation from its ancestral territory.
Following these changes, settlers entered northern Mississippi from older agricultural regions of the South, particularly Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas. The availability of fertile farmland encouraged the growth of cotton cultivation, an industry heavily dependent upon enslaved African American labor. Farms and plantations expanded across the countryside as new roads, churches, and small trading communities developed to serve the growing population.
Marshall County was established on February 9, 1836, and named in honor of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. However, the land that would become Barton did not initially belong to Marshall County. During its earliest years, the settlement lay within DeSoto County, an arrangement that remained in place until a territorial adjustment in 1873 transferred part of DeSoto County into Marshall County.
According to Franklin Earl Vestal’s Marshall County Geology, published by the Mississippi State Geological Survey in 1954, the 1873 boundary changes occurred when Marshall County surrendered territory to assist in the formation of Tate County and received additional land from DeSoto County. The adjustment included portions of Townships 1 and 2 in Range 5 West, placing the Barton area within its modern county boundaries.
By that time, the community had already experienced several decades of settlement, including the establishment of family homesteads that would become important landmarks in local history.
The Mosley and Fleming Families
Among the families associated with Barton’s early development were the Mosleys and their relatives, the Flemings. Their settlement in the area during the middle of the nineteenth century was documented by Glenda Sloan, a lifelong Barton resident whose historical investigation appeared in The South Reporter in September 1988.
One of the most prominent early residents was Fleming Mosley, who came from the Laurens District of South Carolina, where he had served as a colonel in the militia. After relocating to northern Mississippi, Mosley established himself as a farmer and constructed a substantial family residence around 1854. The house stood within a grove of oak trees and became one of the community’s most recognizable landmarks.
The Fleming family also established a homestead near the Tennessee boundary during the same general period. Sloan described the two families as distant relatives whose properties reflected the close social and geographical connections between the farming communities of northern Mississippi and neighboring Shelby County, Tennessee.
Additional evidence of these connections appears in the National Register of Historic Places documentation for the John M. Fleming Home Place near Collierville, Tennessee. The historical nomination identifies John M. Fleming and his wife, Eliza Moseley, as natives of the Laurens District of South Carolina who joined other members of the Moseley family in moving westward during the nineteenth century. Fleming acquired land near the Mississippi border in September 1849, establishing an agricultural property that continued to develop during the decades that followed.
The federal census records examined for that nomination also reveal the dependence of the neighboring plantation economy upon slavery. In 1850, John M. Fleming’s agricultural property employed the forced labor of twenty-four enslaved people, thirteen males and eleven females. By 1860, the number had increased to twenty-eight. These records provide a fuller picture of the agricultural world in which families such as the Mosleys and Flemings established their homes, although the ownership and labor arrangements of the Barton Mosley property itself require separate examination of original census and estate records.
The story of these families therefore belongs to a broader history of westward migration, expanding agriculture, and the social divisions that characterized Mississippi before the Civil War.
The Mosley Homestead: Barton’s Oldest Landmark
The Mosley residence became the most extensively documented surviving landmark associated with Barton’s nineteenth-century settlement. Constructed around 1854, the large house incorporated building materials and architectural practices characteristic of the period, including wooden pegs and square nails.
According to Sloan’s 1988 investigation, the original residence contained three large bedrooms, a parlor, a dining room, and a kitchen connected to the rear of the structure. One of its more unusual features was a pair of staircases separated by a wall, providing different routes to the upstairs bedrooms.
The staircase on the right was accessible through the master bedroom and led to a private upstairs room occupied by one of Fleming Mosley’s daughters, who was blind. Family accounts described the arrangement as providing her with a greater sense of security and independence within the household.
These architectural details reflected the personal circumstances of the family rather than simply following conventional residential designs. The separate stairways, connected kitchen, and surviving interior features also became important elements in the stories told about the house during and after the Civil War.
By September 1988, the Mosley residence was described as the oldest surviving landmark in Barton. Its owners at that time, the Walker family, were undertaking reconstruction work intended to preserve the deteriorating structure. Surrounded by its historic oak grove, the house remained a visible connection to the settlement’s earliest decades, although its present condition has not been independently established.
Barton During the Civil War
The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 brought military activity into northern Mississippi and the neighboring communities of western Tennessee. Barton’s position near the state boundary placed it within a region crossed by Confederate and Union forces moving between Memphis, Collierville, Byhalia, and Holly Springs.
The nearby railroad network was particularly important to both armies, since control of transportation routes allowed troops and supplies to move across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee. Collierville became a strategic point along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, while roads leading south toward Byhalia provided routes for cavalry expeditions, military movements, and supply operations.
In October 1863, Confederate forces under Brigadier General James R. Chalmers attacked Union troops at Collierville, Tennessee, in an attempt to disrupt Federal control of the railroad. The attack occurred on October 11, and although Confederate forces initially gained ground, Union resistance and arriving reinforcements prevented them from capturing the position.
Chalmers subsequently withdrew toward Mississippi, where further fighting occurred around Byhalia and the surrounding countryside. Contemporary Confederate reports preserved in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion describe an engagement near Byhalia during which pursuing Union cavalry fought Confederate forces for several hours.
In a dispatch dated October 14, 1863, Chalmers reported that eleven Union cavalry regiments, accompanied by artillery, had pursued his command and that fighting had occurred near Byhalia before continuing toward the Tallahatchie River. These military records establish the wartime activity in the broader region, although they do not independently document a battle at the Mosley homestead.
For families living in rural communities such as Barton, the movement of soldiers through the countryside could be as disruptive as the battles themselves. Troops frequently depended upon local farms for provisions, horses, shelter, and other necessities, placing civilian households in difficult positions regardless of their political loyalties.
According to family correspondence described in Sloan’s 1988 article, Union soldiers occupied portions of the Mosley property during the conflict. The letters reportedly described Federal troops camping among the oak trees and within barns surrounding the residence, while family recollections suggested that soldiers demanded prepared meals and caused damage to the property.
Fleming Mosley’s daughters later recalled the difficulties experienced by their family, including soldiers taking control of the kitchen and requiring the household to provide food. Although the original letters have not been independently examined for this account, their description in the 1988 investigation preserves an important example of how the Civil War was remembered within a Barton family.
The Civil War Legends of the Mosley House
Beyond the documented military movements and family recollections, the Mosley homestead developed a collection of local legends associated with the Civil War. Some concerned the presence of wounded soldiers, while others described efforts to evade military conscription or protect property from passing troops.
One of the most persistent traditions held that the residence had served as a military hospital. According to Sloan, an upstairs bedroom contained darkened floorboards that some residents believed had been stained by the blood of wounded soldiers. The surrounding oak trees were also said to retain marks from bullets fired during the conflict.
However, Sloan acknowledged that no documentary evidence available to her established that the house had operated as a hospital. The discoloration of the floorboards had not been scientifically identified as blood, and the possibility that wounded soldiers received temporary shelter at the residence remained an interpretation rather than a proven event.
Another story concerned Fleming Mosley’s alleged resistance to Confederate conscription. Local tradition maintained that when Confederate soldiers arrived at the residence to enlist or compel his service, Mosley escaped through a concealed opening in an upstairs bedroom leading into a loft above the kitchen. According to the story, he avoided capture and remained outside Confederate military service, eventually leaving the community during the years following the war.
The details of this episode have not been established through contemporary military or government records. Nevertheless, the account reflects the tensions that wartime conscription could create within Southern households and the ways those experiences were preserved in family memory.
A separate legend involved damage to one of the residence’s bedroom doors. One explanation claimed that a Union officer had concealed a horse inside the house to prevent Confederate soldiers from stealing it, leaving marks where the animal repeatedly struck the door. Another account, attributed to a former owner, maintained that the damage had been caused by hunting dogs kept indoors to protect them from hostile neighbors.
The competing stories illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing historical events from traditions passed between generations. While the physical marks described in 1988 may have existed, the precise circumstances that produced them remain uncertain.
Together, these accounts made the Mosley homestead more than an architectural landmark. The house became a place where the experiences of war, family hardship, and local storytelling remained intertwined long after the soldiers had departed.
Churches and Religious Life in Barton
Religion occupied an important place in the development of rural communities throughout Marshall County, where churches often served as centers for worship, social gatherings, and community activities. Barton followed this pattern, with Methodist and Baptist congregations becoming part of its local history.
The Marshall County church history identifies Barton United Methodist Church, formerly known as Oakgrove Methodist Church, as having been founded in 1867. The earlier name preserves another connection to the Oak Grove identity associated with the settlement before Barton became its established name.
The county’s historical church records also identify a Barton Baptist Church, reflecting the presence of more than one Protestant denomination within the community.
A separate account in the county church history describes an early Union Church associated with Barton, where members of different Protestant denominations could gather in the same building. Such arrangements were common in sparsely populated settlements, particularly when individual congregations lacked the resources to construct separate meetinghouses or retain ministers who could conduct weekly services.
The account reproduces information from a deed dated September 15, 1860, in which J. F. Kimball and his wife, Frances Kimball, conveyed two acres for religious use. Trustees were named for Primitive Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian groups, illustrating the cooperative arrangements that could develop among churches in rural Mississippi. The deed was reportedly recorded in Marshall County Deed Book Y, page 258, although the land description and its stated proximity to Barton require further verification against the original record.
Over time, churches helped maintain the community’s identity even as transportation, postal service, and economic activity became increasingly concentrated in larger towns.
From Oak Grove to Barton: Postal Service and Community Growth
The community’s changing name and postal records provide another window into its nineteenth-century development. Marshall County historical compilations identify Barton as having originally been known as Oak Grove, a name that remained associated with local religious institutions even after Barton became the recognized community designation.
A compilation of federal postal records by William S. Parks identifies an Oak Grove post office in the wider area in 1860, with Oliver F. Eddins appointed postmaster on November 23 of that year. However, the precise relationship between that recorded post office and the later Barton settlement requires further investigation, particularly because county boundaries changed during the nineteenth century.
The Barton post office itself is generally recorded as having begun operations in 1884, serving a small rural population near the Tennessee border. Historical compilations differ slightly on its closing date, with some placing the end of service in 1905 and others in 1906. Original Post Office Department appointment and location records would be necessary to resolve that discrepancy.
The existence of a post office gave Barton a formal place within the region’s communication network, allowing residents to exchange letters, receive newspapers, conduct business correspondence, and maintain connections with relatives living elsewhere.
Transportation remained closely tied to neighboring Byhalia, which served as the nearest railroad station. With no major railroad directly through the settlement, Barton depended upon roads connecting its farms and households with nearby commercial centers.
Dunbar Rowland’s 1907 historical encyclopedia of Mississippi described Barton as a small postal hamlet in the extreme northwestern portion of Marshall County. The entry placed it approximately eighteen miles from Holly Springs and six miles north of Byhalia, with a recorded population of forty-five in 1900.
Although small, Barton represented the kind of rural settlement that remained important to Mississippi’s agricultural landscape. Its residents formed part of a network of farmers, churches, and neighboring communities whose economic and social connections extended across county and state boundaries.
Bennett Hill Griffin: From Barton to American Aviation
Among the individuals connected to Barton was Bennett Hill Griffin, an aviator and aviation administrator whose career eventually carried him far beyond the small Mississippi community where he was born.
Griffin was born in Barton on September 22, 1895, to John B. and Georgia Short Griffin. His family relocated to Oklahoma around 1900, where he grew up and eventually pursued an education that led him into military aviation.
After graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1917, Griffin entered the United States Army during the First World War and received flight training. Following the conflict, he became involved in aviation businesses, flight instruction, and the rapidly developing world of commercial flying.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Griffin participated in several ambitious aviation endeavors. He competed in the 1927 Dole Air Race, attempted to establish a sustained-flight endurance record in 1930, and joined fellow aviator Jimmy Mattern in a 1932 attempt to fly around the world.
The 1932 flight included a rapid Atlantic crossing, but the attempt ended after their aircraft crashed in Siberia. Griffin continued working in aviation afterward, eventually returning to military service during the Second World War.
In the years following that conflict, he assumed administrative responsibilities within the expanding American aviation system. His career included work associated with the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and he later became director of Washington National Airport, retiring in 1959.
Griffin died on April 26, 1978, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His life provides an unusual connection between the agricultural communities of nineteenth-century northern Mississippi and the development of modern American aviation.
Barton in the Twentieth Century
By the twentieth century, Barton remained a small community whose historical identity was closely associated with its churches, agricultural land, and longstanding families. Although the settlement had never approached the population or commercial importance of larger towns, its history continued through the people who lived there and the places they preserved.
In September 1988, the local Chamber of Commerce recognized Barton as part of a community recognition project. The occasion encouraged renewed interest in the settlement’s past and provided the setting for Glenda Sloan’s investigation of the Mosley homestead.
As a lifelong resident of Barton, Sloan approached the subject through a combination of local knowledge, family traditions, and historical research. Her article documented the property’s construction, the families associated with its earliest years, and the Civil War stories that had developed around the residence.
The investigation was particularly significant because it recorded the house during a period of reconstruction, when the Walker family was attempting to preserve its historic character. Without such accounts, many of the details concerning the residence’s interior arrangement and the traditions associated with it might have remained largely confined to local memory.
The wider history of Barton remains less extensively documented than that of Marshall County’s larger communities. Census schedules, property deeds, church registers, postal records, and family correspondence offer opportunities for further investigation, particularly into the experiences of ordinary residents whose names seldom appeared in published county histories.
Remembering the History of Barton
Barton’s story illustrates how much historical significance can be found within a small rural community. Its development followed the opening of northern Mississippi to nineteenth-century settlement, while its farms and households reflected the agricultural economy that transformed the region before the Civil War.
The Mosley and Fleming families provide some of the most detailed surviving accounts of those early years, connecting the settlement to migration from South Carolina, the growth of agricultural properties, and the military activity that crossed the Tennessee and Mississippi border during the 1860s. The Mosley homestead, in particular, became a place where architecture and family memory preserved elements of a community’s past that might otherwise have disappeared.
The establishment of churches, the operation of a rural post office, and the emergence of individuals such as Bennett Hill Griffin demonstrate that Barton’s history extended beyond its best-known homestead. Even with a population of only a few dozen residents at the turn of the twentieth century, the community maintained connections to larger economic, religious, and political developments.
Today, the surviving historical accounts offer a foundation for understanding Barton, although the present condition of its oldest structures and several details of its earliest history still require further investigation.
Like many small communities whose stories are scattered across old newspapers, family papers, and government records, Barton reminds us that local history is not measured solely by population or prominence. It is also preserved in the lives of families, the development of churches, the records of forgotten institutions, and the memories attached to places that once served as the center of everyday life.
Sources & Further Reading
Sloan, Glenda. “Mosley Home Oldest Landmark Left in Community.” The South Reporter, September 8, 1988. https://www.msgw.org/marshall/locales/mosley.php
Rowland, Dunbar, ed. Mississippi: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons, Arranged in Cyclopedic Form. Vol. 1. Atlanta: Southern Historical Publishing Association, 1907. https://books.google.com/books?id=TCUVAAAAYAAJ
Vestal, Franklin Earl. Marshall County Geology. Bulletin 78. Jackson: Mississippi State Geological Survey, 1954. https://www.mdeq.ms.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Bulletin-78.pdf
Everett, Dianna. “Griffin, Bennett Hill (1895–1978).” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society, January 15, 2010. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=GR031
Hopkins, John Linn. “John M. Fleming Home Place.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Tennessee Historical Commission, 1990. National Park Service. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/5b10546d-0924-4de9-91b4-7953ff258b7a/
U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, vol. 30, pt. 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890. https://civilwar.com/official-record/914-chickamauga-part-ii/196989-756-series-i-volume-xxx-ii-serial-51-chickamauga-part-ii.html
Marshall County MSGenWeb. “Cities/Towns.” Historical locality and postal history compilation. https://msgw.org/marshall/locales/cities.php
Marshall County MSGenWeb. “Historic Places.” Historical properties and buildings of Marshall County, Mississippi. https://msgw.org/marshall/locales/historic.php
Marshall County MSGenWeb. “Marshall County Churches.” Historical churches, congregations, and religious records. https://msgw.org/marshall/church/churches.php
Parks, William S. “Post Offices and Postmasters in Marshall County in 1860.” Marshall County MSGenWeb. https://msgw.org/marshall/locales/po1860.php
U.S. Post Office Department. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M841. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
U.S. Post Office Department. Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M1126. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. DeSoto County Tax Rolls. Series 1202. Mississippi Digital Archives. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/osa/s1202/desoto
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Marshall County Tax Rolls. Series 1202. Mississippi Digital Archives. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/osa/s1202/marshall
Clayton, A. M. Centennial Address on the History of Marshall County, Delivered at Holly Springs, Mississippi, August 12, 1876. Washington, DC: R. P. Polkinhorn, 1880. https://msgw.org/marshall/locales/1876history.php
Rand McNally and Company. Railroad Commissioner’s Map of Mississippi. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1888. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/98688503/
Rand McNally and Company. Rand, McNally & Co.’s Sectional Map of Mississippi. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1894. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/79691686/
U.S. Congress. “A Distinguished Oklahoman.” Remarks of Representative Victor Wickersham concerning Bennett Hill Griffin, May 18, 1954. Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1954. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1954-pt5/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1954-pt5-13.pdf
Grivno, Max. “Antebellum Mississippi.” Mississippi History Now, July 2015. Mississippi Historical Society. https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/antebellum-mississippi
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Research guide to United States federal population schedules and related historical census collections. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
Marshall County Genealogical Society. “Marshall County Genealogical Society Collections Available at the Marshall County Library.” Marshall County MSGenWeb. https://www.msgw.org/marshall/address.php
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Research.” Historical manuscripts, newspapers, land records, maps, and archival collections. https://www.mdah.ms.gov/research
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Chickasaw Cession Land Office Record Books, 1834–1846.” Manuscript collection Z/2077. https://finding.mdah.ms.gov/manuscripts/z2077000
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Barton, Mississippi, preserves a history that stretches from its earliest farming families and the Mosley homestead to the Civil War traditions that continue to surround the community. I hope this article encourages readers to explore the records, photographs, and family memories that can help preserve the history of this small Marshall County settlement.