В центре Калумбуса обнаружен исторический дом, связанный с первым врачом города и афроамериканским предпринимателем

With Visit Columbus looking at possible historic markers for Columbus, Leadership Plaza would be a prime location. And for a multitude of reasons. The site has ties to one of Columbus’ founders, to a Chickasaw Indian Chief, to African American history, to a prominent early hotel and to the architectural history of early Columbus. One of the more interesting figures associated with the founding of Columbus was Dr. B.C. Barry. Dr. Barry was one of Columbus’ earliest settlers, opened a medical practice that received national recognition, played a role in the laying out of Columbus and became involved in statewide politics. But he died in 1825 at the young age of 36. The site of Columbus was first settled in the fall of 1817, but until mid-1819 the settlement was only a few scattered families. It was mid-June 1819 that increasing numbers of people began moving to the townsite at the Military Road’s Tombigbee ferry crossing. By the fall of 1819 the settlement had taken on the appearance of a town. Thinking the settlement’s location was in Alabama, it was the Alabama Legislature that first recognized the site as the Town of Columbus in two December 1819 legislative acts. Among those early arrivals in the summer of 1819 were B.C. Barry and his brother Richard. By 1821, B.C. had constructed a two-story frame building where the Varsity building is now located at Main and Fourth Street North. His doctor’s office was on the ground floor, and the Masonic Lodge occupied the second floor. Also in 1821, Richard had constructed a two-story frame hotel, which stood where the Gilmer Hotel was later built. Dr. B.C. Barry may have been a frontier doctor, but in the summer of 1821 a successful surgery he and Dr. Henderson performed on a patient at Barry’s Columbus office made national news. The account of the operation was first carried in The Mississippi State Gazette of Natchez on July 14, 1821, and it later appeared in newspapers from St. Louis to Boston. According to the Natchez paper: “Interesting Operation On the 25th of March … Doctors Henderson and Barry of Columbus performed an operation of Lithotomy (removal of kidney or Gall stones) on Tishee Mingo, Chief speaker of the Chickasaw nation. They extracted nineteen separate cohuti, weighing in the whole between two and three ounces. The patient is supposed to be in his 63rd year and was much emaciated by the disease and very far exhausted by the operation. His recovery has been rapid, and he at this time is considered out of danger. [communicated by a spectator.]” Barry’s community involvement was much more than just medicine. He was one of the commissioners who in 1821 laid out the plan for Columbus. The commissioners also served as the first governing body of Columbus. In addition Barry served on the board of trustees of Franklin Academy. In 1824 he was serving as secretary for the Eastern Board of Medical Censors for the State of Mississippi which was Mississippi’s physician’s and surgeon’s licensing board. Also in 1824, Barry was listed as a Mississippi presidential elector for Amdrew Jackson. In 1825 Barry ran for lieutenant governor of Mississippi. The election was in August, and Natchez newspapers on Aug. 15 announced that G.C. Brandon had been elected after defeating Barry by 1,884 votes and having carried seven counties to Barry’s five. On Aug. 17, 1825, Barry died of “Bilious fever, after an illness of seven weeks.” He was buried in the 1820s Tombigbee Graveyard, which was located on the northern part of the block on which Riverview is now located. The graves there were relocated to Friendship Cemetery in the mid-1800s. In 1824, Barry had started construction of a new house which was located on the southwest corner of Fifth Street South and College Street, which is now the location of Leadership Plaza. The house site was close to what was the early 1820s route of the Columbus-Pickensville Road. Barry was involved in a mail contract between Columbus and Tuscaloosa along that road at the time of his death. Claims filed in his estate for the building materials of his house provide a window into the early architectural history of Columbus and James Scott. Scott appears to be an early African American businessman who participated in the building of Columbus. He is a little-known figure from the time of Columbus’ founding. Other than he lived in Columbus and sold lumber during the mid-1820s, not much is known about him. However, the 1822 through 1825 tax records indicate that no whites were living in his household. As tax records otherwise indicated residents as being White or Slave, Scott would have been non-White and Native American or free Black. Early Choctaw and Chickasaw census records only show one Scott, a John Scott who was residing in south central Mississippi on the Leaf River. So James Scott would not have been non-white as a Native American. Existing evidence would indicate that James Scott was a Free Black man who in the mid-1820s was in the lumber business in Columbus. When Barry began the construction of a house in Columbus, probably in 1824, on the southwest corner of Fifth Street and Second Avenue South, he purchased his lumber from James Scott. The late Sam Kaye found an inventory of lumber and other building materials in Barry’s 1825 Monroe County probate file. Columbus, prior to 1830, was in Monroe County. He was then able as an architect to reconstruct the appearance of the house from the listed materials. It was a frame structure, 16 feet wide and 40 feet long, with 10-foot ceilings and eight windows. In 1835 Maj. Blewett moved to Columbus with his family and built his house on the corner where Dr. Barry’s house had been located. About 1838 he added on to the house, and it became “The Blewett House,” a popular hotel in Columbus in the mid-1800s. It is interesting that Leadership Plaza sits on the site where in 1824 one of Columbus’ earliest community leaders was building his house with lumber purchased from an African American businessman. Thanks to Carolyn Kaye for helping with research. Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected]. You can help your community Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community. You can help your community Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.