(Locals remember Susie Lee Horton as Mrs. Lamar Chamberlain, one of our well-known and well-loved former teachers in the Grenada School System. Miss Horton graduated from Grenada High School and attended Grenada College for three years before it closed then finished her college education at MSCW. Trude Chamberlain, JRHS Class of 1963 and George Chamberlain, JRHS Class of 1965 are the children of Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain. The 1925 winning essay of eighth grade student, Susie Lee Horton, will be presented in three parts.)
Grenada Sentinel
Friday, June 19, 1925
Toward the close of the 1924-25 session of the Grenada City Schools, a prize was offered to the pupil in the eighth grade of the elementary schools who wrote the best paper on “The History of Grenada.” Sixty-five pupils entered the contest, and many interesting and well-written compositions were handed in. The teachers at the school selected from the sixty-five papers the fourteen best and turned them over to Mr. W.M. Mitchell, a Grenada attorney who is perhaps as familiar as anyone else with the history of the town, for final judging. Out of fourteen, Mr. Mitchell was asked to pick the best three. The three which he decided best met all the requirements of the contest were: first, Susie Lee Horton; second, Billy Chapuis; third, William Williams.
Mr. Mitchell paid very high tribute to the paper by Edna Jackson, stating that it displayed an originality of treatment and freshness of style that should be encouraged and developed for the promise it gave. He said that it could not be classed among the best three because it did not meet the requirements in some respects as well as the others but that it did deserve honorable mention.
The paper by Susie Lee Horton, young daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L.P. Horton, selected as the best, is reproduced here within The Sentinel.
History of Grenada
In the early part of the past century Grenada was still a wilderness. Most of the people in this section of the country were Indians, though there were a few white people scattered among them. In 1820 a committee of the American Board of Foreign Missions concluded to send four men as missionaries to the Indians in North Mississippi. They came from Salem, Massachusetts, making most of the long journey in wagons, but when they reached the high water district they used rough barges. They landed finally near the present site of the town of Grenada, but only one of them really settled in the town proper. Their names were John Smith, Calvin Cushman, Elijah Bardwell and William Hooper. John Smith with his wife and four daughters helped organize the town of Pittsburg which afterwards became part of Grenada.
The United States and the Choctaw Indians signed a treaty known as the “Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty,” under the terms of which an Indian girl by the name of Peggy Trihan located a reservation on what is now the west side of the town of Grenada. Later Franklin Plummer, a Whig, headed a company that traded for this reservation and founded a town called Pittsburg. Smith was one of this company and kept a hotel in the new town. His oldest daughter, Harriett, married another member of the company, James Sims, who was a merchant. Her father gave them the lot where the Methodist Church now stands and the original deed to this property, issued in Salem, is now in the possession of their daughter, Mrs. M.M. Ransom, who lives in Jackson, Miss.
(To be continued)
