James Richard Welch died on 6 September 1879 at the age of 62.
Like most of his Jones County contemporaries of modest means, he
left no will. Fortunately, his son-in-law Prentice M. Bynum was
literate and, having once served as clerk in the Ellisville
courthouse, knew a fair amount about the law. Prentice
petitioned the court to be appointed administrator of the
estate. As part of his duties, he compiled a list of all heirs.
That list, which I’ll return to later, provides a useful vantage
point from which to examine the political stances taken by
ordinary families in Jones County, Mississippi, a county that
gained notoriety during the Civil War for its rebellion against
Confederate authority. Early in the nineteenth century, Bryant
Welch, the father of James Richard Welch, followed the same
migration path to Mississippi Territory as did many other early
Piney Woods settlers. He left South Carolina and lived for
several years in Georgia where, around 1817, James R. Welch was
born. The family’s first stop in Mi