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Note: This information was on the site when I adopted it. I am assuming the previous coordinator contributed the below.
Joseph Benjamin Lightsey was a farmer, writer, and civil war soldier.
He kept a diary and did other writings in later life. We will present some
excerpts of his writings here. His diary was handwritten and is in the Archives
of the State of Mississippi in Jackson. Other writings were published in
the Jasper County Review in Montrose.
Excerpts from the Diary of Joseph Benjamin Lightsey
His early entries in the diary in 1850 were mostly about his work. Some days they were simply comments like: "I planted corn" or "I hoed cotton" or "I pulled fodder". Several enteries where about his acquiring his meals: "I shot five squirels today" or "I caught two fish in the pond" Others were astute observations about life in Jasper County in the 1850's or lists of Lightsey family members and their relationships, births, marriages, deaths, etc. This makes it not only interesting, but a valuable source of Lightsey genealogy. Punctuation and spelling were left as he wrote.
25 December 1850: "This is Christmas day I therefore do nothing after dinner today I went in town to see people shooting and capering around ther was one fellow shot of his thumb with a pistole."
2 October 1851: "I knocked about today doing almost nothing brother David was married this evening to Margret A. Grayson my brother very sick and could scarce sit up enough to go throu the seremony...they had sent and brought Margret Mr. Robinson performed the ceremony...the wedding we went over the Grayhsons to the supper had a fine..byt neither the bride nor the groom wer ther to help to eat it."
21 December 1851: "We crossed Chickasaway river today met 9 travelers 15 miles." They reached Mobile, on 24 December and returned to Paulding on 2 January.
His year-end accounting in his diary showed that his yearly expenses had been $46.55. He "gained" $37.25 for the year.
25 June 1852: "We had a good rain last night still a raining this morning i went to the school house this morning but our master did not come...about 9 o'clock came home I went to work on the rice dam...until almost night then went up to my brother Davids to look at his crop and stay all night for the first time since he has been housekeepkin."
Later he wrote to his cousin Cornelius Lightsey in Georgia, dated 10 D=September 1853, "David and Margaret have on child, a daughter."
4 September 1852: "my birth day this day I am 21 years of age I picked cotton til dinner then went down to Pleasant Hill"
31 December 1852: The entry showed that his gain for the year was $39.45.
On 8 July 1853, he answered a letter from John A. Lightsey of Monticello,
Florida saying: "...this letter leaves us all well or nearly so as
we have had a tolerable dry spell until the 4th day of July we had a fine
rain. We have all of us fine crops this yhear there is 10 hands of us working
my father this year and we tend about 150 acres of land. My father has 13
negroes at this time 3 men and 5 women the rest are children. I am still
living with my father he gives me 10 doallars a month and the chance of
making a small crop for myself. i and Dick have 2 acres in cotton 2 incorn
and 1 in pinders which we tend of Saturday morning and mornigs before breakfast."
July 1853: He was digging a well for his brother, George. He got sick, but kept on digging.
28 August 1853: "I staid all night at my brother John's last night ... I saw a commet in the heavens."
4 September 1853: "I came down to my brother Johns late yesterday evening satid all night with Uncle David Lightsey ... Today is my 22nd birthday and I have nothing worth relating."
23 November 1853: "I went down some ten miles south of Paulding to a wedding at Mr. Ruben Hartsfields His daughter Ann was married to Thomas Harper Holder There was a tolerable good crowd at the wedding and they had a sumtuous fare after the dinner was over we got into a sing which lasted awhile then we got into a play which lasted until almost sundown a good many of us stayed and ate supper and after supper we played agian until about ten o'clock then scattered off I staid all night at R. P. Joneses no more"
9 December 1853: "this is the 6th anniversary of my journal. Today 6 years ago I commensed writing it I then thought that before this time I could certainly write something worth reading but I have measurably failed owing to a loack of talent and want of time Still I would not take 5 dollars for by book now and keep no copy."
25 December 1853: "Christmas here again and a cold one it is to Weather still cloudy and trees silvered over with ice I left Mr. Moores after dinner and cam home Very well pleased with my Christmas considering every thing Late this evning the ice is pretty well all melted but the wether is still cool"
29 December 1853: "This morning I went with Miss Mary E. Moore up to Esqr (illegible) to a wedding I saw John Ferrel married to Caroline Dupree There were a great many at the wedding and they had a very sumtious feast prepared for them After the dinner was over there was a cake brought and set before the young people called the bride cake in which some 4 or 5 rings were hid and try their (illegible) Several cut slices out of the cake in order to fiind the ring for acording to a beleif founded not doubt...the couple who find a ring are the next to be married. Miss Mary E. Moore and I took a cut at the cake and lo we both had a ring This created quite a laugh After the cake cutting was finished we got in a sing which soon led into a play and the play lasted until 10 o'clock at night then broke up I came home then got home at 11 o'clock.
31 December 1853: His gain was $47.11. He had booked $112.75. His cotton, when sold, would finish out what the made for the year. His expenses were %56.45. He had gone in debt to his brother-in-law, McKinstry, a merchant, for $13.10.
1 January 1854: "I commensed the yeare with quite an interesting occasion to me from the fact that I actually popped the question as it is (v)ulgary termed and received an affermative answer and no mistake Miss Mary E Moore today concented to be mine Oh that I were worthy of her but time will show what I will do..."
8 January 1854: "Very cloudy and cold... I mounted Jim Crow and down to Mr. Moores I did go for the express purpose of asking for his daughter. I used the precaution of prepareing myself with a note to help me through this and it so happened that it served well"...on returning home he added this, "And if nothing breaks or comes untied the 9th day of February set as the day on which I am to leave the ranks of batchelordom So much for the 8th of January 1854."
20 Jauary 1854: "There was a tremendeous rain was thunder and wind last night...I and my brother Richard skinned an ox of ours that (illegible) with the hollow horn."
1 February 1854: "I came up to Paulding this morning with R. P. Moore to get a license to get married...In Paulding I got a pair of kid gloves for encase my rough hands with...I came home sowed some oats burnt a (illegible) of brush and laid the foundation of a fense Then tonight have set down to write."
He had begun to copy his letters to anf from his cousins in Georgia and Florida into the diary. From these, much information about the members of the Lightsey family and their lives and times has been gleamed. If he continued his diary after the wedding, it is lost to us. However, he did continue his writings later in the Jasper County Review.
In one article he wrote about his courting days: "When I first started out courting, I was about twenty two years old and just as bashful as could be. I, with a cousin of mine, Mike Lightsey, went on Sunday morning, to a widow ladies, where there were two girls. We rode horse-back then, when we got ready to start I brought Miss. Elizabeth's horse to the block where she was standing, but owing to my awkwardness I went to the wrong side, and she said put the block on the other side and I will get up. I decided it would be better to turn the horse around, which placed it so near the fence that I threw the bridle rein over the corner and had Miss Elizabeth's horse securely hitched to the fence. Mike seeing the situation, unhitched her horse, by this time I had mounted and off we rode.."
"My next attempt at couring was pretty soon after this. I rode up to Levi Moore's quite early to go with Miss Mary to Pleasant HIll Methodist Church. I was so well pleased with Miss Mary, who was pretty well educated for those days, and knew how to interest me, that I decided that she would have to say yes or no ..."
"My father having died just before I married, I took charge of his plantation. I built a good home near my father-in-law's near Pleasant Hill, on a 160 acre farm given us by my father and my wife's father. We went to house keeping with a pretty fair start, having plenty of hog and hominy, cattle and horse and two negroes, man and a woman."
"...after raising five children, four boys and one girl, my wife died, and about a year after, like many widowers do, I went courting again. I was not quite so bashful at 48 as I was at 22, so I soon sold my business and was married to Miss Elizabeth Hinton, daughter of James Hinton. We lived amicably together twenty years and she died some 15 years ago."
"I was engaged in the well boring business for about 30 years. This was hard work, but a money making job: finally got thrown from my wagon and in the fall broke my arm, this making the third time in my life that I happened to this kind of accident."
30 October 1913, J. B. Lightsey wrote in the Jasper County Review: "My father, just after I was born, commenced build log cabins, or rather continued. He remaind but a little time at a place but would sell out his claim and move and build another, as a sample of the house he built...My father in moving to Jasper in 1832 settled the pflace now owned by Tom Newell...My father's next cabin was at Pleasant Hill, Jasper County; here my father killed a large panther with his unfailing rifle, it was but 200 yards from the house...the next move he landed in the place now known as Paulding, and the next year 1835 Paulding and Jasper County were named and officers were elected, and the first court held in a little log cabin with a hewed log floor." [Note: Jasper County was formed in 1833.]
Joseph Benjamin also writes about Paulding: "Paulding had two hotels; my father was propriator of one and Jessie Hyde the other. As an incident of the kind of metal that my mother was made of: at one time she was preparing the dinner table when a lawyer came in a little boozy and told my mother than he wanted dinner immediately. She told him to wait a few minutes until the other boarders came. He stepped to the table and taking hold of one corner said 'I'll turn this table over if you don't give me my dinner right now'. My mother grabbed a large carving knife and said, 'If you do, I'll cut your head off, sir.' He turned loose the table and said, 'I believe you would do it'."
He writes about Jasper County: "The land in Jasper county was fertile, producing fine corn and cotton crops, also potatoes; we knew nothing of fertilizing, except with cow peas...The land was covered with switch cane which averaged from eight to ten feet high. There were but few bushes growing here then, the cattle stayed fat the year round and this country then was a hunter's paradise, deer and turkeys went in droves."
"My father sold his drove of cattle, about 500 head, about the time he moved and purchased a family of negroes, consisting of a man, his wife and one child. He bought a farm of level black jack land about a mile and a half north of Paulding; here I leared to hoe corn and dig potatoes, going to schoola at intervals..."
In the 30 October 1913 issue he writes: "My father and mother, John and Barbea Lightsey were born in South Carolina, of Holland-Dutch parentage, a slight exception to pure Dutch on my mothers side who was a daughter of John Linder; her grand mother on her mothers side was Irish. I have always been proud of that little Irish blood."
[Note: The mistaken information ont the Holland-Dutch patentage was probably based on an error often made in the South Carolina area. The area between the Broad and Saluda Rivers, where a large number of Germans settled, in South Carolina, was known as the "Dutch Fork" because people spoke "Deutsch" or German there.]
Continuing the story: "My parents immigrated from South Carolina and were located in Jones County two miles north of Sandersville, Miss., on the line of Jasper, where I first saw the light, the 4th day of September 1831. I was the 7th child of a family of 11 children; 3 of them dying in theri infancy, left 8 that reached the years of maturity all marrying and having families from which sprung all the Lightseys excepting from Uncle David, my fathers brother, who came here at the same time that my father did; so all the Lightseys are related."
Joseph Benjamin Lightsey died 31 March 1919, age 87. He had lived a full ricch life. Through his writings, he left the Lightsey family a record of its heritage and, to others, a glimpse into the everyday world of life in Jasper County, Mississippi.
He also wrote extensively about his experiences in the civil war. Those remembrances will be presented in the section on the Civil War. You may go to the location below.
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