Harriet Byron McAllister

Harriet Byron McAllister Blanton Theobald (April 17, 1798 – September 7, 1888) was an American philanthropist and is referred to as the "Mother of Greenville", Mississippi. She deeded much of her land and right of ways to what became the new site of Greenville, Mississippi after 1865.

Biography

Early life Harriet Byron McAllister was born to John Keith McAllister and Mary Smith on April 17, 1798, in Georgia.

After William Whitaker Blanton's death in 1838, Harriet Byron McAllister Blanton married Dr.Samuel Theobald on June 27, 1841. In addition to the damage done, the Union soldiers also acquired several hundred slaves, who became U.S. soldiers. The first black regiments were formed during the Siege of Greenville; by the end of the operation, nearly 500 ex-slaves were learning the "school of the soldier."

In early May 1863, as retaliation for Confederate artillery firing on Union shipping on the Mississippi River, Commander Selfridge of the U.S. Navy ordered ashore 67 marines and 30 sailors, landing near Chicot Island. Their orders were to "put to the torch" all homes and buildings of those citizens guilty of aiding and abetting Confederate forces. By the end of May 9, the large and imposing mansions, barns, stables, cotton gins, overseer dwellings and slave quarters of Harriet Blanton's (Blantonia) and another plantations were completely destroyed. The destruction of Greenville was completed when a number of Union infantrymen slipped ashore from their boats and burned every building in the town but two (a house and a church).

Donation of Blantonia

Greenville today is in its third location, three miles from the original site. At the end of the American Civil War, returning Confederate Mississippi regiments found their homes gone and their families scattered among area plantations. Following that destruction of Greenville, Mississippi by Federal Troops on September 1, 1865, Harriet Theobald and her two sons Orville and William donated 47.5 acres of the Blantonia Plantation to rebuild Greenville, earning her the nickname “Mother of Greenville.” In 1867, Major Richard O’Hea, who had planned the wartime defense fortifications at Vicksburg], was hired to lay out the new town; Theobald Street serves as the eastern boundary.

Later life Harriet Theobald survived through other hardships the city of Greenville faced. In 1874, the citizens of Greenville suffered a city-wide catastrophe: the Great Fire of 1874, which destroyed 45 homes and 62 businesses, reducing the population of 890 to about 500. A second major fire hit the city a year later. Despite warnings of fire hazards, wood had been used as the major material for the construction for the post-Civil War Greenville. In 1877, a Yellow fever outbreak decimated the community and surrounding areas that stretched to Memphis, Tennessee. A third of the population died in Greenville, including the mayor and four of five councilmen. Soon after the city was chartered in 1886, a group of cotton planters, factors, buyers, and merchants organized a cotton exchange. Due to the fertile soil, cotton farming and processing became a huge boon to the economy and growth of Greenville during and after Harriet Theobold's lifetime in that city.

While in Monteagle, Tennessee in 1886 (aged 88) Harriet Byron McAllister tripped over a croquet wicket and fell suffering a fractured hip. She never fully recovered and died in Greenville on January 23, 1888, at the age of 89. Numerous sites bear her name in contemporary Greenville to include streets and parks.