John J. Poindexter

John Jenkins Poindexter (–1870) was an American slave trader, commission merchant, school commissioner, and steamboat master of Louisiana and Mississippi. He served in the Mexican-American War as a junior officer in the Mississippi Rifles. The historic John J. Poindexter House in Jackson, Mississippi, was commissioned for the young Poindexter family and designed in the 1840s by architect William Nichols.

Biography

Born in Virginia around 1816, Poindexter may be related to the family that produced George Poindexter, an early Mississippi governor, and James Preston Poindexter, an abolitionist minister of Ohio. It is unknown when Poindexter relocated to what was then the southwestern frontier, but a 22-year-old J. J. Poindexter, occupation mechanic, appears on the manifest of a ship called Columbia traveling between Galveston and New Orleans in 1838.

Poindexter appeared in the 1840 U.S. census as a resident of Hinds County, Mississippi. Poindexter married Mary A. Cohea in Hinds County, Mississippi in May 1840. Her father Perry Cohea was a Mississippi building commissioner. The John J. Poindexter House in Jackson, Mississippi was designed by architect William Nichols on a commission made by Poindexter's father-in-law. Mary Cohea Poindexter died near Jackson, Mississippi in January 1843, leaving behind a surviving infant.

Poindexter joined the Masonic lodge in Jackson in 1844. John J. Poindexter served as a second lieutenant or 3rd corporal in Company H, the Vicksburg Volunteers of the 1st Regiment of Mississippi Rifles, known colloquially as Jefferson Davis' regiment. Poindexter may have been discharged in November 1846.

As of the 1850 census, Poindexter lived in Tensas Parish, Louisiana with his nine-year-old son; the head of the household was Thomas B. Poindexter. Poindexter was evidently selling people as slaves by 1852 because a fugitive slave ad placed in the Daily Delta that year offers a $20 reward for the recovery of a man named Primus who could read and write and had been purchased from John J. Poindexter. In May 1857 Poindexter announced "Just received, Fifty young and likely Field Men and Women, Also five Carpenters, three Blacksmiths, one No. 1 Barber, three Seamstresses, four fine Male House Servants and Carriage Drivers, and one Cooper. For sale at the lowest market rates by J. J. POINDEXTER, 71 and 73 Baronne street." In October 1857 Poindexter was seeking the return of an 18-year-old named Ruffin with "lips very much scarred" who was the legal property of Daniel Craig of Arkansas. Also in October 1857 a 21-year-old "griffe color" man named Simon escaped from Poindexter's slave depot at 63 and 65 Barrone Street in New Orleans. Simon was described as slow of speech and "badly scarred on the back from having been whipped." Poindexter offered a reward of $25 if Simon was returned or deposited in any of the city jails. He was listed on the 1860 slave schedules as personally owning three people. The Poindexter & Little slave depot in New Orleans appears in the 1914 biography of Allen Allensworth, a survivor of American slavery:

In April 1861, in his capacity as the Common Schools Commissioner of Arkansas County, Arkansas, Poindexter offered for sale two sections of land, totalling 1,280 acres. (These may have been the school sections created under the Public Land Survey System.)

"The Splendid Passenger Packet Countess, J. J. Poindexter, master," Vicksburg Daily Times, July 23, 1870

In his Confederate amnesty application Poindexter claimed had taken no active part in the rebellion against the United States but had removed with his steamboat to the Red River where he remained for the duration. As of June 1870 Poindexter was master of a steamboat called Countess that traveled between Vicksburg and Skipwith's Landing. Poindexter may have died in July or August 1870 as notices about settling the J.J. Poindexter estate begin appearing in New Orleans newspapers in August 1870. John J. Poindexter was buried in Mississippi.