Joseph Dunbar

Joseph Dunbar (c. 1782–July 15, 1846), sometimes Col. Jo. Dunbar, was a politician, plantation owner, and racehorse owner of the Natchez District in Mississippi, United States. He associated with the Jacksonian Democratic Party in the state. Said to be a "heavy planter" of cotton, he invented the notion of wrapping cotton in iron bands instead of hemp bagging, in part to stick it to Kentucky and South Carolina on tariff issues; cotton grown by his slaves on his land was said to bring high prices from cotton traders selling to the mills of Liverpool, England. At the time of his death he was described by a newspaper of the state capital as "one of the fathers of the State."

Early life Dunbar was born about 1782 in British West Florida, just prior to the cession of the Natchez District to Spain. He was one of nine children, six sons and three daughters, born to his mother, Ann Beaver, and father, Robert Dunbar, who came to the Natchez from North Carolina in April 1773. According to a grave marker at Oakley Grove Plantation Cemetery in Adams County, Mississippi, Ann Beaver (–1822) was from Virginia, and Robert Dunbar (–1826) was a native of North Carolina. They had one son but he died young in 1820. The family lived near Church Hill, sometimes called the Maryland Settlement of Jefferson County.

During his career he was sheriff of Jefferson county, Mississippi Territory in 1813, and a delegate to the Mississippi Territorial Legislature in 1815. Dunbar was representative in the Mississippi State Legislature in 1819–1820, 1829–1830, and 1832–1834; Receiver of Public Moneys in the General Land Office at Washington, Mississippi from 1820 to 1827 and Surveyor General for Mississippi in 1830–1831. The same year he lived at Washington and had a business association with James C. Wilkins. In 1825 he was part of a committee to welcome the Marquis de Lafayette on his tour of the United States. In the 1826 will of his father, Robert Dunbar, he was bequeathed three enslaved people: "(old) Harry, (young) Romeo + (young) Emanuel."

In 1831, the city of Nashville placed a runaway slave ad for Daniel and Betsey. The couple had run away from Joseph Dunbar in Mississippi and gotten to Williamson County, Tennessee, where the city had bought them for the cost of jail fees. Dunbar was elected Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives for the 1831 to 1832 term. In 1834 he and Thomas Hinds were among those representatives of the Democratic Party in Natchez expressing support for Andrew Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the United States. The debate devolved into a melee, and Dunbar, Thomas Hinds, and John F. H. Claiborne were "listed as one of the outnumbered Democratic participants." In 1839 he owned 3,000 acres in Warren County, Mississippi, "in addition to his extensive holdings in Jefferson County."

As of 1840 he was known as a "heavy planter" in the cotton-growing plantation complex business. Dunbar was president of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society in 1842; he showed a sorrel colt at the fair. He was also a sponsor of the Southern Planter, which premiered and disappeared in 1842. It was meant to be a learned agricultural journal for the Slave Power but could not attract enough sponsors, even though Dunbar contributed $50 toward increased circulation.

He was offered as a candidate for Congress in 1843 at which time noted Whig speaker S. S. Prentiss said of him: "Some men, they say, are made Democrats, some dyed in the wool Democrats, but Jo Dunbar was born a Democrat." Dunbar was aligned with the so-called Bond-Paying Democratic Party in 1843. He was a brother of the Thomas Hinds Masonic Lodge No. 48.

Dunbar died July 15, 1846 at his plantation Arundo in the Church Hill section ofJefferson County, Mississippi at age 64.

In his memoir of 1870 William Henry Sparks recalled Dunbar, writing, "Who that has ever sojourned for a time in this dear old county, does not remember the generous and elegant hospitality of Colonel Wood, Joseph Dunbar, and Mr. Chew...It seems invidious to individualize the hospitality of this community, where all were so distinguished; but I cannot forbear my tribute of respect — my heart's gratitude — to Wood and Dunbar, I came among these people young and a stranger, poor, and struggling to get up in the world. These two opened their hearts, their doors, and their purses to me; but it was not alone to me. In this neighborhood was built the first Protestant Episcopal Church in the State, and here worshipped the Woods, Dunbars, MacGruders, Shields, Greens, and others composing the settlement."

Kinship network Dunbar's parents, originally from the British colonies of North Carolina and Virginia, moved to West Florida around 1773. William H. Dunbar Martha Dunbar (1811–1895) m. J. F. H. Claiborne James Dunbar m1. Betsy Bisland (–1822), m2. Mrs. January Charlotte Dunbar m. George Newman Isaac Dunbar m1. Mary Wilkinson, m2. Elizabeth Wilkinson Samuel Dunbar m. Eliza Marbury