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Dr. William Francis Greaves (22) was born 19 Feb. 1824 near Charleston, SC. He first married Eleanor Matilda Dupree on 6 Dec. 1854 at the home of his father, Col. Joseph B. Greaves, in Clinton, MS. She died 25 Dec. 1873. He secondly married Lucilla Hulme on 14 Nov. 1875 in Madison Co., MS. He lived at Boscobel plantation, near Pocahantas, MS.
The following article (possibly published in a local newpaper) tells of an incident during the 1863 Civil War campaign at Jackson, MS, was written by Ed Blake, March 7, 1972, and was titled "Union Raiding Party Captured Boscobel Owner in Springdale Hills Incident."
"Dr. William Francis Greaves, the central character in this incident, came to Mississippi with a company of his kinsmen and settled at Pocahantas, MS, about 1840. He was a native of SC and son of Col. Joseph Greaves, who in the 1830's had killed a man in a duel in the period that dueling was being outlawed.
Shortly he was to build a two-story, white columned, white frame home with a brick kitchen to the rear atop a flat summit, surrounded by loess, red sand and clay cliffs that today is a part of Springdale Hills Park and Arboretum. Meanwhile, another member of the family, Major John Greaves who had come from South Carolina with the party, settled two miles south of Pocahantas at Sub Rosa Plantation, where he built a beautiful two-story home that still stands today and which is on the Jackson tour circuit and is shown to the public by Mrs. T. A. Turner, owner for the past thirty years.
Both homes, Boscobel, located two and a half miles west of Pocahantas, and Sub Rosa, two miles south of Pocahantas, were to be visited by Union soldiers of Sherman's army who were converging on Jackson in 1863 to destroy that city. This account will relate the events that occurred at Boscobel Plantation owned by Dr. William Francis Greaves.
Facts about the raid were related to Ed Blake by Mrs. Lula Greaves Russell, a daughter of Dr. Greaves. Mrs. Russell visited Springdale Hills Park on Oct. 16, 1971, at the age of 86, in the company of a niece, Mrs. Virgie Greaves Huggins, of Pascagoula, who lived at Boscobel for a year in 1895 while the home was demolished escept for the brick kitchen. In the company of members of their families, the two ladies visited the brick kitchen remains of Boscobel, and there Mrs. Lula Greaves Russell related the story of the Civil War raid as described to her by her father, Dr. Greaves.
Dr. Greaves had taken the hand of Miss Eleanor Matilda Dupree of Brownsville on Dec. 6, 1854, in the home of Col. Joseph B. Greaves in Clinton. Shortly thereafter, they set up housekeeping at Boscobel where in subsequent years five sons and two daughters were to come into the household.
Four large cedar trees stood in a row in front of the house which faced west. In front of it was a springhouse surrounded by crepe myrtle trees which have multiplied over the ensuing period of a century and a quarter and which still put forth a dazzling display of pink glory at the Boscobel home site each summer. White iris was planted in clumps along the roadway down the steep hill and a black walnut tree stood behind the house. The kitchen was made by slave labor of bricks which were made on the place. The kitchen was removed from the house to spare the dwelling from the fumes of cooking and for safety reasons as well. It had an interior dimension of 15 x 18 feet with a large fireplace and hearth along the south wall and a window along the east wall.
The home had porches across the front on both levels with a view westward of five miles to a slightly higher ridge, and to the south to Clinton and Jackson, the latter being some fifteen miles southeast. From the home could be heard the incessant cannonading of the Blue and Grey during the spring and summer siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Vicksburg's battlefields were approximately 35 miles west and slightly south.
After the surrender of the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg, the strategic moves of the Union forces came in the form of wide destructive swaths by the raiders on their way to Jackson. General Grant was to move to Grand Gulf and approach Jackson subsequently from the southwest while General Sherman was to move directly from Vicksburg to Jackson, having been called in from West Tennessee to assist Grant in wreaking all manner of havoc upon the South from Vicksburg to the Atlantic.
Dr. Greaves and his family were at home when the Union troops arrived and took him in custody. They blindfolded him, put him on a horse and told Mrs. Greaves that she would never see her husband alive again. Before leaving, they took the family carriage with its gold upholstery to the smokehouse and loaded it with meat before riding off with Dr. Greaves and his pantry to a nearby Union encampment. It is not known just where he was taken, or whether the incident occurred just prior to or after the fall of Vicksburg. He could have been taken to Grassdale Plantation five miles to the south, where 10,000 Union troops were encamped during the Vicksburg campaign, presently Camp Kickapoo, owned by Dr. George Stokes, a native of Cork, Ireland, who had married Charlotte Greaves, a member of the Greaves family that arrived from South Carolina in 1840 with Dr. Greaves. Or, it may have been to Flora, to a Union encampment there.
Dr. Greaves was put to work ministering to the wounded Union soldiers, among them an officer that he nursed back to health. The Union officer, grateful to Dr. Greaves for restoring his ableness, returned the favor and released Dr. Greaves to reunite with his family at Boscobel. The shock of her husband's capture had ill effects on Mrs. Greaves however, and Christmas day ten years later, in 1873, Mrs. Greaves died. Children born of the marriage were: five sons, William Francis, Walter Joseph, Marion Lee, William Dudley, and Hal Percy, and two daughters, Alma and Eleanor Matilda. Only Walter Joseph, Hal Percy and Alma reached maturity. Walter Joseph, born on June 12, 1857, was to become a medical doctor, was to return to Boscobel in 1895 at age 38 to live there a year to look for $40,000 in gold purportedly buried near the home site during the war, and to demolish the then deteriorating home. He was later, about 1935 at age 78, to return to the home site with this writer, Ed Blake, in a final unsuccessful search for the buried gold. He died at a Jackson nursing home on May 26, 1946, at the age of 89, and was buried in the Greaves family lot in Bolton.
The following article (possibly published in a local newpaper) tells of an incident during the 1863 Civil War campaign at Jackson, MS, was written by Ed Blake, March 7, 1972, and was titled "Union Raiding Party Captured Boscobel Owner in Springdale Hills Incident."
"Dr. William Francis Greaves, the central character in this incident, came to Mississippi with a company of his kinsmen and settled at Pocahantas, MS, about 1840. He was a native of SC and son of Col. Joseph Greaves, who in the 1830's had killed a man in a duel in the period that dueling was being outlawed.
Shortly he was to build a two-story, white columned, white frame home with a brick kitchen to the rear atop a flat summit, surrounded by loess, red sand and clay cliffs that today is a part of Springdale Hills Park and Arboretum. Meanwhile, another member of the family, Major John Greaves who had come from South Carolina with the party, settled two miles south of Pocahantas at Sub Rosa Plantation, where he built a beautiful two-story home that still stands today and which is on the Jackson tour circuit and is shown to the public by Mrs. T. A. Turner, owner for the past thirty years.
Both homes, Boscobel, located two and a half miles west of Pocahantas, and Sub Rosa, two miles south of Pocahantas, were to be visited by Union soldiers of Sherman's army who were converging on Jackson in 1863 to destroy that city. This account will relate the events that occurred at Boscobel Plantation owned by Dr. William Francis Greaves.
Facts about the raid were related to Ed Blake by Mrs. Lula Greaves Russell, a daughter of Dr. Greaves. Mrs. Russell visited Springdale Hills Park on Oct. 16, 1971, at the age of 86, in the company of a niece, Mrs. Virgie Greaves Huggins, of Pascagoula, who lived at Boscobel for a year in 1895 while the home was demolished escept for the brick kitchen. In the company of members of their families, the two ladies visited the brick kitchen remains of Boscobel, and there Mrs. Lula Greaves Russell related the story of the Civil War raid as described to her by her father, Dr. Greaves.
Dr. Greaves had taken the hand of Miss Eleanor Matilda Dupree of Brownsville on Dec. 6, 1854, in the home of Col. Joseph B. Greaves in Clinton. Shortly thereafter, they set up housekeeping at Boscobel where in subsequent years five sons and two daughters were to come into the household.
Four large cedar trees stood in a row in front of the house which faced west. In front of it was a springhouse surrounded by crepe myrtle trees which have multiplied over the ensuing period of a century and a quarter and which still put forth a dazzling display of pink glory at the Boscobel home site each summer. White iris was planted in clumps along the roadway down the steep hill and a black walnut tree stood behind the house. The kitchen was made by slave labor of bricks which were made on the place. The kitchen was removed from the house to spare the dwelling from the fumes of cooking and for safety reasons as well. It had an interior dimension of 15 x 18 feet with a large fireplace and hearth along the south wall and a window along the east wall.
The home had porches across the front on both levels with a view westward of five miles to a slightly higher ridge, and to the south to Clinton and Jackson, the latter being some fifteen miles southeast. From the home could be heard the incessant cannonading of the Blue and Grey during the spring and summer siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Vicksburg's battlefields were approximately 35 miles west and slightly south.
After the surrender of the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg, the strategic moves of the Union forces came in the form of wide destructive swaths by the raiders on their way to Jackson. General Grant was to move to Grand Gulf and approach Jackson subsequently from the southwest while General Sherman was to move directly from Vicksburg to Jackson, having been called in from West Tennessee to assist Grant in wreaking all manner of havoc upon the South from Vicksburg to the Atlantic.
Dr. Greaves and his family were at home when the Union troops arrived and took him in custody. They blindfolded him, put him on a horse and told Mrs. Greaves that she would never see her husband alive again. Before leaving, they took the family carriage with its gold upholstery to the smokehouse and loaded it with meat before riding off with Dr. Greaves and his pantry to a nearby Union encampment. It is not known just where he was taken, or whether the incident occurred just prior to or after the fall of Vicksburg. He could have been taken to Grassdale Plantation five miles to the south, where 10,000 Union troops were encamped during the Vicksburg campaign, presently Camp Kickapoo, owned by Dr. George Stokes, a native of Cork, Ireland, who had married Charlotte Greaves, a member of the Greaves family that arrived from South Carolina in 1840 with Dr. Greaves. Or, it may have been to Flora, to a Union encampment there.
Dr. Greaves was put to work ministering to the wounded Union soldiers, among them an officer that he nursed back to health. The Union officer, grateful to Dr. Greaves for restoring his ableness, returned the favor and released Dr. Greaves to reunite with his family at Boscobel. The shock of her husband's capture had ill effects on Mrs. Greaves however, and Christmas day ten years later, in 1873, Mrs. Greaves died. Children born of the marriage were: five sons, William Francis, Walter Joseph, Marion Lee, William Dudley, and Hal Percy, and two daughters, Alma and Eleanor Matilda. Only Walter Joseph, Hal Percy and Alma reached maturity. Walter Joseph, born on June 12, 1857, was to become a medical doctor, was to return to Boscobel in 1895 at age 38 to live there a year to look for $40,000 in gold purportedly buried near the home site during the war, and to demolish the then deteriorating home. He was later, about 1935 at age 78, to return to the home site with this writer, Ed Blake, in a final unsuccessful search for the buried gold. He died at a Jackson nursing home on May 26, 1946, at the age of 89, and was buried in the Greaves family lot in Bolton.
