Place:Big Point, Jackson, Mississippi, United States

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Big Point is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. Per the 2020 Census, the population was 618.

BIG POINT[1]

by Regina Hines Ellison

Northeast Jackson County between Black Creek and the swamps west of Lyons Lake and the Escatawpa River -- traditionally known as Big Point --was sparsely settled until the turn of the century.

Then the few families that were living in this area--the Colemans, Cunninghams, Goffs, Nelsons and Barias--were joined by an influx of people from the north and midwest. They had been lured here by claims of cheap land and fertile soil. Some heard that the warm climate was good for their ailments.

They bought large tracts of land, started farming, or went into business, and got along well with the locals. Over the years, their children intermarried and formed the close-knit, rural community that Big Point is today

"They (land developers) told the people that they could get rich here, that you could buy land for $5 an acre. Some were disappointed. They got discouraged and went back home. A lot stayed and made their homes here," said retired teacher and postmaster Henrietta Cunningham Moak.

"Everyone was very congenial."

Among the families who moved to Big Point in the early 1900s were the Brighams, Eberharts, Hazards and Fairs from Michigan; the Martzes, Parkhursts, Martins, from Illinois. The Grafes, Longs, Ogborns, Frees, Hubbells, McCarrys, Stowells, Snells, Hovarters and others from Indiana.

"They all came down the same year--1914--from the same place. They all knew each other before they came," said Ralph Grafe of Moss Point about several of the Indiana families. Friends and relatives decided to move together.

"The northern people came here to grow pecans and oranges," recalls Dorlar Kennedy Goff, whose family still has farmed acreage off Goff Farm Road for more than 100 years.

The Goffs were early Big Point settlers. Four brothers--Wilburn, John, Bulter and Frank--acquired 160 acres of land each, later selling some, or dividing it among their heirs.

Three Goff bothers married into the Cunningham family, who were also at Big Point early. Mrs. Moak's grandfather, William J.S. Cunningham, came from Paducah, Ky., and homesteaded 2,000 acres of land between Hurley and Big Point. He and his wife, who was of Indiana heritage, raised a large family, who spread throughout the wilderness of northern Jackson County.

Before the northerners came, many people around Big Point made their living in the timber industry. Mrs. Moak's father, Abner C. Cunningham, was a cook for the L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company. Nelson Lawson, a former Jackson County supervisor from Big Point, was also a lumberman. But the timber business was declining by the 1920s.

D.W. Snell, who came from Union City, Ind., to Big Point, farmed on a large scale, employing many people in the community, and tried his hand at raising cotton. After he died, his son, Frank, took over the farm.

"There was some cotton farmed in the area and before the boll weevils ate it, there was enough cotton between here and George County to have a cotton gin at Lucedale," Mrs. Moak said.

Wirth Goff was the town blacksmith, as well as a farmer.

The name Big Point probably became official in 1894 when the first post office to serve the tiny spot was opened. Joseph Gresham was first postmaster. Samuel J. Walters succeeded him the next year and D.H. Moody took over in 1898. Mrs. Ruby Goff Eberhart was postmistress between 1914 to 1928, until illness forced her to relinquish her job. The post office continued to operate until the 1930s when Miss Ota Free was postmistress. After that the mail was delivered from Hurley.

Around 1910, the successful Moss Point lumber concern, the W. Denny Company, sold thousands of acres of undeveloped land in northeast Jackson County to the Lampton Realty of Magnolia, Miss. Lampton laid out several town sites along the planned north--south Alabama--Mississippi Railroad that would eventually link to Pascagoula. Big Point was one of these towns, laid out in 1912 by surveyor O.H. Broun.

The plat in the courthouse shows that the main road of the town was the Saracennia Highway, an old road that started in Escatawpa, went through Helena and Big Point. Today Goff Farm Road is part of that abandoned route.

The western boundary of the planned town was West Street and Front Street ran along the railroad. Other streets were Highland Avenue, Fulton Street, Main Street, Camp Street, Sycamore Street and Denmark Avenue. Between Denmark and Sycamore, the developers set aside land for Magnolia Park.

The planned town never developed. Most people who bought lots in the townsite acquired several lots to raise crops, or have space between them and their neighbors. But a small business district developed.

There was a depot, a grocery store on both sides of the railroad tracks, a post office and a community building, that once stood north of Big Point Methodist Church.

Oldtimers recall a canning factory that stayed busy canning local produce into the 1920s. it was located across the railroad tracks on a site behind today's Big Point Quick Stop on Mississippi 613, the communities only business.

The existing Big Point Community Center, now the site of gospel sings and other socials was once a two-story school, built in 1914. "One of the storms tore up the building and they rebuilt it and kept it one story," remembers Mrs. Moak.

Earlier Big Point's children went to Little Red Hollow School. Jackson County school records exist from Big Point intermittently, beginning in 1884. Children named Goff, Jones, Nelson, Dicken, Rogers, Baria, Odom, Holland, Broom and Enterkin attended school during those early days.

Big Point's early settler were of the Methodist faith and the only church in the area until the 1960s was Big Point United Methodist Church. The church was organized in 1876 in a log building near the Dallas Cunningham place. Thomas Pierce and Charles Calhoun were the first pastors. Four years later, a new log church was built on Brazil Branch, about 50 yards east of what is no Mississippi 613. The congregation continued worship there until 1907 when the church was moved to its present site.

Although they were of different faiths, many of the northerners that moved to Big Point attended the church.

The Rev. Stowell, Mrs. Long's maternal grandfather, also conducted non-denominational service in the former community building, for a time.

A second church came to the community on May 3, 1964 when Temple Baptist Church was founded.

The railroad was a lifeline of the community in the early 1900s. Roads were poor, bridges were few and travel was slow, but the railroad eased the import and export of supplies and maintained a passenger service. "The train delivered the mail and we'd wait for our Chronicle Star to come through," Mrs. Goff said.

"Grandpa used to hate the ferry. His horse did, too. He wouldn't always go on the ferry," said longtime Big Point resident Vera Long Coleman. Her grandfather, H.S. Long, came to Big Point from Portland, Ind., in 1910 and operated one of the stores by the depot.

Long would have to go to Mobile once a week to stock his shelves and the family would go to Pascagoula to sell eggs. "They would leave by daylight and it would be after dark before you would get home," Mrs. Coleman said. "It would take two days to go and come from Mobile," she said.

Long's son, Clifton, finished business college in Indiana, then joined his parents in Big Point, where he met and married Mae Stowell. She had come with her parents, Rev. and Mrs. William Stowell from Logansport, Ind.

The Stowells eventually moved to Columbus, Ohio, when they realized that the Mississippi Gulf Coast was not the dry climate that their doctor had suggested they find. Clifton and May Long also left after the birth of their daughter, Vera. But the Longs returned to Stowell's property during the Depression. Vera married Felix Coleman of Wolf Ridge.

This branch of the Coleman family lives in the section of Big Point called the Big Island, fertile acreage surrounded by Big Creek. Before modern roads and good bridges, the people who lived on Big Island often felt isolated when the water rose. "Some days we would get stranded in here and the kids used to have to walk to school," said Mrs. Coleman.

A doctor has never set up practice in Big Point. If a baby was on the way, there was a choice between the local midwife, or Dr. R.C. Eley of Moss Point, even into the 1950s. Eley was the only doctor who would make the trip to Big Point. "That man deserves a place in heaven. He would help everyone and most of the time he got paid with a sack of corn, a chicken, or a pig," Mrs. Coleman recalls.

Big Point residents always exhibited a community spirit and both a volunteer fire department and a home demonstration club were active for many years. Today East Central Volunteer Fire Department protects the area.

"Up until 1950, there were just a few people here, but we are still just as close," said Dorlar Goff, a lifelong reside. "We had a death last week and you could just see the love. These are good people. We all work together and long living here," she said.

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