Teoc, Mississippi

Teoc is an unincorporated community in Carroll County, Mississippi and is part of the Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area approximately 7 miles (11 km) northeast of Greenwood on Teoc Road along Teoc Creek..

Teoc is best known as the birthplace of the blues legend Mississippi John Hurt.[1]

Teoc Located about eight miles northwest of North Carrollton, Teoc is probably the oldest settlement in Carroll County. This community was named by the Indians, and Malmaison, the home of Greenwood Leflore, was in the area. The five Redditt brothers, David, Robert, Anthony, William, said Albert came here in 1829 and purchased land from the state, with receipts made out at Chocchuma Landing. The settlement was started by the Redditt brothers, along with the Price, Irby, Chandler, and Barrows families who came with them.

Now largely unpopulated, this was once a small farming town. In the 1982 U.S. Geological Survey map.[2] only two houses stood in Teoc; recent aerial photographs show two houses and one farm[3]

William Alexander McCain, great-great grandfather of Arizona senator John McCain, purchased Teoc Plantation in 1851 and owned at least 52 slaves there. He died in 1863, fighting for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.[4] Bill McCain, a descendant and cousin of Senator McCain, still owns 1500 of the plantation's former 2,000 acres (8.1 km2). Since 2003, black and white descendants of the community at Teoc have attended family reunions organized by the black McCains, descended from two of the plantation's slaves, Isom and Lettie, and Henderson McCain. After the Civil War, the blacks remained closely entwined with Teoc, remaining as tenants of William Alexander's son, John Sidney McCain, and adopting the McCain surname. Black people surnamed McCain in Teoc, organizers of schooling for African-American children in the 1880s, were local leaders in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.[5]

Notable Residents

References

  1. ↑ Lawrence Cohen 1996, interview with John Hurt, liner notes, Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 Okeh Recordings, Columbia/Legacy
  2. ↑ USGS National Map
  3. ↑ Flash Earth aerials
  4. ↑ William Alexander McCain profile
  5. ↑ "Two families named McCain", Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2008

See also

Coordinates: 33°34′45″N 90°03′19″W / 33.57917°N 90.05528°W / 33.57917; -90.05528


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