Almost every resident of Webster County has heard stories of Old Greensboro, described by Wikipedia as centrally located in Choctaw County, when the county was formed from territory acquired in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1833. The counties were later divided in Choctaw and Webster.
“At one time it consisted of several types of stores and shops, saloons, a livery stable, a brick yard and a newspaper. It had a Methodist church as early as 1839 and a Baptist church was begun in 1846. The Greensboro Lodge No. 49 of Free and Accepted Masons was chartered in 1842. It had the reputation of a rough and lawless town, many notorious criminals and murderers were located there.”
One of the inhabitants was a famed outlaw of the Natchez Trace, John Murrell. But the Edwards-Gray feud is perhaps the most notable occurrence that marked Greensboro’s history.
Diane Cox McPhail, who was born in Jackson, heard those stories. Her mother passed away while McPhail was still a baby, and she was relocated to Clarksdale. But family gatherings and trips to the old place provided a sense of history.
On a visit to see her uncle Ralph Dunlap in Tomnolen, she was reviewing family photos and discovered a newspaper article about Greensboro. She asked more questions and made careful notes of each story. She was searching for her roots as much as for the history of the place.
As she studied to become a therapist, McPhail’s mind kept going back to Greensboro. What brought about such notoriety in one small town? How did one individual’s thinking create a mob mentality? Questions abounded, and she began what turned out to be 12 years of research about Greensboro and its families and particularly, the deadly Edwards-Gray feud.
An estate inheritance instigated the feud, which resulted in the murders of five people in two families in November 1861. The bloodshed began on the plantation of Judge Edward D. Edwards Sr. on what is now Edwards Road in the Center community and ended in Greensboro.
McPhail’s extensive research revealed a wealth of information about the time and the place but it needed the people to bring it to life. That’s where the idea of a novel began to develop.
She worked with other authors, attended workshops on writing and did copious amounts of study of archived materials. At the time of the Civil War, the South was coming out of the “little ice age” and seeing drastic weather patterns, much as we see today. She found records of Grierson’s Raid and what items were taken from the plantation by the raiders. It all comes together in her just-released debut novel.
“The Abolitionist’s Daughter” is a work of fiction but that fiction is mainly derived from real people and how McPhail perceived their interaction, working backwards from facts to weave them together with fictional characters.
Addressing a group at the Webster County Public Library on May 1, McPhail was asked if someone read this book, would they understand what happened at Greensboro. Her response was, “No, but you’ll know what happened to Emily.”
Emily Matthews is the primary character in the story and the reader learns the history of Greensboro through her. McPhail’s great-grandmother, Mary Ellen Edwards Gray Nelson, was the model for Emily.
The novel has been compared to “Cold Mountain” in the way it challenges Civil War stereotypes. McPhail immediately draws the reader into the times and the town of Greensboro through Emily’s life. The packed room at the library was enthralled with her stories and her readings. Many family names were connected to the author, who now resides in Highlands, North Carolina.
She is making a promotional tour for the “The Abolitionist’s Daughter.” The book was a complete sellout at the meeting in Eupora and is sure to continue to draw readers across the nation.
