The History of Stovall Farms

The Stovall Gin Company sits on Stovall Farms on land the Stovall Family has owned for seven generations..

“About the time of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830, the Treaty of Pontotoc, 1832, and after the Indian Removal Act of 1828, removing the Five Civilized Tribes of Native Americans, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Seminoles and Creeks, to the west, the Mississippi Delta, as we know it, was being defined. Land then could be bought from the state, or from Native Americans that had acquired title to their ancestral lands through terms and conditions of the respective treaties. The young country was on the move. There were dense bottomland hardwood forests to be cleared and cotton to be planted and civilization to be brought to the deep and fecund swamplands of the South. However, for thousands of years, it had been inhabited by indigenous native people; yet, it was soon to be known as our Mississippi Delta.”

- Delta Magazine: Deep Roots, Deep Delta Legacies, January 12, 2017

The 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek with the Choctaw Indian nation resulted what had been their land being offered for sale by the US Government for $1.25 per acre.

William Oldham (1793 – 1850) and Nancy Carver (1790 - 1839)

William John Oldham came to the Mississippi Delta from Port Royal, South Carolina to cut timber. He bought the first stake of the land that now comprises Stovall Farms. Two further purchases followed. The family still has the original land grants.

Port Royal was a nice place, and from the nice town to what was a frontier, Oldham brought his wife Nancy Carver Oldham and their four children – Louisa, Caroline, Ann Elizabeth, and Amanda.

William built a nice house on a small waterway. The house he built is the oldest part of what is now called Peacock House or Seven Chimneys.
(Click here for more on the house.)

In 1839, an unknown malady swept through the household, and Caroline (19), Ann Elizabeth (16) and Amanda (14) died from illness in a two-week span.

Caroline had been married for four months. As was common in those days, the surviving sister Louisa married her sister’s widower.

Devastated by the deaths of her three daughters, Nancy Carver returned on her own to her native South Carolina.

Before departing Mississippi, she offered the slaves she had brought with her from South Carolina the choice to either return to South Carolina with her or to remain in Mississippi as freedmen. Carver gave each freedman 40 acres and built a church for the new community. Many of the freedmen took her surname, Carver.

John Fowler (1805 – 1870) and Rosa Minter Eagle (??? - 1912)

John married 19-year old Caroline Oldham in May 1839. In August she died along with two sisters.

Less than a year later, on September 12, 1840, John married Caroline’s sole surviving sister Louisa.

Louisa died eleven years later in 1851, three weeks after the birth of her third child Caroline Azalia.
At the time of her death, their daughter Louisa Irene was nine years old. Son William had died the prior year at age 5.

Seven years later in January 1858, at age 53, Fowler married a third time to Rosa Minter Eagle, when daughter Louise was 16 and away at school and Caroline was seven.

William Howard Stovall (1834 – 1916) and Roberta Frank ( - )

In 1866 Louise Irene Fowler was 24. She married 32-year-old William Howard Stovall of Memphis, a lawyer and veteran of the Civil War, who served as Adjutant to the 154th Tennessee Regiment. They married May 10, three years after Stovall had been discharged from the Confederate Army due to an eye injury.
He had practiced law in Memphis, but in 1865 he moved from Memphis to Coahoma County, MS.

They lost a child born nine months after the wedding, and a son William Howard, born 1869, at age 3.

Their son John Willis Stovall was born when his brother was two in 1871. (See Sidebar)

In 1880, eight years after John’s birth, Louisa died of consumption in Denver at age 32, one month after her baby Caroline died in Alum Springs, Kentucky.
(There is a lancet window in Calvary Church in downtown Memphis in her memory.)

In 1888, Stovall, aged 54 and a widower for 13 years with a 17-year-old son, married Louise Goodwin.
Louise died in childbirth nine months later.

In 1892, Stovall married a third time to Roberta Lewis Frank.

Stovall, Goodwin, and Franks were, in fact, cousins, as Stovall’s mother Martha Jane (nee Minter) was sister to both Louise Goodwin’s mother (Louise Minter) and Roberts Franks’ grandmother (Sarah Ann Minter).

Stovall was 61 years old when his son William Howard was born. (This was his second son to be named William Howard).

Hank Stovall (1895 - 1970) and Eleanor Carter (1899 - 1979)

William Howard “Hank” Stovall was the only World War One fighter pilot “ace” from Mississippi, achieving that status with 6 confirmed kills in a Spad XIII in France. For his service in WW1, he received the Distinguished Service Cross.

Before he left France, he took a knife and cut out the squadron insignia from the side of his plane.
It’s in a frame today, one of the few such surviving WWI aerial squadron insignia existing.

He Served in WW2 on the senior staff of the 8th Air Force and retired with rank of Brigadier General.
For his service in WW2, he was awarded the Legion of Merit w/OLC, Bronze Star, European, African, Middle Eastern Campaign Ribbon w/5 Bronze Stars, American Campaign Medal, D Day Campaign Medal, Army of the Occupation Medal, Military Order of the British Empire, French Legion d'Honneur and
Croix de Guerre w/Palm, as well as campaign ribbons.

He was the inspiration for the Colonel Harvey Stovall character in the book and movie Twelve O’Clock High (1949). In the TV series adaptation 12 O’Clock High, (1964-1967) the character was played by Frank Overton, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the real Colonel Stovall, the character likewise during the series having a son who is reported Missing in Action. For more information on his military career, click here.

Amazingly, Hank Stovall was a World War 2 veteran whose father had fought in the Civil War.

He married Eleanor Doyle Carter in 1921.
Their elder son William Howard (1923 - 1944) died in air combat in World War 2. He is buried in Margraten, Holland
Son Matthew Carter Stovall (1925 - 1996) was the one to carry on the family farming business.
Their daughter Marie (1926 - 2011) married William Webster of Memphis and is survived by their 6 children.
Their youngest son Bobby (1932 - 2009), a successful commercial real estate developer in Chicago, was actively involved in the family farm after the death of his brother Carter.

Hank Stovall had graduated from Yale University and followed up at Mississippi State’s agricultural program.
He was an innovative farmer, and he oversaw the transition from mules to tractors in the late 1930’s. One of the first tractor drivers was McKinley Morganfield, also known as Muddy Waters. Stovall pioneered and championed the use of burr clover as a cover crop to replenish nitrogen back into the soil for better cotton
yields. This would be the source for Muddy Waters’ song “Burr Clover Blues” in which Stovall is mentioned.
For more on Stovall’s music history, click here.

In 1931, a Hollywood film crew came to shoot exteriors in Stovall, Mississippi for a film starring a relatively unknown young actress names Bette Davis.
To see how that time was memorialized in film and is still celebrated today (sort of), click here.

Hank Stovall is the only member of the family with a Wikipedia page.

Matthew Carter Stovall (1925 - 1996) : Nancy Gilmore (1936 - 2018)

Like his father before him, Carter Stovall attended Yale University and then returned to Mississippi to farm.

He married Meriwether Fargason (1929 - 1986) in 1949 and they had two children, Matthew Carter (1951 - 1968) an Meriwether Lewis (b. 1953, resides in San Francisco, CA with her hisband and daughter and maintains a home and owns land in Stovall, MS). They divorced in 1958.

Carter married Nancy Gilmore in 1961.

He was known as an astute farmer and manager with an eye towards innovation like his father and throughout his career as a farmer, he was a leader in national and international cotton marketing and support efforts.

Carter joined the family operation soon after his graduation from Yale University and farmed independently at Sumner, Mississippi from 1958 to 1964, when he returned to Stovall Farms to operate part of the family lands until his father's death in 1970. At that time Carter became General Manager of the entire Stovall farming network, serving as president of five farm operating companies, an irrigation supply business and a gin, a position he held until he retired in the 1990s.

He also headed an extensive cattle raising and feeding operation.

He served as director and member of the Executive Committee of First National Bank of Clarksdale, Mississippi, a director and Vice President of the Riverside Cooperative Association and as both President and Chairman of the Delta Council.

He was a director of North Delta Compress and the Mississippi Simmental Association. He served as Director, President and Chairman of the Board of Cotton Council International and of the American Red Cross. He also served as Chairman of National Cotton Council Foreign Operations and an advisor to the National Council.

Nancy and Carter’s elder son William Howard Stovall and his wife Baylor are the current owners of the Stovall Store and Gin Complex.
Their younger son Laurence Gilmore Stovall also owns land in Stovall.

Howard Stovall (b. 1962) and Baylor Ledbetter (b. 1969)

It’s not like they weren’t prepared to take on the project of revitalizing the store and gin.

After 8 years in Chicago at the Board of Trade, Howard returned to Mississippi in 1991, where he immersed himself in the nascent blues tourism movement and became one of the leading voices in what blues tourism could do for Clarksdale and Coahoma County. He led the effort to pass a city ordinance that allowed nonprofits to sell beer on the street, which has been critical tot he success of the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival and other events. He championed the idea of a tourism to support blues tourism, giving speeches to any group that would assemble to listen. That idea succeeded, although it was years before the fruits of that new income stream benefited the actual BLUES tourism effort.

Howard moved to Memphis where he worked for Harrah’s Casinos, and then served as executive director of the Blues Foundation from 1997 - 2002. He left the Blues Foundation and founded Resource Entertainment Group, a band booking and event production firm at which he still serves as president.

His aggregate experience in Coahoma County tourism development, event production, music booking, and festival operations all were critical to the success of Stovall Gin company and the Mighty Roots Music Festival.

Baylor co-founded the Ledbetter-Lusk art gallery in Memphis and sold her interest to her partner after the birth of their second child in 2000. After only a couple of months of time off work, she re-entered the business world, purchasing the retail store Papel in 2001 and rebranding it The Stovall Collection. Baylor ran The Stovall Collection for 20 years, amassing tremendous experience in branding, communications, and management. She sold her business in 2018.

After splitting time between Memphis and Stovall for a few years, Baylor and Howard moved back to Stovall full time in 2020.

Their two children have also been involved in the revitalization effort, contributing both hard work and excellent insight into artist bookings for Mighty Roots.

Daughter Carter works in Denver in oncology, and some Tulane lives in New Orleans where he recently graduated from Tulane, and he plans to go to grad school.

Mighty Roots is not just a festival name. It’s also what brought Baylor and Howard back to Stovall, Mississippi.