Working on Wednesday: John Herrod (About 1805 - 1870), Herod & Birmingham's Stage Line

In 1860 my paternal fourth great uncle John Herrod* and his partner Norman Birmingham acquired the assets of D.W. Lamkin's Line and offered a daily connection between Yazoo City and the Mississippi Central station at Vaughan,**  a distance of about 24 miles.

[The Yazoo Democrat. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 1858-18, April 28, 1860

Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn98021556/1860-04-28/ed-1/seq-3/]

[Detail from Colton's Mississippi. Published By Johnson & Browning, 172 William St. New York. 1860.

Entered 1855 by J.H. Colton & Co ... New York. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

After the Civil War started a year later, Herod & Birmingham transported men and supplies for the Confederate States as these invoices show.**

[Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, documenting the period 1861 - 1865;

the National Archive. Source: fold3]

The company was presumably still in business early in 1866, owning 4 carriages each valued at $125.****

[Description : District 2; Annual, Monthly and Special Lists; Dec 1865-Dec 1866. Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA. Original data: Records of the Internal Revenue Service. Record Group 58.

The National Archives at Washington, DC.]

But John Herrod had died in January of that year and on November 10, 1866, his son (also named John), acting as administrator of his father's estate, filed suit against Mr. Birmingham and the case was settled in January of 1871 but it's not clear to me what the outcome was.

[From Catherine-Seabolt's public tree Terrell2011 on Ancestry.com]

*He was born in about 1805 in Tennessee and was the son of my paternal fourth great grandparents Polly (Williams) and Barnabeth Herrod.
**This link has pictures of Vaughan, Mississippi, taken in 2012. You can find a history of Yazoo County here.
***Although the second invoice is for several thousand dollars, remember that the company would have been paid in Confederate dollars which in January, 1864, would probably have been worth about 10 cents each.
****A John Herrod is listed as the owner of a single carriage worth $100 but it seems likely that he's the son.

["CSA-T64-$500-1864" by National Museum of American History - Image by Godot13. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg#/media/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.