beyond Campus
History comes alive at Gathering on the Green thanks to Millsaps students Stephanie Rolph’s students become researchers and re-create a grocery store. by jesse yancy, freelance writer
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t Jones Bros. Grocery at the corner of Pearl and State in downtown Jackson, you can buy lemon drops for your sweet tooth, a tonic for what ails you, and flour for a batch of biscuits. That is, if you were shopping in the 1890s. Jones Bros. is gone, a casualty of time and the changing face of Jackson. Even so, students in Dr. Stephanie Rolph’s History of Mississippi class at Millsaps College recently rekindled its spirit, recreating a turn-of-the-century grocery store on the Old Capitol grounds. Their re-enactment was part of the second annual Gathering on the Green on the grounds of the Old Capitol Green in April and the capstone of their semester-long study of local history. Rolph’s students performed most of their historical research on Jackson during the 1880s and 1890s at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History using collections, microfilmed newspapers, city directories, and photographs. They established what the downtown area included during a period of significant growth in the capital city.
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Their research was challenging—and sometimes frustrating. “It was at times extremely discouraging to spend hours looking and not find anything,” said Kate Sundell, a history major from Franklin, Tenn. “Yet there were the days that I found speeches from senators and editorials written by yeoman farmers, and I was so excited. I felt as if I had discovered some ancient evidence that had forever been thought to be lost,” Sundell said. “The days when my blank notebook pages came into contact with fresh quotes and new dates and opinions were the days when I never questioned being a history major.” The students focused on Jones Bros. and used their research to construct a store display with candy, medicinal items, food products, and other notions of the day. Students conducted 19th-century games for children, such as sack races and gold sifting. They also displayed a city map from the period that marked the businesses in existence around the Old Capitol. “The students spent several weeks in the Archives before