Josiah Maples

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Josiah Maples
Ad for Forrest & Maples in the 1855 Memphis city directory
Bornc. 1820
Alabama, U.S.
Died(1876-09-22)September 22, 1876
Raleigh, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Occupation(s)American planter and slave trader

Josiah Maples (c. 1820 – September 12, 1876) was a 19th-century cotton plantation owner, bank director, and slave trader of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas in the United States (and the Confederate States during the American Civil War). Maples is notable as a slave-trading business partner of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Biography[edit]

Josiah Maples was born about 1820 in Alabama.[1] In July 1849 Maples was appointed to a "committee of twenty" in DeSoto County, Mississippi that produced a resolution that opposed the Wilmot Proviso, protested northern aggression, and "Resolved, 5th. That while we cherish for the Union a lasting and warm regard, yet, we are not to be frightened from maintaining our just rights by being taunted with the name of disunionist feeling that whatever may be the result of this agitation it is chargeable not only on us who only stand on our rights under the constitution, but on those who have on this subject violated every guaranty of that sacred instrument."[2] In 1851 Maples was the treasurer of the Masonic Lodge in DeSoto County.[3] In 1852 the sheriff of Shelby County, Tennessee reported that his jail held a 23-year-old runaway slave named Philip, "5 feet, 6 or 7 inches high, weighs about 140 pounds; belongs to Josiah Maples, of De Soto county, Miss."[4]

Maples was one of three major business partners of slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest, along with (serially, not simultaneously) Seaborne S. Jones and Byrd Hill.[5] (Forrest's five brothers also worked in the business.)[5] Maples and Forrest were in business together as Forrest & Maples from July 1854[6] to December 31, 1855.[7] In November 1854 they sold a nine-year-old girl named Page to Lavinia and Lemuel Smith for $600.[8] On July 9, 1855 they sold Adisson, age 22, to V. Beckworth for $1,000.[9] Also in 1855, Forrest & Maples sold Mary, age 15, for $800.[10] On New Year's 1856 the Maples and Forrest partnership was dissolved. [7]

According to a history of DeSoto County, Mississippi produced by the WPA in the late 1930s, "An interesting fact concerning Gen. Forrest, related by [Anna Maples of Olive Branch, Mississippi], was his having worked for Josiah Maples in his youth, on the old Evans place, a few miles from Pleasant Hill".[11]

In March 1861, Maples was elected a director of the Bank of West Tennessee.[12] During the American Civil War he sold some cotton that was later partially burned by Union troops; there was a subsequent lawsuit.[13] The case Butler v. Maples "established that buying cotton through an insurrectionary area through an agent licensed by the Treasury Department was legal".[14]

In 1875 he was described as "one of the heaviest cotton planters of the Arkansas valley".[15] Maples died in Raleigh, Memphis on September 22, 1876 after a long illness. At the time of his death his primary residence was listed as Red Fork, Arkansas.[16] Red Fork was described as "a post office and landing on the Arkansas River, thirty miles above its mouth, and four miles from Watson, the county seat of Desha county". Maples was considered a pioneer of Desha County,[17] and a leading, if not the leading, citizen of the area of fertile bottomland that was said to "frequently [produce] two bales of cotton to the acre".[18] Maples was buried in Rossville, Tennessee.[19]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Entry for Josiah Maples and Mary A Maples, 1870". United States Census, 1870 – via FamilySearch.
  2. ^ "Southern Meeting". The Weekly Mississippian. July 6, 1849. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  3. ^ Grand Lodge of Mississippi (1882), p. 647.
  4. ^ "Runaways in Jail". Vicksburg Whig. February 11, 1852. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  5. ^ a b Huebner (2023), p. 50.
  6. ^ Huebner (2023), p. 51.
  7. ^ a b Huebner (2023), p. 56.
  8. ^ Hurst (1993), p. 42.
  9. ^ "Forrest and Maples Bill of Sale, 1855". State Historical Society of Missouri. C2017-f001-002.jpg. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  10. ^ Dowdy (2021), p. 42.
  11. ^ WPA DeSoto County (1938), p. 7.
  12. ^ "Runaways in Jail". Vicksburg Whig. February 11, 1852. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  13. ^ "BUTLER v. MAPLES". LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  14. ^ Mackey, Al (January 11, 2017). "Butler v. Maples". Student of the American Civil War. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  15. ^ "Personal". The Daily Memphis Avalanche. December 21, 1875. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  16. ^ "Col. Josiah Maples of Red Fork, Arkansas". The Daily Memphis Avalanche. September 24, 1876. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  17. ^ Goodspeed's Southern Arkansas (1890), p. 1000.
  18. ^ "Red Fork: Cotton Plantations and Cotton Raising—A New Town—Labor and Justice". Memphis Daily Appeal. March 29, 1876. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-05-09.
  19. ^ "Died". Memphis Daily Appeal. September 27, 1876. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-05-09.

Sources[edit]

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