Matilda "Mittie" Glover was born in New Orleans on December 7, 1857 to John George and Emily Vick Morse Glover. On April 25, 1878, she married John Henry Bruce in Catahoula Parish. John was born on Lee Bayou, Catahoula Parish, on December 27, 1852. His parents were John and Ann Bruce.
Mittie was a sister to Mary Elizabeth (1855-1936) who married Asa Jourdan Sapp (1849-1925) in Catahoula Parish on April 30, 1874. Mittie's maternal grandparents were Eliza White Vick and Col. Henry Morse. Her maternal great grandparents were Elizabeth Clark and Rev. Newit Vick. The city of Vicksburg, Mississippi is named after Mittie's maternal great grandfather, Rev. Newit Vick.
John Lane, born in Virginia, April 8, 1789, obtained his education at Franklin College, Athens; in 1814, at the age of twenty-five years, he was admitted to the South Carolina conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, in the following year was appointed to the Natchez circuit, and thus became the pioneer Methodist preacher in Mississippi Territory and the first of that denomination to labor among the Cherokee and Creek Indians; in 1820 he was made presiding elder of the Mississippi circuit, and the ministry was his chosen field of labor, but he also engaged in business, in which he achieved a certain degree of success, and in addition served as judge of the private court of Warren County; his prominence in affairs led to his appointment as president of the Conference Missionary Society; he married a daughter of the Rev. Newit Vick, and in 1820 settled in Mississippi on Mr. Vick's estate, and there founded Vicksburg, which he named in honor of his father-in-law, Rev. Vick; his death occurred in Vicksburg, Mississippi, October 10, 1855. (Virginia Biography, Vols. I-III, p. 208-209)
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| Vick Memorial, Vicksburg, Warren, Mississippi-tombstone photograph is courtesy of Julia Sweitzer at FindAGrave.com |
Mittie and John had the following children:
Frederick Southmayd, 1879-? (m. Lucy Register)
Arlette "Lettie", 1882-1929 (m. 1.William L. Gillespie; 2.Arthur L. Knesel)
George Glover, 1884-1952 (m. Willie L)
Henry Daniel, 1886-1933 (m. 1.Dewetta Willie Hornsby; 2.Katie Meyers)
Agnes, 1889-1973 (m. James Hutchinson)
John Medine, 1895-1963 (m. Pansy Hamilton)
From: Our Island Heritage, Vol. 2, 1977, compiled by Sophie Haley and Mickie Smith:
The Mittie Glover Bruce house in Catahoula Parish was re-built in 1902 after a fire destroyed the original plantation house, according to recollections of Kathryn Bruce Garner, an adopted granddaughter of Mrs. Mittie Bruce. She recalls the hardship that the young widow with six small children must have withstood, with floods, droughts, and boll weevil crop failures before she was able to establish her plantation as a profitable way of life. This enabled her to secure good educations for her children after they finished the local school which had only a five month yearly term. She sent the boys to Jefferson Military College in Natchez, Mississippi and the girls to Whitworth College for Women in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
Her house had four bedrooms, across a hall from the parlor and dining room, and a plantation office with bell-rope through the window. The bell-rope was pulled to ring the bells that signaled the day's work had begun for the tenants who lived on the place. The kitchen and pantry porch were at the rear, near which a huge cypress water tank stood that was used to bring water into the house. There were deep porches on several sides and across the front. The inside wide hall, which formed a natural breezeway, opened onto the porch with double doors. It was in this cool, shady area that the Sunday company sat after one of her huge plantation dinners. "I remember them as feasts", says her granddaughter, "But they consisted of her own hand raised vegetables, fruits, meats and poultry. The one luxury was the ice which was brought to the table and served grandly in tall glasses for tea for the grown ups and lemonade for the children. One cannot imagine the feeling of prestige that serving ice in July brought in that bygone time."
"Grandmother built her levee system around her place to give protection from the encroaching backwaters of the Tensas River. I often walked around it with her, in the early morning inspections she made. Often the levee proved too low and flooded fields followed. The curve of the Tensas River where the place lies, faces Tensas and Concordia Parishes."
Upon Mittie's death, her daughter, Agnes Bruce Hutchinson, occupied the home until her tragic death in 1973. The property was then owned by a great grandson, Joe Lancaster.
Mittie Glover Bruce died on November 22, 1949 and is buried in the Old Pine Hill Cemetery in Sicily Island. John Henry Bruce died on March 9, 1899 and is buried at McIntosh Plantation Cemetery in Clayton, Concordia, Louisiana. There is no tombstone photograph for John Henry Bruce at this time.
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