260 A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI PHOTO COURTESY OF PAULA MERRITT, THE MERIDIAN STAR Confederate Major Amos McLemore was commissioned to round up the deserters, but on October 5 he was shot and killed in the home of Amos Deason in Ellisville, Mississippi. Rumor had it that Knight was the murderer. To those in the East Central region, war meant giving what you had and doing what you could. In 1862, after the Vicksburg Campaign began, Governor Pettus moved the state capital to Enterprise for a while and then back to Jackson. In Lauderdale County, the mill at Dunn’s Falls was used by the Confederacy to produce items such as blankets, clothing, and hats. A distillery and blacksmith shop were added to aid in the war effort. The Lauderdale Springs Resort became a hospital for Confederate soldiers, and the railroad spur that once transported patrons to the Lauderdale Springs Resort was used to deliver wounded Confederate soldiers to the hospital. After Union forces destroyed their home on Davis Island, Joseph Davis, brother of Jefferson Davis, and his wife Eliza settled at Lauderdale Springs. When Jefferson Davis toured the Lauderdale Springs Hospital in October 1863, he discovered his sister-in-law Eliza had died from typhoid fever and was buried in the Lauderdale Cemetery. Her body was exhumed following the war and carried home to Davis Island. Choctaw Indians living in the East Central region joined the Confederate ranks, including Jack Amos, grandson of Nahotima, a sister of Chief Pushmataha. Amos enlisted in the 1st Choctaw Battalion, Mississippi Calvary under the command of Major J. W. Pearce. On February 19, 1863, three miles east of Hickory, heavy rains washed out the railroad bridge and the engineer failed to heed warnings that the bridge was out on the Little Chunky Creek between Chunky and Hickory. The troop train bound for Vicksburg derailed. Jack Amos and other Native Americans stripped and plunged into the water to save about twenty-two people. The February 26, 1863 issue of The Daily Southern Crisis (Jackson, Miss.) reported that sixty-plus soldiers and civilians died in the accident and were buried on the railroad right-of-way. Before the fall of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant sent Colonel Benjamin Grierson and his 6th Illinois Cavalry to Newton where the Confederates had large stores of weapons and supplies and a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. Grierson was to confiscate and destroy all supplies destined for Vicksburg. Grierson sped through Starkville and Louisville on June 22, secured the bridge across Pearl River by the morning of June 23, and was in Neshoba County by three that afternoon. News of Grierson had already reached citizens of Neshoba County and they hurriedly stashed provisions and stock in places of safety, as well as valuables such as THREEFOOT BUILDING With a name taken from the English translation of the builder’s original German name, Dreifuss, the Threefoot Building was an imposing, fifteen story addition to Meridian’s skyline. Built in the Art Deco style of the 1920s with dark brick, the building was completed in 1929. The building has been used as an office in the past but economic troubles have surrounded it from the beginning and it has not been continuously occupied for any long length of time.