06/06/2025
So many people that were involved somehow in Robert Jefferson's life, and others who weren't, but can be connected, died at fairly young ages. This person I am featuring today lived in Mississippi just around the end of Reconstruction, but met O.R. Singleton to talk about a business opportunity his dad had asked him to find out more about.
There is so little out there that I've been able to find on Singleton, even though he was a heavy hitter in Mississippi and both the U.S. and Confederate Congresses, and an officer in the Confederate Army. I have heard from at least one scholar who knows something about him that he was a hateful person and she couldn't believe that he would have signed manumission papers for any enslaved person of color. Of course, if you are a son of the third POTUS, people who don't usually pay attention to your race do pay attention to you.
Anyway, it's not a lot, but it was fun hearing a contemporary talk about his take on this elusive character of Southern history.
A recent Perplexity.ai search led me to find letters written by one Samuel Bradley Wiggin, who had mentioed in one or more of the letters O.R. Singleton, the Mississippi lawyer, politician, plantation owner and slaveholder who signed Robert Jefferson’s freedom papers. A man who, despite serving in...
