The Original Mississippi Collection

Between 1925 and 1933, Judge Stone Deavours donated approximately 567 publications to the University of Mississippi. The collection’s exclusive focus was Mississippiana: all the works were either written by Mississippians or contain significant content about the state. It includes pamphlets from the early nineteenth century, novels, poetry, travel literature, history, and other types of nonfiction.

The Judge Stone Deavours Collection was a foundational gift. Prior to the opening of the Archives & Special Collections in 1975, the library sequestered these rare volumes along with similarly focused book and manuscript holdings in the “Mississippi Room.”

An avid bibliophile, Deavours spent a great deal of time and effort identifying Mississippi authors and tracking down copies of publications to acquire. He often pasted newspaper clippings about the books or authors inside the front covers or added his own notations. For example, Punishment (1925) by Lawrence Highland contains an article revealing the author of this novel as Mary Barron Linfield of Lumberton, Mississippi.

Featured in this display:

• The Black Man's Burden / William H. Holtzclaw, 1915
• Seeing Europe by Automobile / Lee Merriwether, 1911
• Mistress Joy: A Tale of Natchez in 1798 / Grace Magowan Cooke and Annie Booth McKinney, 1901
• Book inscribed to "Hon. Stone Deavours from Edgar [illegible]", 1925.
• Punishment / Lawrence Highland, 1925
• Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills, 1820
• Letter from Judge Stone Deavours to Professor David H. Bishop, 10 September 1925, re: donation of books to the University of Mississippi