Hamilton, Jones S., 1833-1907

Jones S. Hamilton was a Confederate officer who later became a wealthy railroad investor and businessman in Mississippi.

Born on April 19, 1833, in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, Hamilton was educated in Mississippi and then graduated from Centenary College in Louisiana. He served as sheriff of Wilkinson County during the late 1850s but resigned the position to volunteer for Confederate military service when the Civil War broke out in 1861. He served in a Mississippi unit in the Army of Northern Virginia, eventually attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war, Hamilton settled in Jackson, Mississippi, and held various public positions, including the deputy state auditor, adjutant general in the Mississippi militia, and a state senator. Most notably, he gained fame and wealth through railroad projects and commercial enterprises. Hamilton was credited with driving much of the infrastructure and railroad development in southern Mississippi. He also became strongly associated with the convict leasing program, where his companies paid the state to use prisoners from Mississippi’s penitentiary as laborers on public works and construction projects. By the late nineteenth century, Hamilton was a millionaire.

Hamilton’s financial success and business methods drew criticism from some, and in the 1880s he became embroiled in a dispute with a newspaper editor named Roderick Gambrell. The feud led to a duel in which Hamilton killed Gambrell. He was acquitted, but the incident underscored the controversy surrounding him and contributed to perceptions like that written by the Vicksburg American, who noted that “no man connected with public affairs of Mississippi . . . had led a more eventful, and to a certain extent, checkered, career than Jones S. Hamilton.”

Hamilton died on January 21, 1907. He had been married twice, first to Carolina Augusta Stewart in 1856, with whom he had two children. She died in 1861 and he later married Fannie Buck in 1877 and had five additional children. Hamilton is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.

(Wikipedia; FindaGrave; The Vicksburg American, Vicksburg, MS, January 21, 1907; Jackson Daily News, Jackson, MS, January 21, 1907)

Jones S. Hamilton belonged to the following social groups: