Josiah Maples
{{Short description|American planter and slave trader (~1819–1876)}}
{{use mdy dates|date=May 2024|cs1-dates=ly}}{{use American English|date=May 2024}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Josiah Maples
| image = Slave trade in the Memphis, Tennessee, City Directory, 1855 03.jpg
| alt =
| caption = Ad for Forrest & Maples in the 1855 Memphis city directory
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{circa|1819}}
| birth_place = Alabama Territory or Alabama, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date|1876|09|22}}
| death_place = Raleigh, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
| nationality =
| other_names =
| occupation = American planter and slave trader
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
}}
Josiah Maples ({{circa|1819}}{{snd}}September 22, 1876) was a 19th-century cotton plantation owner, bank director, and slave trader of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas in the United States (and the Confederate States during the American Civil War). Maples is notable as a slave-trading business partner of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Biography
Josiah Maples was born in Alabama in approximately 1818{{cite web |work=United States Census, 1860 |via=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M8WM-NQN |title=Entry for Josiah Maples and R C Stone, 1860}} or 1820.{{cite web |work=United States Census, 1870 |via=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MNCS-4W8 |title=Entry for Josiah Maples and Mary A Maples, 1870}} In July 1849 Maples was appointed to a "committee of twenty" in DeSoto County, Mississippi that produced a resolution that opposed the Wilmot Proviso, protested northern aggression, and "Resolved, 5th. That while we cherish for the Union a lasting and warm regard, yet, we are not to be frightened from maintaining our just rights by being taunted with the name of disunionist feeling that whatever may be the result of this agitation it is chargeable not only on us who only stand on our rights under the constitution, but on those who have on this subject violated every guaranty of that sacred instrument."{{Cite news |date=1849-07-06 |title=Southern Meeting |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-weekly-mississippian-southern-meetin/136597991/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=The Weekly Mississippian |pages=1}} In 1851 Maples was the treasurer of the Masonic Lodge in DeSoto County.{{sfnp|Grand Lodge of Mississippi|1882|page=647}} In 1852 the sheriff of Shelby County, Tennessee reported that his jail held a 23-year-old runaway slave named Philip, "5 feet, 6 or 7 inches high, weighs about 140 pounds; belongs to Josiah Maples, of De Soto county, Miss."{{Cite news |date=1852-02-11 |title=Runaways in Jail |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/vicksburg-whig-runaways-in-jail/136598082/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=Vicksburg Whig |pages=3}} On or about October 1, 1853, Maples married Mary A. Marshall in Fayette County, Tennessee.{{cite web| work=Tennessee, County Marriages, 1790-1950 |via=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KZWP-6W4 |title=Entry for Josiah Maples and Mary A Marshall, 01 Oct 1853}} On July 15, 1854, Maples patented 40 acres of land in Cherokee County, Alabama.{{Cite web |title=Patent Details - BLM GLO Records |url=https://glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=AL3260__.308&docClass=STA&sid=m4rpbatf.xpx |access-date=2024-05-10 |website=glorecords.blm.gov}}
Maples was one of three major business partners of slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest, along with (serially, not simultaneously) Seaborne S. Jones and Byrd Hill.{{sfnp|Huebner|2023|page=50}} (Forrest's five brothers also worked in the business.){{sfnp|Huebner|2023|page=50}} According to a history of DeSoto County, Mississippi produced by the WPA in the late 1930s, "An interesting fact concerning Gen. Forrest, related by [Anna Maples of Olive Branch, Mississippi], was his having worked for Josiah Maples in his youth, on the old Evans place, a few miles from Pleasant Hill".{{sfnp|WPA DeSoto County|1938|page=7}} Maples and Forrest were in business together as Forrest & Maples from July 1854{{sfnp|Huebner|2023|page=51}} to December 31, 1855.{{sfnp|Huebner|2023|page=56}} In November 1854 they sold a nine-year-old girl named Page to Lavinia and Lemuel Smith for $600.{{sfnp|Hurst|1993|page=42}} On July 9, 1855, they sold Adisson, age 22, to V. Beckworth for $1,000.{{Cite web |title=Forrest and Maples Bill of Sale, 1855 |url=https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/p17228coll1/id/179/rec/1 |access-date=2024-05-09 |id=C2017-f001-002.jpg |website=State Historical Society of Missouri |language=en}} Also in 1855, Forrest & Maples sold Mary, age 15, for $800.{{sfnp|Dowdy|2021|page=42}} On New Year's 1856 the Maples and Forrest partnership was dissolved. {{sfnp|Huebner|2023|page=56}}
At the time of the 1860 U.S. federal census, Maples, occupation "planter," with personal property valued at $10,000, lived in Redfork Township, Desha County, Arkansas, in a household shared with an overseer, a housekeeper, and their respective families. The slave schedules show that 70 enslaved people worked on Maples' plantation.{{cite web |work=United States Census (Slave Schedule), 1860 |via=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:WKVS-P6N2 |title=Entry for Josiah Maples, 1860}} In March 1861, Maples was elected a director of the Bank of West Tennessee.{{Cite news |date=1861-03-07 |title=Directors, Bank of West Tennessee |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/memphis-daily-appeal-directors-bank-of/136598279/ |access-date=2024-05-10 |work=Memphis Daily Appeal |pages=3}} During the American Civil War he sold some cotton that was later partially burned by Union troops; there was a lawsuit.{{Cite web |title=BUTLER v. MAPLES. |url=https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/76/766 |access-date=2024-05-09 |website=LII / Legal Information Institute |language=en}} The case Butler v. Maples "established that buying cotton through an insurrectionary area through an agent licensed by the Treasury Department was legal".{{Cite web |last=Mackey |first=Al |date=2017-01-11 |title=Butler v. Maples |url=https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/butler-v-maples/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |website=Student of the American Civil War |language=en}}
File:Josiah_Maples_will_of_July_20_1876.jpg, made July 20, 1876]]
Maples was enumerated as a resident of Desha County, Arkansas during the 1870 census, along with his wife, Mary A. Maples, and their three children, Lizzie, Marshall, and Clement. In 1875 he was described as "one of the heaviest cotton planters of the Arkansas valley".{{Cite news |date=1875-12-21 |title=Personal |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-memphis-avalanche-personal/136597513/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=The Daily Memphis Avalanche |pages=4}} In 1876 Maples' primary residence was listed as Red Fork, Arkansas.{{Cite news |date=1876-09-24 |title=Col. Josiah Maples of Red Fork, Arkansas |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-memphis-avalanche-col-josiah/136597466/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=The Daily Memphis Avalanche |pages=4}} Red Fork was described as "a post office and landing on the Arkansas River, thirty miles above its mouth, and four miles from Watson, the county seat of Desha county".{{Cite news |date=1876-03-29 |title=Red Fork: Cotton Plantations and Cotton Raising—A New Town—Labor and Justice |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/memphis-daily-appeal-red-fork-cotton-pl/136598437/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=Memphis Daily Appeal |pages=2}} Maples was considered a pioneer of Desha County,{{sfnp|Goodspeed's Southern Arkansas|1890|page=1000}} and a leading, if not the leading, citizen of the area of fertile bottomland that was said to "frequently [produce] two bales of cotton to the acre".
Maples died in the Raleigh section of Memphis on September 22, 1876, after a long illness. Maples was buried in Rossville, Tennessee.{{Cite news |date=1876-09-27 |title=Died |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/memphis-daily-appeal-died/146913431/ |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=Memphis Daily Appeal |pages=1}}
See also
References
{{reflist}}
= Sources =
{{refbegin|indent=yes}}
- {{Cite book |last=Goodspeed Publishing Co. |url=http://archive.org/details/biographicalhist02good_0 |title=Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas |date=1890 |location=Chicago, St. Louis |publisher=Goodspeed Pub. Co. |via=Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Internet Archive |ref={{harvid|Goodspeed's Southern Arkansas|1890}} }}
- {{cite book |last=Dowdy |first=G. Wayne |year=2021 |title=Enslavement in Memphis |publisher=History Press |series=American Heritage |isbn=9781439673225 |oclc=1265464526}}
- {{Cite journal |last=Huebner |first=Timothy S. | author-link=Timothy S. Huebner |date=March 2023 |title=Taking Profits, Making Myths: The Slave Trading Career of Nathan Bedford Forrest |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/879775 |journal=Civil War History |language=en |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=42–75 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2023.0009 |s2cid=256599213 |issn=1533-6271|url-access=subscription }}
- {{cite book |last=Hurst |first=Jack |title=Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography | year=1993 |location=New York |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf | isbn=978-0-307-78914-3 |lccn=92054383 |oclc=26314678 |language=en-us}}
- {{cite book |author=Various |url=https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/wp-content/uploads/Digitized%20Microfilms/Desoto%20County.pdf |year=1938 |publisher=STATE WIDE HISTORICAL RESEARCH PROJECT (Susie V. Powell, State Supervisor) WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION for MISSISSIPPI |title=Source Material for Mississippi History: DeSoto County, Vol. XVII |via=Mississippi Library Commission |ref={{harvid|WPA DeSoto County|1938}} }}
- {{cite book |last=Freemasons of Mississippi, Grand Lodge |year=1882 |title=Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Mississippi [1818–1852] |location=Jackson, Mississippi |publisher=Clarion Steam Printing Establishment |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008975123 |ref={{harvid|Grand Lodge of Mississippi|1882}} }}
{{refend}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maples, Josiah}}
Category:19th-century American slave traders
Category:American cotton plantation owners
Category:American slave owners
Category:Businesspeople from Memphis, Tennessee
Category:History of slavery in Tennessee
Category:People from DeSoto County, Mississippi