Murrell gang
Jr. Member
- Aug 16, 2011
- 93
- 114
- Detector(s) used
- Garrett Ace 250,bounty hunter tracker 4,Garrett pro pointer
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
If you drive west from Covington, you will arrive at the Mississippi River at a place called Randolph. Today there is not much to it-an unincorporated community with a couple of churches, a few homes and a boat dock. However, there was a time when Randolph challenged Memphis for commercial supremacy along the Mississippi River. Randolph lost out on that rivalry, fell victim to the destructive force of the river and was destroyed by the Union army during the Civil War. Randolph's heyday was in the 1830s, when it shipped more cotton on the Mississippi River then Memphis. If you had come through Randolph then you would have found about 1,000 resident's,three warehouses,saloons,schools and four hotels, the nicest of which was known as Washington Hall You would have also found a printing press that produced a newspaper called the Randolph Recorder. According to the Recorder a new steamboat arrived in Randolph just about every day these boats traded everything from cotton and oats to nails and whiskey. The Civil War played a part in the decline of Randolph. many of Randolph,s buildings were still standing when the War Between the States broke out. Early in the conflict, the Confederate government knew it needed to do something to try to keep Memphis from falling into Union hands.Utilizing slave labor,it built two forts at Randolph: one known as Fort Randolph and the other Fort Wright( tearing down many of the town's abandoned buildings in the process).The Confederate Army also operated boot camps here for soldiers throughout Tennessee; it was here that Nathan Bedford Forrest began military training. As it turned out, the Confederate government didn't have much of a Navy to help defend its fortifications along the Mississippi. Forts Randolph and Wright were abandoned by Confederate forces in the summer of 1862. A few months later, after rebel guerrillas were traced to the area, U.S. Gen. William T. Sherman,then in charge of the captured city of Memphis, ordered his army to burn what was left of Randolph to the ground. Almost nothing is left of these Civil War fortifications other than an underground magazine where the Confederates stored gunpowder.
