Jones County rebel’s descendants try to sort fact from fiction

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Jones County rebel’s descendants try to sort fact from fiction


By Associated Press, Published: July 4
SOSO, Miss. — One hundred and fifty years have passed since the Civil War, but in Mississippi, the descendants of a legendary rebel are still separating the facts of his life from fiction.
Newton Knight, a white farmer from central Mississippi’s Jones County, rebelled against the Confederate Army. He spent years evading capture, living in swamps and the Piney Woods. He married a white woman named Serena and later moved in with a former slave named Rachel. She was owned by Knight’s family and carried their surname, and she had helped him during his days dodging the Confederate Army.

He shared his life with both women.
Today, Florence Knight Blaylock, 81, and her sister, Dorothy Knight Marsh, 69, are among those fascinated with the family legend. The sisters — who live in Soso — consider Newton and Rachel Knight their great-grandparents.
“His life was always a mystery and sort of like the big folklore of Jones County,” Marsh said.
The story’s allure is heightened by layers of misdirection and the veil of time. The legend of Newton Knight, his band of anti-Confederate men, and their so-called Free State of Jones is very much alive for the residents of this rural county, in a state that still shares its flag with a symbol of Confederate rebellion.
Today’s Knights, unencumbered by the taboos surrounding Newton’s interracial relationship and his desertion, are finally able to gather to share pictures, documents and compare stories that might lead them toward the truth of their ancestors’ lives.

For the rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...fdf7fa-e4b2-11e2-bffd-37a36ddab820_story.html
 
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