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v pjRS OF WATER — HISTORY OF GEORGE COUNTY, MI£ Harvell Jackson -	1978
\jLewis Printing Services - Pascagoula, Kiss.)
108	By The Rivers Of Water
Sterling DuPree
One of the most colorful denizens of the Pascagoula River region during the twilight days of the Second Spanish Rule was Sterling DuPree. In most history books, he is overshadowed by the Kemper Brothers in the short-lived West Florida Revolution. The Kempers worked the St. Stephens-Fort Stoddard and the Natchez-Baton Rouge ends of the Golden Crescent, but it was DuPree and Major William Hargreave who made the telling blow in the center at the mouth of the Pascagoula. They captured the Old Spanish Fort, confiscated several schooners belonging to John B. Budreau, Anthony Krebs, and a colored man named Augustin. They also appropriated household goods and other loot from the various settlers.
DuPree might have been a pirate or bandit in the eyes of some, but he was a patriot and hero to most of the big names along the River. They elected him Captain of the District, and sent him to the Pearl River Convention in 1816 as their representative. DuPree was put on a County commission to establish the first courthouse in Jackson County, in 1812. It was placed around what is now Benndale in present George County. There was a John Budreau on the same commission. It is problematical whether it was the same one he had robbed or not!
Major George Farragut, or Farragout, was appointed by Governor Claiborne as the first Justice of the Peace in Jackson County for the express purpose of bringing DuPree to trial for piracy and banditry, but no one would serve the warrant and he was never apprehended. He remained on the roll of tax payers until 1830, and then disappeared from the records.
Major Farragut wrote to Governor Claiborne at New Orleans and stated that DuPree had a house about two miles below the “line of demarkation”; that meaht the 31st parallel (boundary running through the State above Wiggins and Lucedale).
‘Pree Eddy and ‘Pree Creek mark the location of the old homestead to this day. They are about two miles below Merrill. DuPree owned several hundred acres there.
A trip to 'Pree Eddy today by boat fires the faculty of imagination. The one-hundred-yard-gat that leads from the river