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displayed in Bay library
JEAN TOWN Herald Staff Writer
Lovers of things old and rare will find much to delight them iiTthe Baxter Collection exhibited this week at the Bay St. Louis City-County Library, U.S. 90, Bay St. Louis.
Scores of documents, maps, rare signatures, photos and books gathered over the past 25-40 years by Lionel F. Baxter form a kind of geneology of his family, one of the first to settle in the Hancock County area of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Baxter, a Bay St. Louis resident, is a member of the board of directors of Storer Broadcasting, an independent owner of radio and television facilities throughout the country.
The carefully preserved pieces of the past offer, too, an intimate look at the Confederate 20th Regiment, Missisippi Volunteers, which formed at Handsboro, and with which Baxter's grandfather Marion Francis Baxter served.
Impressive among Baxter?s collection is the signature of William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named. The document on which the signature appears is dated Feb. 7,1691, and is a land transfer to William and Abraham Lloyd, 2,000 acres for the sum of 40 pounds.
Included are the rare signaturers of Job and Paul Marion and of their brother Francis Marion, the famed Confederate guerilla fighter ??The Swamp Fox.?
A letter to James Monroe dated 1830 bears the signature of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who, at that time, was the only surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Baxter also has collected the signatures of commanders under whom his grandfather served during the Civil War. They number 20-plus. Among them is the signature of General Robert Lowry, commander of his grandfather?s brigade. Lowry later served as governor of Mississippi, from 1881 to 1885.
Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States, is represented in Baxter?s . collection with a first edition two-volume copy of ?The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government?, written by Davis at Beauvoir.
The collection also includes a letter written in 1878 by Davis to Col. A. D. Mann, who had served as Confederate Ambassador to Belgium. In the letter Davis lists the attributes of the Mississippi Gulf Coast . . . the climate, the fine seafood . . . and also mentions the neighboring community of Mississippi City.
One of Baxter?s most prized possessions is a 1780 revision of a John Stewart map of the carolinas area on the Atlantic Coast. On it he has located three points at which his ancestors first settled in America.
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a Mississippi muzzle-loader of the type used by both sides in the Civil War, a U.S. Centennial medal, a sesquicentennial issue of the Colt .45, and the Confederacy Collection of Lennox plates issued to raise funds for a museum at the White House of the Confederacy at Richmond, Va.
Baxter explained 1,201 complete 12-plate sets were made, the first of which is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution. The 1,201st set is on display at 1201 Clay St., Richmond, at the Confederate White House museum. The other 1,199 sets were made available to the interested persons and one now is in Baxter?s collection.
Each plate bears a ?scene? significant to the Confederacy ... a Confederate military camp, the seal of the Confederacy, ?Jeb? Stuart . . . painted by a Bavarian artist Willi Schiener, and each is accompanied by a printed history of the scene.
Also on display at the Bay library is the gold inlaid silver watch presented to Baxter?s grandfather by Poitevent and Favre Lumber Co., of which Marion F. Baxter was superintendent.
There?s an original Matthew Brady photograph of Pierre Gustave Tontant Beauregard accompanied by a letter Beauregard wrote in 1838 from the military academy at West Point, N.Y.
Another rare autograph is that of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest; and Baxter?s collection also includes an 1867 report card from Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in the name of S. Z. Ammen.
There?s a letter written on a Civil War battlefield by William J. Hardee, and a copy of the Georgetown Gazette, purchased by Baxter's great-great-grandfather Francis Marion Baxter in 1806, in which the latter states what is to be his editorial policy.
On the contemporary side, Baxter has on display memorabilia of the military career of his late brother Hermann M. Baxter who was killed in Germany during World War II.
The collection is extensive and varied and seems to have been put together with painstaking care by a man deeply interested in and enchanted by the history of his family and his nation.
At Monday night?s reception honoring Baxter and the collection, he pointed out a small yellowing newspaper clipping on display between two rate books: An 1891 first edition of "A History of Mississippi? and an 1889 copy of "The Life of Marion?. The clipping is an old recipe for ?Francis Marion Reception Punch.?
?We?re serving that tonight," Baxter said