Alphabet File page 30
What we do know - from mostly reliable sources - is this:
01-21-1818: incorporation of Shieldsborough as a town. (Statutes of the Mississippi Territory, 1823)
03-01-1854: incorporated as a city, with a major and aldermen (Laws of the State of Mississippi, 1854)
10-23-1866 chartered as city of Shieldsborough (City Charters, Ordinances and Collected Documents, 1913)
03-02-1875 reincorporated as a city and name changed to Bay St. Louis (Scharff)
04-27-1875 new name acknowledged by the U.S.P.S.
(list compiled by MP, 2011)
(note: The Jan 1, 1858 date, on which the erroneous Centennial celebration was based, is rumored to have been an attempt by the city to establish the name 'Shieldsborough' once and for all - apparently everyone kept calling it 'Bay St. Louis'. However, as hard as we tried, we have not been able to produce any reliable sources for this. HCHS)
1890
Bay St. Louis is deep in the swim. The Bay is popular to a degree and is growing all the time. It has good hotels, pretty drives, many beautiful residences and a thriving population.
In the march of progress, the Bay is talking now of the formation of an Ice Company needed to meet the demands of the little city and having a capacity sufficiently great to supply sister towns when occasion requires.
Then there is contemporaneously a scheme to foot to form an Electric Light Company, to establish a plant and to illuminate the pretty streets and the beach with electricity in the near future.
Then again the erection of a new Hotel, modern in its appointments and comforts and accommodations, is contemplated to meet the ever increasing demands made upon the city by the stream of people who go to the Bay winter and summer and who always travel and live first class. These three projects serve for gossip and set a standard which must certainly create rivalry and redound to the advantage and popularity of all the towns. (Daily States, Friday, Sep 12, 1890 MJS VF VII 00315)
1892
Described in 1892 by Catherine Cole
Pearl Rivers, Maurice Thompson, and just the other day, in "The Soul of Rose Dede," Mollie Moore Davis, what these not accomplished in favor of that pretty place and rival of Biloxi in popular esteem -- Bay St. Louis? let us take a carriage, any one of the easy-going, go-as-you-please vehicles, that stand in an apparently inextricable tangle about the big station, and drive along that incomparable shell drive that, lined on one side by lovely and commodious homes, on the other by the pearl-gray waters of the Bay of St. Louis, stretches itself over 15 miles. It is 15 miles of charm, of sea and breeze, of pretty girls, of white¬sailed sloops, of young fellows on bicycles, of graceful hammocks, gleaming scarlet and orange under the trees. Out in the water, perching like pelicans, is such an array of bathhouses. Each one flaunts its flag.
The Bay folk are mighty partisan and patriotic, and the English flag salutes the German, the French waves at the Italian. On sunny afternoons it is like a carnival, when the flags of all nations are in array.
In the center of the village is that prettiest of lake shore Catholic Churches. Our Lady of the Gulf where the holy water lies in a scalloped sea shell, and where mariners come to pray.
Behind the village are those dewy forests tremulous with life, and of which no one has written so charmingly as gentle-natured, gifted Pearl Rivers, who is the poet laureate of our southern bird world--our singing white of Selbourne.
And then in the heart of the village, a great boxer--a man more famous than if he mearly strung lyrics or made stories for a living or for love-- has his training ground.
I went to see him. It was something to look at and talk to one of the greatest athletes alive.
He took me up into his attic, where his gymnasium is, and I saw him punch the ball. The ball is a balloon of pretty brown leather, filled up with wind by means of a rubber nipple. It is as large as a water bucket. It hangs from the ceiling on a leather string. Mr. Fitzsimmons punched at this with his big, ungainly fists. He showed me the different styles of hits, how put away with Dempsey, how he was going to get away with O'Brien. I felt myself to be quite an accomplished boxer, or at least, quite a connoisseur of boxing, after that interview with a champion. (Daily Picayune, Sunday July 24, 1892, p 12 c 3-7 in an article by Catherine Cole) (VF MJS VII 00327 also recorded on MJS VII 00405)
A gentleman well informed on the subject told the scribe the other day that no less than sixty houses were in course of construction in Bay St. Louis and the immediate vicinity. (SCE 8/13/1892)
School, BSL Colored - The Bay St. Louis colored public school will open on the 17th, instant. (SCE 10/15/1892)
School, Public - The public city school will open next Monday on Telhiard near Second streets. Prof. J. T. Eagan, formerley THE ECHO'S bright correspondent at Nicholson, will conduct the school. The school could had (not) been placed in better hands. (SCE 10/15/1892)
The work of repairing the courthouse is progressing nicely. (SCE 11/5/1892)
City Council Special Meeting.
A special meeting of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen was held on Tuesday. The entire Board was present except Alderman Carver. The Mayor stated the object of the meeting was to ascertain whether the order for the school bond election could be rescinded by appropriating a part of the school fund to the building of a school house. The sum of $961.84 was found to be in the treasury to the credit of the school fund. The sum of $500 was ordered out of the school fund to be appropriated to the school house building and it was moved and seconded that the elections on the 13th of next month be rescinded.(SCE 11/19/1892)
1893
The New School Building.
The public school building is complete, and the following dispatch to a New Orleans paper is so accurate of the building , that we use part of it:
Among the many recent improvements is the erection of a first class public school, one of the finest in South Mississippi and a matter of pride to every taxpayer in Bay St. Louis.
If the country had been looked over, a more lovely or convenient spot could not have been selected for an educational institution. This splendid sight is slight elevation among beautiful pines, oaks, and cedars, corner of Carroll and Second streets, both of which have been shelled and opened under the administration of Capt. Toulme, the present mayor. The building is about one quarter of a mile from the Louisville and Nashville depot and about half the distance from the courthouse on Main street, in easy distance for all the children attending school. The shoolhouse is 42x62 feet with a large hall and handsome front gallery, and contains four very large recitation and study rooms, also an exhibition hall with twenty-one windows and a state suitable for all the purposes for which it has been built.
The whole building is well ventilated for summer and winter. Flues have been built in all the rooms, and during the coldest weather the pupils can study in warmth and comfort.
The building has been painted cream, with seal brown trimmings, the inside being hard oil finish. The apparatus for the school is complete, and is furnished with everything useful for a first-class institution.
The best of water will be supplied for the building, and a pupil breathing the sweet pure air from the pines and cedars, cannot help enjoying good health, surrounded on one side by the delicious scent from the pines and flowers, and on the other by the balmy breezes wafted over the gulf from other lands.
The play grounds are large, filled with oaks and cedars, with a 6-foot board fence between. The front yard will be used mostly for the teachers for cultivating flowers, which will not only add to the beauty of the place but will be the means of those engaged in the work of plenty out-door, health exercise.