This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

Pilgrimage Guide
members are dedicated to historic preservation as part of their total program of education and protection of natural resources. Both the pleasant small town of Pontotoc and the county situated in the rolling hills and deep valleys of northern Mississippi bear the same name. So does an elevation known as Pontotoc Ridge, which includes Pontotoc County in its angle across this corner of the state.
Pontotoc may have been named for Pakitakohlih, a Chickasaw Indian chief, the name a compound of the Chickasaw words "ponti" and "tokali." In addition to the "hanging grapes" translation, some sources list various versions of "reed prairie" and "battle where the cattails stood."
The battle referred to in the name is known in local lore as the "Battle of Tubbee’s Ridge." Fought in the spring of 1736 when Pierre D’Artaguette arrived with a company of French soldiers with plans to destroy the Chickasaw Nation, the battle turned into a decided victory for the Chicka-saws.
Pontotoc’s history as recorded by the white man began centuries before D’Artaguette, however, with the arrival of General Hernando DeSoto in December 1540 to spend the winter with his forces. It was a hard winter for the Spaniards, who suffered from the weather and the wrath they evoked from the Chickasaws. Legend says some of DeSoto’s men are buried there.
White settlers were in the area long before the Indians ceded the land in the 1830s and walked the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma reservations.
Henry Love, a resident at the time of the 1832 cession, is credited with giving the settlement the name of "Pon-tetok" which became "Pontotoc."
A tour of Pontotoc County takes visitors over the trails of the ancient Chickasaws, D’Artaguette and DeSoto-and to sites where Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett
spent time -in addition to some of the known routes of five invading armies that traversed the area.
Pontotoc boasts many firsts, but the most outstanding may be the contribution of Betty Love Allen, a Chickasaw woman married to a white man, who in 1839 won a lawsuit giving women the right to own property. Litigation over property claimed by her husband’s creditors led the Mississippi Legislature to enact this bit of Chickasaw tribal code into law, and it was a precedent soon to be followed in the rest of the English-speaking
world.
The first Christian mission to the Chickasaws was founded in 1799 by the Reverend Joseph Bullen, a Presbyterian minister. A permanent mission was established when the Reverend Thomas Stuart, another Presbyterian, arrived in 1819 and returned in 1821 to stay. He built a school and church just south of the site where the town of Pontotoc was later to be located.
Old Monroe Mission, the church building erected by Father Stuart sometime before the Civil War, still stands and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Construction details indicate the church was built about the same time (probably by some of the same hands) that Scotsman .Robert Gordon was building Lochinvar, the mansion that anchors garden club tours today.
In addition to Lochinvar, home of Dr. Forrest Tutor and Dr. Janis Burns Tutor and their sons, the last year’s tour of homes included Furr Home, Parker Home, Hodge Home, the Reese Garden, Childers Home, and Larson Home.
From antebellum mansion to an elaborate Victorian structure, the tour offers both new and vintage houses with classic designs and bold modern architecture. Some homes are furnished with priceless antiques, some with one-of-a-kind pieces as modern as the new decade of the Nineties.
The Larson Home is a popular stop on the Pontotoc Tour of Homes. Mrs. Gary Larson displays for visitors a dress she made.
24A MARCH/APRIL 1993