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P’TOWN.002
KNOW YOUR COAST
THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLINGTON
Pearlington, the first town on the Pearl River in the State of Mississippi, was settled way back in 1777 by Simon Favre, who was sent from Mobile by the U. S. Government to negotiate with the Choctaws for this valuable river strip of their land.
As compensation for his services he received a large grant on which he pioneered the settlement known today as Pearlington.
Long before the War Between the States all the cotton raised on Pearl River was brought down on flatboats to the original old Favre farm and ginned at its historic landing on the Pearl River known as "The Gin" (later called Favreport) and then shipped to the New Orleans by schooners and steamboats.
Pearlington, like the river itself, was so named because of the fresh water pearls found in the area - practically valueless, of course, but the same kind of pearls which over two centuries before had deluded DeSoto’s conquistadores that while they had not found gold, they had discovered great wealth.
It was a descendent of the original Favre who became Vice-President of the famous Poitevent and Favre Lumber Company of Pearlington, organized shortly after the War Between the States to replace the lost cotton business, and which operated sensationally for nearly half a century.
During the boom lumber days on the Pearl and Pascagoula in the late 1800’s there were seventeen sawmills in and within a radius of ten miles of Pearlington - but the Poitevent and Favre operation was not only the most aggressive in the Pearlington area it was one of the most successful in Mississippi.
This company supplied the lumber to build the Chattanooga Railroad, now the L & N; furnished the lumber and pilings for the Eads jetty at the mouth of the Mississippi; and shipped the lumber to build the New Orleans cotton exposition of 1884.
When Poitevent and Favre sold out its interests to the Weston Lumber Company of Logtown about 1908, Pearlington - for many years one of the most thriving towns on the Coast, lost its long held lumbering prestige and has never since found a substitute.
Copyright 1956 by Ray M. Thompson
The above article was copied from a newspaper clipping, unidentified and undated except for copyright date, found in the pages of an album of photographs of the Nelson Camp at the Old Gin,