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

---

u- ~ uoo;c,j
"ELMWOOD" S^.iTED AS HOME 181^
WPA - 1937 - Hancock County Interviev with Jesse Cownad
One of the earliest settlers of the coast on Bay St. Louis was Jesse Cowand. Melite La Sassier's grant of land dates hack to 1786 and Jesse Cowand bought from La Sassier allthe tract lying on the water front knovn as the Cowand-Field Cotton Plantation.
In an interview with, his grandson, Jesse Covand, a citigen of Bay St. Louis in 1937, the latter said that his grandfather began work on his home, now ^Elmwood Manor" but left to fight in the War of 1812. He completed the house after the war and it is one of the oldest homes in Hancock County.
The bricks were brought over from Spain as ballast on ships and some from Pensacola. The sills, made from cypress logs, were floated down the Mississippi River.
Jesse Cowand said the home vas on the Plantation where Sea Island Cotton vas raised. There are still signs of the field on the place as the ground is still in ridges.
Covand said that when his grandfather built the home there vas , an Indian shell mound on the grounds. The lime for the cement vas taken from the shells in the mound vhich has nov entirely disappeared.
Jesse Cowand's father, Charles T. Covand served in the Civil War, and Jesse Cowand himself in the Spanisfc-American War.
"Elmwood Manor” is now owned by D. V. Richards, Manager of Saenger Theaters.
It is nearer the type of the Ante Bellum days than any other home of Hancock County.