This is part 7 of a series identifying the individuals in the above photograph. Henry Sims Brumfield Sr. is identified in the above picture as the seated Caucasian man on the left. He has been identified as the former slave owner of Richard Brumfield in a newspaper article dated February 22, 1935. The ancestors and family of Henry Sims Brumfield Sr. have been chronicled by many of his descendants in detail which dates include the 1700s in the states of Virginia, North and South Carolina. They later also migrated to the future states of Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Mississippi Territory was a land area that included present-day states of Mississippi and Louisiana. Spain had previously abandoned its' previous claim to this land in 1795. The state of Georgia also relinquished its claim after a major land scandal ( the Yazoo land scandal) perpetrated by the governor of Georgia in 1802. The Territory of Mississippi was occupied at that time by the Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Chocchuma, Tunica, Yazoo and other indigenous groups. On April 7,1798, the United States Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi and it was opened for settlement.
With the patent of the cotton gin in 1794 and fertile farmland in the Mississippi Territory, there was a great migration to this area. This migration pattern is now known as The Great Mississippi Migration of 1798 to 1819. This land area offered better agricultural and economic opportunities for those who lived in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia.
The ancestors of Henry S. Brumfield were part of this migration. They resided in South Carolina in the late 1700s. "On November 11, 1811 a passport was issued by the governor of Georgia to John Brumfield (Henry S. grandfather) with his wife 11 children and 3 Negroes from York District South Carolina to travel through to the Indian Nation to the Western Country. " *The John Brumfield family and adult children established settlements in Saint Tammany (later Washington) Parish, Louisiana and Pike County, Mississippi.
Louisiana became a state on April 30, 1812. The western area of the Mississippi Territory on December 10, 1817 became the state of Mississippi. The family of Henry Sims Brumfield Sr. was well established in Pike County, Mississippi and Washington Parish, Louisiana.
