Vicksburg, Mississippi: The Founder Who Never Sold a Lot

Newitt Vick planned the city that became Vicksburg, Mississippi, but he died in 1819 before he could sell a single lot, and the town took his name anyway. The federal place-name book of 1905 sums it up in one line: Vicksburg was “named for Newitt Vick, its founder.”

A preacher from Virginia

Dunbar Rowland’s encyclopedia of Mississippi, published in 1907, gives you the outline of Vick’s life. He was born in Virginia on March 17, 1766, farmed for a while in North Carolina, then took his family overland to the Tennessee River, bought a keel boat, and floated down to the Mississippi. He was a Methodist preacher, and the book says the first Methodist conference in Mississippi met at his house.

Some time before 1812, he settled about six miles east of where Vicksburg now stands, in a neighborhood of fellow Virginians called the “Open Woods.” J. F. H. Claiborne, in his 1880 history of the state, says it got that name “because most of the timber had been burned by the Indians.”

The bluffs had names already

The high ground Vick bought on the river wasn’t a blank spot. Claiborne says the point where an old fort stood, a mile and a quarter north of the courthouse, “was then called the Walnut Hills; by the Indians Nan-a-cha-ha.” He doesn’t translate the Native name, and nobody in these books does.

The Spanish had been there too. Rowland says that around 1790 and 1791 they built a fort on “the Walnut hills, which in Spanish were the Nogales hills,” and called it Fort Nogales. Gen. Victor Collot, who toured the country as a military spy in 1796, said it was “called by way of irony the Gibraltar of Louisiana.” The Spanish pulled out in March 1798, and when American troops took over, the fort got another new name. Claiborne: “the name was changed to McHenry, after the then Secretary of War.”

A will, a son-in-law and a long fight

Vick picked out the spot for his own house, the present courthouse square, Rowland writes, “but before he had time to build he was taken with a severe illness and died August 5, 1819.” His wife died too, and the books don’t agree on the details: one entry says she followed him “within twenty minutes,” another says they died “on the same day within a few hours of each other.” Rowland says it’s “now supposed to have been yellow fever.”

Here’s the twist. Vick’s will set aside 200 acres “to be laid off in town lots,” and somebody else had to do it. Claiborne puts it plainly: Vick “did not live to lay it off, or to dispose of a lot.” His son-in-law, the Rev. John Lane, did the work, and Claiborne calls Lane “the real father of the city.” You’ll find different dates for the start depending on where you look: one entry in Rowland says Vick himself began laying off lots in 1819, another has lots offered for sale in April 1822, and a third has the town surveyed in 1824. It was incorporated as Vicksburg on January 29, 1825.

The will kept lawyers busy for decades. Vick’s daughters fought over the lots, and the case over Levee Street, later known as the Commons, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1845 the court sided with the daughters, and Rowland says that cost the lawyer Seargent S. Prentiss, who’d bought up most of the heirs’ interest, his fortune. The founder’s name went on the city, and his estate went on in the courts.

Sources & further reading

• Dunbar Rowland, ed., Mississippi: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons, vol. 2 (1907). The entries “Vick Estate” (pp. 856–857: lots begun in 1819, the 200 acres “to be laid off in town lots,” “within twenty minutes,” “yellow fever,” the Commons case and Prentiss), “Vick, Newitt” (pp. 857–858: birth on March 17, 1766, the keel boat, the “Open Woods,” the courthouse square, death on August 5, 1819, the Methodist conference, and lots offered for sale in April 1822), “Vicksburg,” contributed by R. V. Booth (pp. 858–859: “on the same day within a few hours of each other,” John Lane’s survey of 1824, and the incorporation of January 29, 1825), and “Warren County” (p. 931: Vick “gave his name to the city that was to be”).
• Dunbar Rowland, ed., same work, vol. 1 (1907), pp. 735–736. The entry “Fort Nogales”: the Walnut Hills, “which in Spanish were the Nogales hills,” Collot’s “Gibraltar of Louisiana,” the Spanish withdrawal in March 1798, and the new name Fort McHenry.
• J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi, as a Province, Territory and State, vol. 1 (1880). The present site of Vicksburg “then known as Fort Nogales or Walnut Hills” (p. 357); the “Open Woods,” Vick who “did not live to lay it off, or to dispose of a lot,” John Lane as “the real father of the city,” “the Walnut Hills; by the Indians Nan-a-cha-ha,” and the change to McHenry (p. 534).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (U.S. Geological Survey, 1905), p. 310. “Vicksburg; city in Warren County, Mississippi, named for Newitt Vick, its founder.”
• GNIS feature 679216 (U.S. Geological Survey). Confirms the location in Warren County; there’s no note on the name.