Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series written by Meridianite Katherine Ann Horne.



His spirit still roams the thick wooded hills and hollows from Kemper County down to Bucatunna Creek in Wayne County, ol’ gray fox Jamie, the wild man, whose legend has been passed down for over a century. He’s out there like a tall shadow made of smoke, say those who frequent the woods.

When James Lawrence Foxworth returned home from the war to Lauderdale County in 1865, hair graying at age 26, he just wasn’t “right,” according to old Daddy Bije, who had worked for the Foxworths all his life.

“I helped raise him,” the old man said. “Took him huntin’ and fishin’ nearabout soon as he could walk — loved the woods, was the liveliest young’un I ever saw. Before he went off to fight, he worked hard, ridin’ the cotton all day, danced with the young ladies all night. Now, when Mr. Frank needs him most, he just walks round all the time, not goin’ nowhere or sits on the porch starin¡? at nothin.’”

One day Jamie did go somewhere. He walked out into the deep woods north of Meridian and never came back.

His older brother and neighbors formed search parties, combing Lauderdale and adjacent counties. No tracks were found, no trace of a campsite, no corpse. Daddy Bije had taught Jamie well, and as a scout for Nathan Bedford Forrest, he had gained expertise. An adept woodsman, cunningly elusive, lank and rangy, accustomed to living off the land, he had taken with him his rifle, Colt revolver, and Bowie knife.

He simply vanished like the forest’s mythical will of the wisp. For months rumors reverberated.

“Jumped in Chunky River.”

“Ate up by a panther.”

“But they ain’t found no bones.”

“He’s nowhere around here – – run off out west probably.”

After awhile everyone except his family lost interest.

Then a hunter revealed an alleged sighting down in Clarke County. “Just about daylight I was going through thick woods in Chickasawhay bottom —heavy fog all over. He came up outa the mist sudden like a spook, not makin’ a sound and disappeared just that sudden, in a second or two. But I recognized him.”

Other encounters ensued.

“It mighta been a hant,” speculated a farmer, startled while trapping beavers in Kewanee Swamp.

A moonshiner out on Mount Barton spotted him moving shadowy in the twilight. “Like he was floatin,’” he described.

“You were the one that was floatin;.”

“He’s gone to bein’ a wild man.”

Descriptions tallied substantially: uncommon tall and lean, graying beard, longish hair, though oddly, both appeared neatly cut; quick as a whippet with its tail on fire, unexpected as the devil popping up fiery at a revival meeting.

One consensus held that it was ol’ Jamie’s ghost. Ranging as far south as Bucatunna Creek in Wayne County, the lanky apparition might be reported near Wahalak the next day. “No natural man could cover all that territory fast as he does.”

“Tales mostly superstition augmented by imagination and white lightening,” scoffed the skeptical.

Practicality intervened to solve the mystery. According to the terms of their father’s will, farm and timber acreage as well as all other assets were to be equally divided between James Lawrence and Franklin Everett Foxworth. The brothers had not effected that transaction. After Jamie had been gone for nearly two years, Frank suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving a wife and two children. Advised by her attorney, Mrs. Alice Foxworth advertised the land for sale to clear the title.

Almost immediately lawyer Thomas Fewell contacted them. “James Foxworth is very much alive. He has empowered me to represent him. He is prepared to deed Mrs. Foxworth title to the house, its contents, a hundred and fifty acres immediately adjoining. In return he desires title to the fifty remaining acres in Lauderdale County and the hundred in Wayne, all timberland.” Agreement was reached, legalities enacted. Mr. Fewell divulged nothing further.

Rumblings persisted: there was something demonic about that ubiquitous spectre. “Might be the devil himself.” “Or at least possessed of devilish powers.”

“Eats live fish and squirrels and coons — fingernails two inches long.”

“Can charm bobcats into a trance and make them follow his commands. Talks with owls.”

“Gone wild as a fox.”

A few times bold woods ramblers spoke to him. He was a swishing blur of gray at the first word.

“Was he wounded during the war?” twelve-year-old Simon asked his granddaddy Bije.

“Shot up a time or two, didn’t go deep. They cut the lead out, and that healed.” He knocked ashes out

of his pipe. “Some other kinds of hurts don’t.”

His hair completely silvered. It was longish, but he still kept it trimmed so as not to catch in the thickets.

From time to time a young lady rode to a clearing shaded by thickly sheltering pines and oaks, remembering their trysts there, the farewell that day

he rode off to war.

“Jamie,” she’d call softly. “Jamie?”