Stories of the South - Bigbee Valley, MS Post Office
The Bigbee Valley Post Office and General Store sits in the far eastern part of Noxubee county located on highway 388. From what I can find it looks like the post office was established in 1858 when the county was only 20 years old. And according to an 1890 census I found online, in 1890 Bigbee Valley consisted of a population of 75 people, the post office, and they had no railroad service though there is a boat landing right down the road so I suppose that's how people traveled to and from that part of the county. This is not the original building, that burned in the 1920s and was rebuilt to the present structure.
The office for Valley Farms is located here and has been for two generations. Before it closed this was a post office and a full service general store. They sold everything from fabric and notions to shoes, canned goods, and just about anything else you could need. The store closed in 1997 and the post office a few years before that. The store still has the old post office safe as they gave it to the store when the postal office ceased service.
Have a great day my lovelies! The sun is shining, the temperature is warmer, and I was able to get out and piddle on my patio yesterday and work on my hopefully tiny vegetable patch which makes me unreasonably happy. You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl.
Lastly I'd just like to say thank you and welcome to my new Twitter and Pinterest followers! Again, have a great day!
It is most interesting that I would stumble across this as I was searching ancestry records for Noxubee County. My ancestors were post masters here and this was their store. I am the third-great granddaughter of Ansel Griffin Cunningham III. If I am not mistaken, his sister Jennie also ran the post office. Thanks for the pictures.
ReplyDeleteMy great grandfather Peter C. Lee was appointed postmaster at Bigbee valley, in Noxubee county, on 13 July 1866 and served until it was discontinued on 8 March 1867.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in nearby Oktibbeha County and one time during the mid 1970's, I rode my motorcycle to Bigbee Valley. I mailed something from that post office and purchased a Coke and a snack at the general store. It is very close to the Alabama state line and to the Tombigbee River (actually in Alabama). The boat landing you referred to didn't exist before the Tennessee-Tombigbee project was completed sometime in the late 1980s or early 90s. Before that, Hwy 388 ended and a gravel road went across the state line and up to the river. No bridge across like today and no boat landing. But thanks for writing this. It brought back a lot of memories.
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