One of my favorite places in Mississippi is Greenwood Cemetery (GWC) in downtown Jackson. A ton of Mississippi history “resides” in a permanent state in this 200+ year old plot of land. Full disclosure: I serve on the Greenwood Cemetery Board of Directors and always want to connect any part of this blog to GWC so expect to hear plenty about it.
This story of Governor/Congressman Tilghman Tucker’s official governor’s portrait (which hangs in the Mississippi Capital and is the picture you see above) is full of twists and turns so hang with me as I weave this tale.
We start with Lucy McWillie Dickson (who is buried in GWC by her mother, father, one sister, and her brother in the Captain William McWillie Jr. plot in the Old Cemetery Section 2) was married to Helion Dickson, Sr. (which is almost as fun a name as their GWC neighbor Bourbon Shotwell). This is Lucy’s monument.
Helion, Sr. is not buried in GWC but at Cedar Hill in Vicksburg. Helion, Sr.’s great-grandfather was former Congressman/Lt. Governor/Secretary of State David Dickson. Records are not clear where Congressman Dickson is buried, but since he died while serving in the US House (1835-1836), Congress appropriated a cenotaph in his honor, which is in the Congressional Cemetery (see below). Congressman Dickson had two sons (as best can be determined), and one was GWC resident Thomas Hyde Dickson, who was the first “mayor” of Jackson when he was 19 years old. When Jackson was first incorporated, they elected a city council called Selectmen (the city of McComb, MS still elect selectmen), and the council members elected a rotating Council President who served as Mayor – even though no one was given that title until a few years later. Thomas was accidentally shot in a hunting accident and is buried near Governor Abram Scott. “Mayor” Thomas Dickson was a great-great uncle to Helion Dickson, Sr.
Helion, Sr.’s brother was a well-known Southern writer named Harris Dickson.
This is Mayor Thomas Dickson’s monument in GWC and David Dickson’s cenotaph at the Congressional Cemetery.
Lucy and her three siblings (her sister Sallie is buried next to her husband James Bowmar Harris in Section 1 by his father Congressman Wiley P. Harris) have the honor of what I call the “political double dip” because both of their grandfathers were Governor/US Congressmen (William McWillie and Tilghman Tucker). Lucy and Helion seem to have had three children who could easily claim the “double dip on their Mama’s side” from their great-grandfathers. One of Lucy and Helion’s children was Helion, Jr. which is where this story gets fun.
(One of the caveats of any good Mississippi political history story is the disclaimer of “as it was told to me” which means the full truth may not show up at the time you tell it. I am always interested to learn more and make adjustments and corrections as needed. More embellishment is also welcomed.)
At some point in time, Helion, Jr. was in Jackson and visited the state capitol to see the portraits of his great-grandfathers (and surely visited his family in GWC!). Governor McWillie’s portrait must have looked fine but he wondered just who in the world the portrait was to be Tilghman Tucker. This is a picture of the portrait he saw:
Helion then writes the late, great Elbert Hilliard, the former Director of the Department of Archives and History (MDAH), and proceeds to demand to know what the heck is going on and just who is this imposter pretending to my grandfather? Helion, Jr. was a long-time advertising executive in New Orleans who retired to Pass Christian, MS and had in his possession a portrait of great-granddaddy Tucker.
Mr. Hilliard then asks his predecessor Dr. William D. McCain (who was also former President of the University of Southern Mississippi) to see if Dr. McCain could shed any light on the “Tucker” portrait hanging in the New Capitol (which is the current Capitol). It turns out that Dr. McCain did indeed know exactly what happened and admitted the portrait was the creation of an unnamed Italian portrait artist. Apparently, at one time Dr. McCain was getting a good bit of pressure from the Legislature while serving at MDAH to get portraits of all the governors hanging in the New Capitol and, since the state does not pay for those portraits, to find family or other means to get the collection completed.
Dr. McCain was coming up short on Tucker so he reached out to this unnamed Italian artist who McCain worked with during and after being stationed in Europe as a Captain during WWII. McCain was part of the famous Monuments Men who restored and “re-captured” priceless works of art, literature and other artifacts from the Nazis and Mussolini, etc. Their work was made famous in a 2014 movie with a host of Hollywood A-Listers.
Then-Captain Dr. McCain was put in charge of the Lombardian region of Italy and while there worked with this unnamed Italian artist (that we will call Leonardo). While feeling the legislative pinch, Dr. McCain commissioned Leonardo to paint what Leonardo thought an American/Southern Governor named Tucker of Mississippi might have looked like from the 1840s. The NOT Tucker portrait was born and was hung in the Capitol and none was the wiser until Helion, Jr. showed up.
It’s unclear if Mr. Hilliard fessed-up to Dr. McCain’s “Italian solution” but Helion, Jr. started raising his own sort of hell-ion. Helion then agreed to allow the state to borrow his official portrait for one month to make a copy. The Legislature appropriated $900 for artist Steven Moppert to copy the portrait which is now hanging in the Capitol which is the primary picture above. The NOT Tucker portrait was given to the Columbus library but Wikipedia still has it as the official portrait of Tucker (another reason to be careful of Wikipedia). Governor/Congressman Tucker was first elected to the Mississippi Legislature from Columbus/Lowndes County so it seems to me to be an appropriate place for a fake portrait to hang.
Special thanks to Brother Rogers and Nan Prince at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Brother first shared this fake Tucker portrait story with me and Nan was able to run down the picture of the Non-Tucker portrait.
And the story continues…This is a picture of my two sons Porter (on the right) and John Garrett when we found Governor/Congressman Tucker’s grave in Lake Providence, Louisiana in about 2011. (In typical fashion, Porter was minding his father’s instructions of “look here at the camera” and John Garrett was doing his own thing) I’m posting this on Porter’s birthday.
John Garrett did his Eagle Scout project in GWC cleaning up and pruning bushes not far from Lucy McWillie Dickson which is where we found the monument of her brother named Tilghman Tucker McWillie. That name had too much intrigue for me not to research it more and really started my interest in this never-ending search of politician’s tombstones.
One last story (there is always “one last story” with me) is Governor Tucker’s first wife (the tombstone to the right in the picture with my boys) is Sarah McBee Tucker whose father was Silas McBee. Silas fought in the American Revolution and is given credit for changing the name of Possum Town, Mississippi to the much-better Columbus. Silas McBee is buried in the Williams Cemetery just south of Algoma in Pontotoc County near his other daughter/Sarah’s sister Eustasia. Eustasia was married to former Mississippi US Senator Thomas Hickman Williams (we had two US Senators named Thomas H. Williams – the other was Thomas Hill Williams who was one of our first US Senator when Mississippi was made a state).