A Damn Poor Hell

My family has a hidden history. I’ll begin with the less well-concealed part about my white ancestors.

As soon as the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was ratified by Congress in 1831, and the Choctaw moved to Oklahoma territory, northeast Mississippi became open for settlement. In 1834, my ancestor Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Maxwell moved there from South Carolina, the most aristocratic of plantation states. He settled in a place called Boardtown in…