West Point, MS news and local guide

On February 21, 1864, Confederate cavalry under Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest fought a larger Union force at Ellis Bridge near West Point, a fight remembered locally as a Confederate victory. During World War I the Army's Payne Field advanced aviation school, named for Captain DeWitt J. Payne, operated near town from May 1918 to March 1920, training about 1,500 pilots on 125 Curtiss JN-4 planes. Mary Holmes Seminary, founded in Jackson in 1892 by the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen to educate African American women and named for Mary Holmes of Rockford, Illinois, moved to West Point in 1895. It began admitting men and college courses in 1932 and closed as Mary Holmes College in 2005. The blues giant Chester Arthur Burnett, "Howlin' Wolf," was born at White Station, just north of town, on June 10, 1910, and became one of the giants of Chicago blues and a pioneer in electrifying the Delta blues. Sources Wikipedia: West Point, Mississippi The Historical Marker Database: The Battle of Ellis Bridge; Payne Field Site The Historical Marker Database: Mary Holmes College (Mississippi Department of Archives and History); Howlin' Wolf (Mississippi Blues Commission)