Gaines Landing, Arkansas

The location played a role in the story of fugitive slave Margaret Garner (whose life was the basis of Toni Morrison's Beloved), and was used for troop movements during the American Civil War.

[9] During the 1850s, according to a planter named Charles McDermott, "Chicot County...had quite a number of Murrellites—men who lived by plunder, murder, gambling, and theft.

Charles McDermott's house was an overnight stopping point for westward travelers who crossed the Mississippi at Gaines' Landing.

[13] According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "During the American Civil War, Gaines' Landing was one of many points along the river used by Confederate troops to harass Federal steamboats.

"[14] Samuel Curtis wrote to Henry Halleck in July 1862 that Gaines Landing was used for shipping arms and artillery to Confederate guerrillas harassing Union boats in the Greenville Bends and beyond.

[17] When Tennessee's Confederate Governor Isham G. Harris fled west at the end of the war, he crossed the Mississippi near Gaines Landing.

[20] The settlement lost river access with the creation of the Ashbrook Cutoff of Rowdy Bend in 1935 and nothing remains of it today.

Gaines Landing was on a stretch of the Mississippi River known as the Greenville Bends
Landmarks near the confluence of the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers, showing roads to and from Gaines Landing
Gaines Landing, Arkansas, and environs, mapped 1862
Gaines Landing and Gasters Landing, both "burned June 15, 1863," as mapped during Reconstruction in Arkansas
1866 table of distances between landings along the Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans
Margaret Garner was en route to Gaines Landing when a boat collision killed her baby ("The Slave Mother" The Union and Journal , Biddeford, Maine, March 28, 1856)
Map of the Greenville Bends of the Mississippi, as surveyed 1894
Map of Arkansas highlighting Chicot County