Bosworth, Felix G.

Submitted by:Jeanne Johnson, jj@tampabay.rr.com 3/01

Biography of Felix G. Bosworth (1809 - 1847)
The first judge of Carroll Parish was Honorable Judge Felix G.Bosworth.
Judge Bosworth's life was less than honorable at times and indeed colorful.

Felix G. Bosworth was born in 1809. Four years earlier, his father William Bosworth married Patience Manning in Lexington, Kentucky. Early tax records indicate that William owned taxable property in Nashville, Tennessee, by 1811. Felix most likely spent the majority of his childhood years at Nashville where his father had established a hemp rope factory on the banks of the Cumberland River. William was the son of a wealthy and enterprising patriarch who had migrated to Kentucky in the early 1800's from New England. William was wealthy in his own right and Felix no doubt experienced a privileged childhood as the son and grandson of wealthy and respected men.

In a deposition taken for a Tennessee Supreme Court case regarding his father's estate, it was stated that Felix studied law in Ephraim Foster's office in Nashville. Ephraim H. Foster was a prominent lawyer and senator. "His father had set him up as a lawyer, bought him books, etc. and gave him a horse and money just before he had married in Louisiana and told him never to come to him for anything else, that he must work for himself,that he had got more than his share in being twice set up in the world as a lawyer."

According to a local history book of Carroll Parish, the parish's first judge was a "young lawyer in this twenties" named Felix Bosworth, having been appointed this position by the governor in 1832. At age 23, he was the youngest parish judge. One wonders if Felix's wealthy father and grandfather or his association with Ephraim H. Foster helped Felix obtain the appointment. Perhaps this appointment is what brought Felix to Carroll Parish.

Two years later, Felix married Elizabeth Lester Beiller on August 16, 1834 in Jefferson County, Mississippi. Felix and his wife lived at the 1200-acre Holly Place plantation near the Tensas Bayou at Lake Providence and had three children. First born Felix Bieller Bosworth died at the tender age of nineteen months during a visit to Lexington, Kentucky in 1838. Daughters Anne and Ida were born between the years 1845 and 1847.

In 1844, Felix and Elizabeth ventured to Nashville and returned with nearly $1200 worth of rope and bagging obtained from Felix's father for their plantation operations at Lake Providence. At the same time, Felix borrowed $500 in cash from his father. These debts remained unpaid despite the fact that his father dispatched an agent to Lake Providence in the following year to collect the debts. The claim was then placed in the hands of a lawyer. In the year of his death in 1858, William stated to a friend that Felix had not paid the debts and had "acted very badly with him" by not repaying him.

Felix probably had the means to repay his father. In the 1840 census, Felix owned 88 slaves; he owned downtown real estate in Lake Providence; and he wagered $100 bets on horse races ($100 in 1840 was equivalent to $1559.80 in the year 2000). Following his death at Vera Cruz during the Mexican War, Major Felix Bosworth's body was shipped back home for burial. Throughout the war with Mexico, it was the practice of the U.S. Army to bury the dead in mass graves on or near the battlefield where they fell. The bodies of soldiers who died later of their wounds or from other causes were also buried in a nearby location. Only a few bodies were shipped back to the U.S. Most of these were officers whose families could afford the expense.

Newspaper reports of incidents in the judge's life reflect a colorful and somewhat notorious individual. In a letter published by Jacob Owen in The Carroll Democrat on January 24, 1892, Owen wrote that Judge Bosworth had just one hand when he saw the judge and that he thought the missing hand had been "shot off in an attempt to take forceable possession of his father-in-law's property. An attempt was made to impeach the Judge, but like all such it failed, though if half of what was said of him was true, he richly deserved it." Published in the Richmond Compiler, April 11, 1843: "Judge Felix Bosworth, of the Parish of Carroll, in the State, was shot on the 13th, by a young man on the plantation of Mr. Behler".

After Felix's death in 1847 at age 39, his widow Elizabeth remained in Carroll Parish and married widower Henry B. Blackburn on October 18, 1849. She died nineteen months later on May 6, 1852 at the age of 34.

Felix and Elizabeth are buried in the Lake Providence City Cemetery.Felix's monument reads, "Those flowers I train'd of many a hue - Alongthe path to bloom - And little thought that I might strew - Their leaves upon thy tomb; Beyond that tomb I life mine eye - Thou art not dead, thou coulds't not die!"