Joseph Mitchell Dorris

​Joseph Mitchell Dorris, 1827-1904
Planter and Farmer

Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North section, Block 116

(Family monument photo courtesy of the
​Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.)

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Joseph Mitchell Dorris is believed to have been born April 4, 1826, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was the oldest child of James Harvey Dorris and Martha Ann Embrey. 

In 1834, the Dorris family had moved to Mississippi to take up land from which the indigenous Choctaws had been recently evicted. The 1850 federal census recorded James as farming in Carroll County.

Joseph Mitchell Dorris wed Nancy Jane Powell on February 10, 1847. Over time, they became the parents of twelve children.

By 1860, Joseph was living in nearby Choctaw County on a plantation adjoining that of his father, who by then owned over 700 acres and fifteen enslaved persons.

Although a mature man of 34 when the Civil War began, Dorris joined Turner’s Battery, Company C, 1st Mississippi Light Artillery, CSA, with the rank of corporal on March 27, 1862. When Vicksburg fell to Union forces on July 4, 1863, the entire regiment was captured. After the soldiers were paroled, Company C was sent south to defend Mobile. 

In January 1864, Dorris was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He was absent without leave for a month between May and June 1864; apparently he went home, as his wife gave birth to another baby on March 29, 1865. Dorris was back with his unit in Mobile, Alabama, later in 1864.

Following the War, Dorris returned to Choctaw County, where the census of 1870 listed him as a farmer.  Sometime thereafter, the family moved to Montgomery County, where his wife Nancy died in about 1884. 

Around 1885 or 1886, Joseph’s son Elias moved west to Phoenix, Arizona. His reports were favorable enough that his siblings Caswell, Robert, and Joseph joined him two years later. Sarah and Veronica, their sisters who had both married Stovall men, also made the move around 1898.

Dorris, a Mason and a Baptist, continued to live most of time in Kilmichael, Mississippi, with his older adult children. However, in 1901 he began spending his winters in Phoenix with the others. He died during one such visit on February 2, 1904, of old age and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North section, Block 116.

© 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 17 April 2025.

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