C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa

Join our friends the TN Delta Alliance and T.O. Fuller State Park for a clean-up of the Cypress Creek area!

The C.H. Nash Museum will be closed Tuesday, September 17th to allow staff to participate in an educational event on campus. We will reopen as normal on the 18th.

September 13 & 14 in Tuscumbia!

Have you visited the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa before? We want to hear your thoughts! Please fill out this survey: https://memphis.co1.qualtrics.com/.../SV_eMaTkgTBvS6q3ye

Have you visited the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa before? We want to hear your thoughts! Please fill out this survey: https://memphis.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eMaTkgTBvS6q3ye

The museum will be closed on Thursday, July 4th for Independence Day!

The beautiful work done in our flower beds by the Southwind Garden Club earlier in the year is now in full bloom!

This Saturday! Hope to see you there!

Those interested in the ornithology activities should bring binoculars!

Although archaeologists do not study fossils, the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa does have a collection of Pleistocene mammal fossils! UofM grad student Darold Cooper has been studying one of our mastodon molars for his Museum Collections course project.

Saturday April 13th is Family Day in the Egyptian Gallery at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis!

Please join the English Department for the Deb Talbot Roundtable on Reclaiming Indigenous Languages on April 12!

Kendall King: "Engaging with Indigenous language reclamation is essential for language scholars: Why and how"

Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson): "Nanna ittonchololi' ilaliichi (We are cultivating new growth): Twenty-five years in Chikashshanompa' Revitalization"

Free and open to the public!

The first field school at Chucalissa run by Memphis State University was held in 1963. These pictures from our archives show some of the students

Recognize anyone? If so, please message us!

In 1938, the State of Tennessee bought the land that we now know as Chucalissa and T.O. Fuller State Park. Civilian Conservation Corps company 1464, an African American company composed mostly of young men originally from the Memphis area, was brought in to clear and construct facilities for what was then called Shelby County Negro Park. In the course of digging a swimming pool for the park, the CCC workers found large amounts of archaeological materials and alerted archaeologists to the possibility of an important site. We now call the site they discovered “Chucalissa.”

In the early 20th century, the land around Chucalissa was also worked by sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Based on what we know about the history of the area, these farmers were almost certainly African Americans. This map from 1916 shows two buildings very near to the mounds of Chucalissa, and several others spread through what is now T.O. Fuller State Park. Although we do not know the names of the people who lived near our site before it became a park, some of their belongings were excavated by archaeologists and students and can be seen in our museum.

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution outlawed slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” This exception was used by states, including Tennessee, to create a new pool of labor that could be put to work. Prison populations before the war were usually very small, but suddenly, after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the number of prisoners skyrocketed, mostly due to working age African American men being convicted for petty crimes.

These men formed a new pool of labor that the state government made available to industries through a system called “convict leasing.” Prisoners were “leased” to mines, factories, or farms and forced to work for free under brutal conditions. This practice generated profits for the state, produced enormous profits for industrialists, and drove down wages for free workers, both black and white.

Enoch Ensley, Jr. leased convicts to work alongside tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the bottomland west of Chucalissa. While white prisoners were subject to this system, overall the vast majority of convict laborers were African American, and some scholars describe convict leasing as an extension of slavery.

The 1870 Census was the first to record information about the identities of African Americans. At the time of the census, there were four African Americans with the last name Ensley living on the land near the site of Chucalissa: Amy Ensley, Isabelle Ensley, Jourdan Ensley, and Allen Ensley.

The map excerpted below is from 1888 and shows how much land Enoch Ensley, Jr. still owned in the area. In general, slaveholders held onto their land after the Civil War.

A report summarizing the information in many of these posts, along with other sources about the history of SW Memphis is available to the public at our museum.

Another African-American Civil War veteran who lived in Ensley Bottoms near Chucalissa was Corporal Jourdan Ainsley. Ainsley served in the 11th Colored Infantry Regiment, which also defended Memphis.

Matilda Turner, the widow of veteran John Turner, appears on the Camp Shiloh register in 1864 and was from DeSoto County, MS. She had been enslaved by a landowner named Troy Saunders. Matilda’s husband’s unit was most likely the 9th US Colored Infantry, a regiment that saw action farther east.

Two of the veterans who lived near Chucalissa after the war had fought together in the same unit. They were:
Private Edmond Dillworth, 55th US Colored Infantry
Private Austin King, 55th US Colored Infantry

The 55th Regiment was formed in Corinth, MS in 1863 and protected the city of Memphis from Confederate attacks at Fort Pickering before moving south to fight in Mississippi. The statue you see here honoring their service to the Union stands at Shiloh National Military Park.

Many African American men who left slave plantations joined the Union Army. Between 1869 and 1871, according to records from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, three African American veterans of the Union Army and the widow of one soldier were living near Chucalissa on land still owned by Enoch Ensley, Jr. Their names appear because they were requesting pay owed them from the US Government.

https://www.searchablemuseum.com/men-of-valour -of-the-usct

Before the Civil War started, records indicate that at least 87 people were enslaved by the Ensley family who owned the land that included Chucalissa. We can say a little about two of them.

The war disrupted the economy of the South and enslaved people left the places they had been forced to work, often looking for safety with the Union Army. To attempt to provide for these people, camps, called “Contraband Camps,” were established throughout the South. Several were built in and around Memphis, including one at Fort Pickering.

In 1864, two people who had been enslaved by Enoch Ensley, Jr (and may have lived near Chucalissa) were added to the Register of Freedmen at Camp Shiloh, south of the city of Memphis. Their names were Frances Ensley (age 24) and Isaac Ensley (age 40). Frances was born in Davidson County, TN. Isaac was a native of Shelby County.

For more information see:
https://lastroadtofreedom.org/the-digital-road-ahead/registers/
http://tnency.utk.tennessee.edu/entries/contraband-camps/

Archaeologists often ask questions about landscape itself—how it was shaped by the people who depended on it for a living and who called it home. Like so many places in America, the history of the land around our archaeological site has been shaped by the violence of slavery and segregation.

Chucalissa was once part of a large parcel of land along the Mississippi River owned by Enoch Ensley, a wealthy slave owner from Nashville. Historical documents indicate that when Enoch Ensley bought the property, he also purchased 19 enslaved people. We do not know their names.

Enoch Ensley, Jr., his son, took over management of the cotton plantation, but did not live on this property, and instead lived in a house farther north on Third Street that is no longer standing. It is unlikely that Ensley ever saw the mounds later recognized as a Mississippian town, but it is possible that enslaved people forced to work there did.

This picture shows a view from the forested bluff where Chucalissa is located looking west into the flood plain where crops would have been grown. This picture and other historical photos are available online here: https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/chnash-museum-chucalissa/

While the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa primarily showcases the Native American past, we also house archaeological materials and archival documents related to the rich African American history of the surrounding neighborhoods, Memphis, and the Mid South.

The archaeological site of Chucalissa is located within T.O. Fuller State Park. The park is named after Thomas Oscar Fuller (1867-1942), famous statesman, church leader, and educator.

Follow this page for posts through February about the fascinating story of the landscape around Chucalissa and the African Americans who lived in, worked on, and shaped the place we all enjoy today.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. "Thomas O. Fuller" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 1, 2024. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-e883-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The museum and grounds will be closed Tuesday, January 23.

The museum will remain closed January 20 due to the weather. Stay warm everyone!