JEFFERSON -- A respectful quiet fell early Saturday afternoon as the members of the Lott Reunion gathered around the historic marker a county crew installed recently near the gate to Old Liberty Baptist Cemetery, as Bro. Gary Tanner, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church, and Bro. John Gray, longtime former pastor there, offered dedicatory prayers.
This is hallowed ground, they said, exhorting the Lord's blessings for all who were present and whose ancestors helped establish the cemetery as well as others whose earthly remains are within that ground. Many more than Lotts are included in the words of worship.
Several years had passed before the application for the marker designation to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History was reviewed and approved by director Jim Woodrick, Roger Lott, a member of the Old Liberty Cemetery Association and descendant of pioneers Aaron and Martha Lott, who in 1854 deeded two acres for a house of worship and cemetery on the site a couple of miles east of Jefferson proper, said.
Members of the Lott and related families traveled by wagon train from South Carolina to newly-opened Choctaw lands here in the 1830s.
The faithfulness of J. T. Lott and his wife, Erline Lott of Waco, Texas, was key to the effort's success, Roger Lott said. Erline, he said, had filled out the original paperwork and then was part of a team that renewed their efforts to win the MDAH marker shortly after the Lott Reunion in 2018.
J. T. and his brothers, Oscar and Floyd Lott -- descendants of Aaron and Martha via their son, Vail Jackson Lott and his wife, Levicy Telford Lott -- had been bitten by the "roots bug" several years before they actually came to Carroll County to explore their ancestry with boots on the ground.
J. T., wearing his customary overalls, seemed the picture of health Saturday, but his people were concerned he might not be well enough to make the trip that would be the culmination of the efforts to secure the historic marker for Old Liberty Cemetery. He'd had lung problems and was in the hospital, he said, when he "couldn't breathe. I was dead on the table," he said. Had he not already been in a hospital, he wouldn't have made it, he said.
Yet it's true U. S. Senator Trent Lott is still the "rock star" of the Carroll County Lotts. The former senator, who is now a lobbyist in Washington, D. C. with another home near Pocahuntas, Miss., resigned his Senate seat in 2007. He spent 16 years in the U. S. House of Representatives before moving to the Senate in 1988.
He wrote about his experiences in a book, Herding Cats, keying in on his "whip" role.
Speaking briefly during the reunion Saturday morning, the Conservative leader mentioned current events as well as his early years in this area and of his uncle, the late Arnie Watson of North Carrollton, who served in the Mississippi Senate. He said he thinks the United States should get out of Afghanistan. Seventeen years there is long enough, Lott said.
He praised President Trump, though he doesn't get all that "Tweeting,” Lott said, adding that his son tells him he's a bit old fashioned.
Lott and other members of the reunion left Jefferson before 3 p.m. to tour Cotesworth near North Carrollton, ancestral home of another U. S. Senator from Carroll County during the late 1800s, J. Z. George.
"I love these old homes," Lott said, mentioning aspects of his own "old home", which had been in Pascagoula until it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
