Cassidy Bayou – Quitman County, Mississippi

Cassidy Bayou is among the largest bayous, if not the longest, in the world and springs from Coldwater River. It flows through the central part of Quitman County and then out into Coahoma County and back again and out again where it goes on its courses through Tallahatchie County. A very strange thing happens at a given point in the extreme portion of this county. Cassidy Bayou and Hopson Bayou run parallel and yet Cassidy runs south and Hopson runs north. They are separated only by about six or seven hundred feet.

From: WPA for Mississippi. Source Material for Mississippi History. Quitman County. 1936-1938. (Manuscript)

Cassity (or Cassidy) Bayou was named for Wiley B. Cassidy, a timber man who carried on his trade in the vicinity of the Bayou circa 1839. He went to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and there met a tragic death at the hands of Indians.

CASSIDY BAYOU. The bayou, the longest in the state, has its ghost. At intervals for 25 years the ghost has appeared at the home of Boone Jinkins, a farmer living one mile north of Sumner. Each appearance is accompanied by weird voices and the shriek of a woman. Persons who have followed the voice say that it leads to the bayou and, in some instances, to the Indian mounds in the vicinity; the mystery of the Cassidy ghost has never been solved.

From: Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State, Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA. New York: Viking Press, 1938. Page 421.

Cemetery and Bible Records of Quitman County, Mississippi, 1945-1951, James Gilliam Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution