Blog post written by guest blogger Jim Karegeannes.
Tea in Lincoln County
As our tea plants start to set out new their growth for this year, we wanted to take a minute and think back to an earlier time when tea plants first came to Lincoln County. Constantine Menelas came to Brookhaven, MS in the 1870s with the goal of establishing a model farm to introduce new crops and farming practices to the Southern states during their recovery from the Civil War.
Pictured above: Constantine Menelas
Menelas had come to the US several years earlier to work for a Greek Cotton trading firm in New York City. Prior to that he had worked in India as a trader and Greek government envoy. From New York his work took him to the Cotton Exchange in Savannah, Georgia. In Savannah he promoted public gardens and horticulture. The Menelas Garden adjacent to the Cotton Exchange and still present today, was named in his honor. As Mr. Menelas continued to write and think about agricultural issues facing the Southern states, he looked for space to try out his ideas. Lincoln County in Mississippi caught his attention.
Lincoln County was established in 1870 by redistricting portions of surrounding municipal areas. The town of Brookhaven had grown through the efforts of Milton Whitworth, an early settler in the area who owned large parcels of land and a plantation. He was instrumental in bringing a railroad to the area which allowed Brookhaven to develop and grow.
Pictured above: Historic marker located at the corner of Dale Trail and First Street South in Brookhaven.
In 1878 Mr. Menelas purchased 1,600 acres of land along with a plantation home from Milton Whitworth’s son Sam.
Pictured above: Mikas Plantation
Mr. Menelas continued to work and travel as a cotton trader but made Brookhaven his home. He shared the farm with his brother Andreas Mikas.
Pictured above: Andreas Mikas
They went to work setting up a farm and livestock operation known locally as the Mikas Plantation.
Pictured above: Whitworth College Picnic, Mikas Place, Sellers & Sellers, Druggists, Brookhaven, Miss.
They grew fruit trees from American, Europe and Japan, native America grape varieties, cotton, corn, sugar cane and experimental plantings of sorghum, jute, cassava, and tea. Visitors in the 1880s reported that the farm had 100 tea plants on the property although another visitor put their tea plantings at 5 acres! The plants were supplied by Robert Jones of Liberty County Georgia, just below Savannah. Jones was a plantation owner and editor of the Southern Cultivator journal. His plants were grown from Chinese tea seeds supplied by the US Department of Agriculture before the Civil War. Mr. Jones, and then his daughter, sold tea seeds and young plants from their nursery for many years after the war.
Mr. Menelas published numerous reports on the results of his various crops including tea. He believed that tea could be grown profitably in the southern United States if the methods for processing tea could be learned and properly applied. We don’t have reports of Mr. Menelas making or selling tea from his plants. However, he did show his plants along with other products from his farm at several Expositions in New Orleans and at regional state farms. Tea from the farm was displayed as late as 1906.
The Mikas Plantation was a social hub for Brookhaven. The brothers hosted an annual reception for the women students of Whitworth College and dances for the young people of Brookhaven. In 1908 Mr. Mikas and Menelas donated 60 acres of their land to the county for construction of an Agricultural High School. Mr. Mikas died in 1910. Mr. Menelas slowed down after this loss and sold the plantation in 1914. He passed away in 1916.
Pictured above: Constantine Menelas headstone at Rosehill Cemetery in Brookhaven, MS.
Both men are buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Brookhaven. The Planation house burned in the 1930s but the foundation remained. It was covered in the 1950s and is still present on Dale Trail, just east of Highway 51 near the Highway 84 intersection. We have not heard if any of the various plants set out by the brothers are still present in the area but would love to take a look around.
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Special thanks to Jim for sharing this with our tea fans. Learn more about Jim and the great work he does here:
Jim Karegeannes lives and works in Asheville NC where he grows and makes a little tea. He stumbled onto Mr. Menelas's story while researching the history of tea production in the South. He is also preparing English language versions of several nineteenth and early twentieth century works on tea production in colonial France. Blog posts on his tea adventures and information on up coming publications can be found at: browndogpress.com.
Want to keep reading about the history of tea? Visit our blog post on The History of Tea In America.
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