William R. Landers (Jefferson County)
State House: 1872-1875
Appointed major in the Jefferson County militia in 1873. Married Josephine Wiggenton in 1866 with James Cessor as his bondsman.
I have not been able to find Landers with certainty in census records. He may be the William Landers on the 1900 and 1910 census in Jefferson County, born c. 1849, with wife Louisa and several sons.
However, there is a Social Security record for a Bessie Landers born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1896, to parents William Landers and Josephine Wiggenton. It’s highly unlikely that another couple would have those names, but I haven’t found any other records about Mississippi’s Landers being in Rhode Island. Another William R. Landers, a white man who served in the Civil War, did live in Newport, but his wife was not named Josephine Wiggenton.
In 1905, a William Landers, age 50 (probably an estimate), birthplace Mississippi, died of dementia at the government hospital in Washington, DC. His newspaper obituary (Evening Star, August 24, 1905) refers to him as the “beloved father of Bessie Landers Bruce.” I have been unable to find this man on the census. The only William Landers I can find in DC newspaper records apparently had a long history of gambling arrests in the 1890s.
It would seem more likely that “our” William Landers is the one in Jefferson County on the 1900 and 1910 census, but the maiden name of Josephine Wiggenton in the record for Bessie Landers born in Rhode Island, which possibly connects to the William Landers who died in Washington, DC in 1905, makes this quite a frustrating puzzle!
This page was last updated on February 23, 2026.