Louis Kossuth Atwood (Hinds County)
State House: 1880-1881, 1884-1885
Born: December 15, 1850 in Wilcox County, AL
Died: January 8, 1929 in Hinds County, MS
Attorney. Son of Henry Stiles Atwood (1798-1851) and Mary Massey (c. 1823-?). Mary had been enslaved by Atwood, who emancipated her and a number of others in his will. Mary took her children, including Louis Kossuth Atwood, Daniel Webster Atwood (1842-1888), and Oliver Madison Atwood (1848-1916), to Ripley, Ohio, where they are listed on the 1860 census.
L. K. Atwood graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1874 and was admitted to the Mississippi Bar in 1879. When Booker T. Washington visited Jackson in 1908, Atwood was the one who introduced him. Treasurer of the Black-owned insurance company Union Guaranty and Insurance Company of Mississippi, which was launched in 1911. He also organized and served as president of the Southern Bank of Mississippi. Master of the fraternal organization Order of Jacobs.
Listed on the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses in Hinds County with his wife, Maggie Beatrice Welborne (sister of Eugene B. Welborne), and their children: Hyrticana B., Louis Kossuth, Maggie I., Welborn S., and William F.
“Born in Willcox County, Ala., in 1851, he was sold on the block as a slave when 18 months’ old. His mother bought him for $300, and moved with him to Ohio.”
(D. W. Woodard, Negro Progress in a Mississippi Town, 1909)
Suggested Further Reading:
Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, J. Clay Smith, Jr., 1999
Links:
Memorial on Find A Grave
This page was last updated on October 28, 2025.