Biography/History:

John Aloysius Cannon was born in Sheffield, England, in 1856 to parents of Irish descent. Emigrating with his parents to Cincinnati, Ohio, in that year, Cannon later moved to Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi. He helped build the first railroad in Washington County with James E. Negus and Henry Tillinghast Ireys. Cannon married Maggie Shanahan in 1883, and by 1920 he was working in Greenville as a bookkeeper for a steamboat line.

Cannon was elected to the city council of Greenville in 1912, and he served on the city’s governing body for the next eighteen years. Widely known as "Uncle Johnnie," Cannon was elected as mayor of Greenville in 1926, and he held the office through 1927. He coordinated the efforts of over two hundred men who labored to impede the Mississippi River flood that inundated the city in April of 1927. There were over fifteen hundred men working in and around Greenville to bolster a critical point in the levee three miles north of the city and to build protection levees closer to Greenville. After flood waters breached the levee at Stop’s Landing, an event called the "greatest single levee break anywhere on the river," Greenville’s levees, eighteen miles to the south, were quickly overrun in the next two days. The town was completely flooded by April 23, 1927.

When Cannon died in Greenville on March 3, 1928, he was survived by his wife, Margaret T. (Maggie), and six children: Frank S., John Paul, Robert E., and Timothy S. Cannon, Ann Cannon May, and Mrs. George Outzen.

Scope and Content:

The Cannon papers include a narrative account of the April 1927 Mississippi River flood in Greenville, Mississippi, written by John Aloysius Cannon, a typescript of the narrative, and thirteen photographs and negatives of the flood.

The entries in the narrative begin on April 21, 1927, the night of the levee break at Stop’s Landing, Bolivar County, and after Cannon recounts the previous five days of flood-prevention efforts, he continues to make chronological entries until April 23, when he simply notes, "Water well over city."

Cannon describes many of the problems citizens of Greenville encountered while trying to build levees to prevent the flood. He notes that starting on Sunday, April 17, a work force of around two hundred men began work on a protection levee (P-levee) close to town, while the Levee Board employed a much larger work force of men around Miller’s Bend. Just before the flood, Cannon sent the Miller’s Bend work force one hundred men from the protection levee crew, but the accelerated work around Miller’s Bend led to racial tension and fights among several foremen. Despite these efforts, after the Mississippi River breached the levee at Stop’s Landing, Cannon records that the water quickly filled Greenville’s drainage ditches on April 22 and engulfed the town by April 23.

The thirteen photographs and negatives of the flood depict several protection levees with the water either approaching or climbing the levees. In several pictures, men are at work on the levees, and one photograph shows a large levee, perhaps Stop’s Landing, where the flood breached it and where a series of protection levees and ditches were erected around the breach. Another photograph shows water beginning to cover what may be the outskirts of Greenville.

Series Identification:

1. Narrative. 1927. 2 items.

   Folder 1: Original flood narrative (restricted).
   Folder 2: Typescript of flood narrative.

2. Photographs. n.d. 13 items.

   See Appendix 1: Photograph Inventory.

3. Negatives. n.d. 13 items.