Should it be spelled Vancleave, or Van Cleave? Some residents of this unincorporated spot in central Jackson County say that the town’s name was once two separate words. They want to return to this spelling and make it official.

Documents in the National Archives show that before World War I the name of the post office was definitely two words. Connecting the “Van” and the “Cleave” probably evolved over the years by local usage, resident say. “People don’t realize that Van Cleave is a surname. The town is named after a family and the same spelling should be kept,” said Vancleave businessman Bill Walton. Walton is a virtual newcomer to Vancleave in this place where some families have been living for five or six generations. He came in 1973.

But Walton and Vancleave native C. “Kip” Dees realized that they both had the same idea about the spelling of the town’s name while chatting a few years ago. The two men are not certain what course of action they will now take to change the town’s name, but they are determined to do something.

“Everytime I see Van Cleave in one word it depresses me,” Kip Dees said.  “I could die happy if the sign on the post office said Van Cleave. It would be a milestone in my life,” Dees said.
Dees’ father, C.L. Dees, ran the general store and post office in Vancleave until the 1960s. After that, Kip Dees became postal clerk in charge until 1975 when the post office was discontinued.

“My father always spelled it with two words – Van Cleave,” said Dees. “My teacher, Miss Susie Vaughan, was very particular that Vancleave was two words. What Miss Susie taught us was right, was right.”

Dees still has an envelope of his father’s store stationery showing the “Van” and the “Cleave” separated.  “That’s the way Grandpa Van Cleave used to spell it, I’m sure,” said Vertalee Bradford Van Cleave of Ocean Springs, the only person in Jackson County still carrying the Van Cleave surname. The community was named for her late husband’s grandfather, Robert A. Van Cleave, of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Van Cleave ran a commissary along Bluff Creek after serving in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. He later moved to Ocean Springs where he opened another store and became Ocean Springs’ first mayor in 1892.

From the mid to late 1800s, most people who lived around present day Vancleave referred to their home as Bluff Creek, the major stream and avenue of commerce through the community. When Van Cleave’s store began serving the charcoal burners and naval store workers in the area, people used the Van Cleave as a landmark.

In 1870 Hector Fairley petitioned the federal government to open the settlement’s first post office and asked to use the name Vancleave’s Office. But someone along the chain of command between Vancleave the Washington crossed out the “office” and the first post office was called Vancleave’s. This early post office served about 100 families who lived within a two-mile radius and also could serve a few hundred more who lived nearer to Vancleave than Americus to the northeast and Ocean Springs to the south, but it was short-lived.

Located about 12 miles west of the Pascagoula River, near Paige Bayou, in the general vicinity of Clearwater Road, the Vancleave’s post office operated only four months.  In 1878, when Robert A. Van Cleave was postmaster at Ocean Springs, storekeeper George David tried to revive the post office, but it took two years to come about.

Records at the National Archives show that the first name planned for Davis’ post office was Bluff Creek. But this name was crossed out and the name Vancleave – written as one word – was substituted by someone of higher authority. This was only one of the changes in the
suggested names of the post office over the next several years.

From 1882 to 1888, Sherwood Bradford, Vertalee Van Cleave’s grandfather, was postmaster at his place of business, around the Jim Ramsay-Seaman Road area. Mrs. Van Cleave said one of her uncles told her that a name change to Bradford was considered at that time. By the
time the application was completed, the idea must have vanished and the name stayed Van Cleave.

In 1888, Uncas Cleburne Havens made an application to start a post office called Lauraville, located about one and one-half miles northeast of the post office run by Bradford.
The name Lauraville was not accepted and Havens settled to be postmaster of Van Cleave until 1892 when Willie P. Ramsay took over the position. In 1896 he was succeeded by John W. Westfall. Locations of the post offices presided over by Ramsay and Westfall are unclear.

In 1897, William Martin’s store became the post office for more than 30 years. The post office, named Van Cleave was located about one-quarter mile from Mounger’s Creek, in the vicinity of today’s Mississippi 57 and Ratliff Lane.

Kip Dees said his father assumed the local postal duties form the Martin family in the early 1930s at his store. The Dees store, once located on the west side of Old Mississippi 57, north of Bluff Creek and south of the intersection of Poticaw Road and Mississippi 57, was a former company store. This was C.L. Dees’ second business. After World War I he had opened a store the locals called Red Cash nest to his home, now occupied by his daughter, Peggy Dees Plunk. Later he acquired the old store across the road. The store was closed in the 1960s and later burned.

Kip Dees is particularly sentimental about the Van Cleave post office at his father’s store, because of the memories it brings of his youth and reminds him of its importance to the community.

The rustic post office cubicle that had been used in the Dees Store and years before is proudly displayed in a corner of his living room, complete with the old cash register, adding machine and other items that were used there.  “For years my father ran the post office for $40 a month,” Dees said. Congressman William Colmer later secured a raise for him to $60.

After his father died and Kip Dees took over postal duties, he received $100 a month at his own business, located in the building now occupied by J’s Discount Drugs. In 1975 after a disagreement with federal officials over a pay increase, the Dees substation was closed.

There was no local post office service in Vancleave until the new post office building on Mississippi 57 was opened in 1984.

Most of the 2,500 people living in this fast growing part of the county and countless natives who have moved to other parts of the country have little idea that there are rumblings about slightly changing the spelling of the town’s name. When they hear about it, some may not be too concerned.

While some oldtimers say the spelling has never really been changed from Van Cleave to Vancleave, others, like former Jackson County Circuit Clerk Vertis Ramsay, say that it was always Vancleave.

A native of Vancleave, now living in Pascagoula, Ramsay said he does not remember the name being two words. “It’s one word on all the maps and plats,” he said, when asked his opinion.
“They haven’t been too vocal,” said Postmaster Marvin Holland. Holland said he is uncertain what steps have to be taken to seek a spelling change. But he dreads the thought of having to place a new postal sheild on the building. “It was real heavy, “ he said.