In 1900, a legend which centered around an amazing multimillionaire adventurer, hunter, and playboy, developed in North Mississippi when Paul J. Rainey settled in Tippah County at the turn of the century.

Paul was born on September 18, 1877, the son of William J. and Eleanor Rainey. The Raineys came from the British Isles and settled in Belmont County, Ohio in 1796.

Here William, his father, founded the William J. Rainey Inc., which is still one of the leading coke and coal producers. He was a ruthless man who prided himself at being title "The Coke Baron" and "The Coal King." He also owned a ship line and several plantations throughout the country.

Rainey's mother was a strict Presbyterian, who was so frugal that she made her children's socks from the wool of sheep that grazed on their fabulous estate in Cleveland, Ohio. She made the socks black with white bottoms so that she could tell when they needed changing.

Although Paul's father left approximately forty million dollars, his family spoke of his as "Poor Paul" because he was not given as much as the other children because of his reckless habits. His kinsmen were conservative, and his brother Roy never owned an automobile. He went everywhere on a bicycle.

The South was in the last phases of reconstruction when the eminent Dr. F. H. Rogers of New Albany introduced Paul to the gentle rolling hills of North Mississippi. Dr. Rogers and Mr. Rainey became first acquainted at the famous National Field Trials held annually in Grand Junction, Tennessee, and Rainey liked the land so much that he decided to move to this area. Tippah County was the nearest place where he could acquire the amount of land he wanted.

The first recorded deed to Mr. Rainey was from H. M. Ratliff dated January 11, 1904. On January 27, 1905, he bought from W. P. Wiseman a lot on which he located his large store that served the people around Cotton Plant.

He took the small Ratliff home and converted it into one of the most beautiful estates in the South. On one end of the house he built an indoor heated swimming pool at a time when other families in the area did not even have running water. At the other end of the house he added on a trophy room, which is actually a building in itself, for it is practically as large as a small house of today. The trophy room was filled with trophies collected on hunts throughout the world.

Between the pool and the trophy room were the nine bedrooms, kitchens, and enormous dining and living rooms. The surrounding estate consisted of a splendidly landscaped lawn, complete with a sunken garden and numerous fish ponds.

He had a private electric plant on the estate or "lodge", as it was known, that provided lights and electricity for the house. A water tower gave pressure for the system and kept the swimming pool filled with filtered water, and provided the water needed for the numerous tiled baths.

If he needed ice for his many parties, he merely sent to his own ice plant. If he wanted soft drinks he went to his bottling works in New Albany. The "lodge" boasted paved roads, steam heat, sidewalks, a blacksmith shop, dog food oven, and a perfectly round polo barn, which housed some fifty horses.

He also maintained his own private railroad siding, where his private railroad car would deposit him from his trips throughout the world, or where his party guests would arrive from across the nation-Chicago, New York, California, or Pennsylvania.

In addition to the lodge and his thirty-thousand acres of Tippah and Union County land, Mr. Rainey owned a large plantation in Africa, known as "Forest Glenn", Near Nairobi. He had a duck preserve in Vermilion, Louisiana, which after his death was given to the National Audubon Society. This consisted of twenty-three thousand acres. He owned a racing stable on Long Island, and his horses competed in major events in America and England.

Before he built his private railroad siding, Mr. Rainey would come from the East to Memphis and then to New Albany by train. Then he had an overnight wait until he could catch a train for the ten miles to his estate. In New Albany he spent the night in a boarding house, and the conditions were not to his liking. So one day he called one of his men and said, "Build me a hotel in New Albany."

When the fellow asked what kind of hotel Rainey replied, "I stay in good hotels in New York, in Paris, and in London. I want a hotel like those."

The Rainey hotel must have been a fabulous building, especially for its then remote location. Italian marble was imported for the floors, and a chef was brought to America to provide the meals for its guests. At this time, the turn of the century, it was one of the three most luxurious hotels in Mississippi. Although the original hotel was destroyed by fire, it was rebuilt after Rainey's death and named in his honor.

With his abundance of wealth, he had the world at his command; and he dabbled in anything he could find to amuse himself. He was a member of the American Geographical Society, American Museum of Natural History, the Zoological Society of New York, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Institute of Social Sciences. He was president of Westchester Racing Association, a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, the Racquet and Tennis Lawyers Club, New York Yachting Societies and the Travelers Club of Paris. He was president of the National Fox hunt which later bore his name.

Paul Rainey was something of a paradox. People either flocked to him as a friend or had little to do with him. A great many people did not like him because he had too many peculiarities. His most outstanding peculiarity was an extreme determination. He was a man who, when he set out to do a thing, was not happy until it was finished well. He wanted to accomplish his undertakings as well as anyone in the world could.

He gave much of his money to charities but was cautious to see that his money was a good investment. He offered to build a school at Cotton Plant on his polo field and supply the needed teachers himself, but when the board of trustees wanted a deed for the school, he immediately dropped the project. He received pleas from throughout the world for financial aid to charities and schools. In one case he was asked to found a boys school in Paris but refused for undisclosed reasons.

Socially his name was to be ranked with that of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Although he maintained three or four houses throughout the country and Europe, his "lodge" was considered his home for this is where his heart was. The rambling fifteen room house was the scene for many gala parties that were the talk of the country side for many years.

When Paul Rainey invited guests to dine and dance with him, he intended for the m to do just that. The guests might come from all over the nation. They would usually come by special railroad cars.

Their dinner was catered by a famous Memphis restaurant and some elite Memphis nightclub would be without music for that night: its band would be playing at the Rainey farm. The world famous W.C. Handy's band played at many of his parties.

His abundance of wealth and power made him an international playboy by the time he was twenty-one. Two of the most famous women in his life were the noted actress Elsie Jancie and Mrs. Mary Peters Graham. The latter was the wife of Dr. Graham of Memphis, and she first met Rainey at a ball given in their home in Memphis.

Then a strange thing happened. Dr. Graham fell in love with Mrs. Graham's maid, and Mr. and Mrs. Graham were divorced. Mrs. Graham went to a party given at the "lodge" and stayed on with Paul even thought there were never married.

Another popular legend tells about one of their arguments. They fought once in London, and she left and went to Paris and on to Russia. He finally caught up with her and barged into her hotel room with several dozen red roses and a magnificent ruby and diamond bracelet. She always got what she wanted and was pampered luxuriously by Rainey.

After his death she lived in hotel rooms in New York, but she wanted to get closer to the home and land that he loved, so she moved into his servants quarters during World War II. In 1945 Mrs. Graham moved into her own home, "South Wind", which was built on land given to her by Rainey's sister. Mrs. Graham died in 1956 and was buried with a locket containing Paul's picture and a lock of his hair.

Tippah Lodge was more than just a place for his hunting expeditions. He raised his famous Trigg hounds at the lodge and sometimes had as many as two hundred and thirty dogs in the kennels. Once he had seventy-five foxhounds, twenty bear dogs, thirty-five beagles, one hundred bird dogs, and numerous Airedales.

The trophy room was more like a museum than part of a home. It contained splendid skins from the world over and a collection of ivory from China and India. In the parlor was a musk-ox, a very rare animal, which he had killed in Greenland. He possessed among the finest gun and mounted head collection in the United States. Most of his mounted head collection in the United States. Most of his specimens were later given to the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis.

Rainey went to Greenland for polar bears, to Mexico for the thrill of jaguars, to the American Rockies for grizzlies, to Texas for coyotes, and to Tennessee for the adventure of wild boar.

Rainey's eleven thousand acres directly around the lodge were turned into a game preserve. He brought over a British gamekeeper to raise pheasants and to breed mallard ducks for his lakes. Sheep, bear, and deer roamed the land at will and pigeon roosts were placed around the lodge.

The thirty-thousand acres which comprised his entire estate in North Mississippi presented some of the best fox hunting action in North America and in 1923 Rainey played host to the National Fox Hunt Club's annual fox hunt. During the hunt, George Morris of the News Scimitar presented a typical view of life of the sportsmen on the hunt. It began:
 
 

When Rainey lost interest in the "lodge", he went of Africa to hunt lions. The old hunters laughed and called him a fool when he told them of his plans to hunt lions with hounds and horses. From his ranch in Nairobi he brought back excellent specimens of wild life to be hung in the trophy room of his lodge. He also took and developed the first pictures of big game in Africa. When he decided to make these pictures he took off from his hunt until he had completely mastered the art of photography and then resumed his hunt.

An old Kenya settler attributed to Paul Rainey more than to others far better known than he the honor of opening up of East Africa. He Said:
 
 

Only by paying fantastic wages did Rainey find a hunter with enough fortitude to act as his guide to hunt with hounds and horses. The natives thought this impossible for there were many ant bear holes and gullies that dotted the Kenyan landscape. But to the amazement of the natives and settlers, Rainey was very successful on his hunts and he gained the respect and admiration of the white villagers and natives. A white hunter with Rainey commented: "He was the only man I've seen who was completely without fear." Rainey kept up his reckless horseback dashes for lions at breakneck speeds for six consecutive years. Finally the British government set up laws limiting to four a year the number of lions he could kill.

An angry mob of ostrich raisers marched on the capitol in protest of the passage of these laws because Rainey had been protecting their farms from lions. The government rescinded the restriction and permitted Rainey to hunt within the boundaries of a private ranch. And since some of the ranches were fifty-thousand acres, he still had plenty of room for his hunts. But somehow the hunts were never the same and he returned to the "lodge".

Rainey's adventuresome and roving instincts led him all over the world in search of some kind of contentment that he seemed never to find. He pioneered the field of motion pictures in Africa and some of his pictures were used in early movies about Africa. His stories and pictures appeared in many notable magazines in the early 1900's. He was the first man to build a railroad in Africa. The natives loved him and called him "The White God". He was the first man ever to go among some of the fiercest tribes in Africa.

An interesting sidelight to his hunting in Kenya, he played a crucial part in preventing Kenya from being Governed by the Germans. Because he resented the German raids that were interfering with his hunting sport, he sent to America for bloodhounds to track down the Germans that were mining the Kenya railroads. He did such a thorough job of it that the Germans finally relinquished their hold on Kenya. He was captured twice by the Germans and twice he escaped.

Because he was not accepted for military service in World War I, he bought an ambulance, outfitted himself, and drove it himself in France. Later on in the war he became the official photographer for the Red Cross.

In his search for adventure he followed the trail of Captain Cook and went as far north as the Cook expedition when they discovered the North Pole. On an expedition with Harry Whitney tot he Arctic he brought back "Silver King", the great polar bear donated by him to the Bronx Zoo.

He was an active enthusiast in such sports as track car racing, steeple chase riding, polo, and yachting. Polo especially caught his attention, and he was a member of the first American team ever to defeat the British. He was presented tot he King and Queen of England and awarded a silver serving tray for his efforts.

He built a large polo field and for the benefit of the South brought the famous Long Island team to play. Rainey devoted this entire life to sports, an d the more dangerous the sport, the better he like it.

In 1923, Rainey went to England, got together a new pack of dogs, and took passage for Capetown on the first leg of his journey, planning to do some hunting in South Africa before going to India to hunt tigers with his hounds. He never reached Capetown, for he died and was buried at sea. An old legend retold in True Magazine tolls of his death:
 
 

Other legends sprang up that he only faked death to escape the clutches of Mrs. Graham. But still others have a less dramatic theory of his death. Shelly says that she feels he died of over drinking. He could only hold one drink because of a head injury received in a steeple chase ride.

When the news of his death came back to Cotton Plant, the people were shocked, amazed, and disbelieving. Many of the Negro servants refused to believe his death for many years. For years afterwards when a black limousine pulled up to the lodge, they thought that it was the master returning home. And when a plane's engine was heard the Negroes scurried about to ready the "lodge" for its master.

From September 18, 1877, to September 18, 1923, Paul Rainey put his marks on the world and a mark on Tippah and Union County legends that will be remembered for countless generations.

Shelly said this of Mr. Rainey: