Mississippi State Facts & Information

Select a county from the table below to to view more information on genealogical information & records pertaining to each county.

Microfilm and original copies of a large, although not complete, collection of Mississippi county records are in the collection held by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Microfilm copies are also generally available through the FHL. Researchers will still want to consult county courthouses for those materials that have either not been transferred or microfilmed, including, but not limited to, marriage licenses, probate files, court records, etc.

Dates in the county pages indicate those materials jointly held by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the FHL. Known record losses from fires and other causes are indicated. Deeds, probate records, and marriages may be found at the chancery clerk at the county courthouse. Microfilmed marriage books for both whites and blacks are indicated, in that order, under "Marriages." Court records may be found in the appropriate clerk's office at the courthouse.

The official state website is located at http://www.ms.gov/.

Mississippi, state in the Southeastern United States, bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. Early explored by the Spanish and colonized by the French, Mississippi’s warm climate and rich soil proved ideally suited to cotton, which became the main crop even before 1800 and remained the mainstay of its economy until the 20th century.

Anglo-Saxon settlers from the older seaboard states flocked to Mississippi’s virgin lands, bringing black slaves to work their fields, and until 1940 blacks outnumbered whites. Even today Mississippi has a larger percentage of blacks than any other state. Relations between the races have tended to shape Mississippi’s history and to foster a conservative political philosophy and an insistence on state’s rights among its white majority. In recent years, however, blacks have begun to enter political and economic realms formerly virtually closed to them. At the same time, “king” cotton has made room for a more diversified agriculture, and Mississippi has undergone an industrial boom. Although Mississippians still cherish the columned mansions and hallowed traditions of their past, they can now boast a diversified industrial and agricultural economy.

Mississippi entered the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state. Jackson, Mississippi’s capital and largest city, was founded at about the same time. The state takes its name from the Mississippi River, the great waterway that forms the state’s western boundary. The river’s name was derived from an Algonquin term for “big river.” Mississippi is commonly nicknamed the Magnolia State because of the great number of magnolia trees that grow within its borders. The blossom of the magnolia is the state flower.

Following the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763, France ceded its possessions in the lower Mississippi valley, except New Orleans, to Great Britain, which also gained possession of Spanish Florida and divided that territory into two colonies. One of those was West Florida, which included the area between the Apalachicola and Mississippi rivers. The original northern boundary of West Florida was the 31 parallel, but it was extended in 1764 to the 3228' parallel. Fort Rosalie was renamed Fort Panmure, and the Natchez District was established as a subdivision of West Florida. Natchez flourished during the early 1770s. After the outbreak of the U.S. War of Independence, Spain regained possession of Florida and occupied Natchez. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 fixed the 31 parallel as the boundary between Spanish Florida and the United States, but Spain continued to occupy Natchez until the dispute was settled in 1798.

The original Mississippi Territory created by the U.S. Congress in1798 was a strip of land extending about 100 miles north to south and from the Mississippi River to the Chattahoochee on the Georgia border. The territory was increased in 1804 and 1812 to reach from Tennessee to the Gulf. In 1817 the western part achieved statehood as Mississippi (the eastern part became the state of Alabama in 1819). Natchez, the first territorial capital, was replaced in 1802 by nearby Washington, which in turn was replaced by Jackson in 1822.

The 1820s and '30s were marked by the decline of the Jeffersonian Republicans, the ascendancy of the Jacksonian Democrats, and the removal of the Indians to Oklahoma. They were the days of steamboats, land speculation, and the growth of a plantation-based cotton economy, with its concomitant slave population. Slave owning, however, was not common among the small landowners, who became more numerous than the large planters but who had little influence on public affairs for many years.

Sectionalism in both North and South had been growing for some time. Its ill feelings gradually became dominated in both North and South by slavery. In January 1861, a convention adopted an ordinance of secession, and within a year the state was in the midst of war. The people suffered much privation, and the land underwent great devastation; by 1865 the state was in economic ruin.

For 25 years following the Civil War, Mississippi's former slaves and their former owners grappled with the political, social, and economic consequences of emancipation. The white minority could not or would not accept a biracial society based on equality of opportunity. In 1890 the ruling elite adopted a constitution that established a caste system of racial segregation and an economic order that kept blacks in a position of dependency.
Mississippians hoped to find economic salvation in the coming of industry and the railroads, but the hope was only partially realized. Emancipation had made the former slaves free to go where they wished, but most remained and eventually were absorbed into the tenant-farming system. The continued economic interdependence of the two races kept intact many of the customs and social systems that had developed before the war. The constitution of 1890 effectively disfranchised most of the black population.

The Mississippi Territory was organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina; it was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the U.S. and Spain. Land was purchased (generally through unequal treaties) from Native American tribes from 1800 to about 1830. Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union, on December 10, 1817.

This section provides an list of Mississippi counties that no longer exist. They were established by the state, provincial, or territorial government. Most of these counties were created and disbanded in the 19th century; county boundaries have changed little since 1900 in the vast majority of states.

• Bainbridge County: Formed from Lawrence and Wayne Counties renamed Covington County
• Bourbon County: Organized by Georgia in 1785 out of disputed Yazoo lands in present day Mississippi; dissolved in 1788.
• Colfax County: Formed in 1871, renamed Clay County in 1876
• Pickering County: Formed in 1799 from the Natchez District , renamed Jefferson County in 1802
• Pearl County: 1872-1878, later reformed as Pearl River County, Mississippi
• Sumner County: Formed in 1874 from Montgomery and Choctaw Counties, renamed Webster in 1882

The destruction of courthouses greatly affects genealogists in every way. No only are these historic structures torn from our lives, so are the records they housed: marriage, wills, probate, land records, and others. Once destroyed they are lost forever. Even if they have been placed on mircofilm, computers and film burn too. The most heartbreaking side of this is the fact that many of our courthouses are destroyed at the hands of arsonist. However, not all records were lost.

Below is a list of Mississippi Counties and the years the Courthouses were subjected to a disaster. This does NOT mean that ALL RECORDS were lost. Often, folks took their documents again in for recording after a disaster and later deeds will contain long chains of title, etc.