Mississippi
Mississippi GenWeb. Your Online Source for Mississippi Genealogical Data and Resources.
Civil War Units. Alternate Designations Of Organizations of Mississippi CSA Organizations.
Links to Historical and Genealogical Websites from the National Park Service. Many unit histories and rosters can be found on the internet.
Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System from the National Park Service.
Mississippi in the War Between the States. The war was fought over constitutional principle, sectional differences, and economics. It was a defining moment in United States history and it remains a fascinating subject.
Roots-L: United States Resources for Mississippi.
A History of Cotton Mills and the Industrial Revolution. By 1880 the Industrial Revolution of the South was underway. Initially, most of the mills moved from New England to the Piedmont regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia because of the availability of water power.
Slaveholders and African Americans 1860-1870. Published information giving names of slaveholders and numbers of slaves held is almost non-existent. It is possible to locate an ancestor on a U.S. census for 1860 or earlier and not realize that ancestor was also listed as a slaveholder on the slave schedules, because published indexes almost always do not include the slave census. The last U.S. census slave schedules were enumerated by County in 1860. The actual number of slaveholders may be slightly lower because some large holders held slaves in more than one County and would have been counted in each County.
A clickable map of Mississippi counties.
Mississippi county formation.
Mississippi History and Information.
Old Capitol Museum of Mississippi History.
Making the Mississippi Over Again: The Development of River Control in Mississippi.
The Great Migration TO THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY, 1798-1819. Adventurous settlers, anxious to improve their fortunes, took up new lands in the west, confidently expecting them to be better than the lands they left behind. Westward movement of the colonists continued throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the time they declared their independence from Britain in 1776, Americans had pushed the line of settlement westward to the Appalachian Mountains.
Growth of the Lumber Industry. Mississippi’s abundant virgin forest had long been a natural resource for American Indians. And to the early 19th-century settlers from Europe and America’s east coast, the softwoods and hardwoods provided material for building homes, furniture, farm implements, and tools. Even so, settlers considered the millions of acres of forests as little more than obstacles to be removed in order to start developing farms. The few people who lived in South Mississippi’s pineland before 1840, for example, made their living by hunting and trapping, and later by raising cattle and hogs. By the 1840s, a few small mills for sawing logs had been built along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The sawmills were located near the mouths of major rivers and streams
The Natchez Indians. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Natchez Indian culture began around A.D. 700 and lasted until the 1730s when the tribe was dispersed in a war with the French.
Mushulatubbee and Choctow Removal Choctaw Removal. The Mississippi Legislature passed a resolution that went into effect in January 1830 extending its jurisdiction over Choctaw and Chickasaw territories within the state. Many Indians opposed this move and appealed to the United States government for assistance. Others accepted this new state of affairs and sought the best terms possible.
A Brief History of the Confederate Flags. The six southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida met February 4, 1861, in convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and established the Confederate States of America. They were soon joined by Texas, and after the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, they were joined by Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky were prevented from seceding by the presence of federal troops, but both states sent unofficial representatives to the Confederate Congress and both supplied troops to the Confederate Army.
British West Florida: Mississippi. The year 1763 was a glorious one for the proud British Empire. England finally had triumphed over France after fighting to a standstill for almost a century, from 1689 to 1763. As a result of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, following the French and Indian War (1754-1763), England acquired Spanish Florida and French Canada.1 The British divided Florida into two provinces or colonies, West and East Florida. West Florida included the southern half of present-day Mississippi. Specifically, West Florida was a small rectangular region straddling the Gulf of Mexico from lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas and the Mississippi River on the west, to the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers on the east, and extending north as far as an imaginary line running due east from the confluence of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. It included the old Spanish port of Pensacola and the former French settlements of Mobile, Biloxi, and Natchez.
Spanish Natchez. The fort had been established decades before in 1716 as Fort Rosalie by the French who had first colonized the Mississippi River. Later, the fort was known officially as Fort Panmure, a name the British, its second proprietors, had given it during a brief occupation. However, most people simply knew it as Fort Natchez. The growing settlement around the fort had begun during the 1760s, after the district had passed into the hands of Great Britain following the French and Indian War. Great Britain had issued land grants to prospective settlers. After the 1779 Spanish annexation of Natchez, Spain’s liberal immigration policies and liberal land grants continued to encourage British Americans to immigrate there.
John Law and the Mississippi Bubble. The French controlled the colony of Louisiana, a vast settlement in the interior of North America. The Louisiana Colony included the Natchez district and the area along the Mississippi Gulf Coast in present-day Mississippi. France was the first European country to settle this area of North America (1699-1763). The colony stretched for 3,000 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River to parts of Canada. It included the present-day states that hug the river: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The colony of Louisiana's connection to the Mississippi River gave rise to the company's more popular name, The Mississippi Company.
Pushmataha. Few Choctaws from the early 1800s are better known than Pushmataha. He negotiated several well-publicized treaties with the United States, led Choctaws in support of the Americans during the War of 1812, is mentioned in nearly all histories of the Choctaws, and was famously painted by Charles Bird King in 1824.
Mississippi Soldiers in the Civil War. The second state to secede from the Union, its secession resolution, like those of the other southern states, clearly stated that defense of slavery was its reason for leaving the Union. With a population of 791,000 people, Mississippi's slaves outnumbered whites 437,000 to 354,000. Slavery, therefore, seemed to be an absolute necessity for the state's white citizens. White soldiers from Mississippi reflected the state's position on slavery, but they fought for a variety of other reasons, too. Some joined the military to defend home and hearth, while others saw the conflict in broader sectional terms. The soldiers' motivation was generally more personal than it was ideological.
Flags Over Mississippi. Mississippi did not officially adopt a state flag until 1861, when it seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. Prior to that time, several flags had flown over the territory that would become the state of Mississippi on December 10, 1817.
The Constitution of 1817. On March 1, 1817, President James Madison signed legislation enabling inhabitants of the western portion of the Mississippi Territory to form for themselves a constitution and State government, and to assume such name as they shall deem proper; and the said State, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union upon the same footing with the original States, in all respects whatever. The forty-eight convention delegates elected pursuant to the enabling act assembled at Washington, Mississippi, on July 7, 1817. After deliberating for one month and eight days, they adopted the first Mississippi Constitution on August 15, 1817. Forty-five delegates signed the Constitution; one refused to sign, one was absent because of illness, and one had died during the convention.
The Constitutions of Mississippi. The State of Mississippi has had four state constitutions: the original Constitution of 1817, the Constitution of 1832, the Constitution of 1868, and the present-day Constitution of 1890.
A Contested Presence. During its first half century as a territory and state (1810-1860), Mississippi was an agrarian-frontier society. Its population was made up of four groups: Indians, whites, slaves, and free blacks. All four groups were present in Mississippi from its territorial beginnings. Blacks in Mississippi, and elsewhere in the South, became free in several ways. Prior to 1825, it was common and legal for slaves to become free either by purchasing their freedom or by slaveholders freeing them. Beginning in the mid-1820s, both forms of emancipation became increasingly less common and even illegal.
Mississippi History. In 1798 congress organized the Mississippi Territory, and Natchez was the Capitol. Winthrop Sergeant became the first governor of the territory. The 31st parallel bounded the south side, the Mississippi River bounded the West, and a line bound the north east from the mouth of the Yazoo River, and on the east by the Chattahoochee River. In 1803 the Mississippi River was made part of the United States by the Louisiana Purchase. The River made development of the area much easier, because ships could sail to the Gulf of Mexico. Congress extended the Mississippi Territory north to the border of Tennessee in 1804. More land was added in 1812. In 1812 the land lying east of the Pearl River, which was known as West Florida Republic was added to the Mississippi Territory. The Republic was formed in 1812, after the American settlers took control of the land south of the 31st parallel between the Mississippi River and Perdido River. During the War of 1812, the Choctaw Indians under Chief Pushmataha remained friendly. They joined the Mississippi militia and aided General Andrew Jackson in putting down the uprisings of the Creek Indians and defeated a British Army in the Battle of New Orleans. In 1817, Congress divided the Mississippi Territory into the state of Mississippi and Alabama Territory. December 10, 1817, Mississippi was admitted to the union as the 20th state.
Early SW MS Territory - Historical Information contains the following: a Timeline of the Mississippi Territory; Notorious outlaws of the early Southwest Mississippi Territory; Gov. Winthrop Sergent's Address on the occasion of the territory coming under the control of the United States; Missippi Territory 1808: Situation and Extent; the Mississippi Statehood Convention Site; The Natchez Trace; the Mississippi Petition for Statehood 1811; Early Press in Southwest Mississippi Territory; The Panic of 1813; History; the Creek War; Mississippi and the War of 1812; Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi River; Early Migration Trails; Life on the Nashville-Natchez Trace; and Early Postal Delivery through the Mississippi Territory.
Southest Genealogy Online's Stae of Mississippi contains the History of Mississippi; County Formation Maps; County Census Maps; and the Military History of Mississippi.
Prologue The 1890 Federal Population Census. Reference sources routinely dismiss the 1890 census records as "destroyed by fire" in 1921. Examination of the records of the Bureau of Census and other federal agencies, however, reveals a far more complex tale. This is a genuine tragedy of records--played out before Congress fully established a National Archives--and eternally anguishing to researchers.
Genealogy.com Secrets of the Census by Donna Przecha. The United States Census is an extremely valuable tool in genealogy research. Several censuses give not only names, ages and birthplaces, but also state the relationship of people within a household.
Learning Center. Tracing your family's history is a fascinating journey. The Learning Center will guide you along the way by offering how-to articles, genealogy classes and other resources that will help you dig deeper into your family's past.
Keely's Korner. Genealogical help for everyone.