Leake County, Mississippi

Leake County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Carthage
Year Organized: 1833
Square Miles: 583

Court House:

P.O. Drawer 72
County Courthouse
Carthage, MS 39051-0072

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Leake is named for Governor of Mississippi Walter Leake

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History

Leake County was established December 23, 1833, and was one of the sixteen counties created at that time from the final cession of the Choctaw Indians under the treaty of Dancing Rabbit in 1830. Leake County was named for Walter Leake (1762-1825), a native of Virginia who had a distinguished political career in Mississippi after narrowly losing a race for Congress to Thomas Randolph, a close political associate of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, to protect Randolph's political future in Virginia, appointed Leake chief judge of Mississippi Territory in 1807. Leake was a member of the 1817 Constitutional Convention, one of Mississippi's first two United States Senators (1817-1820), and a judge of the Mississippi Supreme Court (1821-1822). Elected Governor in 1821 and re-elected in 1823, he was the State's first two-term Governor. He died in office on November 17, 1825, not long after moving from Claiborne County to his new home at Mount Salus in Hinds County. The seat of justice of Greene County was named for him in 1826. Its limits were defined in the original act as follows:

"Beginning at the northeast corner of Scott County, and running from thence north with the line between ranges 9 and 10 east, to the line between townships 12 and 13; from thence west, with the line between townships 12 and 13, to the line between ranges 5 and 6 east; from thence south with said line between ranges 5 and 6 east, to the line between townships 8 and 9; and from thence east to the place of beginning."

The county is an exact square, contains 16 townships or 576 square miles. Carthage, near the center, two miles north of Pearl River, is the county seat. Carthage probably was named for Carthage, Tennessee, from which many prominent early settlers had migrated. Some of the important settlements are Walnut Grove, Edinburg, Standing Pine and Goodhope. As early as 1837 it possessed a population of 1,136 whites and 531 slaves.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 585 square miles (1,516 km²), of which, 583 square miles (1,509 km²) of it is land and 3 square miles (7 km²) of it (0.46%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Attala County (north)
Neshoba County (east)
Scott County (south)
Madison County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Carthage (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Lena	town	Incorporated Area
- Walnut Grove	town	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

Online High Schools

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."

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