Simpson County, Mississippi

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

County Seat: Mendenhall
Year Organized: 1824
Square Miles: 589

Court House:

P.O. Box 367
County Courthouse
Mendenhall, MS 39114-0367

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Simpson is named for Judge Josiah Simpson.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Simpson County lies in the south central part of the State, and was organized January 23, 1824, and named in honor of Judge Josiah Simpson, a former Pennsylvanian, educated at Princeton. He later lived at Green Hill, near Natchez, and became a territorial judge of Mississippi and served as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1917. It was part of the Choctaw cession of 1820, termed the New Purchase, and subsequently formed the eastern part of the county of Copiah (erected in 1823). It has a present area of 575 square miles. As early as 1837 it had a free white population of 2,329, slaves 891, a majority of these early settlers coming from the older portions of the State on the west and south.

At the time of it's organization, Simpson County was one of the most attractive Counties of the great Southwest and that is why for the first twenty years after, it grew so rapidly in population. Doubtless the early settlers from Scotland, New England, Virginia and the Carolinas sent back to their relatives glowing accounts of this new country.

The first courts of the county were held at the house of William Gibson, and in 1827 the village of Westville was made the seat of justice. The county seat was eventually moved to Mendenhall. It was returned to Westville in the fall of 1905, but an election in the following year decided the contest for Mendenhall..

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 591 square miles (1,529 km²), of which, 589 square miles (1,525 km²) of it is land and 2 square miles (5 km²) of it (0.30%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Rankin County (north)
Smith County (east)
Covington County (southeast)
Jefferson Davis County (south)
Lawrence County (southwest)
Copiah County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Braxton	village	Incorporated Area
- D'Lo	town	Incorporated Area
- Magee	city	Incorporated Area
- Mendenhall (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this 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."