Winston County, Mississippi

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

County Seat: Louisville
Year Organized: 1833
Square Miles: 607

Court House:

P.O. Drawer 69
County Courthouse
Louisville, MS 39339-0069

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Winston is named for military leader Louis Winston.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Winston County was established December 23, 1833, and was one of the numerous counties formed in that year from the territory acquired from the Choctaws, by the treaty of Dancing Rabbit, in 1830. The county has a land surface of 597 square miles. It was named in honor of Colonel Louis Winston (1784-1824), a native of Virginia, who moved to Mississippi Territory and became a prominent lawyer and the colonel of a regiment of militia. In 1809 he was appointed the district attorney general for Madison County, but it appears that he moved to the Natchez District in about 1817. He was the secretary of the Constitutional Convention of 1817, and he served as a judge of the Mississippi Supreme Court from 1821 until his death, on August 20, 1824, at his home in Washington, Mississippi. Winston County, Alabama, was named for his kinsman, John A. Winston, who served as Governor of Alabama from 1853 to 1857.

The original act declared that it should embrace the following territory: Townships 13, 14, 15, and 16 of ranges 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. By an act of the legislature in 1875, townships 15 and 16, range 10, and township 16, range 11, were added to Choctaw County and about the same time the north half of sections 2 and 3, township 12, range 13, were taken from Neshoba County and added to Winston. It is situated in the so-called Yellow Loam Region. Shortly before and after its organization, a strong tide of emigration set in toward this section of the State from the older parts of Mississippi, and from the States of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, and by the year 1837 the population of the county was whites 2,193, slaves 959, and by 1840 the population had reached 4,650, including slaves.

Louisville, Incorporated in 1836, is the county seat named for Louis Winston and platted on a tract near the center of the county, donated by Jesse Dodson. It was on the great mail route from Nashville to New Orleans, and the terminus of five mail routes in the early days.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 610 square miles (1,580 km²), of which, 607 square miles (1,572 km²) of it is land and 3 square miles (8 km²) of it (0.51%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Oktibbeha County (north)
Noxubee County (east)
Kemper County (southeast)
Neshoba County (south)
Attala County (west)
Choctaw County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Louisville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Noxapater	town	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."