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DeSoto County
DE SOTO COUNTY

Chapter XLV, pages 716-720

Established February 9, 1836, De Soto was one of the twelve counties formed in that year from the territory originally belonging to the Chickasaw nation and ceded by the Indians under the Pontotoc treaty of 1832. The original act defined its boundaries as follows: "Beginning at the point where the northern boundary line of the State intersects the Mississippi River, and running thence down the said river, to the point where the line between townships 2 and 3 intersects the same; thence with the said township line, to the line between ranges 9 and 10 west; thence south with the said range line to the center of township 6; thence east through the center of township 6, according to the sectional lines, to the center of range 5 west; thence north through the center of range 5 west, according to the sectional lines, to the northern boundary line of the State; thence west with the said boundary line to the place of beginning." Its original area was about 24 townships, or about 864 square miles. December 23, 1873, it contributed to form the new county of Tate, and now has a land area of 475 square miles. It was organized during the first administration of Gov. Charles Lynch, and was named after Hernando De Soto, the discoverer of the Mississippi. It is located in the extreme northwestern part of the State, bounded on the north by the state line which divides Mississippi from Tennessee and on the east by Marshall County; Tate County, whose history is closely associated with that of De Soto County, adjoins it on the south, the Coldwater River making part of the boundary between them; the Mississippi River touches it for a few miles on the west and Tunica County completes its western boundary. Its county seat is Hernando, just south of the center of the county, a place of 800 inhabitants and one of the historic old towns of the State. It was named in honor of Hernando De Soto. It was originally called Jefferson and was organized in 1836 by a bill introduced by Senator A.G. McNutt of Warren County. It became the home of many wealthy and prominent families, whose glory before the war is told by the remains of their handsome homes. It was the home of Col. Felix Labauve, who was one of its earliest settlers and quite a remarkable character. A native of France, of distinguished ancestry, and coming as a child to the new world, he was identified in later years with the history of Mississippi. His bequest of $20,000 for the education of poor youths of De Soto County, makes him deservingly remembered as one of its wisest benefactors. Other towns in the county are Eudora, Cockrum, Olive Branch, Nesbit, Pleasant Hill and Love. The main line of the Illinois Central railway crosses De Soto County from north to south, passing through Hernando. The Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railway, which connects the Delta with Memphis also crosses the western part of the county, and the Kansas City, Memphis & Birmingham passes through the northeast portion. Most of the county belongs to the Yellow Loam section of the State and its general surface is level and undulating. A small portion of the county is hilly and the extreme western part is Mississippi bottom land, alluvial and fertile.

De Soto County is rich as an agricultural section of the State, and like the other river counties has a large body of negroes to do the manual labor. The census enumeration gives 3,800 negroes to 1,000 whites engaged in cultivating the rich lands of this portion of Mississippi. The farm property of all kinds is valued at $18,275,000, as compared with $8,464,000 in 1910, and the total value of the crops raised in 1919 was $6,865,000. De Soto County has set aside 74,000 of its fertile acres to the cultivation of cotton, which yielded 24,000 bales in the year named. It is also largely engaged in fruit culture, its thirty thousand peach and apple trees yielding good returns, although only about half of them are of bearing age. The county’s live stock is valued at $2,286,000, the order of their importance from the assessor’s standpoint being mules, dairy cattle and horses.
 


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Source:  Mississippi The Heart of the South - By Dunbar Rowland, LL.D - Director of the Mississippi State Department of Archives and History.  Vol. II Illustrated.  Chicago-Jackson;  The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1925. Public Domain
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