QUITMAN COUNTY
Chapter XLIV, pages 816-817
This county is one of the great cotton
producing regions of the State, lying in the fertile delta of northwestern
Mississippi. It was established February 1, 1877, during the administration
of Gov. John M. Stone and was named for John A. Quitman. The county has
a land surface of 395 square miles. It was carved from the counties of
Tunica, Coahoma, Tallahatchie and Panola. The act creating the county directed
that the seat of justice be located by the Board of Supervisors at a point
on the west side of Coldwater River and that it be called Belen. The place
was named after the battle ground where General Quitman fought in the Mexican
War. But Belen was far to the west of Quitman County, and when the Yazoo
& Mississippi Valley railroad avoided the old county seat, in the early
‘90s, and passed through the center of the county, the seat of justice
was transferred to Marks, which, in 1920, was an incorporated town of over
1,000.
The old boundary line between the Choctaw
and Chickasaw cessions cuts across the northeast corner of Quitman County
and for a short distance forms its boundary. The county lies entirely within
the Mississippi and Yazoo delta region, in the northwestern part of the
State, is a narrow, irregular shaped body of land, bounded on the north
by Tunica County, on the east by Panola and Tallahatchie counties, on the
south by Tallahatchie County and on the west by Coahoma County. It is the
most sparsely settled county in the State, has no towns or villages of
any size, except Marks, but possesses a soil of immense fertility with
ample shipping facilities for its products. Settlers have begun to come
in rapidly during the last few years. The white population is still very
small, as it is in all the Mississippi counties which produce bumper crops
of cotton. The census of 1920 gives the white population of Quitman County
at about 4,800, and the negro, at 15,000.
The Coldwater River flows from the north
in a winding course through the center and unites near the southern border
with the Tallahatchie and Yocona rivers to form the sluggish Yazoo. These
streams, together with Cassidy’s Bayou and Opossum Bayou, afford it good
water facilities.
Quitman is the sixth county in the State
in the point of production of cotton. More than 70,800 acres are cultivated
to the great staple within the limits of the county, and in 1919 nearly
30,000 bales went forth from her fields to the markets of the world. The
value of all the crops produced was given at $7,552,000. The enumerators,
after specializing in cerea1s and vegetables, which were valued at $850,000,
announce that the value of “all other crops” raised in Quitman County was
estimated at $6,646,000. Probably the bulk of the latter sum is accounted
for by the receipts of the cotton crop. Its value is not mentioned in the
figures for Quitman County, or any other of the banner sections of the
State. In the live stock class, valued at more than $2,000,000, the hardy,
invaluable mules are assessed at $1,420,000; dairy cattle, at $290,000,
and horses, at $169,000.
