WINSTON COUNTY
Chapter XLVIII, pages 858-860
The county named above is in the east-central
part of the State. It 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 Col. Louis
Winston. 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, and is bounded on the north by the counties of Choctaw
and Oktibbeha, on the east by Noxubee County, on the south by Kemper and
Neshoba counties, and on the west by Attala and Choctaw counties. 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. Some of the earliest settlers
in the county were S.R. McClanahan, Jonathan Ellison, Wm. C. Coleman, Larken
T. Turner, Henry Fox, Judge Felix M. Ellis, Judge of Probate, John H. Hardy,
Sheriff, Leroy H. McGowan, Josiah Atkinson, George W. Thomason, first county
surveyor, Amos C. Morris, first Sheriff, James Phagan, first Circuit Clerk,
James Bevill, first Probate Judge, and J.M. Field, Isaac Jones, John H.
Buckner, Wm. McDaniell, Geo. B. Augustus, and Joseph Bell early members
of the legislature from the county.
Louisville 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.
Incorporated in 1836, it now contains a
population of 1,700 (census of 1920). In this locality are the well known
Chalybeate springs. Outside the county seat, Noxapater, High Point, Plattsburg
and Ferns Springs are the largest settlements in the county. Numerous small
creeks, headwaters of the Pearl River, and a number of other streams, tributaries
of the Noxubee River, provide every section of the county with water. The
soil of Winston County is of a fair quality, the bottom lands on the streams
being stiff and very fertile, and there still remain considerable tracts
of pine. The Gulf, Mobile & Northern railway gives the county good
shipping facilities. The county is rich in Indian antiquity, the historic
mound Nanih Waiya beihg located near the Neshoba line.
Facts and figures extracted from the census
reports of 1920 are here pertinent as illustrating general statements of
good natural resources. For instance, the value of all the farms, with
their buildings, implements and live stock, is given (as of 1919) at $6,783,000—live
stock valued at $1,247,000. The products of the crops raised in that year
were valued at $2,301,000, while the output of the sawmills and other manufacturing
establishments of the county was placed at $2,424,000. Wages to the industrial
workers were paid in the sum of $546,000. Winston County also proved to
be quite fortunate as a producer of fruits, its 24,000 bearing trees yielding
a harvest of 14,000 bushels. The peach crop was by far the most important,
more than a third of the total yield coming from that source. Vegetables
were also raised for the homes and for the market, more than $300,000 coming
to the farmers from this branch of the agricultural industry.
