Old Town-originally 'Hartford is in

Calhoun County, Mississippi Calhoun County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 13,266. Its county seat is Pittsboro. The county is named after John C. Calhoun, the U.S. Vice President and U.S. Senator from Sou ...

, United States. Old Town is located along the

Skuna River The Skuna River is a tributary of the Yalobusha River, about long, in north-central Mississippi in the United States. Via the Yalobusha and Yazoo Rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River. Course The Skuna River rises about ...

, and was the first county seat of Calhoun County.

History

Chocchuma and

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is ...

Indians first occupied the territory and had a village at Old Town. After the Indian removals in the 1830s, white settlers arrived and the village grew. A letter from Chickasaw County legislator J.A. Orr described the "aspiring little city" as the "head of navigation on the Loosa Scoona river from which many keel boat bore hundreds of bales of cotton to New Orleans." Some of the first settlers were the Enochs, Murphrees, Swoffords, Reagans, and Maxeys. The Enochs owned a boat company, and keel boats and flat boats carried cotton from Old Town down the Skuna River to

Greenwood Green wood is unseasoned wood. Greenwood or Green wood may also refer to: People * Greenwood (surname) Settlements Australia * Greenwood, Queensland, a locality in the Toowoomba Region * Greenwood, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth ...

and as far as

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

. There was a post office, a store, and a pottery which made plates, bowls, and churns. The first church was at "The Old Burnt Meetin’ House Place"; it burned down in 1845. Old Town also had a camp ground and a Methodist church. Calhoun County was organized in 1852, and the first courts and meetings of the Board were held at Old Town. That same year, the first meeting of the Board of Supervisors was held in the Methodist Church, and it was decided to move the county seat to Pittsboro. The Old Town Church and Old Town Cemetery remain; there are homes and farms along nearby roads. A post office operated under the name Hartford from 1852 to 1854 and under the name Oldtown from 1896 to 1912.

References

{{Coord, 33.98810, -89.29906, display=title Ghost towns in Mississippi Former populated places in Calhoun County, Mississippi