Possumneck is an unincorporated community located in

Attala County, Mississippi Attala County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 19,564. Its county seat is Kosciusko. Attala County is named for Atala, a fictional Native American heroine from an early-19th-centu ...

, United States, along

Mississippi Highway 19 Mississippi Highway 19 (MS 19) is a state highway in Mississippi. It runs for , serving the counties of Lauderdale County, MS, Lauderdale, Newton County, MS, Newton, Neshoba County, MS, Neshoba, Winston County, MS, Winston, Attala County, MS, Atta ...

and is approximately south-southeast of West.

History

Possumneck is on land that once belonged to the

Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...

s until the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Settlers arrived in the 1830s from Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. The community was once known as "The Neck", as it is located on a

neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

of land between Sharkey Creek and the Big Black River. A local historian recounted that the name "Possumneck" was derived from a joke about all of the possums that lived in "The Neck", which caused its inhabitants to then refer to the community as Possumneck. J.A. Weeks, who was the first postmaster of Possumneck, reportedly built the first private airport in the state of Mississippi in Possumneck. In 1900, Possumneck had a population of 48. The community once had one of the largest sawmills and cotton gins in Attala County. A post office operated under the name Possumneck from 1893 to 1905.

References

Unincorporated communities in Choctaw County, Mississippi Unincorporated communities in Mississippi {{ChoctawCountyMS-geo-stub