Washington, Mississippi

Washington, Mississippi
Unincorporated community
Washington mapped in 1823
Nickname:  "Versailles"
Washington Washington
Coordinates: 31°34′44″N 91°17′57″W
Country	United States
State	Mississippi
County	Adams
Elevation	279 ft (85 m)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP code	39190
GNIS feature ID	679358
Highways	U.S. Highway 61 U.S. Highway 84 U.S. Highway 98

Washington is an unincorporated community in Adams County, Mississippi, United States. Located along the lower Mississippi, 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Natchez, it was the second and longest-serving capital of the Mississippi Territory.

History

This area along the Mississippi had long been inhabited by indigenous peoples. At the time of European encounter, the Natchez people controlled much of the area. They were descendants of the earlier Mississippian culture that had built earthwork mounds. European Americans, settling the area after the American Revolution, named the town for George Washington. Some of the original settlers of the area were Colonel Andrew Ellicott, Joseph Calvit, and John Foster. The townsite was established near a water source known as Ellicot's Spring.

Washington became the second territorial capital, when the seat of the Mississippi Territory's legislature was moved from Natchez to Washington on February 1, 1802. Fort Dearborn, located at Washington, was for a time the largest military installation then extant in the United States, with more than 2,000 soldiers stationed there, including such notables as Brigadier General Leonard Covington and future General Winfield Scott. It was established in 1802 to protect the newly relocated capital of the Mississippi Territory. As of 1813, celebrations might be held at DeFrance's Hotel. According to a history of Methodism in Mississippi, the church at Washington "became the most popular preaching place in all the country. The congregations were large and appreciative, many of whom, from time to time, were sweetly drawn into the gospel net...The social meetings of the Church were highly appreciated and well attended...Washington was now in the zenith of its glory and prosperity; but from this date (1825–26) a variety of natural causes contributed to its depopulation until for a score of years it has been nothing more than a scattered village." Surnames of white families that lived in or near Washington were Bowie, Calvit, Chew, Covington, Dangerfield, Freeland, Grayson, Magruder, Wilkinson, Winston, and Wailes. According to a 1906 survey of "lost villages of Mississippi":

It was a gay and fashionable place, compactly built for a mile or more from east to west, while every hill in the neighborhood was occupied by some gentleman's chauteau. The presence of the military had its influence on society; punctilio and ceremony, parades and public entertainments were the features of the place. It was, of course, the haunt of politicians and office seekers; the center of political intrigue, the point to which all persons in pursuit of land or occupation first came. It was famous for its wine parties and its dinners, usually enlivened by one or more duels immediately afterward.

Methodist Meeting House—the first statehood constitutional convention was held here July to August 1817

The Mississippi constitution convention of 1817 met in Washington at the Methodist Meeting House (which was purchased by Jefferson College in 1830). Mississippi's first constitution was written and adopted here, and the state's first legislature convened here in 1817. The preliminary trial of U.S. vice-president Aaron Burr occurred under some nearby oak trees. After Mississippi was admitted to the union in 1817, the legislature met once in Washington, and afterward in Natchez. In the late 1810s there was a yellow fever outbreak in the town, which had previously been considered a "salubrious climate" compared to Natchez, and the disease killed "a number of the best citizens, so that people were restrained from fixing their family residences there." The capital was officially moved to Jackson in 1822, in keeping with the Act passed by the Assembly on November 28, 1821, which chose to have a more central location for better accessibility to more residents.

The old Methodist Meeting House building was demolished by a tornado in January 1873. In 1879, the Jesse James gang robbed two stores in Washington and in Fayette in Jefferson County, Mississippi. The gang absconded with $2,000 cash in the second robbery and took shelter in abandoned cabins on the Kemp Plantation south of St. Joseph, Louisiana. A posse attacked and killed two of the outlaws but failed to capture the entire gang. Jesse James would live another three years until his demise in St. Joseph in northwestern Missouri.

Geography

Architecture

Elizabeth Female Academy, considered to be the first women's college in the state, was established at Washington in 1818. For most of its history, it was a degree-conferring college; it closed in 1845. Clear Creek Baptist Church, erected in 1825 and one of the oldest churches in Mississippi, is located in Washington.

In 1836, it was the site of a meeting of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, which was reorganized under President Ashley Vaughn of Natchez. The convention, or association, contained 122 churches, 56 clergy, and 4287 members.

The congregations would have reflected the majority-black population of the area, where most workers on the cotton plantations were slaves. The town also has Washington Methodist Church. These were the two prominent denominations at the time of settlement. Both recruited slaves and accepted blacks as preachers in many locations. Before the American Civil War, both the national Baptist Association and Methodist Church split over the issue of slavery, and southern congregations established separate organizations.

Parks

Washington is the location of Jefferson College, now known as Historic Jefferson College. It is operated as a state historic park and museum by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The college was created by an act of the first General Assembly of the Mississippi Territory in 1802 and was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson, then-president of the United States. Although chartered in 1802, it did not open as a school until 1811.

Operated as a boys' academy, it continued in this capacity (but for a few brief, temporary closures, due to war, fire, remodeling and the like) for the next 153 years. It closed its doors for good in 1964. Jefferson College operated mostly as an all-male, college-preparatory academy. For a period it operated as Jefferson Military College, a military-style boarding school for high-school boys. Jefferson Davis attended Jefferson College as a 10-year-old boy in 1818, when it had the status of a boys' academy. John James Audubon was a teacher there from 1822 to 1823.

Culture

Historical plaque at Washington

Scenes of the lost silent Civil War film The Heart of Maryland (1921) were filmed in Washington. Some of John Ford's film The Horse Soldiers (1959), set during the Civil War and starring John Wayne, was filmed here. Portions of Disney's movie The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993) were filmed here and in Natchez.

Notable people

• Thomas Affleck (1812–1868), Scottish-American horticulturist
• Bill Allain (1928–2013), 59th governor of Mississippi, 1984–1988