A brief Hstory of DeSoto County
Courtesy of the DeSoto County Geneological Society
Founding the County 1836-1840
At its organization on February 9, 1836, DeSoto County stretched from the Tennessee state line on the north to the Panola County line on the south; from the Mississippi River and Tunica County on the west to Marshall County on the east. A mistake in surveying placed the state line at what is now Winchester Road in Shelby County, Tennessee. In 1838, the line was resurveyed and moved to its present location.
The state appointed Felix H. Walker, John D. Martin, G. B. Cartwright, Beverly G. Mitchell and John T. Mosley as an Organizational Committee. These men made the formal application for a Writ of Election. Whig Governor Charles Lynch, knowing the 10 new counties leaned toward Jacksonian Democratic politics which would weaken his Whig Party in the state, refused to sign the Writ of Application. The Mississippi Legislature then received the Writ and formed the counties.
The first elections chose the following officers: C. B. Payne, Sheriff; Robert Atchinson, Circuit Court Clerk; Samuel T. Cobb, Probate Court Clerk; Humphrey Cobb, Probate Court Judge; J. D. Hallum, State Senator; Felix H. Walker, State Representative; and William Hukey Brown, President of the Board of Police consisting of Thomas Reid; Samuel M. King; B. G. Cartwright; and William McWilliams.
Edward Orne, commissioner of the Boston and Mississippi Cotton Land Company, was instrumental in buying up thousands of acres of land in the cession for the consortium. On January 25, 1836, Section 13 Township 3 Range 8 West was awarded to Chickasaw Til-Look-Hi-Yea, who sold the section to Edward Orne on June 16, 1836. On August 16, Edward Orne donated 40 acres of this section to the Board of Police for a county seat.
This 40 acres was planned and laid out with a 450 foot public square surrounded by 172 lots. In the two blocks around the square there were five streets north and south and five streets east and west. This plan still forms the center of Hernando, the county seat.
A public sale of lots in August, 1836, produced funds to build a courthouse and a jail. The contract was let on December 1, 1836. The town was called Jefferson.
The Mississippi Senate changed the name from Jefferson to Hernando to avoid confusion with several other post office names in the state.
An early newspaper states, "On April 27, 1836, when the county was first formed its white population was 140 souls." The 1837 tax list names 204 early settlers who paid taxes. By 1840, 757 heads of households and 6,990 persons were counted in the federal census.
In 1837 the legislature chartered the Hernando Female Academy, the first institution of learning in the entire Chickasaw Cession. The Hernando Male Academy opened for its first session on March 14, 1840.
Hernando elected its first board of aldermen in July, 1839. Within two weeks the board printed in the Hernando Free Press 19 ordinances, the first of which imposed a fine of one dollar on any person "driving a cart, dray, or wagon, or riding a horse faster than a trot."
Edward Orne and the consortium he represented had put in place the Hernando Railroad and Banking Company, which, as was customary at the time, issued its own bank notes. In his efforts to get control of the wildly inflated national economy President Andrew Jackson in 1837, issued the "Specie Circular" ordering government agents to accept nothing but gold and silver in payment for public lands. The Hernando Railroad and Banking Company, like numerous other banks, failed and a serious depression struck the entire county.
Many local citizens had bought stock in the railroad which was to run from Hernando to Commerce Landing in Tunica County on the Mississippi River. The roadbed for part of the railroad to Commerce Landing had been constructed. Commerce Road used this route to layout the wagon road. In 1839, the county newspaper headline read "Good Road to Commerce at Last!"
J. M. Lacey and Felix LaBauve published in 1839, the Hernando Free Press, the first newspaper that is extant. John Lavin brought his printing press from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Commerce Landing in Tunica County, Mississippi, and was printing the Commercial Reporter by 1839. In 1845, he moved to Hernando and founded The Phenix (sic), copies of which may be read on film at the First Regional Library in Hernando. John Lavin was soon elected mayor of Hernando with Nathan Bedford Forrest elected as his constable.
