last updated: 16 August 2008
In March and April, 1996, a group of genealogists organized the Kentucky Comprehensive Genealogy Database. The idea was to provide a single entry point for all counties in Kentucky, where collected databases would be stored. In addition, the databases would be indexed and cross-linked, so that even if an individual were found in more than one county, they could still be located in the index. The Kentucky project soon expanded to all fifty states. Volunteers were found who were willing to coordinate each state GenWeb. Others volunteered to maintain a web page for each county of each state.
My name is Gerald Westmoreland and I am the coordinator for the Simpson Co., MS GenWeb. I am in the process of bringing more Simpson County resources to this web-site as quickly as possible. If I can be of assistance or if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please email me at gerald@gtwestmoreland.org. If you have Simpson County information you are willing to share, please let me know. Good luck in your pursuit of those elusive ancestors!
Simpson County was organized in 1824, seven years after statehood. The population at the time was 2,329 whites and 829 slaves. The 1860 census records a population of 6,080. The county was named for Josiah Simpson, a former Pennsylvanian, educated at Princeton. He later lived at Green Hill, near Natchez, and became a territorial judge of Mississippi and served as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1917.
Simpson County lies in the southern half of Mississippi about midway between the Mississippi River and the Alabama state line. Mendenhall, the current County seat, is thirty one miles southeast of Jackson and 125 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico.
At the time of it's organization, Simpson County was one of the most attractive Counties of the great Southwest and that is why for the first twenty years after, it grew so rapidly in population. Doubtless the early settlers from Scotland, New England, Virginia and the Carolinas sent back to their relatives glowing accounts of this new country.
The attractions of this new county were many and
varied. First of all, of course, was the fact that homesteads could be had for the asking, and the lands on the creeks and rivers were very fertile. Another attraction was the abundance of running water, beautiful, clear running streams, wonderful springs bubbling up in the hills. Especially notable were the great springs at Rials that form a creek at the very beginning.
The greatest of attractions, however, were the great pine forests that covered the county from the north to the south and from east to west. For miles and miles one could ride through the untold thousands of trees, standing in their solemnity, magnificent in their grandeur as they had stood for ages. It seemed a sacrilege for them to be destroyed. We shall never see their like again.
