Achilles "Killis" Walton House

Canton's site was chosen by measuring. In 1833 the county's Board of Police had surveyor John B. Peyton find the geographic center for a county seat, and in 1834 the county bought 40 acres from Killis and Margaret Walton for $100; the plot nearest the center became the public square. Canton was incorporated in 1836 with about 400 residents. By 1838 it had two banks, two hotels, ten dry goods stores, a courthouse, a jail, a church and a female academy.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchez Trace Parkway at Ridgeland — 14 mi
  The stretch of the Natchez Trace around Ridgeland, where a worn section of the Old Trace, the Ross Barnett Reservoir and the Choctaw town of Chisha Foka share a few miles of parkway.
• Tougaloo College — 16 mi
  A historically Black college north of Jackson, founded on a former plantation in 1869, whose students staged Mississippi's first sit-in and whose chapel hosted the movement's leaders.
• Blue Front Cafe — 19 mi
  A cinder-block juke joint in Bentonia, opened in 1948 by Carey and Mary Holmes, home of the Bentonia school of blues and a stop on the Mississippi Blues Trail.
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 21 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.

More markers nearby

• Grace Church — steps away
• Madison County Courthouse — 0.3 mi
• Hickory Street — 0.4 mi
• March Against Fear — 0.8 mi