Claiborne County

Claiborne became the fourth county of the Mississippi Territory on January 27, 1802, named for Governor William C. C. Claiborne. Cotton did the rest. The enslaved population grew from roughly half of 3,102 people in 1810 to 12,296 by 1860, the eighth-highest total in the state and more than three times the white count. Its 305 farms averaged over 400 improved acres, among the largest in Mississippi. After emancipation Black residents remained a large majority, 77 percent of 16,768 people in 1880. The Natchez and Choctaw were here first.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Windsor Ruins — 8.7 mi
  Twenty-three standing Corinthian columns left by an 1890 fire, the largest antebellum mansion in Mississippi, built with enslaved labor on a 2,600-acre cotton plantation.
• Alcorn State University and Oakland Memorial Chapel — 11 mi
  The 1871 Reconstruction college on the old Oakland College campus, first led by Hiram Revels, with the 1838 chapel built by Black craftsmen.
• Lake Bruin State Park — 13 mi
  A state park on a Mississippi River oxbow near St. Joseph, named for a territorial judge who owned a plantation beside it, on a former fish hatchery site.
• Mount Locust — 23 mi
  A 1780s Natchez Trace inn and cotton farm at milepost 15.5, with an enslaved people's cemetery of 43 graves and a brick kiln behind the house.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist M.B. Church — steps away
• The Bernheimer Complex — steps away
• Port Gibson — steps away
• Battle of Port Gibson — steps away