ORIGIN OF PIKE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI  

            The territory of which the county of Pike is a part was originally occupied by the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Natchez  Indians.

            According to our histories, the firt European who visited the region of country of which the State of Mississippi was then a part, was Hernando DeSoto, a Spaniard who, having projected the conquest of Florida, came from Cuba in 1539 with a considerable force and traversed the country to a great distance, and, in the spring of 1541, first discovered the Mississippi River, five or six hundred miles above its mouth.

            In 1683 M. LaSalle visited the same region and gave it the name of Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIVth of France. We are told by early writers, that over this undefined but vast extent of country, the French claimed jurisdiction, and, in 1716, they began a settlement at Natchez on the Mississippi River, and erected a fort.

            In 1763 they ceded the country east of the Mississippi River to the English, and the latter ceded it to Spain in 1783.

            In 1798 the Spaniards abandoned it to the United States.

            In 1798 the territory lying between he western boundary of Georgia and the Mississippi River, and which until now had been claimed by Georgia and called the Georgia Territory, was erected by Congress into a district territorial government by the name of the Mississippi Territory.

            Under this government, with Winthrop Sargent at its head, the Territory was divided into two counties – the southern portion being called Adams County and the northern portion Pickering County.

            Under acts of December 9, 1811, a county called Marion was established. A seat of government was established. It was located on Pearl River at a place called Columbia.

            As far back as 1798 immigrants began to come in and locate on the different streams threading the extensive territory embraced in Marion County, the Pearl and Bogue Chitto Rivers receiving the larger number and extending in groups along the Tansopiho, the Otopasas, Magees Creek and their numerious tributaries.

            Nearly, if not all, of the first settlers of Marion County embraced within the designated lines of Pike County squatted on Public lands, built their homes and lived on them long before acquiring deeds from the government, and hence the map of the first entries cannot be relied upon as a guide to determine the date of settlement, and some of them not for nearly a half century afterward.

            By an act of December 9, 1815, of the Territorial General Assembly, the county of Marion was divided so that the eastern part of Marion County became a new county to be named Pike.

            The appointed commissioners, who were to fix the site for public buildings, located them at the most eligible place within three miles of the geographical center of the county of Pike.

            The commissioners having located the spot and procured the property, as required by law, an act was then passed by the General Assembly December 11, 1816, ratifying the action of the commissioners and giving it the name of Holmesville, in honor of Maj. Andrew Hunter Holmes.

            In 1817 Mississippi was admitted into the Union as a State, and David Holmes, who had served as the appointed Governor since 1809, was elected governor by the people.

            Later, a new county to be called Walthall, was cut out of Marion and Pike County.

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