Washington, Mississippi

Washington is a small unincorporated town in Adams County, Mississippi, United States, close to Natchez.

History

The town of Washington's namesake is George Washington. Some of the original settlers of the area were Colonel Andrew Ellicott, Joseph Calvit and John Foster.

The seat of the territorial legislature was moved from Natchez to Washington on February 1, 1802, and remained there until statehood in 1817.

The Mississippi statehood convention of 1817 met in the Methodist Meeting House at Washington, which was later purchased in 1830 by Jefferson College.

Fort Dearborn, located at Washington, was for a time the largest military installation then extant in the United States, with over two-thousand troops stationed there, including such notables as future Gen. Winfield Scott.

Washington is the location of Jefferson College, now known as Historic Jefferson College, which is a state historic park and museum operated by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The college was created by an act of the first General Assembly of the Mississippi Territory in 1802 and was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson, then-president of the United States. Although chartered in 1802, it did not become a fully functional school until 1811. It continued, more or less, uninterrupted in this capacity (but for a few brief, temporary closures, due to war, fire, remodeling and the like) for the next 153 years, finally closing its doors for good in 1964. In contradistinction to its near-by sister school, the Elizabeth Female Academy, which for most of its history was actually a degree-conferring college, Jefferson College was for nearly the entirety of its existence nothing more than an all-male, college-preparatory academy and, then later (as Jefferson Military College), a military-style boarding school.

A ten-year old at the time, Jefferson Davis, later hero of the Mexican-American War, U.S. Senator and Representative from Mississippi, U.S. Secretary of War and President of the Confederate States of America, attended Jefferson College in 1818. John James Audubon was a professor there from 1822-1823.

Elizabeth Female Academy, considered to be the first true women's college in the state (in spite of its name), was established at Washington in 1818, closing in 1845.

Clear Creek Baptist Church, erected in 1825 and one of the oldest churches in Mississippi, is located in Washington, along with Washington Methodist Church.

Washington became the second state capital until it was officially moved to Jackson in 1822 in keeping with the Act passed by the Assembly on November 28, 1821.

Former Mississippi governor Bill Allain was born here on February 14, 1928. In 1788, the first native-born Mississippi Governor, Gerard Brandon, was born at his family's plantation, Selma, just outside of Washington. Today Washington is an unincorporated community within Adams County, Mississippi.

Portions of Disney's 1993 movie The Adventures of Huck Finn were filmed here and shot in Natchez, as well as the 1959 John Wayne film The Horse Soldiers.

Transportation

• U.S. Highway 61
• U.S. Highway 98
• U.S. Highway 84