Greenwood, the county seat of Leflore County, is located on the left bank of the Yazoo River about three miles below where that river is formed by the confluence of the Yalobusha and Tallahatchie rivers and has a population of one thousand souls. Here also the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroad has an incline for the ready transfer of freights from steam-boats, a number of which ply daily carrying on a lucrative business up and down the river from this point. The growth of the town in the past six years has been almost phenomenal, it having grown in that time from a village to about five hundred inhabitants. Beside a large local trade there are several large wholesale establishments located at Greenwood and a number of cotton buyers and it is a lively business point. It has three churches, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal, for the whites, and a large Methodist church for the colored population, besides two public schoolhouses one for each race, also an elegant opera-house and ample lodge rooms for the various secret and benevolent orders. A number of manufacturing companies have been incorporated and facilities will be supplied to handle the immense amount of cotton shipped from this and adjacent points. Here too a packery of beef could find the material necessary for carrying on that business, since a large number of cattle are raised in this and adjoining counties.
South of Greenwood, on the line of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroad, is the thriving village of Rising Sun, at which place the railroad taps the Yazoo River, and there is probably the best dirt road in the country leading from there to the hill country on the east.
Ten miles south from Greenwood on the same railroad where it taps the river is the town of Sidon, second in size and importance in the county which has kept proportionate pace in improvements with the county seat, and where a number of roads coming in from the hill country make a desirable trading point where are ample church and school facilities and a live whole-soled people.
Going north from Greenwood ten miles is found the third town of size and importance in the county, Shell Mound, on the right bank of the Tallahatchie river, which is the entre-pot of supplies for a large territory embracing the farms on the McNutt lake and Quiver river, where is raised the finest staple of cotton in the world. McNutt, situated on a lake of the same name, was once the county seat of old Sunflower county, and while the march of improvement has turned aside from this once thriving inland town, it still boasts of its school and church and is noted for the hospitality of its people.
Emmaville is a pretty village on the right bank of the Tallahatchie. Railway facilities which are promised will cause Red Cross, Shannondale and Minter city, three beautiful little villages on the Tallahatchie River, to develop into towns of some size.
Sheppardtown, ten miles south from Sidon, on the right bank of the Yazoo River, is another thriving village having the rich land of Bear creek from which to draw its trade and still farther down the Yazoo at stated intervals can be found large storehouses where clever merchants do a good business. Between Sidon and Rising Sun, on the right bank of the river, is Roebuck landing, one of the best trading points in the county, where an immense business is done Going west from there around Roebuck lake, a cutoff of the Yazoo, are to be found several stores, and at Itta Bena, where the line of the Georgia Pacific railroad crosses that lake, quite a village has been built. Fort Loring, where the same railroad crosses the Yazoo River three miles west from Greenwood, has attained importance.
Besides Greenwood, this county has the following towns and villages: Itta Bena, Sidon, Shell Mound, Minter city, Sunnyside, Old McNutt, Rising Sun and Red Cross.
Back to: Mississippi Counties, Cities and Towns, 1891
Source: Biographical and Historical Memories of Mississippi, Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1891