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fhe Coast springs from one gigantic county
i Mflf ho are George, Harrison, WU Jackson and Pearl?
■ W They must have been im-jrtant people. Their names are randed on counties.
1116 state’s six southernmost en-aves were once part of giant Mobile ounty, formed in September 1812 om the southwestern comer of the lississippi Territory.
That lasted only three months. By •ecember, Mobile County was split ito three, retaining its original name i Alabama but taking on the names of lancock and Jackson in what would, i five years, become the state of lississippi.
The division didn’t stop there. Han-ock County was split further into larrison, Stone, Pearl River and, ob-iously, a much smaller Hancock. The arly Jackson County became George nd a half-sized Jackson.
For the most part, the new names yere the names of men famous at the ime of the counties’ creations.
iancock County
John Hancock, the famous Declara-ion of Independence signatory, was lead 19 years when the territory :hose his name for one of its major :ounties. That happened Dec. 14, .812.
The Massachusetts statesman had >een the first to put his "John Han-rock” on the document that declared America’s independence from England.
The county’s 31,760 people count-:d in the 1990 Census live on 478 square miles that are mostly small :ommunities, forest, swamp and arms. The space age arrived at Han-:ock County with the opening of Sten-lis Spare Center in the 1960s.
The ..ounty seat is Bay St. Louis, Lite first Coast village chartered by the stale Legislature. That was in 1818. The Bay, as it' Tiled, was one of the earliest Coat. sorts used by ■ f. 1	1	.n»,»rc	1	'I*1	M- ••
Yellow pine was the gold of the early coastal counties. Logs were often hauled by oxen to the streams and rivers of the piney woods to be rafted to the mills. Far
jacKson uouniy
The easternmost coastal county shares the same birth date with Hancock County. Andrew Jackson, for whom it was named, was a favorite frontiersman because he had opened the Deep South to American settlement.
The politician and military commander was famous for his exploits in the War of 1812, when he led a ragtag army of pirates and settlers to defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans. Later he became the seventh U.S. president.
Jackson County is the state’s third most populous county with 115,243 spread across 731 square miles. Forest industries, which gave the county its first economic boost, remain strong. Pascagoula is the county seat and home of the largest private em-
ing Corp.
Harrison County
When Harrison County, now the state’s second largest, was created Feb. 5, 1841, William Henry Harrison was president-elect. He’d run on the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." After only two months in office, he died of pneumonia, caught while delivering his inaugural address.
Harrison’s lack of presidential accomplishments and lack of household identity leaves Harrison Countians guessing more than others about the man their county was named for.
The county had 165,365 residents at last count, but that number has grown because of dockside gambling. Tourism and the military — there are Navy and Air	ce bases — are
dominant, and .	county seat is the
MOIJB buuniy
Slices of Green, Jackson and Harrison were carved off to form George County on March 10, 1910. The county was named after James Za-charia George, a popular Mississippi statesman who had died in 1897 after a career as a Confederate officer, U S. senator and state Supreme Court justice.
The poor farm boy-tumed-attomey was a key figure in the 1890 state constitutional convention that lashed out at changes brought by Reconstruction.
The population of 16,673 depends mostly on fanning and lumbering on its 483 square miles. The capital is Lucedale.
Stone County
The youngest whippersnapper on our county block was bom Jan. 6, 1916, from the northern half of Harrison County. It is the state’s second youngest county, with Humphries County beating it by two years.
Stone seceded from Harrison because its citizens felt slighted by the Coast, which was a long horse ride i away for county business. The name comes from Civil War hero, state senator and governor John Marshall Stone, whose popularity was sealed in 1876 when he succeeded Reconstruc-The early French explorers tion Gov. Adelbert Ames, thought they’d found a fortune in the Beef and lumber industries are the mud of what is now the Pearl River, main employers, but as the coastline but their visions of riches from fresh grows, more and more folks move tt water pearls never came to fruition., Stone County and commute. It!
This county, the fourth largest geo- 10,750 residents are spread over 44( graphically, is named for the Pearl mostly rural square miles of farms ,	forests and tiny communities likel;
River, the waterway that forms the started during lumber booms. Th< county s western boundary and sepa- capital is Wiggins, rates South Mississippi from Louisi-. ■ _	....	.. •—.
ana. Pearl River County was carved '^*" from northern Hancock and southern Marion counties on Feb. 22, 1890.
Yellow pine was a thriving industry and the river was used to transport the lumber. The waterway still provides a livelihood for many of the county’s 38,714 residents living on its 818 mostly rural acres. The county seat is Poplarville.
better suited to the task than mules and horse, oxen were able to go through the low swampy country. This outfit is mining‘gold’in Jackson County.
! Pearl River Comfy