Choctaw County, Mississippi: History
This was one of the first counties organized in central Mississippi after Indian Removal, and it was originally much larger in geography. As the population increased in the Territory, additional counties were organized. For instance, in 1874 Webster County was formed from some of this county, as were Montgomery and Grenada counties.
The first county seat was Greensboro, which was later assigned to the territory of Webster County and designated as its county seat. Eventually Walthall, Mississippi was designated as the county seat of that county, resulting in the decline and abandonment of Greensboro.
During the American Civil War, many soldiers from the vicinity of Choctaw County began to desert from the Confederate Army after 1863 and return home without permission. Some were principled Unionists opposed to the war who began organized clandestine efforts to undermine local Confederate authority, but others were little more than robbers who formed themselves into bandit gangs and preyed on the civilian population. With several hundred armed men reported to be hiding out in the swamps and forests, cavalry troops of General Nathan Bedford Forrest's Cavalry Corps were dispatched to Bankston in March 1864 to arrest deserters and force them back into army service, but this was only a short term measure that did not resolve the breakdown of Confederate civil authority in the region. In November 1864, Mississippi Governor Charles Clark wrote: "There are more deserters there [Choctaw County] than elsewhere. It is estimated that 500 are in that county." In December, 1864 Union troops under General Benjamin Grierson raided through Choctaw County, and in the spring of 1865 as the Confederacy collapsed local unionists raised the US Flag in Greensboro, the county seat at the time (now located in Webster County).