Jones County, Mississippi
Jones County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 67,761. Its county seats are Laurel and Ellisville.
Jones County is part of the Laurel, MS Micropolitan Statistical Area.
History
Less than a decade after Mississippi became the country's 20th state, settlers carved out a 700-square mile of pine forests and streams for a new county in 1826. They named it Jones County after John Paul Jones, the early American Naval hero who rose from humble Scottish origin to military success during the American Revolution.
Ellisville, the county seat, was named for Powhatan Ellis, a member of the Mississippi Legislature who claimed to be a direct descendant of Pocahontas. During the economic hard times in the 1830s and 1840s, there was an exodus of population from South Mississippi, principally to Texas, and the slogan "GTT" ("Gone to Texas") came into currency.
Soon after the election of Abraham Lincoln as United States president in November 1860, slave-owning planters led Mississippi to join South Carolina and secede from the Union in January 1861. Other Southern states would follow suit. Mississippi’s Declaration of Secession reflected the planters’ interests in its first sentence: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…” However, the yeoman farmers and cattle herders of Jones County had little use for a war over a “state’s right” to maintain the institution of slavery. By 1860, slaves made up only 12% of the total population in Jones County, the smallest percentage of any county in the state.