Farmington, MS

Around Farmington Baptist Church, an Alcorn County town took shape in the early 1800s as settlers arrived from the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia. The legislature incorporated the surrounding town in 1838, and by the early 1840s Farmington had a church, general store, post office, blacksmith, saddle-and-harness shop, and a wheat-fan manufacturing plant. The Civil War left a deep mark: fighting reached Farmington on May 9, 1862, and the town was largely dismantled afterward. Farmington Academy was chartered in 1839, while Alcorn School District serves the town today. The church, school, and battlefield give this northeast Mississippi town a longer story than its present footprint suggests, and the town government was re-incorporated in 1997.