Some Interesting Facts about Liberty and Amite County

     The author of Mississippi's first constitution and one of its first congressmen was Amite countian, Dr. William David Lattimore.

     The Amite County courthouse is the oldest in continuous use in Mississippi. It was built primarily with the use of slave labor at a cost of approximately $4,000 in 1840. It is said that the Courthouse is located on an old Indian ball field used hundreds of years prior to settlement by Europeans.

      Ebenezer Baptist Church, located south of Liberty and founded in 1806, is the oldest Baptist church in Mississippi.

     Amite County was considered the "jumping off” place to Texas. The town of Liberty, Texas, is named after Liberty, Mississippi. Two of the folks reportedly residing for a period of time in Amite County were Colonel William Travis and Jim Bowie, both of Alamo fame.

     Gail Borden, founder of Borden Company, came to Amite County in 1801 with his mother and half-brother Hiram Van Norman. While in Amite County he served as a school teacher and invented his formula for condensed milk.

     Dr. G. H. Tichenor invented his famous antiseptic in Liberty prior to the Civil War. This invention is credited with saving the lives of many Confederate soldiers who were wounded in the War. It has been said that he refused to sell his product to the Union army.

     In 1840, Amite County tried to leave Mississippi and become a part of Louisiana in a dispute over locating the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

     The "Little Red School House" located in Liberty is a two-story structure built in 1853 which once served as the music room for Amite Female Seminary. It was the only one of the school buildings spared by a Union Army raid during the Civil War, although the pianos and other musical instruments housed in the building were removed and destroyed.

     The Liberty Presbyterian Church, founded in 1848, served as a hospital for soldiers on both sides of the conflict during the Civil War. Both Union and Confederate soldiers are buried in the Liberty cemetery.

     The first monument to soldiers of the Confederacy was erected by citizens of the county in 1871.  It lists the names 279 Amite Countians who died in the war.

Sources:

                Excerpted from Interesting Facts About  Liberty/Amite  County , Amite County Historical and Genealogical Society, Liberty, MS.