The Ford Home, also know as Ford’s Fort¹, was built in 1805 by Reverend John Ford. Ford moved to Mississippi from South Carolina in 1798 and settled in Marion County, in what would eventually be known as the Sandy Hook community, around 1805. Rev. Ford was a Methodist minister and took up farming upon setting in Marion County. The Ford home was the site of the first Mississippi Methodist Conference in 1814 and the Pearl River Convention of 1816, which recommended partitioning the Mississippi Territory into the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi.² On November 27-28 in 1814 the Ford Home hosted General Andrew Jackson. General Jackson stopped there on his way to defend New Orleans from the British during the War of 1812.³ The home and its property were sold to the Marion County Historical Society in 1962 and are open for tours on the weekends and during the week by appointment.⁴

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1. Tatum, Howell. “MAJOR HOWELL TATUM’S JOURNAL WHILE ACTING TOPOGRAPHICAL ENGINEER (1814) TO GENERAL JACKSON Commanding the Seventh Military District.” Smith College Studies in History VII no. 1, 2 and 3 (1922): 92. [↩]
2. http://mdah.state.ms.us/manuscripts/z0050.html [↩]
3. Tatum, Howell. “MAJOR HOWELL TATUM’S JOURNAL WHILE ACTING TOPOGRAPHICAL ENGINEER (1814) TO GENERAL JACKSON Commanding the Seventh Military District.” Smith College Studies in History VII no. 1, 2 and 3 (1922): 92. [↩]
4. http://www.mcdp.info/tourism/ford_home.html [↩]

Jefferson College, chartered in 1802 and opened in 1811, was the first institution of higher learning in Mississippi. It was also was the first to receive a charter for any purpose by the Mississippi Territorial Legislature. It began as a preparatory school until 1817 when it became a full college. Jefferson Davis attended in 1818. In 1830 the school purchased the church that held the 1817 Mississippi statehood convention.¹

It continued as a college until being forced to close in 1863 due to the Civil War. It reopened in 1866 again as a preparatory school. It remain as such until it finally closed its doors in 1964 due to declining enrollment.²

Jefferson College is also near Ellicott Springs where Andrew Ellicott camped in 1797 while surveying the 31st parallel to mark the border between the United States and Spanish territories.³

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1. http://mdah.state.ms.us/hprop/hjc.html [↩]
2. http://mdah.state.ms.us/hprop/jmcf.html [↩]
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_College_(Washington,_Mississippi [↩]