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Mississippi was admitted to the Union as the 20th state on December 10, 1817. Mississippi was first settled by the French in 1716 and Natchez is the oldest city on the Mississippi River. By 1860, the state was the country's largest producer of cotton with over 50% slave population. On March 23, 1861, Mississippi seceded from the Union and was one of the seven original Confederate States. After the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on February 23, 1870.
This guide offers a selection of resources and strategies for Mississippi local history and genealogy research. These include the print and digital collections of the Library of Congress, as well as external repositories and web sites key to finding forebears in the Magnolia state.
The Library of Congress has one of the world's premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications, numbering more than 50,000 compiled family histories and over 100,000 U.S. local histories. The Library's genealogy collection began as early as 1815 with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's library.
