Appalachian Community Histories – Middleton, Montgomery County: The Rise and Fall of the Athens of Mississippi
Along the modern highways west of Winona, Mississippi, there once stood a town whose importance extended far beyond its place on the map. During the nineteenth century, Middleton was a center of commerce, education, religion, and social life in what was then Carroll County. Its streets were lined with stores, professional offices, churches, and academies that attracted families from across the region. For a time, the community appeared destined to become one of the important settlements of north-central Mississippi, earning the nickname “The Athens of Mississippi” because of its educational and cultural institutions.
Today, Middleton has largely disappeared from the landscape. The settlement stood approximately two miles west of present-day Winona, in an area that became part of Montgomery County in 1871. Where merchants once sold their goods, teachers instructed students, and travelers stopped for lodging, little remains to suggest that a prosperous community existed there. Even the surviving buildings gradually vanished, leaving the old cemetery as one of the most significant physical connections to the town’s past.
Middleton’s disappearance was not the result of a single disaster. Its decline followed a combination of changing transportation patterns, the arrival of the Mississippi Central Railroad, the growth of neighboring Winona, and the destruction and economic disruption associated with the Civil War. The town’s history offers a striking example of how quickly the fortunes of an American community could change when new transportation routes redirected commerce and population elsewhere.
Choctaw Lands and the Beginnings of Middleton
Long before Middleton became a settlement of American merchants and planters, the surrounding territory belonged to the Choctaw Nation. The Choctaw people maintained communities, trade networks, and longstanding connections to the land throughout central and eastern Mississippi, making the region part of a much older history than the nineteenth-century town that eventually developed there.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed on September 27, 1830, transformed the future of the region. Under the agreement, the Choctaw Nation ceded its remaining lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States, setting in motion a devastating period of forced removal. Thousands of Choctaw people were compelled to leave their ancestral homelands for territory farther west, while others remained in Mississippi despite growing pressure from the expanding American settlement system.
As the land became available for white settlement, families arrived from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and other states. Many sought agricultural opportunities, while others recognized the commercial possibilities created by the roads crossing the countryside.
According to Franklin L. Riley’s account of extinct Mississippi towns, published by the Mississippi Historical Society in 1902, Middleton began with a small log store operated by Ireton C. Devane. The store served Choctaw customers and travelers moving through the region, eventually becoming a gathering point as roads developed between the nearby settlements.
Later histories placed Devane’s trading activities around the beginning of the nineteenth century, although the precise date remains uncertain. Reecie Gillespie Gee’s 1961 History of Middleton, Carroll County, Mississippi suggested that the trading post existed as early as 1790. Because the earliest dates depend largely upon histories written many decades afterward, the exact founding of the settlement cannot be established with certainty.
The location nevertheless proved advantageous. Roads connected the surrounding countryside with Carrollton, Shongalo, and other communities, allowing farmers, merchants, and travelers to meet near Devane’s store. As the number of settlers increased, the trading post developed into a recognizable village.
Carroll County was established in December 1833 from lands formerly belonging to the Choctaw Nation. Middleton was among the settlements that benefited from the new county’s organization, although Carrollton became the county seat.
From Irwin to Middleton
The community’s early name changed several times, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding its development. Riley’s 1902 history identified Oxford and Bowling Green as names associated with the settlement before it became known as Middleton. Local tradition explained that the final name came from its position between Carrollton and old Shongalo, although the origin of the name cannot be established with complete certainty.
Original Mississippi legislative records provide a more definite account of its legal development.
On May 13, 1837, the Mississippi Legislature approved an act incorporating the commissioners of the town of Irwin in Carroll County. The commissioners included William T. Collins, William N. Hesless, Marvel M. Gary, Ireton C. Devane, Allen Gary, John T. Brown, and Richard Small. Their responsibilities included holding property and making arrangements for the community’s development.
Education was already important enough to appear in the original legislation. The commissioners received authority to establish a male and female academy, acquire property for the institution, employ teachers, and regulate its operation. These provisions demonstrate that the settlement’s educational ambitions existed before Middleton became widely celebrated for its academies.
Less than a year later, on February 15, 1838, the legislature approved another act officially changing the town’s name from Irwin to Middleton. The amendment also replaced Devane on the board of commissioners with Dr. Ephraim R. McLean.
A subsequent state incorporation listing records Middleton under February 22, 1840, indicating that its municipal legal history extended beyond the earlier act organizing the commissioners. These records help explain why some later accounts refer to 1840 as the town’s incorporation date, even though its earlier legal organization occurred in 1837.
By this period, Middleton had developed beyond a roadside trading post into a community with businesses, educational facilities, and an increasingly established population.
A Growing Commercial Center
One of the most valuable contemporary descriptions of Middleton appeared in L. A. Besançon’s Annual Register of the State of Mississippi, for the Year 1838. Unlike later histories based on memories and local tradition, the register documented the community while it was still developing.
Besançon placed Middleton in Section 22, Township 19, Range 5 East, and reported approximately 200 inhabitants. The town then contained four stores, a blacksmith shop, a tavern, and an academy. Although modest by later standards, these establishments reflected a settlement capable of serving both its residents and the surrounding agricultural countryside.
Over the following decades, Middleton expanded considerably. Riley’s 1902 account described a commercial district that eventually supported eight or ten stores, along with physicians, lawyers, shoemakers, tailors, and other skilled workers. Merchants such as Baker, Townsend, James Bryant, Hemingway, W. H. Witty, J. J. Gee, and Alexander Ray became associated with its commercial life.
The arrangement of the town reflected the importance of its central business district. Gee’s later history described a square measuring approximately 250 feet on each side, surrounded by businesses and professional establishments. Doctors maintained offices near shops where craftsmen produced furniture, repaired clocks, tailored clothing, and made shoes for local customers.
Middleton also possessed a hotel that served travelers and provided space for social gatherings. Inns and taverns were important institutions in a period when journeys across Mississippi could require several days. Riley recorded that Ephraim Walls received a license in 1834 to operate a tavern and sell alcoholic beverages, an indication that lodging and hospitality were established parts of the community’s economy even before its formal incorporation.
A stagecoach route reportedly connected Holly Springs with Durant through Middleton, carrying passengers and mail across the region. Horses were changed along the route, while travelers could obtain meals, lodging, and supplies before continuing their journeys.
Agriculture supported much of the surrounding economy. Cotton and other products moved through the countryside by wagon, with merchants relying upon transportation connections to obtain manufactured goods and reach broader markets. Greenwood served as an important destination for freight, and wagon teams carried cotton outward while returning with merchandise for Middleton and neighboring settlements.
Industrial enterprises also developed around the town. Later histories describe a wool-processing mill, flour mill, cotton-related facilities, leather tannery, and carriage manufacturing business. The Young brothers operated tanning and shoemaking enterprises, while other craftsmen produced wagons, coaches, furniture, and household necessities.
These businesses made Middleton more than a collection of homes and stores. For many families in the surrounding countryside, the community was a place where agricultural production, trade, professional services, and social relationships came together.
The Athens of Mississippi
Although commerce helped Middleton prosper, education became the institution most closely associated with its reputation.
The community supported private academies that attracted students from outside the immediate settlement. The 1837 incorporation legislation had already authorized an academy, and Besançon’s 1838 register confirmed the existence of educational instruction in the community.
Two institutions became especially prominent in later histories: Judson Institute, which developed into Middleton Female Institute, and Peoples Academy, associated with the education of boys and young men.
The history of Judson Institute can be traced through Mississippi’s educational legislation. An earlier institution had been established at Society Ridge in Hinds County, and an act approved on February 18, 1840, provided for relocating it to Middleton in Carroll County. This legislative connection is particularly important because it demonstrates that Middleton’s educational reputation was supported by more than local tradition.
Gee’s history identified Benjamin Holt of Aberdeen as president of Middleton Female Academy in 1842. She described the female institution as a boarding school that at one point enrolled between 100 and 150 students, while the town’s other academies provided instruction to boys preparing for advanced study.
The subjects reportedly included English composition, mathematics, history, philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, and classical languages. Music was also an important part of instruction, with students learning instruments such as the piano, harp, violin, and flute. The presence of formal music and dancing instruction reflected the educational expectations of the families who could afford to send their children to these institutions.
Teachers associated with Middleton’s schools included A. S. Baily, W. H. Williams, and S. S. Brown, while other educators maintained smaller schools in the surrounding countryside.
The town’s standing as an educational center was reinforced during Mississippi’s search for a location for its state university. In 1840, Middleton was included among seven proposed sites considered by the legislature, alongside Oxford, Louisville, Kosciusko, Mississippi City, Brandon, and Monroe Missionary Station.
The competition ultimately ended on January 26, 1841, when Oxford was selected. Historical accounts of the final legislative balloting show that the deciding contest was between Oxford and Mississippi City, with Oxford winning by a vote of 58 to 57. This is an important distinction because some later Middleton histories incorrectly suggested that the town itself narrowly lost the final vote.
Although Middleton did not become the home of the University of Mississippi, its inclusion among the proposed locations demonstrates that legislators considered it a settlement worthy of examination during the institution’s formative years.
For a relatively small community in rural Mississippi, that recognition was significant. The academies helped create an identity that extended beyond the town’s commercial activity, establishing Middleton in local memory as the Athens of Mississippi.
Churches and Community Life
Religion occupied an important place in Middleton’s social and cultural development. Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Christian congregations were associated with the town, while Episcopalian worship also became part of its religious life.
Gee’s history identified several ministers who served the community during the 1830s and following decades. Presbyterian ministers reportedly included the Reverend A. Newton and the Reverend W. E. Holly, while Methodist circuit riders and missionaries traveled through the surrounding countryside, ministering to congregations that did not always have a permanent pastor.
The community’s religious institutions served purposes beyond weekly worship. Churches became gathering places where families developed social connections, discussed local concerns, celebrated marriages, and mourned deaths. In a community containing residents who had migrated from several states, these congregations provided a sense of continuity and belonging.
Religious differences sometimes produced disagreement. Gee preserved an account of a particularly contentious debate between Baptist and Presbyterian leaders that remained part of local memory for years afterward. Although the details are difficult to verify independently, the story illustrates the importance residents placed upon denominational identity.
Community activities also included dances, weddings, agricultural gatherings, horse races, shooting competitions, and other forms of entertainment common in nineteenth-century settlements. Some events took place in private homes, while others drew crowds to the public square or local inns.
For the town’s more prosperous white families, these institutions created a social world shaped by education, commerce, religious participation, and personal relationships. Yet that prosperity existed within a society marked by major inequalities, particularly the institution of slavery.
Slavery and the People Overlooked in Middleton’s History
Any examination of Middleton’s past must recognize that much of the community’s wealth developed within the slaveholding economy of antebellum Mississippi.
Many of the settlers who established plantations and businesses around Middleton enslaved African Americans, whose labor supported agricultural production, domestic work, transportation, and manufacturing. Cotton cultivation depended heavily upon coerced labor, while enslaved workers also participated in spinning, weaving, wagon transportation, and other activities connected to the local economy.
Gee’s 1961 history acknowledged that enslaved people performed much of the spinning and weaving associated with early textile production. It also described enslaved laborers working with the wagon teams that transported cotton and merchandise through the region.
The town’s churches reflected the racial hierarchy of the period. According to Gee, some church buildings contained galleries or partitioned sections designated for enslaved worshippers. The arrangement permitted attendance at religious services while maintaining the separation and unequal status imposed upon African Americans.
Education was similarly unequal. Middleton’s celebrated academies served a relatively privileged population, while enslaved Black residents were denied the educational opportunities that gave the town its reputation.
The surviving historical narratives devote considerable attention to prominent merchants, planters, physicians, and educators, but provide far less information about the people they enslaved. As a result, the traditional story of Middleton is incomplete.
Original Carroll County tax rolls, probate inventories, deeds, and the 1850 and 1860 federal slave schedules offer important opportunities to recover portions of this overlooked history. Although federal slave schedules generally identified enslavers rather than the names of enslaved individuals, these documents can be compared with estate records and other surviving materials to reconstruct families, property holdings, and the scale of enslavement in the Middleton area.
The wealth of nineteenth-century Middleton cannot be separated from these circumstances. Its prosperous appearance and cultural institutions existed alongside a system that denied freedom and opportunity to a substantial part of the surrounding population.
How Large Was Middleton?
Determining Middleton’s actual population is more difficult than the town’s later reputation might suggest.
Besançon’s contemporary register reported approximately 200 inhabitants in 1838, providing a useful early estimate. Later histories sometimes claimed that Middleton grew to more than 2,000 residents, with Gee’s account placing the figure as high as 2,900.
However, these larger estimates have not been conclusively established through contemporary records.
In a historical article published in The Conservative on November 13, 1980, C. C. Buchanan specifically questioned the claim that Middleton had reached a population exceeding 2,000. He described the higher estimate as unauthenticated, recognizing the difficulties involved in reconstructing the population of a town that had largely disappeared.
A locally compiled transcription of Middleton-related entries from the 1860 Carroll County census identified 409 white males, 340 white females, and one free Black female, giving a total of 750 people in the free-population entries examined. The same compilation reported 156 children enrolled in school.
These figures are valuable but should not be treated as a complete count of everyone living within a precisely defined town boundary. They do not include enslaved residents recorded separately, and the geographic boundaries of the extracted census entries require further examination.
What the available evidence supports is that Middleton grew from a relatively small settlement into an important local center, even if its exact peak population remains uncertain.
The Civil War and the Decline of the Old Town
The coming of the Civil War in 1861 placed additional pressure upon a community whose commercial future was already being threatened by the railroad.
Men from Middleton and the surrounding countryside entered Confederate military service, while families faced the economic uncertainty and personal losses that accompanied the conflict.
Among the local physicians associated with military service was Dr. B. F. Ward, whom the 1902 Mississippi Historical Society account identified as having joined the first company raised from the county. Dr. H. B. Atkins also entered Confederate service, illustrating the involvement of the town’s professional class in the conflict.
The war affected the area’s commercial establishments and manufacturing enterprises. Gee’s history reported that Confederate authorities took control of Middleton’s flour mill, carriage factory, and shoe factory for military purposes. These accounts suggest that industries originally established to serve civilian needs became connected to the wartime economy.
Later historical accounts also described destruction associated with Federal military operations. The National Register documentation for the Winona Commercial Historic District, drawing upon local historical materials, reported that a Federal raid destroyed what remained of Middleton during the war. However, the precise circumstances and extent of that destruction require further confirmation from contemporary military records.
One particularly interesting piece of surviving evidence is the diary of Jason Niles, whose October 20, 1864, entry described traveling through the region. His route carried him through Vaiden and along the Shongalo road before he passed through Middleton on his way to Mrs. McLean’s residence.
The entry is significant because it demonstrates that Middleton continued to exist as a recognizable place during the later years of the Civil War. Although its economic importance was declining, the community had not simply vanished when the railroad first passed nearby.
For its residents, the conflict contributed to an already difficult transition. Agricultural wealth was disrupted, businesses lost customers, and families experienced the consequences of military service and economic instability. Even without the railroad, the war would have presented substantial challenges to the town’s future.
The Railroad That Changed Middleton’s Future
The most important development in Middleton’s decline began before the Civil War, when railroad construction transformed transportation across Mississippi.
During the 1850s, the Mississippi Central Railroad advanced through the state as part of a broader effort to connect southern communities with northern markets. For towns located directly along the line, the railroad promised easier access to passengers, freight, manufactured goods, and agricultural markets. Communities bypassed by the tracks faced the possibility that their commercial advantages would disappear.
Middleton fell into the second category.
The railroad’s route passed approximately two miles east of the established town, crossing land associated with Colonel O. J. Moore. According to Gee’s history, Moore supported construction through his property and offered land for a depot, helping establish the location around which Winona would develop.
Local histories also suggest that some Middleton residents opposed bringing the railroad directly through their community. Whether that resistance decisively influenced the final route remains uncertain, but the consequences of the route selection were substantial.
By the end of the 1850s, development increasingly centered upon the new railroad station. The Mississippi Central completed its main north-south connection on January 31, 1860, creating improved transportation opportunities for places located along its tracks.
Winona was established along the line in 1860 and incorporated on May 2, 1861. Merchants and families who had previously depended upon Middleton began relocating toward the railroad, where new commercial buildings and residences gradually appeared.
The movement was not necessarily sudden. Some businesses transferred their operations, while others closed or followed customers elsewhere. Residents who did not relocate to Winona sometimes moved to Carrollton, surrounding settlements, or states where they had family connections.
The shift fundamentally altered the relationship between the two communities. Middleton had grown because it stood at the intersection of important roads, but those roads could no longer compete with the railroad’s ability to carry people and freight over much greater distances.
When Montgomery County was created on May 13, 1871, Winona became its county seat. The change further strengthened Winona’s position as the political and commercial center of the surrounding countryside.
Middleton, once a center of trade and education, had been overtaken by a nearby community whose location better suited the transportation economy of the nineteenth century.
From a Prosperous Town to an Abandoned Settlement
As Middleton’s population declined, the institutions that once sustained its reputation gradually disappeared.
Stores closed, professional offices relocated, and the academies that had attracted students to the town ceased to occupy their former place in regional education. Religious congregations and families increasingly became associated with communities where commerce and transportation remained active.
By the early twentieth century, Middleton was being described in historical publications as an extinct town. Riley included it in his 1902 study of Mississippi settlements that had disappeared, preserving the names of its merchants, physicians, and early residents at a time when much of the physical community was already gone.
Some structures reportedly survived well into the twentieth century. Buchanan’s 1980 history recalled the old Pace house, connected to one of the area’s early families, as among the last remaining buildings associated with Middleton. According to that account, the house was demolished during construction of Interstate 55 in the mid-1960s.
The loss of such structures further weakened the visible connection between the modern landscape and the former town.
The development of major highways eventually brought travelers across the same general area where Middleton had once stood, but the roads served a different transportation network and an entirely different community.
A traveler passing through the area could easily overlook the fact that an important nineteenth-century settlement had once existed nearby.
Middleton Cemetery and the Preservation of Its Memory
Although Middleton’s commercial and educational buildings disappeared, its cemetery survived as an important reminder of the people who had lived in the town.
Located near Winona in what became the Winona Recreational Park area, Middleton Cemetery contains burials associated with some of the community’s earliest families. The surviving inscriptions preserve names and dates that connect the modern landscape with the settlement’s nineteenth-century history.
Among those recorded are William Barrow, who died in 1867, and Sarah Ann Barrow, a child who died in 1849. The cemetery also contains records associated with the Bennett, Wadlington, Whitehead, Young, and other families whose names appear throughout the town’s historical accounts.
These markers reveal the personal side of Middleton’s story. Behind the accounts of prosperous merchants and respected institutions were families who experienced childhood deaths, illness, marriage, war, and the ordinary difficulties of life in an expanding frontier society.
The cemetery also contains memorial evidence connected to the Civil War. One surviving inscription for Noah Gregory Wright, who died in 1866, refers to a mortal wound received at Shiloh, providing another link between the community and the conflict that disrupted its later history.
For many years, the burial ground suffered from neglect. Trees, vines, brush, and fallen branches covered portions of the property, while numerous headstones became broken, displaced, or difficult to identify. Some inscriptions disappeared entirely as time and weather damaged the surviving monuments.
In 1992, the Winona Lions Club undertook a restoration effort to preserve what remained of the cemetery. Volunteers cleared the grounds, recovered damaged markers, and established a memorial to those buried there, including individuals whose graves could no longer be identified.
Betty Wiltshire copied surviving inscriptions on November 3, 1994, and her work was later published in the winter 2002 newsletter of the Carroll County Genealogy Society. The transcription became an important historical resource, allowing researchers to identify families and individuals whose lives might otherwise have been lost from the written record.
The restoration was significant because the cemetery represented more than a collection of graves. With most of Middleton’s buildings gone, the burial ground remained one of the few physical places where the history of the former settlement could still be encountered directly.
Remembering the Athens of Mississippi
Middleton’s history reveals how a community could become important within one generation and nearly disappear within another. Its rise depended upon the expansion of settlement, the development of regional roads, agricultural commerce, and the establishment of educational institutions that brought recognition throughout Mississippi.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the town supported merchants, physicians, churches, manufacturing enterprises, and academies whose reputations reached beyond the surrounding countryside. Its selection as one of the proposed locations for the University of Mississippi reflected the promise that some of its contemporaries saw in the settlement.
Yet Middleton’s prosperity rested upon circumstances that could change. The railroad redirected commerce toward Winona, the Civil War damaged the regional economy, and the creation of Montgomery County strengthened a neighboring town that possessed the transportation connections Middleton lacked.
What remained was a community remembered primarily through historical writings, family records, government documents, and the inscriptions of its cemetery.
The story also reminds us that the history of a place is larger than the buildings that once stood there. Middleton’s past includes the Choctaw people whose homeland preceded the settlement, the enslaved African Americans whose labor helped sustain its economy, the educators who established its schools, and the families who remained even as the town’s importance declined.
Today, little of the old Athens of Mississippi remains visible beside the modern roads west of Winona. Yet the legislative acts, nineteenth-century descriptions, census records, and cemetery inscriptions preserve evidence of a community that once seemed destined for a much larger future.
Middleton may have disappeared as a town, but its history remains an important part of the story of Carroll County, Montgomery County, and the changing landscape of Mississippi.
Sources & Further Reading
Besançon, L. A. Besançon’s Annual Register of the State of Mississippi, for the Year 1838. Natchez, MS: L. A. Besançon, 1838. https://www.loc.gov/item/rc01002481/
Mississippi Legislature. “An Act to Incorporate the Commissioners of the Town of Irwin, Carroll County.” May 13, 1837. Laws of Mississippi. Historical transcription hosted by Vaiden.net. https://www.vaiden.net/irwin.html
Mississippi Legislature. Act changing the name of Irwin to Middleton, February 15, 1838. Laws of Mississippi. Historical transcription hosted by Vaiden.net. https://www.vaiden.net/irwin.html
United States and Choctaw Nation. “Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.” September 27, 1830. Ratified Indian Treaty No. 160. National Archives, Record Identifier 176532909. https://digitreaties.org/treaties/treaty/176532909/
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Carroll County Tax Rolls, 1834–1860.” Series 1202, County Tax Rolls, 1818–1902. Mississippi Digital Archives. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/osa/s1202/carroll
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Carroll County Records, 1829–1978.” Series 2050, County Records. Government Records Finding Aids. https://finding.mdah.ms.gov/government-records/carr
United States Census Bureau. Seventh Census of the United States, 1850: Carroll County, Mississippi. Population and slave schedules. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
United States Census Bureau. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860: Carroll County, Mississippi. Population and slave schedules. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
Riley, Franklin L. “Extinct Towns and Villages of Mississippi.” In Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. 5, 311–83. Oxford, MS: Mississippi Historical Society, 1902. https://books.google.com/books?id=HkgTAAAAYAAJ
Gee, Reecie Gillespie. History of Middleton, Carroll County, Mississippi. Winona, MS: Lowry Printing Company, 1961. https://www.vaiden.net/middleton_history.html
Rowland, Dunbar, ed. Mississippi: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons, Arranged in Cyclopedic Form. Vol. 2. Atlanta: Southern Historical Publishing Association, 1907. https://archive.org/details/mississippicompr02rowl
Hamilton, William Franklin. History of Carroll County, Mississippi. 1901. Listed in Mississippi State University Libraries, Mississippi Genealogy by County. https://www.library.msstate.edu/specialcollections/collections/genealogy/ms
Goodspeed Publishing Company. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi. Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1891. “Winona, Montgomery County, Mississippi.” https://mississippigenealogy.com/uncategorized/winona_montgomery_mississippi_1891.htm
Weathersby, William Henington. A History of Educational Legislation in Mississippi from 1798 to 1860. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1921. https://www.loc.gov/item/21017021/
Buchanan, C. C. “Carroll County Broadcast.” The Conservative (Carrollton, MS), November 13, 1980. Reproduced by Carroll County MSGenWeb. https://www.msgw.org/carroll/history/townhist.htm
“Brief History of Middleton.” Family Trails, May 1984, 71–76; August 1984, 55–64. Listed in Mississippi State University Libraries, Mississippi Genealogy by County. https://www.library.msstate.edu/specialcollections/collections/genealogy/ms
Witty, Fred M. “Reconstruction in Carroll and Montgomery Counties.” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 10 (1909): 115–34. https://books.google.com/books?id=7KkKAAAAIAAJ
Wiltshire, Betty. “Middleton Cemetery.” Gravestone inscriptions recorded November 3, 1994. Carroll County, Mississippi, Genealogy Society Quarterly Newsletter, Winter 2002. Reproduced by Carroll County MSGenWeb. https://msgw.org/carroll/cemeteries/middlton.htm
Applewhite, Ralph W. Interview by H. T. Holmes, April 28, 1975. Oral History 1975.23, AU 155. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/vault/projects/OHtranscripts/AU155_015931.pdf
Niles, Jason. Diary entry, October 20, 1864. Transcribed in “Vaiden and the Civil War.” Vaiden.net. https://www.vaiden.net/vaiden_and_the_war.html
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Darden (Frances Witty) Collection.” Z 2245.000, correspondence, 1844–1858. Manuscript Collection Finding Aids. https://finding.mdah.ms.gov/manuscripts/z-2245000
National Park Service. “Winona Commercial Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 1994. National Register Information System No. 94000659. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/94000659
National Park Service. “Winona Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2015. National Register Information System No. 15000303. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/15000303
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Inventory of Historic Maps of Mississippi.” Compiled by Paul Davis, 2007–2017. Mississippi Digital Archives. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/mapindex/
Mississippi State University Libraries. “Mississippi Genealogy by County.” Archives and Special Collections. Bibliography of Carroll and Montgomery County histories, genealogical publications, and cemetery records. https://www.library.msstate.edu/specialcollections/collections/genealogy/ms
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. “Tribal History.” Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. https://www.choctaw.org/about-us/tribal-history/
National Archives and Records Administration. “American Indian Treaties: Catalog Links.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/treaties/catalog-links
Carroll County MSGenWeb. “Carroll County Research Resources.” County deed records, probate documents, marriage records, and historical court records. https://www.msgw.org/carroll/resources/court.htm
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “County Tax Rolls, 1818–1902.” Series 1202. Mississippi Digital Archives. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/osa/s1202
Mississippi State University Libraries. The Lantern Project. Digitized records concerning enslaved individuals in Mississippi and Alabama. https://www.lanternproject.msstate.edu/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Appalachian Regional Commission. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Middleton’s story reminds us that even the most promising communities can disappear when transportation, commerce, and opportunity shift elsewhere. I hope this article helps preserve the memory of a Mississippi town whose schools, businesses, and residents once played an important role in the region’s history.