Benton County Formation Benton County was formed in 1870, when reconstructionist laws came into effect after the Civil War.  Benton was originally Tippah and Marshall County up until that time.  The town of Ashland is the county seat and location of the Court House.  Benton County borders with Marshall County on the West, Tippah County on the East, Union and Lafayette on the South, Hardeman and Fayette Counties in Tennessee on the North.  The land that makes up Benton belonged to the Chickasaw Indians before settlement.  In 1834, the Treaty of Pontotoc was signed between the State of Mississippi and the Chickasaw Nation  allowing the purchase of land by white settlers. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a general in the Civil War was from Salem, MS, located in what is now Benton County. Old Court House - 2006 Photo sent in by:  Bill Webb Post on the Message Boards Rootsweb and Ancestry.com have provided us with message boards to inforamtion pertainging to Benton County, MS.  The boards are user friendly and gatewayed to the mailing list so everyone searching in Benton County will be notified of a new posting.  This site includes a drop down menu with places and to post and view queries, obits, biographies, deeds, pension files, bible records, births, and cemetery records.  Go there now!  New Additions! Cannan School Picture 1913 or 1914 Picture of 1937 Ashland High School Seniors   Unknown Benton County School Picture Spring Hill School Students Old Photographs of  Ashland, Mississippi!  Spring Hill School Students ca. 1914

Thanks to some great volunteers, Benton County is well represented on Find A Grave!
Check it out!

Search for cemetery records in Benton County, MS at by entering a surname and clicking search: Benton County, MS (1,191 names) All of Find A Grave (58.3 million names) Restrict search to Surname

Benton County Links

Benton County Surnames
Benton County Lookups
Benton County Queries -before the new boards were activated
Benton County Family Pages
Vital Records
Benton County Cemeteries
Research Facilities in Benton County -Including the Libraries and the Court House in Ashland
The Charles Terry Diary - an ante-bellum diary of life in Salem, dating from 1856
Marriages Performed by Reverend Jesse T. Cox
Pictures of Hickory Flat
Ashland High School Class of 1928
Smith's Grove Cemetery An abandoned cemetery in northern Benton County
Old Photographs of Ashland

Links that include Benton County Information

Tippah County Cemeteries (contains some from Benton Co)
Tippah County Confederates
The 1840 Census Records of Tippah County
The 1850 Federal Census of Tippah County 
The 1866 Census Records
The Tippah County Marriage Records
Search Tippah County
Old Map Collection of Tippah, Union and Pontotoc Counties
Wolf River Conservancy

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Your comments and suggestions are welcome.  If you know of a link that would be helpful to Benton County Researchers, please send me a note.  If you have questions regarding you ancestry please post a query,  the surname, or post questions to the Benton County Mailing List.  If you have information that you would like to share by adding it to this page, please contact me.

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Melissa McCoy-Bell
Benton County MSGENWEB Coordinator

MSGENWEB State Coordinator: Jeff Kemp
Asst. State Coordinator:Denise Wells and Ann Geoghegan

           © 1997-2011,  by Melissa McCoy-Bell.  All rights reserved.