Lee County: Named for Robert E. Lee, Home to Elvis and a Civil War Battle

Lee County was established by the Mississippi Legislature on October twenty-sixth, eighteen sixty-six, named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee just one year after the war ended. It was carved from Itawamba and Pontotoc counties, with the railroad settlement of Tupelo eventually winning the county seat over Saltillo.

Tupelo itself had started as Gum Pond, named for the tupelo gum trees lining a small pond near the Mobile and Ohio Railroad depot. In July of eighteen sixty-four, a Civil War battle was fought here, with Union forces under General A. J.

Smith defeating Forrest's cavalry. And on January eighth, nineteen thirty-five, Elvis Aaron Presley was born in a two-room house in Tupelo, the city that would shape the boy who reshaped American music.