Washington: Mississippi's First Capital

Six miles northeast of Natchez, the unincorporated village of Washington was once the political heart of the Mississippi Territory. Congress established the territory in seventeen ninety-eight, and by eighteen oh one Washington had become the territorial capital, a role it held for sixteen years.

In eighteen oh two, the territorial legislature chartered Jefferson College here, the first institution of higher learning in the territory. The college did not open its doors until eighteen eleven, and its name honored President Thomas Jefferson. Then in eighteen seventeen, delegates gathered in a small Methodist church on the college grounds to draft Mississippi's first state constitution, the document that launched Mississippi into the Union. Natchez replaced Washington as state capital soon after. Today Historic Jefferson College is preserved as a state site, and those quiet grounds still carry the weight of those founding moments.