WELCOMES YOU
TO WOODVILLE &
TO OUR MUSEUMS!
The Town of Woodville, the county seat of Wilkinson County, is tucked away in the Southwest corner of Mississippi near the river between Natchez and Baton Rouge. This website is the effort of a group of volunteers who work anonymously and as a team to make this community a better place for us to live and for you to visit and share our community with you.
Our
Projects
Economic Development
Woodville National Register
Historic District
Publications
Main Street Market
Tourism & Bus Tours
Friends of Beth Israel
Cemetery
Events
Genealogical Records
Seminars
Lectures
The Woodville Civic Club Inc. was founded in 1971.
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These two buildings are only two of the many projects of the Woodville Civic Club Inc., our 501(c) (3) parent organization, during its over 50 years plus of existence.
The Civic Club was the result of a meeting called together in September of 1971 by Mrs. Alice Ray Wall Thomas Farrar, a native of Woodville, a descendant of early settlers, and a spirited, community minded individual.
There were lots of empty stores; business was bad, and the morale of our residents at an all-time low. It had a malaise that so many small towns across this country were suffering as the world seemed to shift and change so fast.
That meeting in September of 1971, resulted in the formation of a group who saw themselves as an umbrella organization anxious to co-ordinate and work with all of the existing clubs, the churches, our government on all levels, and our business people with one goal in mind, and that goal was simply the betterment of this community.
For two hundred years we have been a stable community as the county seat of Wilkinson County. You can see it in our architecture, in our way of life, and in our institutions. Woodvillians love their community and it shows.
Our National Register District, our Journals of Wilkinson County History, our museums, our plantations, and our people all have a story to share. We want to share it with you.
Please enjoy our website. Let us know what we might have missed or what we can find out for you. But most of all...please come visit us.
WOODVILLE AND WILKINSON COUNTY HIGHLIGHTS
Fort Adams on the Mississippi River began as a French Settlement, one of the first settlements by Europeans, now over three hundred years old.
Also take notice of our 1809 brick Woodville Baptist Church building; our 1823 St. Pauls Episcopal Church, and our 1824 Woodville Methodist Church.
Read about our many early plantations in our coffee-table book with information about over 50 plantations and nearly 500 color photos . . . THE PLANTATION WORLD OF WILKINSON COUNTY MISSISSIPPI 1792 - 2012
Jane Cook & Samuel Emory Davis, parents of President Jefferson Davis built Rosemont Plantation in 1810, when they came to Woodville. Jefferson, was two years old and the youngest of ten children.
We started the first railroad that ran from here to Bayou Sara near St. Francisville in 1842, and in retrospect, became the first standard gauge railroad in the United States.
The Civic Club has also published in the last 30 years five volumes of THE JOURNAL OF WILKINSON HISTORY providing information on cemeteries, marriages, the Woodville Historic District, and two volumes on the Confederacy.
And for real insight into life in Woodville in the mid 19th Century there is nothing like the two volumes written by astute Woodville business woman Betty Bingham Beaumont, as she tells of her life in TWELVE YEARS OF MY LIFE and it's sequel, A Business Woman's Journal . . .both available in reprints.
Our newspaper, The Woodville Republican just celebrated its 200th year of its founding and now, as the oldest newspaper in the state, and the oldest business institution.
We have 226 buildings just in town in our Woodville National Register Historic District and many plantations and sites in the county on the Register as well
And to top it all off there is nothing like a treat from a favorite of our local books, a comfort food marvel called WOODVILLE RED RECIPES. . . a creation of the TABITHAS at the Woodville Methodist Church.