There has been a lot said and written about the naming of Forest in the past 160 years; all interesting but not all accurate. I don’t claim to be the expert but I have spent a lot of my fun-times compiling Forest history.
The first original area of town that we now know as Forest, Scott County, Mississippi, was first called (but not incorporated as such) ‘Forest Depot’ (one ‘r’) in 1858.
In 1858 a needed water tank for refilling the steam-engine locomotives was built in lower Scott County on the northern edge of a huge ‘forest’ of virgin majestic short-leaf pine trees that were so tall they appeared to be poking into the sky and blotting-out the sun. This water tank refill station built in 1858 was named ‘Forest Depot’, spelled with one ‘r’. Forest Depot was so named because its location was on the newly built 1858 Southern Railroad through lower Scott County and central Mississippi and the location was on the northern edge of more than 50 thousand acres of those virgin (hundreds of years old) majestic short-leaf pine ‘Forest’ (one ‘r’) trees.
Within just a few months in 1858, a Forest Depot building was constructed (in the same location but was not the same building as the present Forest Depot building). The Western Union Telegraph Company was established in 1860 in the Southern Railroad Depot building and the establishment of the Western Union probably can be called the beginning of the Town of Forest. Very soon (1860-‘61) after the Forest Depot building, the Simmons Hotel building (later renamed the Pevey Hotel) was constructed a few hundred feet northeast of the train depot building. A post office was established in Forest about this same time, but I’m not sure if that post office had a building of its own, or not…..probably not, it was likely just a post office ‘space’, maybe in the depot or hotel building.
It has been written, but I have not verified, that the Town of Forest (one ‘r’) was first incorporated as a town in February 1860 during the administration of Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus, a Democrat.
In 1861 before the War Between the States there were seven or eight business houses and just a very small number of families in the town of Forest (one ‘r’). After the War started and for the next five or six years, Forest had no growth and was almost totally deserted. All of those Forest businesses were closed-down during the War because over 1000 Scott County men and boys were off fighting those Damn Yankees. The only people left in Scott County were women, young children, old men and slaves and they were all too busy trying to make a living to keep from starving and were not interested in ‘going to town’. This writer knows a lot about Scott County women and he can tell a lot about the mood of Scott County women just by looking at her hands. That is, if she has a gun in her hands…….she probably angry. I’ve learned my lessons well, which is, don’t mess with Scott County women……….just love them!
On November 21, 1865, shortly after the War Between the States (it was NOT a Civil War), there was an incorporation of the Town of Forrest (2 ‘r’s) by then Mississippi Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys, a Democrat, who had fought as a Confederate Brigadier General. Confederate Brigadier General Humphreys had fought the entire four-year War in many battles alongside famous Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest (2 ‘r’s). Some historians, including this one, believes that the ‘second’ incorporation of Town of Forest with the spelling of two ‘r’s was NOT a mistake, at all, but instead was intended to be named after Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest. However the second ‘r’ did not ever stick because Forest spelled with one ‘r’ had been well established before that 1865 incorporation with the spelling with two ‘r’s.
So, Panzey, you were probably correct in your thinking that the second spelling of Forrest (two ‘r’s) could have been because it was named for a person.
John B.
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