Editing Greenville, Mississippi (section)

===The destruction of Greenville and the Civil War===
The town (the second Greenville, eventually also referred to as Old Greenville<ref name="auto"/> by its residents who may not have been familiar with Mississippi's first Greenville, which by then had disappeared) was destroyed during the Union Army's actions related to the [[siege of Vicksburg]]. Troops from a [[Union Navy|Union gunboat]] landed at Greenville. In retaliation for being fired upon, they burned every building. The inhabitants took refuge in plantation homes of the area. When the war ended, veterans of Mississippi regiments returned to find Greenville in a state of ruin.

The former residents soon decided to build again. They chose a new site (the third, current Greenville) three miles away, at the highest point on the Mississippi River between the towns of [[Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg]] and [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]]. Much of the land belonged to the Roach and Blanton families; the major part of the area selected was within property owned by [[Harriet Byron McAllister|Mrs. Harriet Blanton Theobald]]. She welcomed the idea of a new Greenville, and donated land for schools, churches and public buildings. She was called the "[[Harriet Byron McAllister|Mother of Greenville]]". Major Richard O’Hea, who had planned the wartime defense fortifications at Vicksburg, was hired to lay out the new town.

Greenville recovered prosperity, still based on cotton, despite the decline in world markets for this commodity. In the early 20th century, its elite families had considerable political influence in the state, and US Senator [[Leroy Percy]] was from here. Several residences and other buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries have been listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]]. It was a center of Delta culture in the early 20th century.  This city adapted the former site to serve as [[Landfill|industrial fill]].