Editing Mississippi County, Arkansas (section)

=== Antebellum Period ===
American settlers were recorded in the area as early as 1828. These early settlers include John Troy, the first Mississippi County Judge and namesake of Troy township and G.C. Barfield, the first county surveyor and namesake of Barfield Landing.<ref name=":0" />

Mississippi County was created on November 1, 1833, when it was split off from [[Craighead County, Arkansas|Craighead County]]. By 1836, when Arkansas achieved statehood, the county's white population had slightly increased and the local Native population was pushed in the eastern part of the county, towards what is now [[Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge|Big Lake]]. The first county seat was a small community called Cornwall, which was located at on the banks of the Mississippi River, on the remains of an old Spanish "encampment." [[Osceola, Arkansas|Osceola]] was named as the County Seat in 1833, and later incorporated in 1843.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Hale |first=Ruth |title=Mississippi County |url=https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/mississippi-county-791/ |access-date=December 28, 2023 |website=Encyclopedia of Arkansas |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":0" />

The [[Swamp Land Act of 1850|Federal Swamp Act of 1850]] granted federally controlled swamp lands to their respective state governments for sale. According to the 1852 surveyor general's report, Mississippi County had the largest amount of swamp and "Sunken" lands of any county in the country.<ref name=":1" />