History of Utica Picture Courtesy of Janice Rice UTICA Incorporated March 5, 1880, and named for the native city of Ozias Osborn, an early settler from New York. Utica is noted for the great number of its citizens who have become educators of the deaf. Utica Hinds County was originally part of the Choctaw Nation, and part of the lands ceded to the U S Government in the Treaty of Doak's Stand, and was settled as early as 1809. The settlement was named Cane Ridge because of the abundance of cane breaks, and early on was occupied by the families of Kelly, the Cessna's, and the Lees by the year of 1815. Later numerous families moved into the settlement of Cane Ridge. Some of these early families were Beauchamp, Brock, Broome, Brpwm, Easterland, and Wise. By the year 1835 the town was called Utica, after the City of Utica NY. A description of the town taken from the book "History of Hinds County Mississippi 1821 - 1922" by Mrs. Dunbar Rowland states "Utica, in the southwestern part of the county, is an incorporated post-town. It is situated on the Y. & M. V. Railroad, 32 -miles southwest of Jackson. It is hilly, well-drained and surrounded by a rich farming section. All kinds of fruit and vegetables, especially watermelons, grow in abundance in the soil. The town is accessible to a large amount of fine hardwood timber. It ships annually about 10,000 bales of cotton. It has two banks with a combined capital of $90,000; two hotels; a public school; an industrial college for the education of Negroes; three churches, Methodist, Baptist and Christian; and a Democratic weekly newspaper, the Herald, established in 1897. Among its manufacturing enterprises are a brick plant, three steam cotton gins, and a saw mill. Many organizations that embrace intellectual as well as material progress are found in this thriving little city." HOME ©Genealogy Trails