Extinct Towns & Villages
of
Tippah County, Mississippi

Submitted by Debora Reese

Extract taken from Publication of the Mississippi Historical Society, By the Mississippi Historical Society, Edited by Franklin L. Riley, Secretary, Volume V, Oxford, Mississippi, 1902, pgs 372-374 , from chapter entitled “Extinct Towns and Villages of Mississippi” by Franklin L. Riley

Orizaba [1]- In 1837 a large Cumberland Presbyterian church was organized seven miles south of Ripley, the county seat of Tippah county.  This was among the first church organizations in that county.  Around it grew a village containing one hundred and fifty inhabitants in its palmist days.  It had a flourishing Masonic Lodge, a fine school, five business houses, and the shops and industries usually found in a country village at that time.

In the early 50’s Orizaba did much business with the surrounding country, which was occupied by a large number of prosperous planters.  Laird, Wear, Noah Roberts, W. T. Ratliff, and Robert I. Hill were the principal merchants.  This place also had a drug store and blacksmith shops.  Its physicians were Dr. Laird, Magill, Ford, Ellis, and King.  It also had a Masonic lodge and a Cumberland Presbyterian church, both of which had a large membership.  During the War between the States the business men of Orizaba either died or removed to other places.  With the abolition of slavery the planters who had supported this village were financially ruined.  What completed its destruction was the building of a great female college (1869), by the late Gen. M. P. Lowrey, at Blue Mountain, three miles to the northwest, and the building of the Gulf and Chicago railroad.  Mr. Hearne, in writing of the final destruction of Orizaba, says that “the last business that was done there was to burn all its stores and outbuildings in 1882”,

Orizaba still remains a post office.  Magistrates’ courts are also held there, but under the tall oaks, as the church and lodge hall, and other houses are gone.  All of its old citizens are dead.

Ruckerville [2]- About the year 1842 two brothers, John and Daniel Finger, established a blacksmith shop and a drygoods (sic) store where the Ripley and Pocahontas and Salem public roads cross.  The place was known as Finger’s Cross Roads.

About the 1846, Dr. Charles Rucker, an able physician, bought a home at Finger’s Cross Roads and put up a drug store.  The place soon took the name “Ruckersville”.  By this time a post office had been established and business increased until the village bade dair to develop into a thriving town.

In 1847 a licensed whiskey saloon was established.  From that date until the War between the States no improvements was made in the town.  It became noted as a place where men of sporting and drinking propensities met.  Discord and riot were the leading features of its history during this period.  A living witness remembers having seen horses standing hitched for two or three days without food or drink, while the miserable masters engaged in drunken debauches.

The war closed out business of all sort.  After the war, Fant, Gibbs & Company ran a thriving business in the line of drygoods (sic) and groceries until a railroad was built from Middleton, Tenn., to Ripley, Miss.  This road ran within five miles of Ruckersville and absorbed the business so completely that Fant, Gibbs, & Company moved to the railroad.  This was in 1876.  C. C. Rucker, son of Dr. Chas. Rucker kept a small stock of goods and the post office for