1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Columbus (Mississippi)

COLUMBUS, a city and the county-seat of Lowndes county, Mississippi, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Tombigbee river, at the head of steam navigation, 150. m. S.E. of Memphis, Tennessee. Pop. (1890) 4559; (1900) 6484 (3366 negroes); (1910) 8988. It is served by the Mobile & Ohio and the Southern railways, and by passenger and freight steamboat lines. It has cotton and knitting mills, cotton-seed oil factories, machine shops, and wagon, stove, plough and fertilizer factories; and is a market and jobbing centre for a fertile agricultural region. It has a public library, and is the seat of the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College (1885) for women, the first state college for women—the successor of the Columbus Female Institute (1848)—of Franklin Academy (1821), and of the Union Academy (1873) for negroes. The site was first settled about 1818; the city was incorporated in 1821, and in 1830 it became the county-seat of the newly formed Lowndes county. During the Civil War the legislature met here in 1863 and 1865, and in the former year Governor Charles Clark (1810–1877) was inaugurated here.