Mendenhall

Philip Didlake, a store owner from Steens Creek (later Star, MS) and wife Eula Maude Didlake, purchased 250 acres in Simpson County along the planned Gulf & Ship Island Railroad route in 1898 in hopes of convincing Simpson County residents to relocate the county seat from Westville to their proposed Village of Edna, named for their infant daughter Edna Earle. They marked out a town plat and began leasing plots. After the railroad rejected the name of Edna for their train station, the town was renamed Mendenhall, after Westville attorney, Thomas L. Mendenhall, who had represented the county at the State Constitutional Convention in 1890.

After the county held a voter referendum in 1900, the county seat was moved from Westville to Mendenhall. Residents of Westville sued on the grounds there had not been sufficient voter turnout as stipulated by state law. The case was decided in Mendenhall's favor, but the verdict was overturned on appeal in the State Supreme Court in 1905. A second referendum with sufficient turnout selected Mendenhall by a large majority in 1906. Construction on a new courthouse began that same year and completed in 1907.