Mississippi Mills was a cotton and wool textile manufacturing complex that operated in Wesson, Mississippi, during the latter half of the 19th century. By 1892, Mississippi Mills was described as the largest industry of its kind in the South.
Absentee management and financial difficulties contributed to the mills' decline. The complex closed in 1910 and was dismantled several years later.
In 1864, during the American Civil War, a textile mill in Bankston, Mississippi, was burned by Union forces because it supplied the Confederate Army. In 1866, the Bankston mill owner, Colonel James Madison Wesson, relocated to Copiah County, Mississippi, and established a new textile mill, known as the Mississippi Manufacturing Company. The town of Wesson developed around the mill.
Because of Reconstruction-era financial problems, Mississippi Manufacturing Co. was bankrupt by 1871. Captain William Oliver and John T. Hardy bought the mill from Col. Wesson, but it burned in 1873. Oliver convinced Mississippi's largest landowner and cotton producer, Edmund Richardson, to become a partner in building a more modern textile mill of brick, to reduce the fire hazard created by using wood-fired power in combination with flammable cotton fibers. Richardson bought out Hardy and assumed a controlling interest in the enterprise, which became known as Mississippi Mills, with Edmund Richardson as president and William Oliver as general manager.
The textile complex consisted of four mills that were built over a period of 21 years, from 1873 to 1894. By 1882, electric lights had been installed to illuminate the textile buildings. When all four mills were completed, they covered several city blocks, and one was five stories high.