A Mississippi Genealogy & History Collection
McBride was a small but meaningful rural community in Jefferson County, Mississippi, one of many crossroads settlements that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to serve the agricultural population of the county’s interior. Like much of Jefferson County outside Fayette, McBride’s history is tied closely to cotton farming, timber, local churches, and the social networks that grew up around a post office and country stores rather than around formal town incorporation.
The community of McBride developed during the post–Civil War period, when formerly enslaved people, small farmers, and tenant families spread into the interior lands of Jefferson County. Fertile soils and access to creeks and wagon roads made the area suitable for cotton cultivation, and by the late 1800s small farms dotted the countryside. Communities such as McBride were never intended to become towns in the municipal sense; instead, they functioned as service points where nearby families could trade, receive mail, worship, and gather socially.
A post office named McBride was established in the early 20th century, marking the community’s brief appearance on official maps and giving the settlement its identity. The Post Office was located in a corner of Smith Grocery, Robert "Bob" Smith and his son Rayford Smith served as Postmasters. Smith Crocery was the only store in McBride and served the community as a grocery and general store for many decades.
As was common in rural Mississippi, the name McBride came from an early settler family whose in the area. The post office served as a lifeline, connecting residents to markets, news, and relatives beyond the county, but its operation was short-lived, reflecting McBride’s small population and limited commercial activity.
Salem Methodist Church and Antioch Missionary Baptist Church were central to life in McBride. These congregations provided spiritual leadership and doubled as social and educational centers. Church gatherings, revivals, funerals, and homecomings bound families together across generations, especially during times when economic hardship or seasonal labor kept daily life isolated. Although no longer used, these church buildings still remain serving as gathering places for homecoming events.
Like many rural Jefferson County communities, McBride declined gradually rather than suddenly. The mechanization of agriculture, falling cotton prices, and the Great Migration drew younger residents away to larger towns and cities in Mississippi and beyond. Improved roads and centralized services reduced the need for small rural hubs, and by the mid-20th century McBride existed primarily as a name remembered by families rather than as a functioning settlement.
Families surnames in McBride included Hudson, Allred, Smith, Varnado, Housley, Abbott, Foster, Furr, Goza, Greer, Mason, McFatter, Saxon, and Shelton among others.
Today, McBride no longer exists as a distinct town, but its legacy survives in land records, church cemeteries, oral history, and family genealogies. For descendants, McBride represents the kind of close-knit rural community that shaped Jefferson County’s social fabric—quiet, unincorporated, and easy to overlook on a map, yet deeply significant to the people who lived, worked, worshiped, and were buried there.
McBride is on State Hwy 552 about three miles northwest of State Hwy 28. GPS: 31.765833, -90.782222
