Page 28 - Hancock County Tourism ~ 2021 History

Do you know about...
Napoleon
How is it
that a tiny
community
along the Pearl
River came to
be named after
an illustrious
French
emperor?
When Napoleon
Bonaparte’s brother, Jerome, came to America seeking help and funding
to free Napoleon from exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba, he and his followers landed somewhere near Waveland and hid in the marshes and swamps along the Pearl River waiting for aides to escort them to New Orleans where they hoped to find people sympathetic to their cause. Jerome named this area in honor of his brother.
The land was first given to John Claudius Favre through a British land grant; he in turn passed it on to his
son, Simon Favre, who settled the area in 1798. Families farmed and raised livestock, and by the mid-1800s, many of them worked at the Weston Lumber Company, one of the largest sawmills in the world. A short-lived brick-making industry operated as well. Bricks made here were used in the construction of Fort Pike, a Civil War installation still standing near Slidell, La. In addition, Napoleon was the location of Hancock County’s first printing press. The town was absorbed into the Stennis Space Center buffer zone in the 1960s. A small cemetery is all that remains.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Incidentally, Napoleon engineered his own escape from Elba, was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, and was permanently exiled to the South Atlantic Ocean island of St. Helena.
Baptist church in Napoleon
Cemetery in Napoleon
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