About

We are a quaint, yet vibrant, and progressive small city that is focused on quality of life issues for everyone. We are a great place for young families, empty-nesters, and seniors.  Our public and private schools offer great educational opportunities for our children, K-12. Hinds Community College, in addition to a two-year college program, offers many cultural, educational, and recreational opportunities to all ages.  Ten churches within the city help keep us neighborly.

The crime rate in Raymond is very, very low.  We have an active, young police department that is dedicated to enforcing the laws and to providing good community policing.  Our public works department is dedicated to providing quality water and wastewater services for the present while planning for the future.

Our community offers a veritable smorgasbord of festivals and events that are designed to make living and visiting here great fun and quite dizzying if you keep up with them all.  Friends of Raymond caters to visitors and locals alike with its civil war reenactments, historic tours, original theatre offering a celebration of a trial of a bedbug, and pilgrimages of historic homes and buildings.   The Raymond Chamber of Commerce sponsors community events such as the much loved Raymond Country Fair and Christmas on the Square, the event that heralds the Christmas season in Raymond.

In short, we have many amenities that add to the quality of life of a community, yet we are small enough to know our neighbors, and strangers on the street are not allowed to stay strangers long.  If you don’t believe me, just leave this virtual tour of Raymond and drive on down to see for yourself.

History

Raymond, a place of history, a place in the heart, and a place of promise is a theme that runs through present-day Raymond.

Raymond’s place in history cannot be ignored. This small city is being preserved to showcase its more than 175 years.  Native Americans, early settlers, and abundant wildlife were here in the young years of our country and state. Old sunken road beds remain to show their footsteps and wagon tracks.

Hinds County was established in 1821 and named in honor of General Thomas Hinds.  The county was carved out of a tract of deep country ceded to the United States by the Choctaw Indians on October 18, 1820.  OnFebruary 4, 1828, the Mississippi legislature provided for the selection of three commissioners to select a site for the courthouse and jail for the county, and to locate the same either at Clinton or within two miles of the center of the county.  According to local lore, the commissioners determined the center of the county to be on Snake Creek. They selected a site just above the bottom land of the creek to be the county seat.  They named the site Raymond for General Raymond Robinson of Clinton who is said to have given up his prior claim to the land. On January 17, 1829, an act was passed by the legislature directing that the courts of the county should be held at Raymond, and that all books, records, and papers belonging to the respective offices should be removed to that place. The young town grew and prospered as a seat of justice for the county.

Thirty-three years later Raymond became one of Ulysses S. Grant’s victims as he marched his army through Mississippi to capture the city of Vicksburg.  On May 12, 1863, 12,000 Union soldiers of General James McPherson’s XVII Corps met the 3,000 Confederates of General John Gregg’s brigade in the Battle of Raymond.  The Union victory influenced Grant to change his scheme of maneuver and march to Jackson to rout any remaining Confederates.  After the battle, local citizens helped care for 1,000 wounded men from both armies as they were hospitalized in private homes, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and the brand new Hinds County Courthouse.

Raymond not only tells its story through the town’s beautiful homes, bed and breakfast inns, historic churches, and other landmarks, but through its progress as well.  Today, the town embraces Hinds Community College, Mississippi’s largest two-year college, as well as Eagle Ridge Conference Center with an 18 hole golf course. Riggs Manor Retirement Community offers a tranquil environment for a secure, comfortable lifestyle for seniors. The Hinds County Gazette, one of the state’s oldest weekly newspapers, was published locally from 1844-45 to very recent times when ownership passed to Dr. Lucius Lampton of Magnolia, MS.