As stated in this marker, the town and county were named after a person: Greenwood LeFlore. Greenwood was established in 1830's but Leflore County was not created until 1871 from portions of Carroll, Sunflower and Tallahatchie counties.
Greenwood LeFlore (or Le Fleur)
(June 3, 1800 – August 31, 1865) was elected Principal Chief of the Choctaw in 1830 before removal. Before that, the nation was governed by three district chiefs and a council of chiefs. A wealthy and regionally influential Choctaw of mixed-race, who belonged to the Choctaw elite due to his mother's rank, LeFlore had many connections in state and federal government. In 1830 LeFlore led other chiefs in signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi to the US government and agreed to removal to Indian Territory. It also provided that Choctaw who chose to stay in Mississippi would have reserved lands, but the United States government failed to follow through on this provision.
While many of the leaders realized removal was inevitable, others opposed the treaty and made death threats against LeFlore. He stayed in Mississippi, where he settled in
Carroll County and accepted United States citizenship.
In the 1840s, LeFlore was elected Mississippi representative and senator. He was a fixture of Mississippi high society and a personal friend of Jefferson Davis. He was elected to represent Carroll County in the state house for two terms, and elected by the legislature as a state senator, serving one term. He became a wealthy planter and amassed a huge estate, where slaves worked acres of cotton.
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Malmaison
Leflore wanted a manor house that befitted his status as a wealthy planter. He had the house designed in French style. When he sought a name for the house, "he decided on the name of the Château de Malmaison, ten miles west of Paris on the Seine." The house was built 9 miles East of the town of Greenwood in
1854. LeFlore called his Carroll County home
Malmaison.
To furnish his mansion, LeFlore imported most of the furniture from France, where it had been made to order. Silver, glass, and china came in sets of dozens. The drawing room set was of 30 pieces of solid mahogany, finished in genuine gold and upholstered in silk damask. The house held mirrors, tables, large four-poster beds of rosewood with silken and satin canopies, and four tapestry curtains depicting the four palaces of Napoleon and Josephine: Versailles, Malmaison, Saint Cloud and Fontainebleau.
LeFlore occupied the mansion until his death in 1865. He was buried wrapped in the American flag, on the estate. His body was later moved by angry members of the Choctaw nation, and buried face down in an unknown area. He left in addition to the mansion, an estate of 15,000 acres and 400 slaves. With emancipation after the war, the slaves became freedmen, but many may have stayed on the plantation to work for his descendants.
LeFlore descendants used the mansion until it was destroyed in a fire in
1942.
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