It is thus seen that Choctaw County as originally esablished was thirty-six miles in length from north to south and thirty miles in width from west to east.
it is not to be supposed that the legislators of 1833 had any premonition that forty years later the area of the county would be reduced 414 square miles. Actually, there would have been only 306 remanining if 108 had not been taken from Winston and added to Choctaw. That is a story to be told when we arrive at the fifth Decade. A committee appointed by the legis lature located the county seat of the new county in the southwest quarter of Section 8, Township 19, Range 9, and named it Greensboro, often spelled Greensborough. The land numbers reveal that the new county seat was practically in the center of the county, as originally established, and was approximately twenty-four miles by road northwest of Ackerman.
Greensboro remained the county seat of Choctaw until January 1, 1872. All that remains of it today is a church and two cemeteries, seven miles west of Eupora, and three miles north of Tomnolen. It was exactly ten miles north of Bankston. Soon it was connected with the outside world by a road which ran from Starkville to Carrolton, by another which ran from Bellefontaine to Kosciusko, and by a third which ran southeasterly to Louisville.
Settlement could not legally begin with the formation of the new counties. It was directed that the Indians must first be removed in 1831, 1832, 1833. Then the lands had to be surveyed into sections, townships, and ranges, so that tracts could br identified by number, as it is done today. Under the survey plan, townships were numbered from south to north, while ranges were numbered from west to east. A township was six sections square (thirty-six square miles) and eash section was divided into sixteen 40 acre subdivisions.
Those desiring to purchase acreage could file their applications by appropriate land number at the Land Office in Columbus. Subsequently, deeds of conveyance (called patents), signed by the president, were issued. The new county rapidly filled up with settlers from the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and other states. Not all of them obeyed the command to await the completion of the government land survey. As in latter day Oklahoma, there were "sooners". For example, the reconds reveal that Eli Snow of North Carolina made a corn crop in the year 1833 near where Highway 12 now crosses Highway 15 in the town limits of Ackerman. William Childress and Isaac Sharp made an affidavit to that fact on September 17, 1834, soon Snow transferred his claim, at Louisville, to one John D. Bibb.
