If you’ve ever been inside the Bolivar County Courthouse in Rosedale, you may have noticed the old bell — quiet now, but heavy with history. It doesn’t just belong to the building it’s housed in today. That bell once rang out over a town that no longer exists, a Mississippi place that was swallowed whole by the river.
Long before Rosedale became the county seat, that role belonged to a town called Prentiss — not the Prentiss you’ll find today in Jefferson Davis County, but an earlier one that stood along the banks of the Mississippi River in Bolivar County. And yes, it’s still there… just underwater.
Originally settled around 1800, the town was first known as Wellington. In its earliest years, the only way in or out was by boat. After the War of 1812, soldiers returning home from New Orleans often passed through — and many decided not to leave. By 1838, Wellington had built its first road. Within two years, it had a courthouse and jail, and by 1852, county records were moved there, making it the seat of Bolivar County.
The town was later renamed Prentiss, honoring Mississippi Congressman Sergeant Smith Prentiss, a nationally known orator of his time. By the start of the Civil War, Prentiss was thriving. Nearly 800 people called it home. It had a hotel, a racetrack, a newspaper, and gambling houses lining the riverfront. It also held something no other town between Vicksburg and Memphis had — the only ferry crossing on that stretch of the Mississippi River.
But the war changed everything.
Union troops burned Prentiss to the ground, leaving only a handful of structures behind. And what fire didn’t destroy, the Mississippi River finished. In the years following the war, erosion and shifting currents slowly pulled the remains of the town into the river itself.
For decades, Prentiss was thought to be gone for good. Then, in 1954, a change in the river’s course briefly revealed part of the old brick courthouse. A chimney poking out of the riverbed caught the attention of hunters, and soon the forgotten town made national headlines. Artifacts — champagne bottles, whiskey barrels, pieces of everyday life — surfaced from the mud before the river reclaimed them once again.
Today, Prentiss remains hidden beneath the Mississippi River, its story mostly forgotten. But the bell still hangs in Rosedale, a quiet reminder that Mississippi history isn’t always behind glass — sometimes it’s beneath the water, waiting to be remembered.
