Ballentine, Panola County: A Rural Post Office, Family Papers, and the Mystery of Dickens Place
Appalachian Community Histories – Ballentine, Panola County: A Rural Post Office, Family Papers, and the Mystery of Dickens Place. Along Ballentine Road in Panola County, Mississippi, lies a community whose history reaches beyond the name appearing on modern maps. Ballentine, an unincorporated settlement situated approximately three miles south of Pleasant Grove and four and a half miles south-southwest of Curtis Station, belongs to the network of small rural communities that developed across northern Mississippi during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although it never became a major town or county seat, its appearance in federal geographical records, postal directories, and local historical collections provides evidence of a community whose identity survived long after its post office disappeared.