The state legislature authorized a second county seat at Laurel, to the northeast, which developed as the center of lumber and textile mills, with a much larger population.

Many local men resented going to war to support slaveholders, and worried about the survival of their families, where women and children worked to keep subsistence farms going.

They resented Confederate tax collectors who took the goods and stores their families needed to live.

In 1919, Ellisville hosted one of the most gruesome lynchings in history, when a black man, John Hartfield was found to have a white girlfriend.

The Jackson Daily News ran headlines that "John Hartfield will be lynched by Ellisville mob at 5:00 this afternoon",[4] and that a crowd of thousands was expected to attend.

[5][6] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Ellisville lost primacy to nearby Laurel, which became a center of the timber industry and cotton textile mills.

Laurel is majority African American in population, reflecting the migration of agricultural workers to the city for industrial and urban jobs.