Hattiesburg is located in the southeastern part of the state of Mississippi and a city and seat of Forrest County that sits on the Leaf and Bouie rivers that are in the northern part of Gulfport. The area where the present-day Hattiesburg stands were founded in 1882 by a lumberman and engineer who named the city after his wife. With the arrival of the railroad in 1884 and 1897, it signaled the growth of the community’s lumber industry. Lumbering has always been a principal economic activity of the city up to the present. It is now being supplemented with poultry processing and the manufacture of paper products and kitchen appliances.