The name Chickasaw grew from Native American use of Chickasas Bogue for the creek in the area before the French settlement at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff in 1702, a name used by Apalachee and Choctaw peoples and later anglicized by English settlers to Chickasabogue, from which Chickasaw was derived. In 1733, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Governor of the French Province of Louisiana, deeded a large tract including the Chickasaw area to John Baptist Lorending as the St. Louis Tract; the land later passed to Joseph Chastang and was recognized by United States Congress in 1847. The area was first settled by farmers and then developed a trading post, and by the early 1900s the community included a mill that processed coconuts into oil and soaps along with other manufacturing companies. In 1914, Tennessee Coal and Iron Company bought the land, created three companies including Chickasaw Shipbuilding and Car Company, drained the cypress swamp with pumps and dikes, and built a shipyard and planned community with two residential villages, a school, sanitation, police services, transportation, parks, and streets where homes faced each other across a common sidewalk. The shipyard built 14 ships before the end of WWI, was bought in 1938 by Gulf Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of Waterman Steamship Company, and during WWII produced about 75 ships, including seven destroyers that earned 27 battle stars. After the war the shipyard's operations gradually ended, and in 1946 Leedy Investment Company bought the entire village for one million dollars, sold homes to individuals for the first time, and on November 12, 1946, residents voted to incorporate as the City of Chickasaw.