As late as 1864, northeast Mississippi was sparsely populated. Thirty years earlier the area had belonged to the Chickasaw Nation, and many local white landowners had moved there after 1845. The Bethany Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the lone occupant of the Crossroads today, was founded in 1852. During the 1860s some land grew cotton and corn, but much of the area remained wooded with dense underbrush. At Brice's Crossroads, the landscape was as much forest as field, shaping how soldiers could fight: cavalrymen left their horses in the rear and entered the woods on foot, and soldiers could be only a few yards from the enemy line without seeing it through the underbrush. Sergeant C.F. Macdonald of the 9th Minnesota Infantry recalled an extremely hot and sultry day, largely woodland country, very muddy roads, and a rapid march under a scorching sun that exhausted the men. In a December 15, 1852, diary entry, Samuel A. Agnew wrote of arriving in Tippah County and being bewildered by woods in every direction, with no clearings and many unfamiliar sights that later became commonplace to him.