Browse Items (94 total)

  • Tags: Colbert County Alabama

Sterling High School was another prominent school for African Americans in Colbert County. The origin of the school is in a Baptist Church on East 20th St. Originally, the school only served five students and a man named Henry Hopkins was hired as…

This church was located close to what is now downtown Tuscumbia. The original buildings were cotton gins sheds. It has been said that these cotton gin sheds were used as a church as far back as the year 1870. The church served as a place of worship…

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Trenholm High School was originally founded as the Osborne Colored Academy in 1877. From there it became Tuscumbia’s Colored School, which lasted until 1921. The Tuscumbia’s Colored School changed its name to Trenholm High School in 1921. The…

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Montgomery Avenue, in Sheffield, Alabama, has maintained several spots along the street for the citizens of the area to enjoy the natural beauty of North Alabama. A water tower marks the end of the street and a small park with an overlook allows…

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Friendship Community Church, an Evangelical Church, is located at 800 North Atlanta Avenue in Sheffield, Alabama.

Friendship Community Church is housed in what was once the first Jewish Temple in the Shoals area.

Sheffield was the home of what…

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The residents of Montgomery Avenue and the citizens of Sheffield, Alabama have preserved several spaces for public use on the historic street. The Veteran's Park, which is maintained by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, is the home to several monuments…

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Trenholm High School, which is located on Trenholm Memorial Drive, was the last African-American High School in Tuscumbia, Alabama before desegregation.

The school, which opened in 1870 and closed in 1969, was subsequently torn down.

A movement…

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Alfred Hugler Moses, who was appointed the first mayor of Sheffield, Alabama by the governor of the state, moved to Sheffield in order to build the Sheffield Land, Iron, and Coal Company.

Moses, who had been a captain during the Civil War and a…

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The North Alabama Hallelujah Trail features thirty one churches that are at least 100 years old, still stand on their original sites, still hold services, and are accessible to the public.

The churches represent various architectural designs, use…

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To reach the Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery from AL-157 in Muscle Shoals, head east on 2nd Street/AL-184 and after 6 miles, turn right onto County Line Road. The church and cemetery are on the left.

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The Tennessee Valley Art Association was incorporated in 1964 in order to create an art museum and develop public programming related to the arts. The Tennessee Valley Art Center was constructed in 1972 on property provided by the city of Tuscumbia.…

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WLAY-AM (1450 -AM) was one of the first broadcast radio stations in the Shoals. Licensed in 1933 (as WNRA), the station stopped broadcasting in 2014.

The station's original broadcast was a variety format featuring gospel, country, and "race music"…

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LaGrange Cemetery in Colbert County is located on the site of Alabama's first college, which was established by charter in 1830, and served as a military academy in the years leading up to the Civil War. In 1854, most of the LaGrange College faculty…

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The Jackson Cemetery was established in 1918 by Alex Jackson as a burial place for his adoptive family. Vinson Perkins, the grandson of Jackson's adoptive parents, was caretaker of the cemetery from 1978 until his death in 2006.

To reach the…

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Locust Hill, a historic home located in Tuscumbia, Alabama on the corner of Seventh and Cave streets, was built in 1823 by Col. William Winters. The large 14 room mansion stretches across nearly three-fourths of a city block and features striking…

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Colbert County was established in 1867, fourteen years before the courthouse was built. Commissioners met at a local hotel called The Horn House while the probate judge’s office was located on the second floor of a brick building on Main Street in…

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Winston Cemetery, at the corner of SW 14th Avenue and SW 7th Street in Sheffield, sits on land purchased from the United States government by Andrew Jackson, who subsequently gifted it to Col. Anthony Winston. The property was later incorporated into…

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Tuscumbia's Oakwood Cemetery was mapped and designated as a burial ground in General John Coffee's 1817 survey "Plan of a Town at Coldwater Spring," and the cemetery's oldest burial dates from 1821. Hundreds of military veterans are buried in…

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To reach Glendale Cemetery from Muscle Shoals, head south on Wilson Dam Road, then turn right onto Old Highway 20 and drive for about 3 miles. The cemetery is on the left, just past Gnat Pond Road.

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On September 4, 1937, Tuscumbia merchant Key Underwood buried his trusty coon dog Old Troop in a part of the Freedom Hills Wildlife Management area known then as Sugar Camp. In the years that followed, other coon dog owners began to follow…

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The origins of Leighton's Old Brick Presbyterian Church can be traced back to 1812, when traveling minister Carson P. Reed staged a two-week revival in the Brick community. 45 men baptized during the revival were inspired to establish a congregation…

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Mt. Cumberland Presbyterian Church was established by a faction which split from nearby Old Brick Presbyterian Church. The earliest burial in the cemetery is Josephine "Josie" Davidson Kerby (1870-1916). The RootsWeb source linked below contains a…

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To reach Sheffield City Cemetery from Florence, follow US-72 across O'Neal Bridge into Sheffield. Go straight through the first traffic light and veer slightly right onto North Jackson Highway. After half of a mile, look for the cemetery on your…

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Tuscumbia merchant Clark T. Barton began building what would become the William Winston House around 1835. Several years later, in 1840, planter Winston purchased the still-unfinished house and oversaw its completion. The house remained in the…

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The Tuscumbia Historic District encompasses a substantial portion of the city's 1817 street plan, including Spring Park, the North Commons, and the entirety of the Colbert County Courthouse Square Historic District, which is itself listed on the…

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Covering 160 acres and encompassing 678 properties, the Sheffield Residential Historic District reflects development in the city of Sheffield from its establishment in 1883 through the mid-20th-century. Like the Colbert County Courthouse Square…

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One of the oldest surviving domestic structures in Tuscumbia, the John Daniel Rather House, or Locust Hill, was built in 1823 for planter William Hooe and his wife, Catherine Winter. It was occupied briefly during the Civil War by Union troops under…

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Preuit Oaks is a plantation complex once owned and operated by W. Richard Preuit, one of the most successful cotton planters of the so-called "Town Creek Triangle" area during the mid-19th century. Family tradition holds that the central cottage was…

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According to church tradition, Leighton's Old Brick Presbyterian Church building was constructed in 1828, although architectural evidence suggests a later date during the 1830s or 1840s. Its distinctive, kiln-fired exterior bricks and sun-dried…

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The Oaks, also known as the Abraham Ricks Plantation, is actually two houses in one: a one-and-a-half story log building connected to a two-story late-Georgian plantation home by a one-story dining room. The log structure, which predates its Georgian…

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Situated on the corner of North Main Street and Second Street in Tuscumbia, the Felix Grundy Norman House is one of the few single-story Greek-revival-style cottages remaining in a city where such structures were once commonplace. The house was…

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The Nitrate Village No. 1 Historic District encompasses 112 family homes, two school buildings and one apartment complex, situated near the south bank of the Tennessee River in Sheffield, Alabama. The village was constructed in 1918 to house workers…

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Johnson's Woods in Tuscumbia is one of the earliest surviving examples of Classical Revival-style architecture in the Tennessee Valley, and is among "the best preserved collections of mid-nineteenth-century agricultural architecture" in the state of…

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The 22 buildings which comprise Tuscumbia's Colbert County Courthouse Square Historic District reflect a broad range of architectural styles, including Victorian, Gothic, and Greek Revival. The most distinctive architectural example is the courthouse…

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The E.L. Newman Lustron House is a prefabricated one-story home in Sheffield built in 1949 by the Lustron Corporation. The house is one of eleven surviving Lustron homes in the state of Alabama, and one of five in the Shoals area, for which it once…

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The modest exterior of the one-story concrete structure at 3614 North Jackson Highway stands in deceptively stark contrast to the majesty of the music produced therein. The building once housed the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where some of…

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The John Johnson House, commonly referred to as "The Green Onion," is a 19th-century Tidewater-style cottage near Leighton in Colbert County. It is one of four double-square Tidewater cottages in the state of Alabama, and one of three among those…

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A one-and-a-half-story "Southern Viriginian" frame cottage located at 300 West North Commons in Tuscumbia, Ivy Green is significant for being the birthplace and childhood home of Helen Keller. It was during her infancy at Ivy Green that illness…

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The John and Archibald Christian House in Tuscumbia was built during the 1830s as a residence for two brothers from Virgina, who, like many natives of the Piedmont region during the mid-19th-century, relocated to North Alabama. It is particularly…

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The Chambers-Robinson House at 910 Montgomery Avenue in Sheffield is a two-story, Queen-Anne-style frame house, built in 1890 as a residence for Judson G. Chambers and his wife Mary. In 1898, the couple sold the home to Charles and Dora Robinson,…

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Built between 1924 and 1930, the Clyde Carter House is a Spanish-Eclectic-style cottage located in what was (briefly) the Bernard Subdivision of Ford City. With its "fanciful," European-influenced design and stuccoed walls, the house stands out…

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Buzzard Roost is a site along the Natchez Trace Parkway near Cherokee, where farmer, trader, and Chickasaw tribal spokesman Levi Colbert is thought to have lived and operated a "stand," or inn, for travelers during the early years of the 19th…

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A rare Southern example of architectural "Jeffersonian Classicism," the Belmont plantation house was completed in 1835 as a residence for Isaac Winston, a successful and wealthy planter who would, in his sixties, volunteer for service in the…

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Barton Hall, or Cunningham Plantation, is a two-story, Greek-Revival-style, wood-frame house near Cherokee in Colbert County. Its construction was initiated during the 1840s by Armstead Barton, whose father, Dr. Hugh Barton, had left Virginia during…
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