The courthouse at Wellborn was destroyed by fire in March 1851. The
story still persists that the burning of the courthouse was arson, as most
of the people were not satisfied with its location. Due to opposition to
rebuilding the courthouse at the relatively inaccessible Wellborn, the
legislature, on January 30, 1852, passed an act directing the sheriff to
hold an election, on the first Monday in August, 1852, to determine the
permanent location of the court house. The voters were authorized to select
Wellborn, Elba, or Indigo Head (Clintonville), and the site receiving a
majority of the votes was to be the county seat, provided the citizens of
the town should build a good and substantial court house and jail free of
charge to the county. Due to the fact that more voters were living around
Elba, they won the election. The citizens of the town of Elba were well
pleased over the selection of their town as the county seat. A mass meeting
was held and F. M. Gannons, Nicajah Harper, and James M. Cauthen were
appointed as a building committee to see to the courthouse and jail. J. B.
Simmons donated the square for the courthouse and a suitable lot for the
jail. It is not known how the money was raised to pay for the construction
of the building, for Elba was not incorporated at this time.
The courthouse when completed, was a painted two-story building with a
painted railing fence around it. As tobacco chewing was prevalent, it was
customary to keep sawdust on the floor of the courtroom. To this end,
barrels of sawdust were conveniently provided. The title to the courthouse
and jail were conveyed to the county on September 12, 1853. It is
interesting to note that the courthouse has remained on the same square in
Elba since that time.
N. A. Agee, a Montgomery businessman, traveling through Coffee
perceived mostly a succession of pine trees and tall waving grass. Herds of
cattle were lazily grazing amid this luxurious natural pasture. When he
wrote later in 1909, Agee recalled a tract of level, sparsely settled,
unbroken forests of yellow pine, which offered few variations for the eye.
There was a covered bridge across Pea River, which Agee described, but his
attention was focused mostly on the roads, which he found to be very rough.
There were not any good roads here in Coffee County in the 1850’s and
indeed, very few public roads of any kind. The main roads connected Elba
with the county seats of the adjoining counties. One led from Elba through
Indigo Head (Clintonville) to Daleville on westward to Montezuma(Andalusia)
in Covington County, one north to Troy to Pike County and one south through
Geneva to the Gulf at Fort Walton, Florida. The roads were very crude,
being little more than clearings through the woods. In the low arid places,
logs were used to form a corduroy bed to prevent bogging. Farms and home
sites were widely scattered and the individuals maintained the roads between
communities. The usual mode of travel was by horseback.
The United States census of Coffee County in 1850 showed a population
of 6,940, of whom 6,380 were white, 557 were slaves, and 3 were freepersons
of color. There were 893 white families in Coffee County in 1850 with an
average of 6.03 people per family, whereas in 1860, there were 1,375
families with an average of 5.96 people per family.
As in all frontier settlements, a large percentage of the people were
born in other localities. Most of the original settlers came from Georgia
and all except about three percent came from South and North Carolina. No
rich Virginia planters moved into this section of Alabama. Nearly all of
these non-natives of Alabama had been born South of the Mason and Dixon
Line. Only ten people in the county in 1850 were born North of the Mason
and Dixon Line.
Most of the early settlers in Coffee County were poor, but some owned
slaves, and brought the slaves with them to their new homes. In 1850, there
were 557 slaves in the county and by 1860 the number of slaves had increased
to 1,417. There were only a few large slave holdings in Coffee County in
1850, only twelve persons owned ten or more slaves, while in 1860, this
number had increased to forty-three.
As the county became more thickly settled, villages appeared, for the
great distance to shopping centers and the condition of the roads made it
imperative for the farmers to have the means of getting supplies close at hand.
Some of the first settlers in the county located at what is now
Clintonville. The community was first called Indigo Head, because there was
so much indigo growing there. One of the first voting precincts in Coffee
County was created at Indigo Head in 1845. The village continued to grow
until in 185- the population was around two hundred. This figure could only
be matched by Elba. It was a great blow to the citizens of Indigo Head in
1852, when Elba, instead of their village, was selected to become the county seat.
The name of the town was changed from Indigo Head to Clintonville in
1850. Why the name was changed or why Clintonville was selected is not
known. The town has prospered through the 1850s, a post office was
established there. John A. Fleming was the first post master. During the
period there existed in the town eight stores, a blacksmith shop, and two
churches, one Methodist and the other Baptist.
The legislature on January 11, 1860 granted a charter to the
Clintonville male and female academy. This was the first academy in the
county and thus Clintonville became the cultural and education centerof the
county and remained so for a number of years. Some of the pioneer families
were Flemings, Hutchisons, Marshes, Sawyers, Goyens, and Carmichaels.
Elba had its economic beginning with the establishment of a ferry
across Pea River between what is now Claxton and Polk Streets. The ferry
was established by a Mr. McLane. The exact date of the building of the
ferry is not known, but it is believed to be in the early 1830s.
Ephraim King entered the land on which Elba is located on February 17,
1826. About the year 1840, King sold his holdings to John B. Simmons and
his brother-in-law, Cappa T. Yelverton.
Simmons and Yelverton organized the Simmons Mercantile Company, which
was the first store in Elba. For many years, the post office was located in
their store building and Mr. Simmons served as postmaster. They called the
town Bentonville in honor of Thomas Hart Benton, Colonel, and Senator from
Missouri, who won the favor of Alabama in the Creek War of 1813-14, serving
in Alabama and commanding Fort Montgomery.
With the growth of the town, the citizens of Bentonville thought the name
should be changed to one more fitting for a thriving community. The name
was changed in 1846 by placing different names in a hat and drawing. Each
person present could submit one name. John B. Simmons who had been reading
a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, containing reference to the islandto
which he was first banished, placed the name of Elba in the hat. Elba was
drawn. In the year 1852, when by the act of the State Legislature a voting
precinct was created, that new name was officially recognized.
In 1852, after Elba was selected to be the county seat, the town was
moved back from the river one-half mile. The town in its new location was
planned with the streets leading from the courthouse square. Most of the
streets were named for the leading citizens: Claxton, Yelverton, Cordelis,
Adkison, as well as Court and Polk Streets, run north and so; Davis and
Collier, Simmons and Buford Streets, as well as Putman Street, run east and
west. On May 7, 1853, an election was held and the people voted to
incorporate the town.
In 1860, post offices were located at Geneva, Henderson’s Store, Rocky
Head, Haw Ridge, and Victoria, besides Clintonville, and Elba. In the
election of 1859, boxes were located at the following places: Elba,
Danally, Coffee Corner, Tilmon’s Mill, Simmons Mill, Smut Eye, IndigoHead,
Haw Ridge, Grant, Wellborn, Geneva, Flat Creek, Old Town and Rushing.
Another community of Coffee County, in time named Victoria, was first
settled in the early 1830s. The village itself was never very large, but
was the center of a relatively thickly farm district. This community, for
some years, bore the name "Smut Eye". A story persists that men of the
settlement would gather outside of J. C. Brown’s place of business, and in
cold weather would build a fire. Mr. or Mrs. Brown, or both apparently had
rules against drinking in their house. After spending several hours around
the open fire talking and drinking, the men’s faces would be coated with
smut. Someone remarked that the men of the community always had smut around
their eyes. The name stuck and the community is till sometimes referred to
as Smut Eye. Miss Winslow is said to have owned the first piano in Coffee
County. It was brought from Montgomery on a wagon in the late 1850s. The piano
attracted people from miles around, who came to see and hear it, for it was
an oddity and the people were curious.
Victoria never developed into a town, but remained through the years
simply a rural community center. Many centers of population, which were
prominent before the Civil War, have disappeared or their names have been changed.
Public education in Coffee County as in other frontier communities
lagged. There were 666 people in Coffee County in 1850 who were illiterate.
This was 32.58 percent of the people twenty years old or older.
There were no public funds for the support of schools, consequently
education was irregular and of poor quality. The people in a community, who
were interested in educating their children, would build a schoolhouse and
hire a teacher. These schools were supported by charging a small fee to
clients and by private donations. There was no central agency for hiring
teachers, and no particular qualifications were established as prerequisite
to teaching. Teachers of any kind were scarce and the local schoolboard
would hire an itinerate teacher with no information as to his qualifications
but the candidate’s assertion that he could handle the job. The
schoolhouses were very crude, usually being a typical frontier one-room log
building without glass windows.
There were seventeen schools in the county in 1850, and all of them
were one-teacher schools. The published census for 1850 gives the number of
pupils enrolled in these schools as 290, but the number of children
attending school as returned by families was 712. The schools probably
reported the average attendance, while parents reported a child attending
school, if he went just for a few days. During 1850, the total income for
the seventeen schools was $3,480 per year. This money all came from private
sources, and averages only $205.00 per school. The shortage of money caused
the teacher’s salaries to be very low and the school term short.
The state educational system was organized in the 1850s and provided
for a county superintendent of education. J. C. Moore was the first person
to hold that office in Coffee County. He was elected in the general
election of 1855. The superintendent received no salary and acted only in
an advisory capacity to the local school boards.
Until 1860, there was not a school in the county above the elementary
level, but on January 1860, as noted above, the legislature granted a
charter to the Clintonville Male and Female Academy. The trustees of the
new school were Alfred McGee, John A. Fleming, William L. Watson, AsaR.
Doolin, J. C. Moore, Lewis Hutchison, Jr. and A. B. Brooks. The trustees of
the academy were granted the power to erect buildings, elect a president,
and do the other things, which were necessary for the operation of a
boarding school. The schoolhouse, as completed in 1860, was a two-story
frame building painted white. The first head of the school was W. A.
Edwards who owned a plantation in Dale County. Edwards had four teachers
serving under him during the first term in 1860, with an enrollment of two
hundred students. The Clintonville Academy was described by a contemporary
as the best and longest term school in any of the adjoining counties.
Edwards was followed a principal by J. J. Johnson, J. M. Sanders, and J. J. Langham.
History of Coffee County