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    Sumter County
    Sumter County
    Sumter County
    Ebook194 pages1 hour

    Sumter County

    By Alan Brown

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    About this ebook

    Sumter County was founded on December 18, 1832, on land ceded to the United States by the Choctaw Indians in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Almost immediately, settlers began pouring in from Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. In the 19th and early-20th centuries, most of the residents were farmers; however, following the infestation of the boll weevil, many turned to raising cattle and growing timber. Every November, hundreds of hunters descend upon Sumter County in hopes of harvesting one of the thousands of deer that live on the rolling prairies and in the oak forests lining the Tombigbee River. With the help of Ruby Pickens Tartt, scores of ethnomusicologists, including John and Alan Lomax, traveled hundreds of miles to the red clay country of Sumter County in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to record African American folk songs from people like Vera Hall and Dock Reed.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 6, 2015
    ISBN9781439650776
    Sumter County
    Author

    Alan Brown

    Alan Brown grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City and graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School in 1973 and Avila University in 1979. Now He lives in a suburb of St. Louis, MO with my wife and three daughters. He also has four sons that are grown and living outside the home. He enjoys writing about experiences he had growing up, examining the fantastical side, the dark side of a person’s natural fears. All of his books are based on a reality in his life. He is a fan of Alfred Hitchcock. Like his stories, Alan Brown’s will conclude with a twist, something he hope will take the reader by surprise.

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      Book preview

      Sumter County - Alan Brown

      book.

      INTRODUCTION

      In 1804, the US government began negotiating with the Choctaw chiefs for a vast tract of land that had been owned by the Choctaw since 1797. On September 27, 1830, representatives of the US government met with those of the Choctaw nation on the banks of Dancing Rabbit Creek in Macon, Mississippi, to sign a treaty ceding the Choctaw lands west of the Tombigbee River to the United States. On December 18, 1832, the Alabama legislature created Sumter County, Alabama, located in the west-central portion of the state. A commission appointed by Gov. John Gayle selected the present site of Livingston, Alabama, as the county seat.

      When French explorers from Mobile, Alabama, arrived in what is now Sumter County, it had been divided into four Indian villages. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, constructed Fort Tombecbee as a trading post on a chalk cliff in what is now Eppes, Alabama. A number of French, Spanish, and English settlers—nicknamed squaw men because they had married Indian women—received land under a provision in an article of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit. Thousands of people from Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas settled in towns like Livingston. Throughout most of the 19th century, farming was the primary occupation. Cotton, sweet potatoes, and corn were grown on small farms and plantations scattered throughout Sumter County. Prior to the Civil War, slaves did most of the work on plantations. Because of its proximity to the Tombigbee River, Gainesville became the largest inland shipping port of cotton in the entire world. By 1840, Sumter County’s large cotton production had made it one of the wealthiest and most heavily populated parts of the state. The population was made up of 22,000 African Americans and 8,000 whites.

      Sumter County’s prosperity came to an abrupt end following the boll weevil infestation in the early 1900s. Farmers attempted to replace cotton with a variety of other crops, but without much success. The farmers of Sumter County suffered even more during the Great Depression, although the vegetables grown in their truck gardens enabled them to fare better than people living in the cities at the time. Today, little cotton is grown in Sumter County. In fact, only 3.2 percent of the workforce makes a living in agriculture. Cattle is the major agricultural product in Sumter County, and forestry is the primary industry. Almost half the workforce in Sumter County is employed in manufacturing, educational services, health care, and social assistance. Sumter County was once one of Alabama’s wealthiest counties, and now it is one of the poorest.

      The 900 miles of land that make up Sumter County are part of what has come to be known as the Black Belt, which derived its name from the region’s rich black topsoil and the large number of African Americans who worked the land, first as slaves and then as sharecroppers. The economic inequality between blacks and whites living in Sumter County was not addressed until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s. In one of the last-known cases of slavery in US history, Sumter County residents Fred N. Dial and Oscar Edwin Dial were convicted in 1954 for holding two black men as virtual prisoners on the farm where they worked.

      Ironically, the poverty and illiteracy that have plagued African Americans in Sumter County for so many years also preserved many of their folk traditions. Renowned ethnomusicologists like Alan and John Lomax, Harold Courlander, and Ellie Siegmeister trekked hundreds of miles to Sumter County from the 1930s through the 1960s to record the spirituals, work songs, ring game songs, and blues that people were still singing in Sumter County. Livingston native Ruby Pickens Tartt not only assisted the Lomaxes with the task of collecting folk songs in Sumter County but also collected folk tales, legends, and life histories of former slaves from the people who lived in the red clay hills of Sumter County. For years, African Americans have sold their baskets and quilts at venues like the Sucarnochee Folklife Festival. Today, the people of Sumter County are proud of their past, and they celebrate it by passing these traditions down to their children and grandchildren.

      The University of West Alabama, which has been serving the educational needs of the region since 1835, has taken great strides to keep the history, culture, and natural resources of Sumter County alive. Since its inception in 2012, the Center for the Study of the Black Belt has provided educational programs to grade school teachers, collected oral histories with the assistance of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) workers, offered classes in crafts like twining to the community, and established the Black Belt Garden, the Black Belt Archives, and the Black Belt Hall of Fame on the UWA campus. The fact that such a center exists stands as proof that there is much more to Sumter County than barbecue clubs, hunting camps, and antebellum homes.

      One

      THE EARLY YEARS

      After Sumter County was created by the state legislature in 1832, a log courthouse was built in Livingston, the county seat. It was replaced by a frame courthouse in 1839. After it burned in 1901, the present Beaux-Arts courthouse was constructed a year later. The cornerstone was laid on July 9, 1902. The ceremony, which was presided over by former lieutenant governor J.G. Harris, included a public barbecue. Today, Sumter County consists of two cities, Livingston and York; five towns, Cuba, Emelle, Eppes, Gainesville, and Geiger; two census-designated places (CDPs), Bellamy and Panola; and two unincorporated communities, Intercourse and Ward. (Photograph by author.)

      The Alamuchee Creek mound was built between 300 and 450 CE. This truncated rectangular mound is 2.5 meters high, with a ramp on the southeastern slope. It had been abandoned by 900 CE,

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