Alabama Genealogy

Despite Birmingham’s powerful industrial growth and its contributions to the state economy, its citizens, and those of other newly developing areas, were underrepresented in the state legislature for years. The rural-dominated legislature refused to redistrict state House and Senate seats from 1901 to the 1960s. This led to a stranglehold on the state by a white rural minority. The contemporary interests of urbanizing, industrial cities and tens of thousands of citizens were not adequately represented in the government. One result was that Jefferson County, home of Birmingham’s industrial and economic powerhouse, contributed more than one-third of all tax revenue to the state. It received back only 1/67th of the tax money, as the state legislature ensured taxes were distributed equally to each county regardless of population.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

After 1874, the Democratic party had constant control of the state administration. The Republican Party by then was chiefly supported by African Americans. Republicans held no local or state offices, but the party did have some federal patronage. It failed to make nominations for office in 1878 and 1880 and endorsed the ticket of the Greenback party in 1882.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

According to the presidential plan of reorganization, a provisional governor for Alabama was appointed in June 1865. A state convention met in September of the same year, and declared the ordinance of secession null and void and slavery abolished. A legislature and a governor were elected in November, and the legislature was at once recognized by President Andrew Johnson, but not by Congress, which refused to seat the delegation. Johnson ordered the Army to allow the inauguration of the governor after the legislature ratified the thirteenth amendment in December, 1865. But the legislature’s passage of Black Codes to control the freedmen who were flocking from the plantations to the towns, and its rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, intensified Congressional hostility to the presidential plan.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

The “Unionists” were successful in the elections of 1851 and 1852. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and uncertainty about agitation against slavery led the State Democratic convention of 1856 to revive the “Alabama Platform”. When Democratic National convention at Charleston, South Carolina failed to approve the “Alabama Platform” in 1860, the Alabama delegates, followed by those of the other cotton “states,” withdrew. Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, Governor Andrew B. Moore, as previously instructed by the legislature, called a state convention. Many prominent men had opposed secession. In North Alabama, there was an attempt to organize a neutral state to be called Nickajack. With President Lincoln’s call to arms, most opposition to secession ended.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

In 1819, Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state to the Union. Its constitution provided for universal suffrage for white men.

One of the first problems of the new commonwealth was that of finance. Since the amount of money in circulation was not sufficient to meet the demands of the increasing population, a system of state banks was instituted. State bonds were issued and public lands were sold to secure capital, and the notes of the banks, loaned on security, became a medium of exchange. Prospects of an income from the banks led the legislature of 1836 to abolish all taxation for state purposes. This was hardly done, however, before the Panic of 1837 wiped out a large portion of the banks’ assets. Next came revelations of grossly careless and even of corrupt management. In 1843 the banks were placed in liquidation. After disposing of all their available assets, the state assumed the remaining liabilities, for which it had pledged its faith and credit.

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Popularity: 32% [?]

Among the Native American peoples living within the present boundaries of Alabama in pre-contact times were ancestors of Alabama (Alibamu), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Koasati, and Mobile people.

Spanish were the first Europeans to enter Alabama, claiming land for their Crown. They named the region La Florida.

Although a member of Pánfilo de Narváez’s expedition of 1528 may have entered southern Alabama, the first fully documented visit was by explorer Hernando de Soto. He made an arduous expedition along the Coosa, Alabama and Tombigbee rivers in 1539.

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Popularity: 51% [?]

Alabama became a state of the United States of America on December 14, 1819. After the Indian wars and removals of the early 1800s forced most Native Americans out of the state, white settlers arrived in large numbers. Wealthy planters created large cotton plantations based in the fertile central Black Belt, which depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans. Tens of thousands of slaves were transported to and sold in the state by slave traders who purchased them in the Upper South. Elsewhere in Alabama, poorer whites practiced subsistence farming. By 1860 African Americans comprised 45% of the state’s population of 964,201.

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Popularity: 28% [?]