Some Early Families of Snow Hill, Wilcox County, Alabama

Wilcox County, Alabama was created on 13 December 1819 from the vast region obtained by Gen. Andrew Jackson for the United States in the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson, which ended the 1813–1814 Creek War. The county was named in honor of Lt. Joseph M. Wilcox, a Connecticut native and West Point graduate who was killed in January 1814 during the conflict. Wilcox lies in southern Alabama's Black Belt, and like surrounding counties of the region, farming dominated life there for its first century. The Alabama River bisects the county, and numerous steamboat landings along its banks made it easy for farmers to ship cotton and other products downriver.

Wilcox County lies a short distance north of the Federal Road, the only viable route from Georgia into south Alabama between about 1807 and the 1830s. Lands directly along the Federal Road in what are now Butler and Lowndes Counties attracted earlier settlement, but in the early 1820s famililes from Georgia and the Carolinas began moving into Wilcox County.

As settlement increased in northeastern Wilcox County in the 1820s, the village of Snow Hill formed on the west side of Cedar Creek, likely beginning as a single store surrounded by a few cabins. The village prospered, and Snow Hill soon boasted stores, a blacksmith shop, Missionary (Southern) and Primitive Baptist churches, a Methodist Church, a school, and the region's first post office. Located about 1.5 miles south of the Dallas County line, Snow Hill became the focal point of the local community during the antebellum era.

After the Civil War, a railroad line was laid south of the village, and all business activity at Snow Hill shifted to the railroad station located about four miles to the southwest. The original village became known as "Old Snow Hill," while the community that formed around the station adopted the name Snow Hill. More recently, the area's commercial center moved to the town of Furman, located about one mile south of Old Snow Hill.¹

Notes:

¹Palmer, W. B. "A History of Furman, Alabama." In Barefield, Marilyn Davis. Records of Wilcox County, Alabama. Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1988, pp. 122–134. Palmer's work was copied by the WPA Library Project #3529 sponsored by the Birmingham Library Board in 1937.