WILCOX COUNTY ALABAMA
WILCOX COUNTY ALABAMA
Wilcox County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, the population was 11,670. Its county seat is Camden. Wilcox County was established on December 13, 1819. The county was named after Joseph M. Wilcox, a US Army lieutenant who was killed in Alabama during the Creek War.
The county is located in the south-central part of the state, in the Black Belt region. It encompasses 883 square miles. The county was a center of Alabama antebellum plantation life. Today it is largely agricultural and rural.Wilcox County is home to the nationally renowned Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective and the Freedom Quilting Bee. Pine Apple in Wilcox County was also the birthplace and boyhood home of Kenneth R. Giddens (1908-1993), who founded several TV and radio stations in Mobile before becoming the longest-running director of Voice of America (1969-1977).
Wilcox County Alabama Cities
Camden Alabama
Camden is a city in and the county seat of Wilcox County.
Wilcox County Alabama Towns
Oak Hill Alabama
This small community is located in beautiful Wilcox county. Founded in the early 1800s, this town continues to enjoy a peaceful way of life. According to the 1940 U.S. Census, it incorporated in 1938. The population was 26 at the 2010 census, down from 37 in 2000. It is the second smallest incorporated town in Alabama as of 2010, behind McMullen. However, the smallest unincorporated census-designated place in the state is also located in Wilcox County, that of Catherine, which had 22 residents as of 2010. With a median household income of $9,286 (compared to $44,758 for the state), Oak Hill is the poorest community in Alabama.
Pine Apple Alabama
Pine Apple is a town in Wilcox County. It incorporated in 1872. At the 2010 census the population was 132, down from 145 in 2000. It has two places on the National Register of Historic Places, the Hawthorne House and the Pine Apple Historic District. Pine Apple was originally called Friendship, and under the latter name was laid out in 1825. The present name was given in 1852 on account of there being pine and apple groves near the town site.
Pine Hill Alabama
Pine Hill is a town in Wilcox County. It incorporated in 1895. As of the 2010 census, the population of the town was 975, up from 966 in 2000. It incorporated in 1895. The area where Pine Hill now is located first was named Arnold. After an early settler referred to a hill covered with pines as “that pine hill,” the name stuck and the first post office, established in 1839, was named Pine Hill.
Yellow Bluff Alabama
Yellow Bluff is a town in Wilcox County. It incorporated in 1985. At the 2010 census the population was 188, up from 181 in 2000.
Wilcox County Alabama Census-designated Places
Boykin Alabama
Boykin, also known as Gee’s Bend, is an African American majority community and census-designated place in a large bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County. As of the 2010 census, its population was 275.
Boykin Alabama History
Boykin is a block of land enclosed on three sides by the Alabama River, within a horseshoe shaped turn of the river named Gee’s Bend. It is within the Black Belt of Alabama. The plantation started by Joseph Gee passed to his nephews Sterling and Charles Gee upon his death, along with 47 slaves. The brothers then sold it to their relative Mark H. Pettway in 1845 to settle a $29,000 debt. About a year later, the Pettway family moved from North Carolina to Gee’s Bend, bringing about one hundred slaves with them. When slavery was abolished many of them continued working for the Pettways as sharecroppers. Many of the black tenants Arthur Rothstein photographed were named Pettway. The white Pettway family owned the property until 1895, when it was sold to Adrian Sebastian Van de Graaff. Van de Graaff, a lawyer from Tuscaloosa, then operated it as an absentee landlord.
Credit: Wikipedia contributors, “Boykin, Alabama,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Catherine Alabama
Catherine is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Wilcox County. As of the 2010 census, its population was 22. It is the least populated census-designated place in Alabama as of 2010.
Wilcox County Alabama Unincorporated Communities
Ackerville Alabama
Ackerville is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County. Ackerville has one site included on the National Register of Historic Places, the Ackerville Baptist Church of Christ. A post office was established at Ackerville in 1892, and remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1940. The community was named in honor of the Acker family of area residents.
Alberta Alabama
Alberta is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Anne Manie Alabama
Anne Manie, sometimes spelled Annemanie, is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Arlington Alabama
Arlington, originally known as Dumas Store, is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Canton Bend Alabama
Canton Bend, once known simply as Canton, is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County. Located on the south bank of the Alabama River, it served as the first county seat for Wilcox County from 1819 until its move to Camden in 1833.
Coy Alabama
Coy is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County. Coy is located in a bend of the Alabama River and is home to several historic plantations.
Furman Alabama
Furman, also known as Old Snow Hill, is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Gee’s Bend Alabama
Lower Peach Tree Alabama
Lower Peach Tree is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
The community was named for a peach tree which stood near the original town site (the town’s name was prefixed with “Lower” to avoid repetition with another place called “Peach Tree” in the state).
McWilliams Alabama
McWilliams is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County. The town is named for the general store established there by the McWilliams family, who migrated to South Alabama from the Orangeburg District of South Carolina.
Millers Ferry Alabama
Millers Ferry is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County, Alabama, United States. The Millers Ferry Lock and Dam is located near the community on the Alabama River.
Pebble Hill Alabama
Pebble Hill, also known as Capell, is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Snow Hill Alabama
Snow Hill is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Sunny South Alabama
Sunny South is an unincorporated community in Wilcox County.
Wilcox County Alabama Ghost Towns
Prairie Bluff Alabama
Prairie Bluff, also known as Dale and Daletown, is a ghost town in Wilcox County.
Ruthven Alabama
Ruthven is a ghost town in Wilcox County.
Wilcox County Alabama Weblinks
For over one hundred forty years, Bethel Church has been ministering to the needs of the people of eastern Wilcox County, Alabama. Founded in 1856 by settlers who relocated to Oak Hill, Bethel Church continues a tradition of Associate Reformed Presbyterian influence on this area which dates to the 1820's. The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church is the oldest Presbyterian denomination in America. Our beliefs are those found in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and in the Standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
A plantation named Gee's Bend was established in the very early 1800's on a huge bend in the Alabama River directly across the river from the present location of Camden, Alabama. The owner and creator of this prosperous plantation was Joseph Gee born March 12, 1763 in Sussex County, VA eldest son of Charles Gee and his second wife Elizabeth Dobie who later moved to Halifax, North Carolina. Joseph went to Wilcox County, AL where he built the plantation and he died at Mobile on Dec, 1, 1824. He was a bachelor and left an estate estimated at from $40,000 to $60,000 which obviously must have included the plantation, Gee's Bend. His nephews Sterling H. Gee and Charles J. Gee offered to probate an alleged verbal will by which the deceased bequeathed all his property exclusively to the two nephews. The excluded heirs contested this arrangement in a chancery court suit so there is a court record of this whole sordid affair. The result was that the property was divided among Joseph's nieces and nephews.
Hunter Appreciation Day is held in November, celebrating a rich hunting heritage and thanking the many hunters who travel from around the country to enjoy the outdoors of Wilcox County. The bi-annual Front Porch Tour is held in the spring, taking visitors back to a time when front porches were for socializing with friends and neighbors, a time when the pace of life was a bit slower.