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 that 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 throughout the region, farming prevailed as the leading occupation for the county's first century. The Alabama River bisects the county, and numerous steamboat landings along the river 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 means of transportation from Georgia into south Alabama between about 1807 and the 1830s. Lands directly adjacent to the Federal Road in modern Butler and Lowndes Counties received earlier settlement, but in the early 1820s, famililes from Georgia and the Carolinas began settling in 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, probably originating as merely a store surrounded by a few cabins. The village thrived, and Snow Hill soon boasted stores, a blacksmith shop, both 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 moved to the railroad station located about four miles to the southwest. The original village became known as "Old Snow Hill," and the community that formed at the railroad station now became known as 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.