A Glimpse of Jackson County, Alabama

From John H. Graham, Stevenson, Alabama:

“This is a log house built about 1846 near the head of McMahan’s Cove. It was occupied full time until about 1970 by the Walker family.”

This house is in Jackson County, Alabama, along the Tennessee River, in the northeast corner of the state. It’s a state that Andrew Jackson had much to do with creating. In 1814, most of the region belonged to the Creek nation, and other parts of Cherokees and Chickasaws. There was a limited number of white settlements, largely in the vicinity of Mobile Bay in the south and Huntsville in the north. But from 1814 onward, as shown in Jacksonland, that began to change. The last Indian rights to Alabama land were terminated by 1838, when the Cherokees were removed. This made space, in many places, for enormous cotton plantations, and in others for modest farmhouses like this one.