Many of the people and events in Blount County history are well documented. Others, not so much. This book of essays is an attempt to revisit some of the well known events of our county's past, add a little more background, and present our history from a Blount County point of view. In addition to illuminating some familiar topics, this book attempts to bring to light people and events who played significant roles in the development of Blount, but were somehow overlooked or skimmed over by the primary reference books-people and events which were the topic of conversation among our ancestors but over time, have been forgotten. These fun to read tales will promote a greater understanding of the history of Blount County.

Amazing Alabama: A Potpourri of Fascinating Facts, Tall Tales and Storied Stories chronicles a brief history of the state, famous personages associated with Alabama, a discussion of state firsts, unique occurrences, antiquated laws and other fascinating topics.

The Blount Count Journal published in Oneonta from 1909 to 1918. Compared to other Blount County papers, the Journal was only a small blip on the journalistic radar in Blount County. However, it is an often overlooked and untapped source of great genealogical and historical knowledge. While some of the articles mirror those published in its contemporary publications, often the Journal captured other obituaries and news missed by the Democrat. Most of the original copies of the Journal were found in the court house in Oneonta. These were reviewed for notices of births, marriages, obituaries and interesting news items. Missing issues from the court house were reviewed at the State Archives in Montgomery. This book will add to the body of knowledge of Blount County, Alabama and will serve as a useful tool for area genealogists and historians.

Known for antebellum mansions and sunny beaches, Alabama also claims an abundance of fascinating mysteries and legends. The White Thang is a Sasquatch-like creature that has terrorized Alabamians for generations. For a brief period in the 1980s, Needham gained national attention because of its "crying pecan tree." In 1854, a farmer named Orion Williamson simply vanished in a field in Selma. From the aquatic beast known as the Coosa River Monster to the story of the Leprechaun of Mobile, these stories have evolved over generations. Author Alan Brown presents some of the strangest stories from this collective tradition.

Alabamians in Blue offers an in-depth scholarly examination of Alabama’s black and white Union soldiers and their contributions to the eventual success of the Union army in the western theater. Christopher M. Rein contends that the state’s anti-Confederate residents tendered an important service to the North, primarily by collecting intelligence and protecting logistical infrastructure. He highlights an underappreciated period of biracial cooperation, underwritten by massive support from the federal government. Providing a broad synthesis, Rein’s study demonstrates that southern dissenters were not passive victims but rather active participants in their own liberation. Ecological factors, including agricultural collapse under levies from both armies, may have provided the initial impetus for Union enlistment. Federal pillaging inflicted further heavy destruction on plantation agriculture. The breakdown in basic subsistence that ensued pushed Alabama’s freedmen and Unionists into federal camps in garrison cities in search of relief and the opportunity for revenge. Once in uniform, Alabama’s Union soldiers served alongside northern regiments and frustrated Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s attempts to interrupt the Union supply efforts in the 1864 Atlanta campaign, which led to the collapse of Confederate arms in the western theater and the eventual Union victory. Rein describes a “hybrid warfare” of simultaneous conventional and guerilla battles, where each significantly influenced the other. He concludes that the conventional conflict both prompted and eventually ended the internecine warfare that largely marked the state’s experience of the war. A comprehensive analysis of military, social, and environmental history, Alabamians in Blue uncovers a past of biracial cooperation in the American South, and in Alabama in particular, that postwar adherents to the “Myth of the Lost Cause” have successfully suppressed until now.

"The Cullman Democrat was established about 25 years after the first newspaper to publish in the town named for the famous German settler, John G. Cullman. While it came relatively late on the scene, its circulation soon grew to match that of the most successful Alabama weekly newspapers. The Democrat was first published by Major W.F. Palmer in June of 1901. Palmer sold the paper to R.L. and J.E. Griffin in 1902, but by the end of January of 1903, the paper was purchased by Joseph Robert Rosson. The Democrat remained in control of the Rosson family for man years after."--Publisher's description

Stories of life in Tuscaloosa and Alabama before the Civil War.