Cahaba, also spelled Cahawba, was the first permanent

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

capital of

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

, United States, from 1820 to 1825. It was the county seat of

Dallas County, Alabama Dallas County is a County (United States), county located in the Central Alabama, central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 38,462. The county seat is Selma, Alabama, Selma. ...

until 1866. Located at the confluence of the

and Cahaba rivers, the town endured regular seasonal flooding. The state legislature moved the capital to Tuscaloosa in 1826. After Cahaba suffered another major flood in 1865, the state legislature moved the county seat northeast to Selma, which was better situated. The former settlement became defunct after it lost the county seat, because it lost associated businesses and jobs. Many people moved to the new seat. Cahaba declined rapidly, although it had been quite wealthy during the antebellum years. It is now a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

and is preserved as a state historic site known as the Old Cahawba Archeological Park. The state and associated citizens' groups are working to develop it as a full interpretive parkHarris, W. Stuart. ''Dead Towns of Alabama'', pp. 66-67. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1977. . St. Luke's Episcopal Church was returned to Old Cahawba, and a fundraising campaign is underway for its restoration.

Demographics

Cahawba was listed on the US census rolls from 1860 to 1880. It remained incorporated until as late as 1989.

Etymology

The name ''Cahaba'' is thought to come from the

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

words , meaning and , meaning .

History

Capital

Cahaba had its beginnings as an undeveloped town site at the confluence of the

and Cahaba rivers. At the old territorial capital of St. Stephens, a commission was formed on February 13, 1818, to select the site for Alabama's state capital. Cahaba was the site chosen and was approved on November 21, 1818. Due to the future capital site being undeveloped, Alabama's constitutional convention took temporary accommodations in Huntsville until a statehouse could be built. Governor William Wyatt Bibb reported in October 1819 that the town had been laid out and that lots would be auctioned to the highest bidders. The town was planned on a grid system, with streets running north and south named for trees and those running east and west named for famous men. The new statehouse was a two-story brick structure, measuring wide by long, located near Vine and Capitol streets. By 1820 Cahaba had become a functioning state capital. Due to its lowland location at the confluence of two large rivers, Cahaba was subject to seasonal flooding. It also had a reputation for an unhealthy atmosphere, when people thought that miasma in the air caused such diseases as malaria, yellow fever, and cholera. The numerous mosquitoes carried disease. People who were opposed to the capital's location at Cahaba used this as an argument for moving the capital to Tuscaloosa, which was approved by the legislature in January 1826. That was not a long-term success, and it was moved again in 1846 to centrally located

Montgomery, Alabama Montgomery is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama. Named for Continental Army major general Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River on the Gulf Coastal Plain. The population was 2 ...

. After the relocation of the capital, Cahaba was adversely affected by the loss of state government and associated business.

Antebellum

The town served as the county seat of Dallas County for several more decades. Based on revenues from the

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

trade, the town recovered from losing the capital, and reestablished itself as a social and commercial center. Centered in the fertile " Black Belt", Cahaba became a major distribution point for cotton shipped down the Alabama River to the Gulf port of Mobile. Successful planters and merchants built two-story mansions in town that expressed their wealth. St. Luke's Episcopal Church was built in 1854, designed by the nationally known architect, Richard Upjohn. When Cahaba was connected to a

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

line in 1859, a building boom was stimulated. In 1860, before the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

, the census listed 2,000 residents in the town. About 64% were enslaved African Americans, reflecting the population of Dallas County, which was 75% black and composed largely of fieldworkers on cotton plantations. In the town,

free people of color In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (; ) were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who we ...

dominated the poultry business.

Civil War

During the Civil War, the Confederate government seized Cahaba's railroad and appropriated the iron rails to extend a nearby railroad of more military importance. It built a stockade around a large cotton warehouse on the riverbank along Arch Street in order to use it as a prison, known as Castle Morgan. It was used for Union prisoners-of-war from 1863 to 1865. USUnionGraveStone

In February 1865 a major flood inundated the town, causing much additional hardship for the roughly 3000 Union soldiers held in the prison, and for the town's residents. Confederate General

Nathan Bedford Forrest Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821October 29, 1877) was an List of slave traders of the United States, American slave trader, active in the lower Mississippi River valley, who served as a General officers in the Confederate States Army, Con ...

and Union General James H. Wilson met in Cahaba at the Crocheron mansion to discuss an exchange of prisoners captured during the Battle of Selma.

Postbellum

In 1866, the state legislature moved the county seat to nearby Selma. Related businesses and population soon followed. Within ten years, many of the houses and churches in Cahaba were dismantled and moved away. St. Luke's Episcopal Church, for example, was moved in 1878 to Martin's Station. Jeremiah Haralson represented Cahawba and Dallas County when elected to the State House, the State Senate and the United States Congress. He was the only African American in Alabama elected to all three legislative bodies during Reconstruction. Together with the minority of whites, most freedmen rapidly left the declining town. By 1870, the overall population was 431, and the number of blacks was 302. During the

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...

era,

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their owners), emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self- ...

organizing in the Republican Party and trying to keep their "moderate political gains" met regularly at the vacant county courthouse. Freedmen and their families gradually developed vacant town blocks into fields and garden plots. But they soon moved away. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, a freedman purchased most of the old town site for $500. He had the abandoned buildings demolished for their building materials and shipped the material by

steamboat A steamboat is a boat that is marine propulsion, propelled primarily by marine steam engine, steam power, typically driving propellers or Paddle steamer, paddlewheels. The term ''steamboat'' is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels worki ...

to Mobile and Selma for use in growing communities. By 1903, most of Cahawba's buildings were gone; only a handful of structures survived past 1930.

Modern

Although the area is no longer inhabited, the Alabama Historical Commission maintains the site as Old Cahawba Archeological Park. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1973. Visitors to this park can see many of the abandoned streets, cemeteries, and ruins of this former state capital and county seat. The Cahawba Advisory Committee is a non-profit group based in Selma that serves to support the park; it also maintains a website related to the park and its history. It is conducting fundraising to support the restoration of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, which was relocated to Old Cahawba in the early 21st century.

Folklore

The town, and later its abandoned site, was the setting for many ghost stories during the 19th and 20th centuries. A widely known one tells of a

ghost In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

ly orb in a now-vanished garden maze at the home of C. C. Pegues. The house was located on a lot that occupied a block between Pine and Chestnut streets. The purported haunting was recorded in “Specter in the Maze at Cahaba” in '' 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey''.

Notable people

* George Henry Craig, born in Cahaba, former U.S. Representative * Anderson Crenshaw, former Alabama judge who served in the circuit and state court when this was the state capital * Jeremiah Haralson, born in Dallas County, he was the only African American in the state elected to the State House, State Senate, and Congress during the Reconstruction era. Was deprived of re-election in 1876 by fraud by the Dallas County Sheriff General Charles M. Shelley. * Edward Martineau Perine, merchant and planter; owner of the Perine Store and the Perine Mansion on Vine Street

Gallery

Image:Vine Street Cahaba.jpg, The Perine Store; photo likely taken in the last quarter of the 19th century. Image:St Lukes Episcopal Martins Station 1.jpg, St. Luke's Episcopal Church at Martin's Station (approximately from Cahaba) in 1934. Image:Cahaba Methodist Church.jpg, The Methodist Church in the 1930s, later destroyed by fire. Image:Kirkpatrick House Cahaba.jpg, Kirkpatrick mansion on Oak Street, burned in 1935. The two-story brick slave quarters at the rear remains intact. Image:Dallas Academy.jpg, The Female Academy in 1903. Image:Perine Mansion Cahaba.jpg, The twenty-six room Perine mansion, built in the 1850s, later demolished. Image:Perine Mansion.jpg, Another view of the Perine Mansion. Image:Crocheron mansion.jpg, Crocheron mansion, built 1843, destroyed by fire in the early 20th century. Image:Castle Morgan.jpg, Castle Morgan, a Confederate prison camp on the Alabama River at Cahaba. Image:Cahaba School House.jpg, The abandoned school house in Cahaba, taken in November 2019. Image:Downtown Cahaba.jpg, The informational plaque for downtown Cahaba Image:Arthur-Fambro House.jpg, The Arthur/Fambro House, built by Judge W. W. Fambro and purchased by former slave D. Ezekiel Arthur in 1894. Arthur's family lived in the home until 1994.

References

Bibliography

*Fry, Anna M. Gayle.

Memories of Old Cahaba. Nashville, Tenn: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1908. * Meador, Daniel J.
"Riding Over the Past? Cahaba, 1936"
''Virginia Quarterly Review'', Winter 2002.

External links

- Civil War Album
Old Cahawba Archaeological Park
- Alabama Historical Commission
Cahawba Advisory Committee

The Cahaba Foundation
* * * * * * * * {{authority control National Register of Historic Places in Dallas County, Alabama

Populated places established in 1818 Ghost towns in Alabama Reportedly haunted locations in Alabama History of Alabama Archaeological sites in Alabama Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama Alabama in the American Civil War Alabama placenames of Native American origin Geography of Dallas County, Alabama Protected areas of Dallas County, Alabama Parks in Alabama Alabama State Historic Sites Former county seats in Alabama Museums in Dallas County, Alabama Historic American Buildings Survey in Alabama Populated places on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama