HISTORY: Barbour County, Alabama, was created by an act of the Legislature on December 18, 1832. Originally part of Pike County and the Creek Indian Territory, the area has a rich history. The county was named for James Barbour, a distinguished gentleman who had been governor of Virginia and later Secretary of War for the United States. The original county included parts of both Russell and Bullock Counties. Midway, Three Notch, Glenville and Cottonton were all originally in Barbour County. Louisville was founded in 1817, before Alabama became a state. Serving as the county seat of Pike County from 1821 to 1828, Louisville would also serve as Barbour's first county seat in 1833. The town of Clayton was created at the center of the original county in 1833, so that the conveniences of county government were an equal traveling distance to all. Eufaula, the largest settlement in Barbour County, was founded in 1827, near a pre-existing Indian town of the same name. Eufaula would be called Irwinton from 1837 to 1843, in honor of General William Irwin of Henry County, but the name was changed back to Eufaula because of confusion with a Post Office in Georgia also named Irwinton. (The name, Eufaula, means "high bluff" in the Creek or Muskogee Indians language.) In the 1870s there was a movement to have the county courthouse relocated from the geographic center of the county to the commercial center of the county. As a result, a second courthouse was established at Eufaula in 1877. The Creek Indians continued to be a force in Barbour County until the Uprising of 1836, which culminated in the last battles with the Creek Indians in Alabama being fought in February 1837 at the Battle of Hobdys Bridge, and the Battle of Pea River, which was fought just north of Hobdys Bridge in March of 1837. Both of these battles were fought in the Pea River Swamps of western Barbour County, near where Highway 130 crosses Pea River. With the Indian threat eliminated, settlers flooded the area in a great land rush. Communities flourished and vanished, while other areas grew into permanent towns. Places like Williamston, Pea River, Star Hill, Fort Browder, Hawkinsville and White Oak Station, flourished for a while, then vanished into history. Other locations, like Clio, would not be founded until after the Railroad transverse the county in the 1880s. Settlers included the Scottish, Irish, French, German, English, Jews, and African Americans. Farmers cleared the virgin pine timber and tilled the soil. Log cabins dotted the landscape. Cotton became a cash crop and large plantation homes and town houses were constructed by the wealthy. Settlers built churches, and ultimately cemeteries were established throughout the county. John McNeil, who died in July 1822, would become the first recorded white man buried in what is today Barbour County. Mr. McNeil was interred at Mt. Pleasant, with the help of the local Indians, having a hollowed out log as a coffin. The location of Mt. Pleasant is a mystery. Historians believe that Mt. Pleasant was somewhere on the old road between Louisville and Hobdys Bridge or Joiners Bridge over Pea River. Regardless of the location, this was the first recorded cemetery in Barbour County. Others would follow, and today there are about 200 identified cemeteries in the county. Some of these cemeteries, like Louisville, Clayton, Fairview, Pea River, and Mt. Zion, are well kept and easily accessible. Others, like New Bethel, Craig, Dawkins, Ephesus, Sutton, Carr, Old Nebo, and Thornton, are hard to find, overgrown with vegetation, and almost inaccessible except in winter. Still others, like Shorter, Lee, Beauchamp, Evans - Perkins, and Bennett - Lee struggle against neglect, decay and vandalism. Unfortunately there are others that have been completely destroyed. Sometimes this destruction was out of ignorance, at other times deliberate. In any case the results are the same. We have lost a part of our heritage.