JCHA

If you are using The Heritage of Jackson County, Alabama book on the JCHA website, here are a few things to remember.

• Families spell names differently. The county has Hinshaws and Henshaws and they are all kin. They have Clemens and Clemons. My family has Nabors and Neighbors. These are all the same family. Look in the index or search on something other than the last name before you rule out inclusion.


• I am sure the committee who put together Heritage approached representatives of families who did not respond. Likewise, they approached families and got pages of information from families who have not lived in the county for several generations.


• Some families have sketches in multiple places.


• Family sketches are, for the most part, written by family members. The committee compiling the book could not validate all this family information. It could be as riddled with errors as ancestry. Like ancestry trees, the sketches are a starting place, not the be all and end all. Check the original sources.


• Don't forget this is not the only book with family information. The Stevenson Story includes families from the Stevenson area. Kennamer's Woodville Book is nothing but family sketches and pictures. Some cemetery books, like Paint Rock Valley Pioneers (which I do not have permission to post) contain good family sketches.


• Look in the logical place. The Limrock books are full of information about Gentles. The Birmingham/Rash book has information about Coffey, Heltons, and Austins, for example.

Legal Sources and Ledgers

In 1999, when the little courthouse was moved to the Heritage Center, records formerly housed at other locations were moved to the Heritage Center. Additionally, historical source documents like store ledgers and paper collections were added to the Heritage Center. These collections were indexed by Jan Boyd Roberts and others and collected and published as a set of grey books titled "Early Jackson County, Alabama Books." The index to these sources is out of print and over time, the books themselves are not clearly labeled, and it is not apparent what set of books is being indexed.

The best of the courthouse legal records (Wills) are available on ancestry. Much of the reason for this research is to locate potentially useful documents, either in the main courthouse, the little courthouse at the Heritage Center, or online through a search facility such as Ancestry or Family Search.

The role of the probate court is to make sure that a deceased person's debts are paid and assets are allocated to the correct beneficiaries. The term probate is used to describe the legal process that manages the assets and liabilities left behind by a recently deceased person. Probate is multifaceted in that it covers the overall legal process of dealing with a deceased person's assets and debt, the court that manages the process, and the actual distribution of assets itself. Individual states have specialized probate courts. Some states do not call it a probate court but instead refer to it as a surrogate’s court, orphan’s court, or chancery court.

So, our early record about Orphan's court has very little to do with orphans. Remember that at this early date, women, children, and slaves were not recognized as legal entities. A woman had to have a court-appointed guardian to stand for her in legal situations. Orphaned children needed a legal guardian. Slaves were property and had no rights at all. They were dealt with as property, not a people with legal rights and certainly without the right to inherit. Wills in which property was left to slaves were taken into court and broken. There is an excellent discussion of this topic here

Circuit Court Records

The Alabama Circuit Courts are the state trial courts of general jurisdiction in the State of Alabama. The Circuit Courts have jurisdiction to hear civil and criminal cases. For civil cases, the courts has authority to try cases with an amount in controversy of more than $3,000 and has exclusive original jurisdiction over claims for more than $10,000.[1] The Circuit Courts are the criminal trial courts for most felony charges, and for some misdemeanors and lesser included offenses.[1] The Circuit Courts also have appellate jurisdiction over certain cases arising from the Alabama District Courts (the trial courts of limited jurisdiction in Alabama).

The team of indexes assembled by Wendell Page indexed the Circuit Court minutes between 1842 and 1868. Additional information about these court records is found in the first of these three indexes.

Chancery Court Records

Under the English legal system that we inherited, there were two kinds of courts: church (chancery) courts and the king's court, identified as “law" courts with "legal" jurisdiction. That same system was duplicated in America, and most states continued to have two courts: one for matters traditionally handled by the church courts involving matters of "equity" and another for matters that were governed by either the common law (not statutory) and statutory law. The jurisdictions did not overlap, but one person seeking relief could have both equity claims and legal claims. In Alabama, the same judges handled both types of cases, although there were separate judges for each jurisdiction in some states, such as Tennessee. Each court, chancery and law, had clerks to accept pleadings and keep records of cases. The clerk in charge of the chancery court was called the "Register in Chancery". On the law side, the clerk was called simply, "Clerk of Court". Lois Stewart was the last Jackson County Register in Chancery.

Rollup of Slaves Mentioned in All Other Indexes

Having helped a number of African-Americans trying to trace their ancestors, I appreciate first-hand how difficult this is. There are slaves census records in 1850 and 1860 but all these records record is the age and sex of the slave, not the name. The first census, the 1870 census called by man the Freedman's Census, is the first treatment of African-Americans as people with actual names and identities. Slaves had only Christian names, and often the names the same names as children born about the same time in the slave-owner family. Our family, for example, had a son who died in 1836 named Napoleon Bradford. There were black Napoleon Bradfords in the same area until 1930.

The team of people who built these indexes created a unique document that is made up of all the slave references in other indexed documents. I have also found Chancery Court records very helpful in the past. For example, I read a case where a white slave owner took another white man into chancery court because he he exchanged goods for the labor of a slave, and the slave had not been returned as agreed. The slave was identified as Isaac, son of Dicie, and this is very good information to have to establish kinship. Here is the roll-up of slave references from other county pre-Civil War documents.

Phone Books

• 1917 Jackson County Phone Book


• 1952 Bridgeport and Stevenson


• 1955 Bridgeport and Stevenson


• 1956 Bridgeport and Stevenson


• 1957 Bridgeport and Stevenson



• 1951 Scottsboro


• 1955 Scottsboro


• 1956 Scottsboro


• 1958 Scottsboro


• 1966 Scottsboro, Section, and Skyline


• 1970 Scottsboro City Directory Supplement


• 1979 Scottsboro City Directory

Links to Useful Publications

• The Kennamer Family by J.R. Kennamer (1924)


• Salt Peter Mining and the Civil War in Jackson County by Marion G. Smith


• Moody Brick Web Site

Locations in Jackson County on the National Register of Historic Places

Links are to the actual paperwork and photos submitted to put these Jackson County locations on the National Register of Historic Places. Here is the wikipedia table of Jackson County places on the national registry. .

• Jackson County Civil War Soldiers
• A A Russell's 4th Alabama Cavalry (James Sentell)
• Jackson County Korean War Casualties
• Jackson County Vietnam Casualties
• Jackson County WWI Casualties
• Jackson County WWII Casualties