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The Road Builders of Alabama
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I began reading the Minute Books of the Alabama Town meetings starting from the very beginning in
1826. The first 15 years or so contained a lot of documentation on the creation of roads, changing roads,
and discontinuing roads. This part of every annual meeting did not seem very interesting at first. After
reading ten years worth I noticed something very exciting. Needless to say, I started over.
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The town of Alabama was divided into Road Districts. Every district had an Overseer of Highways.
There were also (at that time) three Highway Superintendents. Their job was to oversee the Overseers.
Every man in each district was responsible to help clear the land and build the roads in his district.
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At the annual town meeting the Superintendents of Highways gave their report. In this report was the
name of every man in each district and how many days he worked on road construction. If a man did not
work any days there was a zero next to his name. Every man was accounted for.
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It finally dawned on me that this was almost like a mini "head of household" census! I decided that
this was valuable information for anyone doing genealogy, especially the years that fall between the
census'. I decided to post the names of the men in each district for each year until it no longer seems
relevant. They eventually stopped doing this. Probably because the majority of the road construction was
completed. I have already found several people that, prior to this information, I could not prove lived
here.
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