Page Contents for Pickensville, Alabama

Statistics & Facts

Historical Events

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Statistics & Facts

The Alabama state capital is Montgomery.
The population of Pickensville is approximately 169 (1990), 608 (2010).
The approximate number of families is 85 (1990), 275 (2010).
The amount of land area in Pickensville is 2.509 sq. kilometers.
The amount of surface water is 0.043 sq kilometers.
The distance from Pickensville to Washington DC is 764 miles.
The distance to the Alabama state capital is 133 miles. (as the crow flies)
Pickensville is positioned 33.22 degrees north of the equator and 88.26 degrees west of the prime meridian.

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Pickensville Historical Events

1860'sPlace: Tombigbee River at pickensville, Alabama
This event took place after the war was over when many hardships were placed upon all the people. This story, sad as it is, is true, and was passed down as oral history.

My granddaddy was a small child when our great-grandmother carried her family to work on the Bailey Plantation. The Civil War was winding down. This put my granddaddy to be raised right in the Reconstruction Period. The farm hands that were once slaves thought they could stay on and not work. The plantation owner told them they were free to go with their newfoundfreedom. They just walked off with nowhere to go and no way to make a living. Granddaddy told me this one day when we were sitting by an old wood burning stove made from a 50 gallon barrel. He told me many farm homes were left without a man to guard the home or plow the fields. The men had not gotten back from the war or were killed during the war. These, once slaves, gathered on the Tombigbee River. They had no food or money, so they took to stealing. They would slip in at night, take a widow woman's milk cow, chickens, hog, corn, or anything they could find to eat. This went on for a long time. It seems these former slaves had put severe hardships on everybody. Women who were trying to feed their children, sometimes large families couldn't, because the former slaves were taking everything they had raised on the farms. So, all the white men had a meeting. They decided to fix the problem. They went to the river and killed every black man they could find. Granddaddy said, "The Tombigbee River had former slaves floating for miles." The white men told the black women that they were free to go and take their children with them. Chuck Bailey put my granddaddy in charge of these workers at a very young age. This made him a hard man, and he never got over it. He had a quick temper until the day he died. His job forced him to do things he was not mature enough to handle. These are the things I have been told by my uncle of my great-Grandfather, Calvin Dickerson Johnson. I am not proud of the things, "Dick," as he was known, had to do on the Chuck Bailey Planation, but I am proud of his mother, Liza Johnson, a Chitimacha Indian, from around Franklin, Louisiana and her husband, my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Johnson who died of malaria and was buried on the banks of the Tombigbee River.

Submitted by Pamela