This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Stovall, Smith, Dawson, Sanders, Hayden, McClendon, McGowan, Peterman, Stringer, Lane, Tharp, Freeman, Brown Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/YS.2ADI/2688.1 Message Board Post: Georgana, As the unofficial “official” historian of the hamlet of Haleburg, my native home and that of my ancestors, I will share what I know of the Stovall Plantation that was begun by this stalwart African American family after the War Between the States. Stovall Family legend has it that one Tucker “Tuck” Stovall received his freedom from a Tennessee plantation and he set forth to purchase land in the still sparsely settled area in Henry County that is now Haleburg, Alabama. He was among other settlers such as the old Confederates Jonathan Hales (the town’s founder), Council Stephenson, and Capt. Dennis Harrison Zorn who moved into the area in the post war years along with many others black and white. Tuck Stovall purchased a farm of about 250 acres on what is now Stovall Drive in Haleburg. He was a tanner by trade and it is not known if he continued this trade or simply began farming the red clay soil that is on one half of the Stovall Pl! ace and the sandy land on the other half of the Stovall Place. In 1871, Tucker Stovall and his children along with other African Americans that had created a community at Haleburg later called “Sandy Ridge”, helped to establish the Mount Zion Colored Baptist Church and constructed a beautiful churchhouse with double steeples in front. The Stovall Family and other families that were once members of the dear old church have just restored the churchhouse. The Henry County Historical Group, Inc. in now in the process of working with the Historic Chattahoochee Commission (State of Alabama) to have a historic marker in metal placed at this bethel spot of African worship. It is already listed on the Alabama Register of Historic Places since 1984. I have worked with the church and my friends there to seek historic grants for the church and cemetery. Tucker Stovall gave the land for the place of worship and his plantation wrapped around the church where it stands today with a large cemetery with many marked graves and many mo! re unmarked graves that are common in all of the cemeteries of the area during those tough times of the Radical Republican Reconstruction that was actually further destruction of the South for both Africans and whites alike. Some of the names of other families include Dawson, Sanders, Hayden, McClendon, McGowan, Peterman, Stringer, Lane, Tharp, Freeman, and others—all upstanding African families and hard working farmers in the area. Unique to the Stovall Plantation is that the original 40 acres that was purchased, plus many of the other acres purchased through the years, are still in the Stovall family and have been passed down through the generations. The key person at the Mount Zion Colored Baptist Church (its historic name for “Colored” has been dropped today) is deacon Ceffer Stovall of Stovall Drive, Haleburg, Alabama 36319. Another version of the legend places Tucker Stovall on the Smith Plantation just up the Old River Road across the Abbie Creek from Haleburg on the plantation of Capt. Thomas Tipton Smith. The white Smith family was from Tennessee and moved to this large and prosperous plantation on the Chattahoochee River bringing their slaves with them. There is a possibility that Tucker Stovall, his wife and some children were on this Smith Plantation at the end of the war and slavery days. The older white people used to quip “Tuck Stovall was still in the pouch when slavery days ended.” This was Tucker Stovall, Jr. they had reference to. The folk vernacular expression referred to the fact that Tucker Stovall the Younger was never a slave, but was born into freedom though his mother was in slavery and pregnant at the end of the War Between the States. This story is from the white Smith family stories. There were many Smith freedmen and some of them were the actual he! irs and children of the Capt. and an African woman on the plantation. When the plantation was divided at the death of Capt. Smith, the African Smith’s received land in the will along with the white Smith heirs. I place this idea somewhat bluntly to some, but it was a known fact that the Chattahoochee River Plantations were scattered with mulatto children of the plantation owners and slave maidens on the places. It is a fact that many Southerners, black and white, try to avoid. Once when asked if I was kin to a certain person I simply responded, “I am kin to all of the white people and half of the black people in Henry County!” My ancestor, William Brown was one of the first two men to raise a crop in Henry County in 1816 before the land was even open for settlement—they were squatters raising crops in the Creek Indian old fields and living in the skint pine log homes of the Creeks that had been removed after the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814—but I digress. A Stovall descendant that is a good Stovall family historian is Mertice (George) Keith, granddaughter to Hannah and Charlie Lane of Haleburg. You may contact me at my private e-mail address and I can give you her number and that of Ceffer Stovall—one of my most treasured friends! Also, as a historian of Haleburg, I would be very interested in any information that can prove or disprove the information I have herein covered. I am searching for as much of the African American history of Haleburg as possible—too little too late! Very Henry Countily Yours, Steve Elliott