Civilization Comes to the Big Spring: Huntsville, Alabama, 1823

Civilization Comes to the Big Spring. Huntsville, Alabama, 1823. By Sarah Huff Fisk. Huntsville, Ala.: Pinhook Publishing, 1997. xii, 178 pp. $16.95 (paper) ISBN 0-9655917-3-5.

Within a year after Leroy Pope of Petersburg, Georgia, purchased a majority of Section 36 Township 3, Range 1, West during the 1809 land sales for the newly opened Madison County in the Mississippi Territory, plans were made to build a city atop the bluff overlooking "the Big Spring." Pope gave the city commissioners thirty of the sixty acres he set aside for the new town adjacent to the spring bluff. The original name, Twickenham, lasted but two years, after which the townspeople opted for Huntsville, in honor of John Hunt, who had settled by the spring in 1805.

From 1810 to 1823 seventy-seven buildings were constructed around the town square. Sixty-four of these were standing at the time the constitutional convention met in 1819. Thus, the reader is able to visualize a vibrant town ready to receive the delegates who came to Huntsville that year.

The city had unexpected amenities. In addition to merchants, barbers, lawyers, and furniture dealers selling the "latest fashions" from Baltimore and New York, there were saddle makers, tailors, silversmiths (from 1818 to 1825, nine individuals offered services in gold, silver and watchmaking), a furniture gilder (Francis Le Coq), two book binders, a piano tuner, and a portrait painter (John Grimes of Kentucky), as well as over forty-one physicians and dentists.

That the town was wealthy was evidenced in the 1821 assessment on time pieces. This tax, $9,264.25, resulted from the levy on 56 gold and 119 silver watches and 36 clocks.

As in any modern city, businesses opened and closed. Buildings saw a variety of usages. Consider for example, Building #22 on the north side of the square. Built before 1814, its first occupants (1815) were John J. Winston and Thomas D. Crabb, merchants. The following year S. Ragsdale & Co. sold county products from Building #22. In 1818 it housed the offices of doctors John Hart and Alex Campbell. By 1823 the law office of John M. Taylor and Byrd Brandon was located in Building #22.

Fisk has meticulously recorded the specific history of each building surrounding the square, including the courthouse and the public market house. Basing her research on recorded deeds, she has also relied on materials from the town's newspapers, providing important facts about a developing city for both the casual reader and scholar alike. Fisk uses newspapers to identify a variety of somewhat exotic items for sale. For example, in 1819 John E. Reviere, confectioner, distiller, and baker, offered "soft shell Almonds, Muscated Raisins, Brandy Fruit assorted, Preserves: Lemons, limes, oranges, pineapples, Gingers and West India Tamorinds, Wines, Confectionary, Cordials, Cakes and Breads" (p. 64).

The volume is enhanced by a scale illustration of the buildings surrounding the square. With no photographs to guide her Fisk has used information from deeds, newspapers, and the few surviving buildings from the period to depict lot sizes to scale. An eighteen-by-twenty-fourinch print of the full scene is available separately from the publishers. The volume is fully indexed.

I know of no work that compares to Civilization Comes to the Big Spring, other than architectural studies such as the Washington, D.C., Commission of Fine Arts's detailed study of Massachusetts Avenue architecture and similar studies of great houses in a variety of historic cities. But Fisk has provided something different-a study of ordinary buildings in a frontier town.

This gem of a book details the development of the town square in an Alabama frontier town that would host a constitutional convention seven years after its incorporation. Fisk has demonstrated the importance of building research in documenting the transformation of a settlement into a city. Other Alabama towns deserve similar treatment.

JOHN RISON JONES JR. Huntsville, Alabama

Copyright University of Alabama Press Jan 2000
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved