Jefferson is an unincorporated community in Marengo County, Alabama, United States.
Demographics
Jefferson appeared on the 1870 and 1880 U.S. Censuses. In 1870, it reported 233 residents. Of those, 143 (61%) were black and 90 (39%) were white. Racial demographics in 1880 were not reported. These were the only two occasions on which it appeared on census records.
History It was founded in 1810, before Marengo was a county or Alabama was a state. Most of the original settlers were veterans of the American Revolution, including John Sample, John Gilmore, and Reuben Hildreth.Marengo County Heritage Book Committee: The heritage of Marengo County, Alabama, page 7. Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000. The village was named Jefferson in 1820, after Thomas Jefferson, and that year saw the first church established. The population had reached 200 people by 1860 and the village contained two dry goods stores, one drugstore, a male and a female academy, a Masonic Lodge, a hotel, two tanneries, a wagon shop, and a blacksmith shop.
Geography Jefferson is located at and has an elevation of .
Historic sites Jefferson Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places on 13 December 1976.
Notable person Geneva Mercer, sculptor.
Further reading Angela McMillan Howell. Raised Up Down Yonder: Growing Up Black in Rural Alabama (University Press of Mississippi; 2013) 224 pages; an ethnographic study of high school students in fictional Hamilton a pseudonym for the community near Jefferson and John Essex High School.
References