TALLADEGA
by Patricia Stockdale

There was a time when Talladegans never looked beyond the point where their sunny skies bent to kiss their grand old mountains. They cared for no other life, for they were the princes of the earth, but misfortune soon came and with it the languor of inaction, continuing until progress stood on the mountains and blew her golden trumpet, like murmurs of thunder.

News spread rapidly of this “garden of Eden” located at the foot of of the Appalachian mountains, by early explorers, thoughout the other territories and soon the settlers came, bringing with them a dream of a utopian life.

As the first settlers began to settle, the “thunder began to roar and the mountains trembled.”

Talladega County was created by an act of the Alabama General Assembly on December 18th, 1832, from land ceded by the Creek Indians. It was located near the geographic center of the state, in the Coosa River Valley.

Many of the first settlers in Talladega were already prosperous before they arrived. While bringing their families and slaves from South Carolina, Georgia, and other states in America, leaving their homes across the Atlantic ocean and their memories behind, they rejoiced to the news they heard, of the opportunities and prosperity in the new territory, called Alabama.

There was a detailed description of how the streets and public square were laid off and named in Talladega. After the lots were surveyed and numbered, an election was held.

News, through Our Mountain Home newspaper editor and proprietor, John Williams, left a mountain of information. through the writings in his weekly newspaper is proof of the prosperity and organization of a new town called Talladega.

Another remarkable time in history was the cotton industry after the Civil War. The early 1900s, thirty five years after the civil war, Talladega and the people who lived there were still prospering in spite of the adversity through the war-torn years and abolishment of slavery.