Jefferson, Alabama

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.[4] Racial demographics in 1880 were not reported. These were the only two occasions on which it appeared on census records.

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.[5] The village was named Jefferson in 1820, after Thomas Jefferson, and that year saw the first church established.[5] 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.[5]

Jefferson is located at 32.38580°N 87.89817°W / 32.38580; -87.89817 and has an elevation of 233 feet (71 m).

• Jefferson Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places on 13 December 1976.

• 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.