Larkinsville, Alabama

David Larkin, third son born to a family of pioneers in Tennessee, established a trading post at Larkin's Landing on the Tennessee River near Hollywood shortly after Alabama gained statehood in 1819.[6] In the 1820s, he established a plantation of 32,000 acres[7] two miles west of present-day Scottsboro, and the village of Larkinsville developed around it. A post office was established in 1830, with David Larkin as postmaster, and Larkinsville became the most populous town in Jackson County up until the Civil War.[8] The first overland route through Larkinsville, now known as the Old Stage Road or County Road 30[9] ran from Huntland, Tennessee, across Cumberland Mountain and ended at Larkin's Landing. In 1850 the Memphis and Charleston railroad extended its line through Jackson County; David Larkin, as a railroad commissioner, established a station at Larkinsville.[10]

In the Civil War, Company K, the Larkinsville Guards, was organized in Larkinsville and served with the 4th Alabama Regiment under Captain A.C. Murray.[11] The war devastated Larkinsville, as it did most of North Alabama. On June 30, 1862, shortly after the fall of Huntsville, the Tenth Wisconsin regiment occupied Larkinsville.[12] As a stop along the strategically important railroad, Larkinsville would be occupied by Union forces for the remainder of the war, including the 13th Wisconsin,[13] the 10th Iowa,[14] the 116th Illinois,[15] and the 101st U.S. Colored Regiment.[16]

The postwar establishment of the county seat at Scottsboro began a gradual movement of people and business away from Larkinsville.[17] The railroad kept the village alive into the 1930s, but after both Alabama State Road 35 and U.S. 72, the main east-west highways in Jackson county, bypassed Larkinsville entirely,[18] the formerly thriving village has survived as little more than a ghost town.[19]