Live Oak Cemetery | Selma

William Joseph Hardee (1815 – 1873) was a career U.S. Army officer, serving during the Second Seminole War and fighting in the Mexican-American War. He served as a Confederate general in the west during the American Civil War, quarrelling sharply with Braxton Bragg and John Hood.

He opposed Sherman in Georgia, escaping into Carolina, before surrendering with Joseph E. Johnston. Hardee's writings about military tactics were widely used on both sides in the conflict.

After the war, Hardee settled at his wife's Alabama plantation. After returning it to working condition, the family moved to Selma, Alabama, where Hardee worked in the warehousing and insurance businesses. He eventually became president of the Selma and Meridian Railroad.

He fell ill at his family's summer retreat at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and died in Wytheville, Virginia. He is buried in Live Oak Cemetery, Selma.

Centreville, Alabama

The Cahaba River falls near Centreville, which made the town a strategic location for transportation through the region. The first post office in Bibb County was established in Centreville in 1821. Sarah Willis Chotard obtained a patent for land in this area in 1823 and began moving squatters off the land and laid out a plot for the new town of Centreville.

In 1829, Centreville became the permanent seat for Bibb County after several years of debate and different locations of the county courthouse, and the town was incorporated in 1832. Centreville's historic district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Selma, Alabama

Selma was first recorded on a map in 1732 as Ecor Bienville, in honor of the then-French provincial governor Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Seiuer de Bienville. Not until the early 1800s did European settlers begin to frequent the site, however, which by then they referred to as "High Soap Stone Bluff." The site became known as "Moore's Bluff" when Thomas Moore, a settler from Tennessee, built a cabin there in 1815.

Two years later, a group of influential settlers in the area, including future vice president of the United States William Rufus King, formed the Selma Town Land Company to buy up land to establish a town above the river. On December 4, 1820, Selma was incorporated by the state legislature. (Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama)