Camden, AL news and local guide

The area's wealth came from cotton grown by enslaved African Americans. Early industries included a brickyard, a sawmill and a window maker. Townspeople founded a girls' school in 1844, and the red-brick Greek Revival building of the Wilcox Female Institute, incorporated in 1850, was built between 1845 and 1850; since 1976 it has housed the Wilcox County Historical Society. The Greek Revival Wilcox County Courthouse was completed in 1857. Union troops ransacked the courthouse in 1865, but officials had hidden the county records, legend says in a coffin. Fires in 1869 and 1870 destroyed about two-thirds of the town, and recovery began in the 1880s; the first bank was incorporated in 1894. In the mid-20th century a paper mill at Yellow Bluff and the Millers Ferry Lock and Dam on the Alabama River, which created the William "Bill" Dannelly Reservoir, brought new growth. Sources The Historical Marker Database: Camden (Camden Sesquicentennial Committee) The Historical Marker Database: Wilcox Female Institute (Alabama Historical Association) Wikipedia: Camden, Alabama