Monroeville, AL news and local guide

For decades Monroeville depended on the more than 400 small farms around it. The First National Bank, opened in 1904, was an economic turning point, and the Old Monroe County Courthouse, designed by architect Andrew Bryan, was built in 1903 and 1904 and served until a new courthouse opened in 1963. The town was formally incorporated on April 15, 1899. Industry arrived in 1937, when Vanity Fair Mills opened a sewing plant with 300 workers, mostly women; at its peak in 1995 it employed 2,500. Monroeville's fame comes from two writers. Truman Capote lived here with relatives, the Faulk family, from 1927 to about 1933 and spent summers here, and his cousin "Sook" inspired characters in A Christmas Memory and other stories. Nelle Harper Lee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, was also a Monroeville resident. The old courthouse owes its lasting fame to that novel and to the film's courtroom scene, and it is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Sources The Historical Marker Database: Monroeville, Alabama (Alabama Tourism Department and the City of Monroeville) The Historical Marker Database: A County Older Than the State; Old Monroe County Courthouse; Truman Capote (Alabama Historical Association) Wikipedia: Monroeville, Alabama