Albert J. Pickett

Albert James Pickett (born Anson County, North Carolina, August 13, 1810 - died Montgomery, Alabama, October 28, 1858) was a planter and lawyer in Autauga County, Alabama, and is known as Alabama's first historian.

Biography

At the age of 8, Pickett moved with his father, William R. Pickett to the frontier of Autauga County, ceded to the United States by the Creek Indians in the Treaty of Fort Jackson only four years earlier. William Pickett built a home near Autaugaville and a mill building and trader's post on Swift Creek. Growing up, Albert befriended many of the Creek and frontier traders that frequented his father's store. From them he began to piece together the early history of the state which he later put into writing.

Pickett studied law, but never practiced professionally, instead devoting his time to literature, agriculture, and historical research. He traveled widely and corresponded with archivists and book dealers in the Atlantic states and Europe in order to document various parts of his history of the state. The two-volume History of Alabama was published in Charleston, South Carolina in 1851. Pickett was working on a comprehensive history of the Southwest at the time of his death.

History of Alabama

His History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi from the Earliest Period was published in 1851, with the copyright renewed in 1878 by Mrs. Sarah S. Pickett. The book was republished in 1900 with an addition, "Annals of Alabama 1819-1900", by Thomas McAdory Owen,[1] and in 2003, with a foreword by Wayne Greenhaw and an introduction by Philip Beidler. In 2018, NewSouth books of Montgomery published The Annotated Pickett's History, annotated by historian James P. Pate.

Bibliography

  • History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi from the Earliest Period. Charleston, SC: Walker & James, 1851.

Reference

  1. ↑ History of Alabama 673.
  • Jackson, Crawford M. (1859) "Brief Biographical Sketch of Colonel Albert J. Pickett," by Crawford M. Jackson (Montgomery)
  • History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period
  • "Albert J. Pickett". Find a Grave. Retrieved September 3, 2010.
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