Marengo County is a county located in the west central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,323. The largest city is Demopolis, and the county seat is Linden. It is named in honor of the Battle of Marengo near Turin, Italy, where French leader Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrians on June 14, 1800.
Pennington is a town in Choctaw County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 221, down from 353 in 2000.
Demopolis is the largest city in Marengo County, in west-central Alabama. The population was 7,162 at the 2020 census.
The Tombigbee River is a tributary of the Mobile River, approximately 200 mi (325 km) long, in the U.S. states of Mississippi and Alabama. Together with the Alabama, it merges to form the short Mobile River before the latter empties into Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. The Tombigbee watershed encompasses much of the rural coastal plain of western Alabama and northeastern Mississippi, flowing generally southward. The river provides one of the principal routes of commercial navigation in the southern United States, as it is navigable along much of its length through locks and connected in its upper reaches to the Tennessee River via the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
CSS Baltic was an ironclad warship that served in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. A towboat before the war, she was purchased by the state of Alabama in December 1861 for conversion into an ironclad. After being transferred to the Confederate Navy in May 1862 as an ironclad, she served on Mobile Bay off the Gulf of Mexico. Baltic's condition in Confederate service was such that naval historian William N. Still Jr. has described her as "a nondescript vessel in many ways". Over the next two years, parts of the ship's wooden structure were affected by wood rot. Her armor was removed to be put onto the ironclad CSS Nashville in 1864. By that August, Baltic had been decommissioned. Near the end of the war, she was taken up the Tombigbee River, where she was captured by Union forces on May 10, 1865. An inspection of Baltic the next month found that her upper hull and deck were rotten and that her boilers were unsafe. She was sold on December 31, and was likely broken up in 1866.
The USS Queen of the West was a sidewheel steamer ram ship and the flagship of the United States Ram Fleet and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. It was built at Cincinnati, Ohio in 1854. It served as a commercial steamer until purchased by Colonel Charles Ellet Jr. in 1862 and converted for use as a ram ship. The ship operated in conjunction with the Mississippi River Squadron during the Union brown-water navy battle against the Confederate River Defense Fleet for control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the American Civil War.
The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway is a 234-mile (377 km) artificial U.S. waterway built in the 20th century from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system near Demopolis, Alabama. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway links commercial navigation from the nation's midsection to the Gulf of Mexico. The major features of the waterway are 234 miles (377 km) of navigation channels, a 175-foot-deep (53 m) cut between the watersheds of the Tombigbee and Tennessee rivers, and ten locks and dams. The locks are 9 by 110 by 600 feet, the same dimension as those on the Mississippi above Lock and Dam 26 at Alton, Illinois. Under construction for 12 years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway was completed in December 1984 at a total cost of nearly $2 billion.
The Lexington was a paddlewheel steamboat operating along the Northeastern coast of the United States from 1835 to 1840. Commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, it was one of the fastest and most luxurious steamers in operation.
Cahaba, also spelled Cahawba, was the first permanent state capital of Alabama from 1820 to 1825. It was the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama until 1866. Located at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers, the town endured regular seasonal flooding.
13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey is a book first published in 1969 by folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham and Margaret Gillis Figh. The book contains thirteen ghost stories from the U.S. state of Alabama. The book was the first in a series of seven Jeffrey books, most featuring ghost stories from a Southern state. Jeffrey in the book's title refers to a ghost that allegedly haunts Windham's home.
Natchez has been the name of several steamboats, and four naval vessels, each named after the city of Natchez, Mississippi or the Natchez people. The current one has been in operation since 1975. The previous Natchez were all operated in the nineteenth century, most by Captain Thomas P. Leathers. Each of the steamboats since Leathers' first had as its ensign a cotton bale between its stacks.
Gaineswood is a plantation house in Demopolis, Alabama, United States. It is the grandest plantation house ever built in Marengo County and is one of the most significant remaining examples of Greek Revival architecture in Alabama.
The PS Eliza Anderson operated from 1858 to 1898 mainly on Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Fraser River but also for short periods in Alaska. She was generally known as the Old Anderson and was considered slow and underpowered even for the time. Even so, it was said of her that "no steamboat ever went slower and made money faster." She played a role in the Underground Railroad and had a desperate last voyage to Alaska as part of the Klondike Gold Rush.
The Enterprise was an early steamboat operating on the Willamette River in Oregon and also one of the first to operate on the Fraser River in British Columbia. This vessel should not be confused with the many other vessels, some of similar design, also named Enterprise. In earlier times, this vessel was sometimes called Tom Wright's Enterprise after one of her captains, the famous Tom Wright.
Prairie Bluff, also known as Dale and Daletown, is a ghost town in Wilcox County, Alabama.
The transportation system of Alabama is a cooperation of complex systems of infrastructure.
James T. Staples, officially registered as the Jas. T. Staples and also known as the Big Jim, was a Tombigbee River sternwheel paddle steamer that ran a route between Mobile and Demopolis, Alabama, during the early 20th century. She was destroyed during 1913 in an explosion while docked on the Tombigbee roughly six miles (10 km) north of the current Coffeeville Lock and Dam. It was the last major maritime disaster involving a steamboat in Tombigbee River history. The disaster saw the ship enter southwestern Alabama folklore, with tales that its sinking had been foretold by supernatural occurrences.
Moores Bluff is a ghost town in Lowndes County, Mississippi, United States.
Jennie Clark, also seen spelled Jenny Clark, was the first sternwheel-driven steamboat to operate on the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia. This vessel was commonly known as the Jennie when it was in service. The design of the Jennie Clark set a pattern for all future sternwheel steamboats built in the Pacific Northwest and in British Columbia.
