Baldwin County, Alabama: History
Baldwin County was established on December 21, 1809, ten years before Alabama became a state. Previously, the county had been a part of the Mississippi Territory until 1817, when the area was included in the separate Alabama Territory. Statehood was gained by Alabama in 1819.
There have been numerous border changes to the county as population grew and other counties were formed. Numerous armies have invaded during the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War.
In the first days of Baldwin County, the town of McIntosh Bluff on the Tombigbee River was the county seat. (It is now included in Washington County, northwest of Baldwin County.) The county seat was transferred to the town of Blakeley in 1820, and then to the city of Daphne in 1868. In 1900, by an act of the legislature of Alabama, the county seat was authorized for relocation to the city of Bay Minette; however, the city of Daphne resisted this relocation.
To achieve the relocation, the men of Bay Minette devised a scheme. They fabricated a murder to lure the sheriff and his deputy out of the city of Daphne. While the law was chasing down the fictitious killer during the late hours, the group of Bay Minette men stealthily traveled the seventeen miles (27 km) to Daphne, stole the Baldwin County Courthouse records, and delivered them to the city of Bay Minette, where Baldwin County's county seat remains. A New Deal mural, completed by WPA artists during the Great Depression, depicts these events. It hangs in the Bay Minette United States Post Office.
During the American Civil War, 32 men hailing from Baldwin County enlisted with a Union unit mustered in Pensacola, Florida, called the 1st Florida Cavalry Regiment. In 1860, Baldwin County was the least populous of Alabama's 52 counties. Half of the population were enslaved. There was also a large population of Muscogee (Creek) in the northern portion of the county.
During the Cold War, the vice president of Foley-based Gulf Telephone Company, John Mcclure Snook, formed a private militia to resist a potential Communist invasion from the Gulf of Mexico. Due to this militia being armed with automatic weapons from Snook's personal collection, the federal government seized the weapons as part of an order during a 1964 libel proceeding. Although Snook paid the taxes imposed on the manufacture of automatic firearms, he sued for a refund on the basis that his militia served as auxiliary deputies for the Baldwin County Sheriff. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected this argument in a 1971 decision as his militia never performed services where use of those weapons were deemed necessary.
Due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, Baldwin County frequently endures tropical weather systems, including hurricanes. Since the late 20th century, the county has been declared a disaster area multiple times. This was due to heavy damages in September 1979 from Hurricane Frederic, July 1997 from Hurricane Danny, September 1998 from Hurricane Georges, September 2004 from Hurricane Ivan, August 2005 from Hurricane Katrina and September 2020 from Hurricane Sally. …