European Americans set up an active trading post in Abbeville in
Alabama Territory early in 1819. The first settler gateway to the
wiregrass region was at Franklin, located fourteen miles west of Abbeville. Named for the nearby Abbie Creek. Locals say the name of Abbie Creek derives from the
Muscogee name for Abbie Creek,
Yatta Abba, meaning "
dogwood tree grove". Abbeville was designated as the Henry County seat in 1833; the seat had previously been
Columbia. Abbeville acquired its Post Office in 1833.
20th century to present Abbeville suffered a catastrophic tragedy that wiped out most of the town when an arsonist almost burned the whole town to the ground on May 20, 1906. An entire block of Kirkland Street, the major portion of the business district, was destroyed. The nearby courthouse was almost lost but was saved through the efforts of the "bucket brigade" firefighters, who kept pouring water on the flat roof. During the week of June 28, 1906, a mechanic named Ward was arrested and charged with arson and starting the fire. His bond was set at $500. After his bail was paid, Ward fled Abbeville and the county and was never heard from again. Brick buildings were erected to replace the wooden structures that had been lost in the fire. In February 1937, Wes Johnson, an 18-year-old African-American man, was accused of attacking a white woman and was arrested. He was abducted from the Henry County jail by a mob of 100 white men and
lynched: shot and hanged to death. His body was found "bullet marked" and "swinging from a tree." As was typical of lynchings, none of the members of the mob was charged with a crime. It has been suggested by local historians that Johnson and the white woman were engaged in a consensual sexual relationship, and the accusation of assault was merely a manufactured pretext for the lynching. Howell (who is Howell?) was featured on
60 Minutes on April 8, 2018, during an episode featuring
Oprah Winfrey touring the new
National Memorial for Peace and Justice in
Montgomery, Alabama. Johnson is among the lynching victims memorialized there. Henry County is noted as among the 805 counties where lynchings took place. In 1937 the Alabama Attorney General filed an impeachment against the Henry County sheriff for his failure to protect Johnson. An appeal was heard by the Alabama Supreme Court, which overturned the impeachment in June 1937. The Alabama Attorney General openly declared that Johnson was innocent of the charges against him. In 1944,
Recy Taylor, an African-American woman, was gang-raped by seven white men. Although the men admitted the rape to authorities, two grand juries subsequently declined to indict them. From a historic point of view, "the Recy Taylor case brought the building blocks of the
Montgomery bus boycott together a decade earlier" than that event. On November 5, 2002, Kirkland Street was hit by an F2 tornado. The tornado destroyed several single-family homes, mobile homes and many other homes and businesses. The damage at the Abbeville High School was deemed too costly to repair and was rebuilt in a new location. Downed power lines and uprooted trees were numerous and widespread. The Old Pioneer Cemetery was especially hard-hit. ==Geography==