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 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.
2016 flag controversy Baldwin County attracted national attention after the
2016 Orlando nightclub shooting as the only county in the United States to refuse to lower its flags to half-staff. Both
President Obama and Alabama governor
Robert Bentley had ordered all flags to be lowered immediately following the attack, which was believed to have specifically targeted the LGBTQ community. Citing the U.S. Flag Code, Baldwin County commissioner Tucker Dorsey stated that while his "heart certainly goes out to the victims and their families", the incident "doesn't meet the test of the reason for the flag to be lowered". ==Geography==