The area of today's Washington County was long inhabited by various
indigenous people. In historic times, European traders encountered first
Choctaw, whose territory extended through most of present-day Mississippi, and later
Creek Indians, who had moved southwest from
Georgia ahead of early
European settlers who were encroaching on their land. Smaller numbers of
free Black settlers had begun to arrive by 1800. Washington County was organized on June 4, 1800, from the
Tombigbee District of the
Mississippi Territory by proclamation of territorial governor
Winthrop Sargent. It was the first county organized in what would later become Alabama, as settlers moved westward after the
American Revolutionary War. Washington County is the site of
St. Stephens, the first territorial capital of Alabama. In 1807 former U.S. Vice President
Aaron Burr was arrested at
Wakefield in Washington County, during his flight from being prosecuted for alleged treason (of which he was eventually found innocent). In the 1830s, the U.S. government
removed most of the Choctaw and Creek to
Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi River. Some members of these tribes stayed behind on their traditional lands in southwest Alabamas. They were nominally considered state (and U.S.) citizens, but suffered severe racial discrimination. In the 19th century, the county was largely developed for
cotton plantations, with labor supplied by thousands of
enslaved African Americans. Many had been transported by slave traders to the
Deep South in a forced migration in the early part of the century, as the land was being developed. During the
American Civil War, more than three quarters of the adult white men in the county were serving in the
Confederate Army by 1863. In that year, a group of children petitioned the
Confederate government to avoid drafting more white men, so they might serve as a home guard
militia. The petition claimed the militia was needed to guard against a potential slave uprising, since there were numerous cotton plantations with large numbers of enslaved African Americans. No such uprising occurred. While the county continued to rely on agriculture into the 20th century, the infestation of the
boll weevil destroyed many cotton crops. Mechanization and industrial-scale agriculture reduced the need for labor. Thousands of African Americans left the South in the
Great Migration to Northern and Midwestern industrial cities, where they could get better jobs and escape the legal
segregation and violence of the South. In the early 20th century industrialists began to harvest and process the pine and other timber in this area of the state. While the timber industry continued to be important to the economy, the county has gradually developed other businesses and industries, particularly petrochemical. Due to damage from
Hurricane Frederic in 1979, the county was declared a disaster area that September. ==Geography==