DALEVILLE…..Then, Now and Future: Indians to homemade root beer, Daleville thrived

The following is part one of a three part series on the city of Daleville, then, now and in the future. Part one looks at Daleville beginnings up until Fort Rucker, then known as Camp Rucker, was built. It concentrates on the townspeople and life in what most have forgotten was a small farming community with a rich history and lots of unique memories. While it is impossible to document it all, it is the goal of this part to highlight a few facts from the 1800s through the early part of the Twentieth Century and share a little about life in Daleville in the middle of that century. An accompanying video with more detail for each part of this series can be found at southeastsun.com and The Southeast Sun You Tube channel.

Dale. Dalesville. Daleville. Those are the three names that the current “City of Possibilities” and the “Gateway to Fort Rucker” have been called since the area from first established by settlers in the early 1820s.

A government survey, that began in 1827, was completed to determine the geographical center of the 1900 square-mile county, an act of the state legislature on Jan. 15, 1830, the settlement of Dale was designated the county seat. At that time, the county included what is now Dale, Coffee and Geneva counties and the present-day Wicksburg portion of Houston County. The area was called Dalesville in 1833 and then the “s” was omitted in 1837, forming the current name Daleville.

Eventually, a huge area was broken off from Dale County and Coffee County was formed and that caused the geographical center to change to nearby Newton, eventually, the county seat was made to be the city of Ozark.

Prior to this time, Muskogee Creek Indians, were being moved west of the Mississippi by the United States Government as more and more land was settled by the white man. Daleville was not exempt from these times.

According to The Alabama Almanac and Book of Facts, a Muskogee Indian Village existed on the western side of Daleville. The book states, “In 1836 the Indians went on a war path rather than move west of the Mississippi River. Among the murders committed by the Indians was that of Mrs. Eli Albrison and her sister, who lived in the southern part of Dale County. While the young husband was away from home attending to business, a band of Indians came down the Choctawhatchee River in a boat, went to his house and murdered the two women. Their bodies were scalped and mutilated…

“Later an Indian woman and two Indian boys were captured and put in the town jail…Through a large crack between the hewed logs of the jailhouse, a marksman spied the Indian squaw on the moonlight night and fire his muzzle-loading shotgun. It was thought that Eli Albrison did the killing in reprisal for the murders of his wide and sister-in-law, but there was no proof that he did so he remained a free man.”

The body of the Indian woman was buried in an unmarked grave near what was once called the Jake Stephens Grocery Store on land owned by the late A.M. Windham, according to “Highlights of Daleville History—1830-1976” by Maud Byrd Windham.

The store is no longer in existence, but would have been near what is now A.M. Windham Elementary School.

According to native-languages.org, “Most Native Americans were forced to leave Alabama during the Indian Removals of the 1800's. These tribes are not extinct, but except for the descendants of Alabama Indians who escaped from Removal, they do not live in Alabama anymore. They were moved to Indian reservations in Oklahoma and Texas instead.”

Some of the first settlers were of the Samuel and Irvin Donnell brothers and their families from North Carolina and William and Jesse Pouncey families. There is still Pouncey Farm Road in Daleville and Donnell Boulevard.

The town was first incorporated in 1912, but the legislature abolished the incorporation in 1919. An effort to incorporate the town again did not occur until after World War II and the Korean War. In 1956, an election to incorporate once again was held and approved, but was voided due to voting irregularities. A third and final effort to incorporate Daleville was successful on April 13, 1958. The incorporation was challenged once again in 1959, but that attempt failed.

According to Windham’s writings, Daleville became to prosper in all areas after that final incorporation, complete with residential construction, streets, water and sewer systems, restaurants, modern schools, banks, etc.

During wartime, the Ozark Triangular Division Camp was formed on the northern side of Daleville and many were forced to move. The name was later changed to Camp Rucker and eventually Fort Rucker.  The Army Post brought additional life to the town and area as a whole.

Current Daleville resident Jan Long Robertson moved with her family to Camp Rucker in the 1950s. Her father was eventually mobilized out of the country, so the family moved them into Mobile Home Trailer Park in Daleville so they could get to the stores, church and schools easily as her mother, did not drive.

To sit and talk with Robertson is to be transported to another time, literally. She talks of abundant farmland throughout the town, walking on the nearby railroad tracks and finding a refuge there for art sketching, of a swimming hole with a water fall that is still in existence,  homemade root beer, french fries and hamburgers with her friends and a horse named Trigger. One hundred percent mid-century Americana in southern Alabama is a part of Daleville’s history few are even aware of.

During her childhood, Robertson said, there was still a town square, somewhat of a circle, with stores, restaurants, a beauty shop, a gas station, the post office and a place called, “Byrd’s Sundaes” where she would get homemade divinity, even though she was allergic to it.

Next to where McDonalds is located now, there was a restaurant called the Big R, that Robertson and her friends would enjoy eating at. The Big R, owned by current Daleville resident Martha Gallo, was a small chain of franchised homemade root beer establishments in the early 1960s. There was one in Elba and also in Defuniak Springs, Fla.

“The Big Rs were a big thing in the south. They had that huge root beer thing on the roof. It was so awesome,” said Robertson chuckling as she reminisced. “It had a screened porch…(my friend Joey Brewer) had a horse named Trigger. That horse ate what we ate. We would take the horse into the Big R in the screened porch. He would eat the hamburgers, the french fries, just whatever we were eating. It was me, Joey Bruer, Joey Gallo (a local attorney), the Price kids, little Jimmy Day, all of us. It was such fun.” Trigger belonged to Bruer.

Daleville Methodist Church and Daleville Baptist Church were also right off the square. The present-day McLin’s Restaurant is located in what was the Baptist church building. McLin’s still utilizes the former Sunday school classrooms as private dining rooms, explained Robertson, and Buckaloos Steakhouse was where the former Lee’s Steakhouse building still sits, in front of the current McLin’s.

Not too far from the square, Robertson explained, she and her friends enjoyed ago-cart racetrack and exploring the areas around the railroad tracks that are still in existence and still used. The Daleville Train Depot, however, is no longer there.

Robertson noted that one of Daleville’s native families—the Sansburys—donated pastureland for what is now the current city complex of city hall, department of public safety and the cultural and convention center are located. “Post” Windham was the name of the man that owned the farmland—A.M. Windham— and the Windham Elementary School now sits on a portion of that property. The nickname came from soldiers who watched the elder Windham stand still with his hands on top of this shovel each day when they would pass by and said he looked like “a post,” she said.

Eventually, Robertson’s father, George C. Long, returned to Daleville and became a city councilman in the mid-1960s. She grew up, opened her own hair salon, retired and remains active in the community with hopes of seeing a resurgence of family and activity in her hometown.

Current city leaders have the same hopes as Robertson and are working collectively with the community to make things happen. A look at the current state of Daleville and its future will be in feature in the next two weeks of the Sun-Courier and on southeastsun.com