Chapter One: In the Beginning… C 17 Thomas Bibb was the second governor of Alabama. His brother, William, was the territorial governor and the first governor of the state, but William died from an accidental fall from his horse after only a few months in office. Thomas was serving as President of the Alabama Sen- ate in 1820 when his brother died, and he thereby succeeded his brother by rules of the state constitution at the time. James Henry Bibb, who later lived and died in Madison, was related to the Belle Mina Bibbs via their shared ancestor, Benjamin Bibb of Virginia, who was born in 1640. The local Bibb family ancestry includes John Dandridge, who was father of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, first lady of the United States. Clement Comer Clay came to Huntsville in 1811 as a young attor- ney. He quickly established several plantations, including one that covered the northern end of the airport today. His land there adjoined that of John Withers to the north, and it may have been through that connection that he met John’s daughter, Susannah Claiborne Withers. They were married in 1815, and Clement entered politics in 1818, becoming the Thomas Bibb, governor of eighth governor of the state in 1835. He was a close friend of Jefferson Davis, Alabama, 1820–1821 president of the Confederate States of America. A son of Clement and Susan- nah, Clement Claiborne Clay, was reported by Judge Robert E. Wiggins to have been born “just south of Madison”, which location would fit for either a Clay house or a Withers house, if Susannah went back to her parents’ or a brother’s house to have her child. Clement C. Clay Jr. also became prominent in politics at the state and federal levels. Michael Farley took land just east of the location of old Madison. Today the Farley-Crutcher Cemetery is located on his land near Horizon Elementary School. His sons included a doctor who became the namesake of the Farley community near Whitesburg. His descendants intermarried with Gillespies, Trotmans, and Crutchers, among others of the Madison pioneers. The Lanier family settled on property that today is part of Redstone Arsenal. They owned several thousand acres (in Left: Clement Comer all, about a tenth of the total sixty thousand acres of arsenal land) before the Civil Clay, governor of Alabama, War. After the war, two of the three sons of Burwell Clinton Lanier Sr. came to 1835–1837 the new town of Madison Station, as the village was known. The family main- Right: Clement Claiborne tained large cotton-raising operations on the pre-arsenal lands, but they were part Clay, 1860s (born in of Madison. Their family history includes notables in Virginia and England, Madison area) as well as shared descent from the paternal grandfather of President George Washington. (More about the Laniers is given in Chapter Three, the family story related to 154 Maple Street.) 18 c Memories of Madison: A Connected Community, 1857–2007 Steptoe Pickett initially located near Triana on the Tennessee River. How- ever, his widow, Sarah, and their children moved to Madison after his death. Two of their daughters later married into families of governors of the state. Steptoe was a son of Col. Martin Pickett and his wife, Ann Blackwell, of Virginia’s Paradise Plantation. Steptoe married Sarah Orrick Chilton at Currioman Plantation in Westmoreland County of Virginia in 1811. About ten years later, they moved to the southeastern corner of Limestone County, where they lived close to the Black- well and Collier families along the river. The Picketts had thirteen children, of whom child number five, Felicia Chilton Pickett, married Reuben Chapman, a governor of Alabama. Child number thirteen, Anna Corbin Pickett, married Thomas Bibb, the third of eight children of Gov. Thomas Bibb of nearby Belle Mina Plantation. One can only imagine the parties in the governor’s mansion at Belle Mina that were attended by the Picketts of Madison. At various times, the Belle Mina mansion hosted such dignitaries as Bavarian Prince Franz von Bayern from the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, according to Chris Edwards and Faye Axford in their book The Lure and Lore of Limestone County (Alabama), published in 1978. The Collier neighbors of the Picketts owned Myrtle Grove Plantation along the river between Triana and Mooresville. One of their grandchildren married Dr. William Pickett, the ninth child of Steptoe and Sarah. The seventh child of Steptoe and Sarah, Dr. John Scott Pickett, married Martha Blackwell, daughter of Wil- liam Henry Blackwell and Eliza Collier. Sarah Virginia Pickett, the eleventh child Belle Mina, mansion of Governor of Steptoe and Sarah, married Martha Blackwell’s brother, Samuel. The Blackwells Thomas Bibb, built 1826. (Photo descended from Joseph Blackwell, royal surveyor for King Charles I of England. by Victor Haagen in Alabama Heritage by Virginia Pounds He came to Virginia in 1639 and established Walnut Lodge Plantation. Brown and Helen Morgan Considering the number of intermarriages among the Picketts, Blackwells, and Akens, 1967) Colliers, their plantation houses surely must have hosted numerous balls and other .