Lowndes County Alabama County History Established by act approved January 20,1830. Territory taken from Montgomery, Dallas and Butler counties. Named for William Lowndes, the South Carolina statesman. Lies near the centre of the State. Area, 720 square miles; all prairie (rotten limestone and rolling or hill prairie); woodland, all, except a few square miles of open prairie. In the prairie region a large area of the uplands are brown sandy soils. Principal soil varieties are the sandy loams of the table lands, the dark loams of the bottoms, and the calcareous soils of the prairies and lime hills. Soils very productive. Bottom lands particularly adapted to corn, of which crop forty bushels to the acre are often made. Principal crops, cotton, corn, oats, potatoes, millet and sugar cane. Lowndes is situated in what is known as the "black belt" of Alabama, and is one of the richest agricultural counties of the State. Population, white, 4,466; colored, 27,084; total, 31,550. County seat, Hayneville; population, 355. Other towns, Lowndesboro, Benton, Fort Deposit and Mount Willing. Acres in county, 442,514. Assessed value of property in 1891, real,$2,155,- 959.00; personal, $1,739,189.00; total, $3,895,148.00. Newspapers, Examiner, weekly, and True Citizen, weekly, Hayneville. Railroads, miles of main track, Western of Alabama (Selma division), 22.42; Louisville & Nashville (Mobile & Montgomery division), 21. Telegraph, miles of poles, 64.42. The Alabama river—navigable throughout the year, forms the entire northern boundary of the county. County watered by several large creeks. Climate and health good, and school and church facilities superior. Crops in 1889 (census of 1890)—cotton, acres, 113,341; bales, 40,430; value, $1,847,206.00; corn, acres, 51,080; bushels, 1,063,793; oats, acres, .4,591; bushels, 60,608. Lands, $3.00 to $20.00 an acre. There are no unappropriated government lands in this county. Source: Handbook of Alabama, by Saffold Berney, 1892, Transcribed by C. Anthony ©2009 Genealogy Trails