ALABAMA, TEXAS (Houston County). Alabama was a post office community and steamer stop on the Trinity River ten miles southwest of Crockett in western Houston County. It was established in the 1830s. In 1841 the Texas Congress chartered Trinity College, which operated in the community before the Civil War. An Alabama post office opened in 1846 with A. T. Monroe as postmaster. The community prospered for many years as a shipping point for plantations in western Houston County but began to decline in the 1870s, when the railroad supplanted the Trinity steamboats. The post office was closed in 1878, and by the 1880s many of the businesses and residents had moved away. A school was still operating at Alabama in 1897, but by the mid-1930s only a few scattered houses remained. Alabama appeared as a place name on maps as late as 1946.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Armistead Albert Aldrich, The History of Houston County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1943). Viktor F. Bracht, Texas im Jahre 1848 (Iserlohn, Westphalia: J. Bädeker, 1849; trans. C. F. Schmidt, San Antonio: Naylor, 1931). Houston County Historical Commission, History of Houston County, Texas, 1687–1979 (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Heritage, 1979).
