Water source has much to do with location of present-day Camden, Alabama

Old Wilcox County Jail in Camden, Ala.

While looking through some century-old copies of The Progressive Era recently, I ran across an interesting item that sheds light on why the county seat of Camden is located where it is today.

In the Nov. 22, 1917 edition of The Progressive Era, editor S.D. Bloch reported that “Mr. William B. Dunn, one of the oldest residents of Camden and who was born and reared about three miles northwest of town, says that he can well remember the time when as a boy he used to visit Barbersville, which was the former name of Camden, and that his uncle Thomas Dunn, gave to the county the site where Camden is now located. The selection was made because of the spring back of the jail, for in those days there were no wells and spring water was used. He has promised to refresh his memory of the early days and give The Progressive Era an article of the time when Camden was a village.”

Many history buffs in the reading audience will know that Wilcox County’s first county seat was located at Canton Bend, but moved to what was then called Barboursville in 1833. Before that, the land was part of Thomas Dunn’s sizeable plantation, and it was named Barboursville in honor of Virginia Congressman Philip Barbour. In 1841, the named was changed to Camden in honor of Camden, S.C., which was the hometown of local doctor, John D. Caldwell.

I believe William B. Dunn to be the “W.B. Dunn” who is buried in the historic Camden Cemetery. According to cemetery records, he was born in 1839, which means he was around 78 years old in 1917 and would have been a couple of years old when Camden was officially incorporated in 1841. W.B. Dunn passed away in 1923, when he was either 83 or 84 years old.

William B. Dunn’s uncle Thomas Dunn was one of Wilcox County’s earliest settlers. Born in Georgia around 1798, he and his wife, Martha Hobbs, married in 1824, and a year later they built a two-story house that still stands today off Camden’s Broad Street. Their house, now known as the Dunn-Fairley-Bonner-Field House, is the oldest documented structure in all of Camden.

Thomas Dunn and his wife had at least eight children, but Thomas didn’t live to be very old. According to his headstone in the Camden Cemetery, he passed away at the age of 40 on Aug. 4, 1838, about a year before the birth of his nephew, William B. Dunn. Martha remarried, had at least two more children and was buried in the Camden Cemetery after her death at the age of 77 in 1884.

What’s now known as the Old Wilcox County Jail on Water Street in Camden was actually the county’s third jail, which leaves me to wonder exactly where the first and second jails were located. Also, is there any remaining trace of the old “spring” that William B. Dunn mentioned in 1917? If so, it would be interesting to know exactly where it’s located. After all, Camden apparently owes its status as the county seat to this important, old water source.