How did Haines Island get its name?

My son James got the itch to put his boat in the Alabama River on Sunday afternoon, so I put on a light jacket and hopped in the truck with him for a short run up to Haines Island. He didn’t plan to hunt or fish. He just wanted to scout out some places for future trips with his buddies.

We headed up County Road 17 through Finchburg and Wainwright before turning onto Ferry Road. We then negotiated Nancy Mountain before arriving at the Davis Ferry. A few minutes later, the boat was in the water, and we were headed south down the river.

At Haines Island, James guided us into the channel that runs around the south side of the island, where the waters are still – almost stagnant – and heavily shaded. I hadn’t been around that side of the island in years, but it looked about the same. Eventually we reached the far end of the island and reentered the river, where the sun was shining brightly from clear blue skies.

On the way home, I could not help but think about the part of the river we’d been in. The names – Haines Island, Davis Ferry and Nancy Mountain – are in such common usage by local folks that most of us, myself included, don’t give their origins much thought. Who were they named after and when?

Back at the office on Monday, I did some research, and the earliest reference to Haines Island that I could find in old newspapers was in the Dec. 20, 1889 edition of The Monroe Journal. In that week’s paper, a brief paragraph talked about the removal of logs and snags from the Alabama River, including around Haines Island. Much of this work depended on the depth of the water.

Dickey Andress recently showed me a really cool mapping website called caltopo.com. Using this website on Monday, I was able to determine that Haines Island is about 1.1 miles long and that the channel around it is about 100 feet wide. Of course, these measurements are at the mercy of the river’s depth, and I imagine that there have been times when the island has been mostly under water.

The earliest newspaper reference to the Davis Ferry that I could find was in the Jan. 24, 1901 edition of The Journal. Readers that week learned that Drew Massey had repaired and erected a “very attractive” rail fence on the Davis Ferry road. I believe this was noteworthy because much of Alabama was still “free range” for livestock at that time.

Prior to 1963, I could find no reference to Nancy Mountain anywhere in back issues of The Journal. Former Monroe Journal columnist George Singleton, who passed away in 2007, often said that this high point was named after “Crazy Nancy” or “Aunt Nancy,” who supposedly still haunts this area today. Much has been made of this local ghost story, but that is a tale for another day.

Even though I didn’t have much luck finding these names in old Monroe Journals, I know that these place names are old, and it would be interesting to learn where they came from. There is no entry for Haines Island, Davis Ferry or Nancy Mountain in Virginia O. Foscue’s authoritative book, “Place Names in Alabama.” Sources do say that Davis Ferry can be found on old maps as far back as 1837.

In the end, if anyone in the reading audience can shed more light on these places names, please let me know. You can reach me by email at news@monroejournal.com.