Green Street community takes its name from Burnt Corn tannery owner

Burnt Corn's John Green.

Last week in this space, I wrote about a recent field trip that I made up to the Green Street community. This sparked much discussion over how this small community got its name, and I’m happy to report that someone in the reading audience knew the real answer. For those of you unfamiliar with Green Street, it’s a small community located about 20 miles northwest of Evergreen, between Fairnelson and the Monroe County line.

In the days leading up to my visit to Green Street, I checked a book called “Place Names in Alabama” by Virginia O. Foscue, but it contained no information about Green Street. Historical records say that this community was a former saw mill town, and Evergreen library historian Sherry Johnston told me that she remembered reading about three men with the last name Green who owned and operated a saw mill in that area. She said that at one time the community was “thickly settled” and even included a commissary and a black smith shop.

Don Green, who lives in Mississippi but has ancestral roots in Conecuh County, said that his third great-grandfather John Green started the first school in Burnt Corn, which isn’t too far from Green Street as the crow flies. Don wondered if Green Street possibly took its name from the school’s founder.

Another man told me that a tale often told in the community is that a long time ago, God and the Devil had a knock-down-drag-out fight in that part of the county. When they finished, the surrounding countryside had been consumed by flames, all except for a strip of green that ran down through the middle of what we now call Green Street. The man who told me this said that he didn’t put much stock in the tale, but he’d heard it all his life.

After last week’s column hit the streets, Mrs. Sherry at the library told me that additional research revealed that the community was actually named after a man named “Tanner” Green. Tanner Green, who was not related to John Green, raised a large family and had a host of sons, Sherry said. Eight of Tanner’s sons served in the Confederate Army, and he also owned a large tannery near Burnt Corn that made shoes for the Confederate Army. Margaret Gaston noted that she’d read somewhere once that all of Tanner Green’s sons shared the same middle name, “Bigby.”

Billie Patterson, who is also well-versed in the John Green family history, confirmed that John and Tanner were not related. She’d also been told in the past that Green Street was not named after John Green. She noted that John Green did own property in that area, but his home place was on County Road 15, about one mile outside of Burnt Corn.

During the past week I did some digging and learned that Tanner Green’s full name was Whitson Bigby “Tanner” Green and that he was born in Stafford County, Va. on Sept. 22, 1796. He served in the 1836 Seminole War and migrated to Monroe County two years later. Records reflect that he died on Jan. 30, 1885 at the age of 89 at Burnt Corn and that he is buried in an unmarked grave in the Watson-Green Cemetery in Monroe County.