Wilcox County county seat traces its roots back to Dunn family land donation in September of 1832

Philip P. Barbour of Virginia

September 14 is an important date in the history of Camden for it was on that day in 1832 that Thomas and Martha Hobbs Dunn donated the land where downtown Camden is now located to the Wilcox County Commission for a new county seat.

At the time of this donation, what would become Camden didn’t even really have a name, and the county seat was located in Canton. Sources say that the Dunns donated 12 acres of land to the commission on the condition that they would build a courthouse there. Commissioners took them up on their offer and moved the county seat to present-day Camden in 1833.

The original name for what would become Camden was Wilcox Courthouse, but the name would later be changed to Barboursville in honor of Virginia Senator Philip P. Barbour. The town was officially incorporated in 1841 and was renamed Camden in honor of Camden, South Carolina, the hometown of prominent Camden resident, Dr. John D. Caldwell.

There were two main reasons why the land donated by the Dunns made for an attractive location for the county seat. First and foremost, Camden was more centrally located within the county than Canton, which was in the western half of the county close to the Alabama River. (The geographic center of the county in 1832 was about one mile west of Camden on what was known as the Sellers Place.)

The other reason had to do with a plentiful freshwater source that was known by at least four different names. Sources called this spring the Public Spring, the Town Spring and the Courthouse Spring. In later years it was known as the Jail Spring.

According to information published in the July 17, 1889 edition of The Wilcox Progressive Era, this location was a “beautiful place. The hill came down with a gradual slope, not a wash or break in it, covered with trees, shrubbery and grass at the bottom of which flowed out, in one solid stream, all the water that now comes out at different places. All that country where the branch runs now was covered with a beautiful forest growth.”

At that time, most of the land where Camden is located was enclosed and was in cultivation by various farmers. When the commission accepted the Dunn donation, with the exception of the lots where the courthouse was built and the spring, commissioners had the land laid out in lots and sold. The proceeds from these land sales were used to pay for the construction of a new courthouse. Construction of the courthouse was completed in a relatively short amount of time, and court was first held there in 1834.

At this time, the town spring supplied all of the water used by residents of the growing town as there were no water wells dug in the town at that time. Water from the spring was typically collected and carried throughout the town by women and boys in cedar pails. Later, as people began digging wells throughout town, the spring was abandoned as a water source, but it remained a popular swimming hole.

Based on a handful of clues, I believe this old spring to have been located behind Camden’s present-day city hall on Water Street. It was known to have supplied water to the old jail in that area, so it makes sense for it to have been located close by. In the end, if anyone has any more information to share about this old spring and its place in Camden history, please let me hear from you.