Browse Items (2533 total)

Few people can call the University of Alabama campus home. Students and even presidents of the institution live there only temporarily. Wilma Hosea O’Rourke, born on Nov. 28, 1921, grew up there.

Zeb Hosea, O’Rourke’s father, was a steamfitter…

Willis E. Penfield, civic leader and retired vice president of Gulf States Paper, was elected a director for the company whose production operation he headed many years.

Penfield was a second generation executive with Gulf States Paper. His first…

Willie Bies Jr. was one of the first black police officers in Tuscaloosa. In 1966, he was hired by Police Chief William Marabel.

The Civil Service Board at that time used an employee test that discriminated against blacks, so Marabel hired Bies…

After he was quite elderly, William Rufus Dodson, a decendant of the surveyor Dodson who first surveyed Northport in the 1820s, built this home about 1890. The property was deeded to Lewis Williamson upon Mr. Dodson's death. Robert G. Mitchell was…

Built around 1835 making it one of the city's oldest structures, this home known as "Ivy Towers" and also as the Williams-James House, was the site where early government leaders mapped local and state political strategy.

Marmaduke Williams, who…

The Willams Hotel was located on Main Street in Gordo, Alabama. The date of its construction is unknown, but is after 1900. The building was demolished in the 1960s.

Settlement of the town of Gordo, located on U.S. Hwy 82, 23 miles west of…

The Willams Hotel was located on Main Street in Gordo, Alabama.

Settlement of the town of Gordo, located on U.S. Hwy 82, 23 miles west of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in east-central Pickens County, began before 1847. A web site, www.postalhistory.com,…

"Pick" Cowden, as he was called, was a farmer-merchant in north Tuscaloosa County, Ala.. He was married on December 17, 1868 to Elizabeth Samantha Dodson ( December 11, 1852 - October 12, 1930), the daughter of William Rufus and Annie Palmer…

William W. Brandon was an American Democratic politician who was the 37th governor of Alabama from 1923 to 1927.

Brandon was born in Talladega, Alabama, but grew up in Tuscaloosa. He attended Tuscaloosa High School and studied law at the…

William Travis "Bully" Van de Graaff is shown in this photo published in a promotional booklet, "Alabama," about the 1924 University of Alabama football team. Van de Graaff coached the undefeated freshman team after playing for Alabama himself along…