Newbern

Newbern is located in southeastern Hale County in the west-central part of the state. It has a mayor/city council form of government. Author and poet Martha Strudwick Young was born in Newbern.

History

Newbern Little League Baseball Field Originally, Newbern was referred to as Cane Brake owing to the abundance of cane in the area. It was a part of Greene County until Hale County was created by the Alabama legislature in 1867. The earliest settler in the area was named Christopher, a planter, preacher, and physician who arrived in 1816. A man named Chiles built the first grist mill in Newbern in 1818 next to Prairie Creek, and in 1829, Harvey Tyndall and Simpson Hemphill constructed the first store, called Grab All. F. A. Borden established the first post office in 1832 and subsequently became postmaster.

In 1834, two of Borden's brothers arrived from North Carolina. The Bordens then bought much of the land in the area and laid out a town, cutting a wide road through the center and selling lots for homesteads and for businesses. They named the town after New Bern, a town in south central North Carolina that was the seat of government for the British Province of North Carolina until the American Revolution. For a number of years, the town's name was spelled as two words. The Saline Hotel, Newbern's first lodging house, was built in the early 1850s. The town incorporated in 1854.

Newbern was primarily a farm town, with settlers raising cattle and, as land was increasingly cleared, cultivating cotton. Newbern quickly developed into a cotton economy fueled by slave labor. The first train came through in 1859, running from Newbern to Uniontown. There, it linked with a line that ran from Selma to Demopolis, increasing Newbern's access to national and global markets.

Newbern Public Library During the Civil War, many of the Confederate soldiers from Newbern fought in the Fifth, Eleventh, and Twentieth Alabama regiments. The Ninth Alabama Battalion, consisting of eight regiments, was organized in Newbern in November 1861. The cotton economy regained its footing somewhat after the war through the sharecropping system. It remained a mainstay until the Great Depression collapsed the town's economy. By the 1950s, the cotton industry had become mechanized and made much human labor obsolete, leading to a lack of opportunity and a significant dip in Newbern's population. The catfish industry arose in the area in the 1960s and became an important part of the region's economy.

In 1993, Auburn University's College of Architecture, Design, and Construction established an off-campus design-build program in Newbern called the Rural Studio. The program's founders, D. K. Ruth and Samuel Mockbee, wanted to provide Auburn architecture students with a hands-on experience that would also produce well-designed housing and community facilities for the residents of the impoverished counties of Alabama's Black Belt region.

Demographics

According to 2020 Census estimates, Newbern recorded a population of 221. Of that number, 71.9 percent of respondents identified themselves as African American, and 28.1 percent as white. The town's median household income was $36,250, and the per capita income was $21,431.

Employment

According to 2020 Census estimates, the workforce in Newbern was divided among the following industrial categories:

• Educational services and health care and social assistance (20.5 percent)
• Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and extraction (18.1 percent)
• Other services, except public administration (14.5 percent)
• Manufacturing (13.3 percent)
• Wholesale trade (13.3 percent)
• Retail trade (12.0 percent)
• Arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and food services (4.8 percent)
• Finance and insurance, and real estate and rental and leasing (3.6 percent)

Education

Schools in Newbern are part of the Hale County school system; the town has one K-12 high school.

Transportation

State Highway 61 bisects Newbern running north-south.

Events and Places of Interest

Auburn University's Rural Studio is located in Newbern. The Newbern Village Historic District is listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and History. The Augusta Sledge House (also known as the Morrisette-Tunstall-Sledge House, ca. 1855) that was located southwest of town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, although it has since been destroyed. A number of structures in Newbern were catalogued by the Historic American Building survey in the mid-1930s, including the still existing Newbern Baptist Church (ca. 1845) and the Newbern Presbyterian Church (ca. 1848).