Montgomery, Alabama: Which Montgomery Was It?

Everybody agrees Montgomery, Alabama, is named for a man called Montgomery, but the old books don’t agree on which one. It was either a Revolutionary War general who died in the attack on Quebec in 1775, or a Tennessee major killed fighting the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814.

Three little towns on a bluff

Before there was a Montgomery, there were rivals. Thomas McAdory Owen’s History of Alabama (1921) says Arthur Moore put up a cabin on a bluff of the Alabama River in 1814. After the land around it went on sale at Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1817, Andrew Dexter founded “New Philadelphia,” George R. Clayton and his partners founded “East Alabama,” and Gen. John Scott and his partners founded a town called “Alabama.” The site itself had an older name. Owen says the city sits where an Alabama village called Ikanatchati, meaning red earth, once stood. That tribe also gave its name to the river and, eventually, to the state.

M. P. Blue, who wrote a short history of the city for its 1878 directory, adds a nice detail. The name New Philadelphia came from a settler named John G. Klincke (Brewer spells him Klinck), and some people mockingly called the place “Yankee Town.” Owen says that on December 3, 1819, the first Legislature of the State of Alabama, which had just met in Huntsville, incorporated New Philadelphia and East Alabama as one town “under the name ‘Montgomery.’”

The general who fell at Quebec

Blue is clear about whom the name honored. The towns were joined “under the name of Montgomery, in honor of General Richard Montgomery, who fell, December 31, 1775, in the attack upon Quebec.” The federal place-names database says the same thing today: “Named for Richard Montgomery (1736-1775), a Revolutionary War general killed in the Battle of Quebec.”

The major who fell at Horseshoe Bend

Willis Brewer’s 1872 state history tells the naming another way. Brewer writes that the town got its name from the county, and in a footnote he passes along the word of Klinck, the same New Philadelphia settler, “who came to the place in 1817.” According to Brewer, Klinck said “the name ‘Montgomery’ was a compromise between the settlers of Alabama Town and New Philadelphia,” and “that it was named for the county.”

Montgomery County was created in 1816, and there’s no argument about its namesake. Owen and Brewer both say it honors Lemuel P. Montgomery, a major in the 39th Infantry who was killed at Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814. Owen’s account of the battle says he had just fired his pistol through a porthole in the Creek breastworks when a bullet “coming from the same place” killed him. Brewer adds that Andrew Jackson “was much grieved at his loss.”

You’ll notice a wrinkle in Klinck’s version. He names Alabama Town as one of the two rivals, while Owen says the merger was New Philadelphia and East Alabama, with Alabama town added later. Henry Gannett’s 1905 place-name book for the U.S. Geological Survey doesn’t settle it either. It says Alabama’s county was named for Lemuel P. Montgomery and doesn’t give the city an entry of its own.

How the two stories stack up

So you have two kinds of evidence. Klinck was on the ground in 1817 and is the earliest voice in these books, but his words come to us secondhand, through Brewer. Blue wrote six years after Brewer and doesn’t say where he got the general, yet his version is the one the federal record follows. Neither side quotes a document from 1819 that names the man. Until one turns up, both stories stay on the table.

Dexter’s square

Andrew Dexter had his own plans for the place. Blue says he reserved a square for a future state capitol from the very beginning. About thirty years passed, and Dexter had been dead for twenty of them, before the legislature finally chose Montgomery as the capital in 1846, taking the job from Tuscaloosa.

Sources & further reading

• M. P. Blue, “A Brief History of Montgomery,” in City Directory and History of Montgomery, Alabama (1878). Klincke and “New Philadelphia,” “Yankee Town,” Dexter’s capitol square (pp. 6-7); the 1819 merger “in honor of General Richard Montgomery, who fell, December 31, 1775, in the attack upon Quebec” (p. 8).
• Willis Brewer, Alabama: Her History, Resources, War Record, and Public Men (1872). Lemuel P. Montgomery and Jackson’s grief (p. 446); the town’s name “derived from the county,” Klinck’s footnote on the compromise, and the capital in 1846 (p. 447).
• Thomas McAdory Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography (1921). Vol. 2: Arthur Moore, the three rival towns, Ikanatchati, and the incorporation of December 3, 1819 by the first Legislature (pp. 1037-1038); Montgomery County named for Maj. Lemuel Putnam Montgomery (p. 1042; vol. 1 calls him Lemuel Purnell Montgomery). Vol. 1: the tribe, the river and the state’s name (p. 15); Lemuel Montgomery’s death at Horseshoe Bend (p. 702).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). Alabama’s Montgomery County, “named for Lieut. Lemuel P. Montgomery,” and the many places named for Gen. Richard Montgomery.
• GNIS feature 165344 (U.S. Geological Survey). Incorporated 1819, state capital 1846, “Named for Richard Montgomery (1736-1775).”