Talk:Wilton, Alabama
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Birmingham Junction and Wilton
[edit]I did some searches in Newspapers dot com and found the first reference to Birmingham Junction in the 29 Apr 1890 edition of The Birmingham Daily News (page 1). It references the first run of a train from Birmingham Junction to the Cahaba River, a train operated by the Briarfield, Blocton and Birmingham Railroad. The junction was soon listed regularly in the published train schedules in newspapers of the mid 1890s.
The 17 Feb 1883 edition of The Jacksonville Republican (page 2) outlines the future development of the railroad through the area. References to reaching Briarfield and the Cahaba River are strong indicators of the eventual building of the railroad that passed through the junction. See A New Coal Road From Birmingham to Selma and Mobile.
There were newspapers in 17 Nov 1945 and 19 Aug 1948 that cited land transfers that pointedly referred to Wilton as formerly named Birmingham Junction. But I found an article in the 28 Aug 1931 edition of The Birmingham News that discussed the history of Wilton as if it had existed since a few years after the War of 1812, when soldiers settled the place across from a settlement of native Americans. See Wilton Was Founded After New Orleans Battle by Jackson Soldiers: Town Resembles English Village, by Frank Wills Barnett.
There were so many references to carpets made with Wilton wools in newspapers of the day that it was difficult to search for the current article's referenced name changes from Birmingham Junction to Bismarck to Wilton, or the town's founding as Wilton in 1918. I assess these items to be incorrect based on my review of newspapers, but someone with local sources might find out more than this editor from New Jersey. I am not editing the current article.
I launched this study because I have a death record for a family tree that cites Birmingham Junction as the deceased's place of birth in 1944. Of course the death certificate was created many years after the fact, so it cannot be used here as evidence, and the place of birth regrettably remains unclear even after all my diggings. At some point perhaps someone will augment this tiny article with some of the town's interesting history based , in some small part, on the above sources. For now, I document that research here for a future editor. Pnoble805 (talk) 23:25, 9 October 2020 (UTC)