Albert J. Pickett

Who was Albert J. Pickett?

Albert James Pickett was a planter and lawyer in Autauga County, Alabama, and is known as Alabama's first historian.

At the age of 8, Pickett moved with his father, William R. Pickett to the frontier of Autauga County, ceded to the United States by the Creek Indians in the Treaty of Fort Jackson only four years earlier. William Pickett built a home near Autaugaville and a mill building and trader's post on Swift Creek. Growing up, Albert befriended many of the Creek and frontier traders that frequented his father's store. From them he began to piece together the early history of the state which he later determined to put into writing.

Pickett studied law, but never practiced professionally, instead devoting his time to literature, agriculture and historical research. He traveled widely and corresponded with archivists and book dealers in the Atlantic states and Europe in order to document various parts of his history of the state. The two-volume History of Alabama was published in Charleston, South Carolina in 1851. Pickett was working on a comprehensive history of the Southwest at the time of his death.