Vienna

"By the eighteen thirties, Vienna had become a prominent trade center. There were seven or eight stores, a tannery, shoe shops, saloons, several warehouses, churches, boarding houses, two doctors, and a post office and school. Doctor Pearson, the best-known doctor, built brick office in the corner of his yard, and had a splendid practice. He had the prettiest flower garden in the county, and owned a tannery and a shoe shop, and farmed also. He became member of the legislature. Another well-known doctor was Dr. Turnipseed. The post office opened in Vienna in eighteen thirty-four with John Jennings as postmaster. He served only a few months when Tristan S. Thomas replaced him. Tristan S. Thomas became the judge of, uh, Probate Judge of Pickens County. The post office at Vienna closed during the War Between the States, and was not opened again until eighteen eighty-one with Rueben Jones as the postmaster. Leading businesses were F. M. Crooks, J. M. Cook, W. B. Peebles, Richardson and Wilder, H. Connally, Crooks and Company, and Robert Bridges. Connally was quite a character. He was once accused of having a special order of nine-gallon kegs made and shipped in. He filled them with molasses and sold them as standard-sized, ten-gallon kegs. There were two churches out from Vienna: a Methodist church, Emory Chapel, and Bethany Baptist Church. Bethany Baptist Church is where the cemetery is that, uh, George Washington's bodyguard, James McCrory, is buried.

Political rallies and baseball games always grew a big crowd to Vienna, and eighteen seventy-eight Major E. D. Willett and Colonel J. J. Lee, candidates for the legislature, spoke to the largest crowd ever to assemble there. Many from Vienna played for the Bridgeville team. It as made of John Horton, J. M. S. Summerville, W. B. Peebles, Dr. McLoyd, Dick Buntin, John Buntin, Vestor Peebles, Walter Mitchell, and Arch Hood, and Mr. Zac Pulliam umpired the games between the teams. In eighteen eighty-seven the Peebles family formed their own syndicate and bought the entire town of Vienna, stores, warehouses, ferries across both Sipsey and Tombigbee, and every residence in the town except Dr. Pearson's. Cholera killed all the hogs that year, and W. B. Peebles sold five hundred pounds of meat in two days. An advertisement he placed in the West Alabamian offered hip boots for a dollar seventy-five, and ladies' eighteen lace shoes for a dollar.

As early as eighteen fifty-seven the county had a fair in Bridgeville, and many entries came from Vienna. H. S. Stevenson won a prize for the best-tanned leather. Mrs. Abram Turnipseed had the best blackberry cordial, and Mrs. Crooks won one dollar for a coop of chickens.

Vienna lacked the services of a Perry Mason or a Dick Tracy, and the mystery of the floating casket was never solved. In eighteen eighty-three a fisherman near Vienna found a casket in the river. Inside was the body of a pretty brunette, well dressed and wearing a string of pearls around her neck. The man rushed into the town for help, but returned to find that the casket had floated with the current downstream, and was never seen again. A telegraph office was placed in Vienna in eighteen and eighty-two. In nineteen oh one Vienna was able to call Columbus by phone. There had been phones a number of years where neighbors called each other, not by numbers but by rings, such as two longs or a long and a short, and so forth. Every phone on the line rang, and one's person's news was everyone's news, as each listened in for any bit of juicy gossip on the line. To call Columbus, the call went through Bridgeville, Franconia, Carrollton, and Pickensville.

It was near Vienna in Old Bethany Cemetery that James McCrory along with some of the early settlers is buried. McCrory, a bodyguard for George Washington, received his land grant in Township twenty-four, Range two W, n September the twenty-sixth, eighteen and twenty-seven. The Peebles monuments in this cemetery are beautifully sculptured from Italian marble, and brought in by boat.

Vienna was a horse-and mule-trading center. Traders from Tennessee would spend the winter, bringing their mules and horses there to sell. Some would find work and stay on, but most returned to Tennessee in the spring.

A few years ago, Mrs. Emm Hildreth, from Eutaw and a descendent of the Peebles family, placed a marker marking the spot where the old school stood. This, and a marker which points the way to the cemetery, and another that says AVienna, are the only reminders that this was once a thriving town. But one only needs to read, read the old newspapers to see that in the eighteen hundreds it was quite a place.

Much history has been woven into the Tombigbee; those who lived along its banks contributed much to the growth of the county, and now that the stream will be navigable again, and once more riverboats will be traveling up and down the river, our county may look forward to the future, when some of the old towns, or perhaps new ones, will grow into progressive industrial centers".