Forgotten Trails: Newport was town's first name
Published 3:47 am Wednesday, July 25, 2007
By Staff
The first thing I want to do today, is to make a correction in the name listed under the photograph last week. It was George Granberry, not J.M. Greenberry, who was pictured.
I have been reading some material that was in the Alabama Historical Quarterly in 1949. It was written by Dr. Robert Leslie Scribner to fulfill his requirement to receive his master's degree from the University of Alabama in 1935.
Scribner was also a social science teacher at T.R. Miller High School from 1936 to 1938. The material Scribner wrote was “A Short History of Brewton,” and I believe it to be very informative. It gives some insight to the early days of Brewton that I have not seen anywhere else. It also covered some of the early settlers' personalities and could debunk some of the things that have been printed elsewhere. I found several instances where, if he knew what he was writing, things were a little different than has been passed on down to the present.
For instance, the town was not always Brewton. I think most of us know that, but was Edmund Brewton the first train station agent? According to Scribner, there was a different person made agent in 1865.
The first house built was the Arends store house. The old Coleman Hotel and a little store were soon afterward built by W.J. Coleman. These