Monumental Dreams: The Life and Sculpture of Ann Norton

1. The Origins of a Great Alabama Family

7 1 The Origins of a Great Alabama Family Ann Vaughan Weaver was born in Selma, Dallas County, Alabama, on May 2, 1905. Her parents belonged to the three dominant families in Selma at the time—the Weavers, the Minters, and the Vaughans, all of whom who lived in the center of the South’s black belt, so-called for its rich, fertile, cotton-loving soil. Ann’s great-grandfather, Philip J. Weaver, whose German antecedents came from Maryland, was perhaps the most famous Selma native in its history. Born in 1797, he was famous for several things: for being the first permanent white settler in Selma and also the richest man in the region, thanks to an entrepreneurial talent for running cotton plantations (at one time he had over seven hundred slaves working for him); for looking outside his home territory and buying real estate that extended from Mississippi , Tennessee, and Texas to New York City; and for sustaining various other businesses that flourished before the Civil War. Described admiringly by the local newspaper as “Selma’s merchant prince,” Philip Weaver started out running a general store, trading mostly with the local Native Americans. In 1827 he funded Selma’s first newspaper , and in 1837 he pledged $100,000 (a lot of money in those days) to help build a railroad from Selma to Montgomery. In the 1840s he went to Germany to recruit skilled workers for his projects, and by the early 1850s at least three hundred German and Jewish immigrants had settled in Selma. He built a splendid house on the corner of Lauderdale and Water Streets, 8 · Part I. Southern Roots: Selma, Alabama, 1905–1930 and from its veranda he could watch the steamboats carry his merchandise from New York up the Alabama River to his dealers in Mobile. In 1823 Philip Weaver acquired a well-born wife, Ann Powell Gardner, with whom he reared six children to adulthood (several more died young). In the Marriage Records of Dallas County from 1818–1918, twenty-seven Weavers were listed. Philip J. Weaver’s other claim to fame was, as for so many Southerners, his role in the War Between the States, as they called it. The Battle of Selma in 1865 was a defining moment for the town, which was the second most important munitions depot in the South and the most crucial surviving arsenal. The outcome of the confrontation in Selma between the crazed but inspired Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Union counterpart, General James H.Wilson, was never really in doubt. The Union Army was in fine shape, with 13,500 experienced troops supplied with every kind of weapon and transport. The Confederates, on the other hand, had lost so many soldiers over the years that Forrest was forced to induct old men and young boys to help defend Selma’s munitions base and its strategic position on the Alabama River. On April 2, 1865, Philip J. Weaver was sixty-eight years old. At around Philip J. Weaver (1797–1865), founder of Selma and patriarch of the Weaver family, c. 1850. Photo courtesy of Edith Weaver Haney. The Origins of a Great Alabama Family · 9 5 p.m., he sat outside his large mansion in Selma and waited for the Union boys to arrive, which they did, in large numbers. There are several versions of what happened next, but probably the most reliable is told by Philip Weaver’s granddaughter, Rose Pettus Weaver, who described the event in her diary: “Grandpa stood in the West door way facing Lauderdale St. watching the Yankee soldiers passing, when one of them slipped up and knocked him in the head and stole his huge open face watch, the first purchase he had made with his first earned money. He lay unconscious for an hour.” (The soldier’s aggression may have had something to do with the fact that Weaver had been an adviser to Jefferson Davis and a well-known financial backer of the Confederate Army over the years.) Weaver did not die immediately from this assault. He lingered long enough to sign the Presidential pardon that all Southerners whose wealth exceeded $20,000 had to sign in order to escape being tried for treason. Weaver signed it on October 2, 1865, and died a month later, leaving 100,000 acres of land and between 700 and 1,000 slaves. Since Philip Weaver had...