Collinsville: From Lynchburg to a Schoolteacher's Name

This northeast Alabama crossroads sits on land that was Cherokee territory until the eighteen thirties, when the federal government forced the nation from its homes and opened the land to white settlers. The first families to arrive called their settlement Lynchburg, after three pioneer brothers who came early.

Then, in eighteen thirty-nine, a schoolteacher named Alfred Collins moved in and gradually became the place's most important person. He opened a store and an inn on the stagecoach route connecting the region's growing towns, and his name replaced the earlier one. By the eighteen eighties Collinsville had a post office, a mill, and enough residents to incorporate. The town straddles the line between DeKalb and Cherokee Counties, which means it has always had a divided legal identity to match its divided origins: Cherokee homeland first, then a settler town built around one man's enterprise.