Greenville: Butlerville Becomes the County Seat

Butler County's seat arrived in a rush. In January of eighteen nineteen, settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas streamed into what is now south-central Alabama along the Federal Road, the main pioneer highway cutting through the region. They found good land near Fort Dale and began building a town they called Butlerville, after Captain William Butler, who had been killed by Creek warriors near Fort Bibb the previous year.

The county itself, formed on December thirteenth, eighteen nineteen, took his name too. But as Butlerville grew into the county's largest community and was chosen as county seat, residents renamed it Greenville in eighteen twenty-two. The name had a fresher sound.

Greenville has anchored Butler County ever since, sitting about forty-four miles from Montgomery on what became one of Alabama's main north-south corridors.