Lincoln, Alabama: Three Names and a Railroad

The community now called Lincoln in northwest Talladega County has worn three names. The first settlers noted it as Blue Eye, for a reason now lost. By the time a post office opened the name had become Kingsville.

Then in eighteen fifty-six the post office was renamed Lincoln, this time in honor of Benjamin Lincoln, the Revolutionary War general who accepted the British sword of surrender at Yorktown in seventeen eighty-one. It was not named for the president. The Georgia Pacific Railroad arrived in the eighteen eighties, and the business district shifted south to meet the tracks.

Lincoln incorporated in nineteen eleven. Today it sits along Interstate Twenty just east of the Birmingham metro, one of those small Talladega County towns that grew up around a railroad stop and kept the name of a forgotten hero.