Athens, Alabama

Athens is a city in and the county seat of Limestone County, in the U.S. state of Alabama; it is included in the Huntsville–Decatur–Albertville combined statistical area. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city is 25,407.

History

Founded in 1818 by John Coffee, Robert Beaty, John D. Carroll, and John Read, Athens is one of the oldest incorporated cities in the state, having been incorporated one year prior to the state's admittance to the Union in 1819. Limestone County was also created by an act of the Alabama Territorial Legislature in 1818. The town was first called Athenson, but was incorporated as Athens after the ancient city in Greece. The town's first mayor was Samuel Tanner, and the Tanner area, south of Athens, was named on his behalf.

The Athens area was the home of William Wyatt Bibb, the first governor of Alabama, and its second governor, his brother Thomas Bibb, who succeeded him in office when he died in a fall from his horse.

Before European settlers arrived, the area which would become Athens was part of Chickasaw lands, settlers from Tennessee began intruding into what would become Limestone County in the first decade of the 1800s; the Chickasaw ceded lands north and east of the Tennessee River by about 1816, opening legal settlement in the area.

Encyclopedia of Alabama

In 1818, a group of land speculators, including Robert Beaty and John D. Carroll, purchased 160 acres and began selling lots in what would become the city of Athens. The city was incorporated on November 19, 1818 — notably before Alabama even became a state (December 14, 1819).