Anson County, NC - Albert James Pickett, 1810-1858 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Anson NCGenWeb Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century. Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography page 742 PICKETT, ALBERT JAMES, author, was born Aug. 13, 1810, in Anson County, N.C. He was a writer of Montgomery, Ala., who published a History of Alabama. He died Oct. 25, 1858, in Montgomery, Ala. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Albert James Pickett (born Anson County, North Carolina, August 13, 1810 - died Montgomery, Alabama, October 28, 1858) was a planter and lawyer in Autauga County, Alabama, and is known as Alabama's first historian. At the age of 8, Pickett moved with his father, William R. Pickett to the frontier of Autauga County, ceded to the United States by the Creek Indians in the Treaty of Fort Jackson only four years earlier. William Pickett built a home near Autaugaville and a mill building and trader's post on Swift Creek. Growing up, Albert befriended many of the Creek and frontier traders that frequented his father's store. From them he began to piece together the early history of the state which he later determined to put into writing. Pickett studied law, but never practiced professionally, instead devoting his time to literature, agriculture and historical research. He traveled widely and corresponded with archivists and book dealers in the Atlantic states and Europe in order to document various parts of his history of the state. The two-volume History of Alabama was published in Charleston, South Carolina in 1851. Pickett was working on a comprehensive history of the Southwest at the time of his death.