Gainesville was founded in 1832 on land originally owned by John Coleman, the husband of a Choctaw woman from the area, and after he sold it to Colonel Moses Lewis, the town was divided into lots and named for Colonel George Strother Gaines, an American agent to the Choctaw who helped negotiate the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. The town grew rapidly, and by 1840 it had become the third largest town in Alabama with a population of more than 4,000. It was also a major port, shipping 6,000 bales of cotton to Mobile each year by steamboat on the Tombigbee River. Gainesville's Confederate Cemetery is the final resting place of 250 Civil War soldiers who were injured in the Battle of Shiloh and brought to the hospital in the Female Academy there, and the town also preserves a strong legacy of pioneer history in its historic homes and churches.