In 1817, two years before Alabama became a state, Josiah Tilley came to the Tombigbee area, which was inhabited by Indians. In 1820, Pickensville was established and named for Civil War General Andrew Pickens of South Carolina, and it became a booming town with large riverboats entering its ports, delivering goods, and carrying passengers to Mobile, Alabama. After water transportation slowed, the M&O Railroad arrived in 1870 with passenger and freight trains. Ferry boat transportation operated across the Tenn-Tom River to Noxubee County, Mississippi, from 1879 to 1979, and two of its operators were war veteran Raleigh Ryan and Hezekiah Grice, both of Pickensville. The town had schools, businesses, doctor’s offices, and churches. The Methodist Church, the oldest building in Pickensville, was founded in 1921 and was used as a hospital for Confederate soldiers, and Black and whites worshipped there together. The Stage Coach Inn, built in 1830, served stage coaches traveling between Columbus, Mississippi, and Eutau, Alabama. Pickensville First Baptist Church was founded in 1847, B.B. Chapel Methodist Church in 1977, and Saint John Missionary Baptist Church in 1885. The Rosenwald School, the only school left and now serving as the Pickensville Community Center, was founded in 1925 by Julius Rosenwald of Chicago and Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee. Pickensville is the oldest town in Pickens County and was the first county seat. Its first mayor, a riverboat captain named Newell, died in 1843. Once a Confederate town, Pickensville elected its first African American mayor in 2004, Mary Locke Fuseyamore, granddaughter of Dora Wilkins Locke, who was born in Virginia and brought to Pickensville in the early 1800’s, and daughter of local civil rights worker Jimmie Locke Sr.