On the extreme eastern boundary of Washington County, on a bluff overlooking the Tombigbee River from the west, is the site of old St. Stephens, the original, or territorial, capital of Alabama. At one time it had a population of perhaps three thousand, composed largely of immigrants from Virginia. At the time of its selection as the seat of territorial government it was about the only place in the territory fitted to become a capital, though Huntsville, on the extreme north, was also a town of considerable pretension.

As early as 1817 St. Stephens was a bustling little center of culture and wealth. In their insulation the people were proud of their little capital. Their touch with the outside world was by means of sluggish flat boats which were operated to and from Mobile. The original site is now a scene of desolation. A few ruins and relics remain to tell the story of the once refined society existing there. Some of the foundation masonry of the little capital building and of the tiny treasury, an occasional column of stone or brick, beaten and battered, rows of trees still growing in regular order as they were planted nearly a century ago and a cemetery with its stained and blackened marble remain to indicate that this was once a spot inhabited by a refined community.

Here, as far back as 1814, Thomas Easton, the first public printer of the Alabama territory, issued his little paper with its scant news of flat boat tidings from Mobile, the improvements in the little town, the exploits of hunters of turkeys, deer, wolves and bears, with a slight sprinkling of personalities. St. Stephens had been a town of some pretension for years before the first territorial governor, Honorable William Wyatt Bibb, of Georgia, came across the country from the Chattahoochee to assume the executive functions to which he had been appointed by President Monroe. Bibb was amply equipped for his difficult position alike naturally and by experience.

A graduate from William and Mary College, he chose medicine as a profession and was actively engaged in his profession when he was chosen to represent Georgia in the legislature, where, though still quite a young man, he won distinction. When scarcely twenty-five years old he was sent to Congress from Georgia. Later he became one of the senators from the state, and later still was appointed by President Monroe, the territorial governor of Alabama. His was an arduous task. The territory was dotted over with straggling settlements of colonists who came from Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia and settled here and there, but the two chief settlements were in the opposite ends of the territory at St. Stephens and Huntsville. Roads were yet uncut, and in passing from one settlement to another the colonists would follow the trails of the Indians which threaded the forests through. To weld the widely separated communities into statehood and lay the foundation of a great commonwealth required more than ordinary statesmanship.

The boundaries of the territory had just been defined by the National Congress, with the provision that the territorial legislature of the new region should be those who were members of the Mississippi legislative council and house of representatives who resided within the confines of the newly created Alabama territory. Of that number, it so happened that only one member of the legislative council, or senate, fell within the new territory. James Titus, of Madison, was the only member of the upper house, and during the first session of the legislative assembly he sat in a chamber alone as the senate of Alabama. He was president, clerk and the senate—all in one. He met, considered the measures of the lower house, adjourned and convened with ludicrous formality. In the lower house there were about a dozen members.

The initial message of the first governor showed a ready grasp of the raw conditions and an ability to grapple with formidable difficulties. A wilderness had to be shaped and molded into a commonwealth by the creation of the necessary adjuncts, all of which the young governor recommended in his first message. The promotion of education, the establishment of highways, the construction of bridges and ferries, the definition of the boundaries of counties and the creation of new ones, in order to fuse the dispersed population into oneness were among his recommendations.

Perhaps the most notable service rendered by Governor Bibb was that of thwarting the effort of the Mississippi constitutional convention, in which convention was organized that state, in seeking so to change the original boundary between the Alabama and Mississippi territories as to include into the new state of Mississippi all that part of Alabama which lies west of the Tombigbee River, or, in other words, to make the Tombigbee the boundary line between the two proposed states. This imposed on the young governor an important and arduous task, but with cool aggressiveness, coupled with influential statesmanship, he succeeded in preventing the proposed change. Had the change been made there would have been lost to Alabama that valuable portion now embraced in the counties of Sumter, Choctaw, Washington and Mobile Counties. To the active agency and energy of this original commonwealth builder is Alabama indebted for the retention of this valuable strip of territory.

Commercial and educational systems were organized by the incorporation of banks and schools, and the first location of the seat of government of the new state provided for by the selection of a site at the junction of the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers, which new town was called Cahaba. Governor Bibb was charged with the work of laying out the plans of the town and for providing for the erection of a capitol building. Meanwhile the seat of government was removed to Huntsville in order to await the completion of the capitol at Cahaba.

His term having expired as territorial governor, and Alabama having now become a state, Governor Bibb offered for election as the first governor of the new state, and was opposed by Marmaduke Williams, of Tuscaloosa. Bibb was elected, but died soon after. Two counties, one in Alabama and the other in Georgia, were named in honor of Governor William Wyatt Bibb.