Editing Ashville, Alabama (section)

==History==
Ashville was initially founded as the community of St. Clairsville, but the name was changed to honor John Ash, the first white settler of the area who arrived in 1817.<ref name="encyclopediaofalabama.org"/> He became the first county judge and later state senator. His log cabin stands in the city center. Philip Coleman originally owned the land on which the town stands, but he sold 30 acres to the five county commissioners, which included Ash, who was appointed by Gov. [[Thomas Bibb]] to establish a new county seat for St. Clair. It was designated the county seat in 1821 and the village incorporated in 1822. The first courthouse, also a log structure, was built two years later. It was replaced in 1844 with the current courthouse building.

In 1890, a group of investors organized the Tennessee River, Ashville and Coosa Railroad Company, and planned to build a railroad line from [[Sheffield, Alabama|Sheffield]] to [[Anniston, Alabama|Anniston]] via Ashville. It managed to build to Ashville from [[Whitney, Alabama|Whitney]], connecting the town to the [[Alabama Great Southern Railroad]]. However, it went bankrupt during the mid-1890s, and the tracks were dismantled and sold for scrap.<ref>Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States, Vol. 27 1894</ref>

Electric lights came to Ashville in 1891, and the first telephone company was chartered in the same year. Residents in the southern half of the county often complained of the difficulty of traveling to Ashville over Backbone Mountain, which divides the county, so the state legislature authorized a satellite county seat to be established in Pell City in 1907 on the southern side of the mountain.