Henry County, Alabama (Abbeville, Alabama)

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Henry County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. Its name is in honor of Patrick Henry, famous orator and Governor of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, its population was 17,302. Its county seat is Abbeville.

Henry County is part of the Dothan, Alabama, Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Henry County was established on December 13, 1819 by the Alabama Territorial Legislature. The area was ceded by the Creek Indian Nation in 1814 under the Treaty of Fort Jackson. Henry County was formed before the State of Alabama was organized. The area that includes Henry County had historically been part of the Lower Creek Confederacy. It was occupied for thousands of years before that by varying cultures of indigenous peoples. Abbeville was designated as the county seat in 1833.

Upon formation, Henry County was the largest county within Alabama, composing all or portions of the present counties of Barbour, Coffee, Covington, Crenshaw, Dale, Geneva, Houston, and Pike. When the youngest county of Houston was formed in 1903, Henry became the smallest.

After 1814, the colonial settlers' developed Franklin as their first European-American settlement in the Creek territory. The former river port served Abbeville on the Chattahoochee River. Much of the original Henry County was part of the original Alabama wiregrass region.

According to the 2000 census, the county has a total area of 568.33 square miles (1,472.0 km2), of which 561.80 square miles (1,455.1 km2) (or 98.85%) is land and 6.53 square miles (16.9 km2) (or 1.15%) is water.

www.henrycountyalabama.org/