Alfred Battle
Alfred Battle was married to Hannah around 1830 and had at least 16 children with her. He was born in Georgia and as a young boy moved to Eufaula. He could read but he could not write. He made sure to send his children to school so they could do both. It was likely that Alfred was a sharecropper because he was a farmer after the Civil War, and he was renting property to farm. As a sharecropper, he farmed some land and gave the earnings from the crop to the landowner, who in return gave him food and supplies. Sharecropping was hard to escape because often time landowners would try and tie people to the land but 1910 Alfred bought 3 acres of his own land for $10. They had multiple land transactions throughout their lives. The plantation he lived on was in Eufaula, Alabama. He got married in Tuskegee to Hannah who was owned by someone else. Alfred owned lot of land and he was a farmer. He was a voter in 1867 which was rare because freedmen were only able to vote for a short time in the South. After the Reconstructions of the South after the Civil War, groups such as the KKK and the White League made it almost impossible to vote as a person of color. These groups also made it hard for sharecroppers to escape the loop of sharecropping; Alfred likely faced hardships from the groups as a Black landowner. In 1896, Alfred and his son were arrested after Alfred’s son was involved in a burglary. Whether he is guilty of the crime he was accused of, we are unsure. Alfred and Hannah were landowners in Auburn. He passed away on May 5, 1918, and was buried in Baptist Hill Cemetery.
Contributed by Charlie and Jonah from Auburn High School