Hybart, Alabama

Thanks to Fred Hybart for the photo.

If one travels North on Al. 41 from Monroeville, Al. they will travel through some of what many say is the last foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. 

This is a winding road with many hills and hollows that rivals many places in other parts of the world for their beauty. Steep hills, sharp curves, incredible views in various places. Along this road is some of the most beautiful and rugged land in South Alabama. 

In the northern most part of Monroe County one comes to a small quaint little village called Hybart. The Monroe/Wilcox County line is there. I honestly can’t prove it but I have always been told that the rail road track at Hybart is the lowest elevation in Monroe County, and only a few miles as the crow flies Look Out Hill is the highest. One topo map I looked at put the elevation there as 94’ and Look Out Hill at 433’. I did not check everywhere in Monroe County to determine what was lowest and what was highest. Water runs out of Hybart so I am not sure how it being the lowest could be determined. However the railroad crosses the county line in Hybart also. Water doesn’t run up hill. Sounds good though anyway.

I was “always told” that the community of Hybart was named for James Willis Hybart who was the first postmaster of Hybart. According to the information on the Facebook page of the Hybart-Bell’s Landing Preservation Society, “He was the first postmaster there when the post office was established in 1926. Mrs. Carol Hybart was Post Mistress when it closed in 1976.” Many communities I have found out were named after the original post master there so that makes perfect sense.

There is a small white building in Hybart that has Post Office on it. I never remember a post office being in that building. One source I talked to said that it was indeed used for only a couple of months. I cannot confirm it but, I seem to remember that the post office was also in the store that was the Johnson/Sessions store very briefly as well, but I have not run into anybody else that confirms that so I am not sure. At any rate if/when it was in that building it was with a temporary postmaster and a very short time. I personally was not living in the area and only visited and can’t remember for sure. It seems like in the back of my mind that both places were used temporarily until it closed completely after Miss Carole Hybart retired.

One of the many interesting things about Hybart is the fact that there are or have been several artesian wells there. In my lifetime I remember that there was one right beside the road at the store that was on the highway. There was one out in the pasture that is west of hwy. 41 and south of County rd. 56. There was one down 56 on the right a little way’s down toward Coy. There was one at Mr. Cecil Sheffield’s shop that was actually across the County Line and on the west side of hwy. 41. I am sure that there were probably others that I did not know about. However, I always thought that there were a lot of them for the area. As a kid I always wanted to get a drink out of them. It was cold water but it always had a strong sulfur smell and taste. Ha ha my grandmother always called it a rotten egg smell.

In my early childhood years the store out on 41 was owned by Mr. Greg Johnson and his family. My grandmother always said that before he owned it that Mr. Jeff Sessions ran it. He was the father of Jeff Sessions who later became a long serving US Senator, and then Attorney General in Washington DC. My grandparents always called him Little Jeff.  I do not know the years. For a large part that was the store she traded at. My grandmother always reminisced that when Mr. Sessions sold the store to Mr.  Johnson that he introduced her to Mr Johnson and told him that she would be a loyal customer if he treated her right. However we went in both of them from time to time. 

Having watched Jeff Sessions grow up, and later grow to the prominence that he attained in life, my grand parents and other family members were always proud of him and they passed way long before he was elected to the senate. One funny thing my grandmother used to say about him was that my dad and uncle who were about 10 or 12 years older than Little Jeff, would go in the store when Little Jeff was in there as a very small kid. As kids will do they would always ask him, “what is your name”? My grandmother said he would always answer, my name is Jeffery “By God” Sessions. He was too small to say Beauregard. They were I guess like al of the Hybart people proud of his accomplishments.

Mrs. Carol Hybart was the Post Mistress there and the post office was attached to her house. Mr. Jack Hybart ran a the other store that was on the south side of Co Rd. 56 closer to the road than the house. That store still stands today although it has been vacant for many years.

As a preschooler I stayed with my great aunt Minnie Jordan whom many of us simply knew as Aunt Minnie, while my mother worked at Vanity Fair in Monroeville. She lived a couple of miles south of Hybart right off Al. 41. We would venture down to Hybart a couple of times a week to the stores and post office and other places. I remember going in the store and getting an Ike and Mike Stage Plank and an Orange Soda. I remember that there was always a big glass container on the counter that held cookies also that were to die for as well. 

When we went out Aunt Minnie would many times visit some of the folks in the community. I remember on several occasions going with her to visit Miss Abbie Sessions who lived in the house on the right of 56 before the post office Where Senator Sessions was raised. She visited numerous people. That was the only way she had of communication because there were no phones south of Hybart.

Back in that era of time as it is today, politics was always a discussion but, as a preschooler I was clueless as to what that even meant. I remember though that Aunt Minnie had to work at the polls one time. This was the presidential election when John F. Kennedy was running. Looking back I do not know if it was the primary, or final election. It seems like somebody came to her house early that morning and told here that they needed her to work. Nobody up our way had a telephone back then. I know it was unexpected. I had to spend the day at the polls. The voting place was in the back of Mr. Jack Hybart’s Store. Many people came in or it seemed a lot anyway.

Later on the county moved a little white house out to the corner of Co. Rd. 56 and Al. 41 and there was where folks voted for years. I remember that my father was one that was charged with helping count the votes and them sealing the metal box and having to take it to Monroeville on election night.

This was in the very early 1960’s. Where the McGraw’s store later named Gaines’s Store is now located there was a tin covered building. In that building there was a shop of some sort that worked on things like pulp wood trucks. It was after Mr. Jack Hybart’s store closed that the McGraw’s Store was built and opened to the best of my memory. 

Aunt Minnie had worked as a switch board operator in Vredenburgh, and at Beatrice for years. She had also worked for the railroad at the depot. Because of her ties to the railroad and railroad people, from time to time we would go to the depot and see the agent there. I remember the agent having a pole with a U shape on the end that had rubber bands stretched across it. In between those rubber bands would be papers that they called orders. When the train switched cars in and out at Hybart the depot agent would hold them up, and the engineer would reach out the window and take them out of the rubber bands. I was fascinated by them being able to do that.

Being a little kid the sound of the train coming through was so loud that it was terrifying. Today 60+ years later looking back on these experiences I am amazed still at the things I got to experience at a young age.  

Not having a phone was something that in time of emergency made things hard. In times of something happening information came second and third hand and it could lead to misunderstood things. I remember when Jimmy Suttle a guy who grew up in Vredenburgh was killed by lightening while he was at college. I am not sure how word came but I remember folks visiting a couple of times during the day and the adults were very upset. They had known him apparently all of his life. 

Anybody that went on to college was looked up to by the adults. I know they were very upset as to how a young man in the prime of life could be taken so suddenly.

Another catastrophe that happened was when the train hit the school bus in Coy and the children were killed. The only word that we got that morning was that a locomotive had hit a school bus and the driver and a bunch of the kids were killed. My grandmother drove the school bus that ran from Hybart over to Beatrice. She crossed the railroad in three places. Hybart, out from Buena Vista, and Cordoroy. Who ever came and told us that morning did not know where the wreck was. I remember Aunt Minnie paced the floor and prayed and cried. As a preschooler I was clueless but knew it was bad. Therefore, it was a terrible day for hours till information got back that it was not her bus. It was bad still because there were other families who had lost their loved ones.  According to an internet search this wreck happened in March 1960.

The good memories of Hybart and spending my childhood years in that area far out weight any bad memories that I have. The good people, good times. It was just a simpler time.

Those of us who grew up in the Rural South are blessed in so many ways to have experienced the things of times gone by that were so much simpler than the mad rush of today.