Robert Jemison Jr (Tuscaloosa)
Robert Jemison, Jr (born September 17, 1802 in Lincoln County, Georgia; died October 16, 1871 in Tuscaloosa) was a a member of the Alabama General Assembly from 1837 to 1863. Though he had voted against secession, he was elected to succeed William Lowndes Yancey in the Confederate Senate and served from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865.
Before the war, Jemison owned numerous businesses in Tuscaloosa, including a stage coach line, toll roads and bridges, a grist mill, a sawmill, livery stables, the Indian Queen Hotel, and six plantations totaling over 10,000 acres. He lived at the largest of them, Cherokee Place, in what is now Northport, until constructing a town house.
Jemison hired Horace King, a former slave from Russell County, to construct two of the first covered bridges over the Black Warrior River. He had worked for Jemison before the war, building bridges in Mississippi. After King purchased his freedom from owner John Godwin in 1846, Jemison helped him secure an exemption from the manumission laws through the Alabama Legislature, thereby allowing him to remain in the state. After Jemison's death, King completed the contracts for Tuscaloosa County.