Toadvine
Toadvine is a small community located south of Gilmore and north of Oak Grove, just north of where Toadvine Road crosses Valley Creek in western Jefferson County.
The community was founded in the vicinity of a mill constructed on Valley Creek by Joe Waldrop in 1823 and was originally referred to as Waldrop's Mill. In the 1870s the name "Toadvine" was applied to the post office, along the route from Elyton to Fayette. According to the grandson of then-postmaster Cape Smith, the name honored a John Toadvine who was held with Smith in the Union prison camp in Rock Island, Illinois during the Civil War.
The small community, which attracted commerce on weekends with its three mills, cluster of stores and saloon in the 1870s, opened its first schoolhouse in 1877. It was combined with the Alliance School in 1915. The George Smith Lodge No. 417 was chartered there in 1876 but moved to Short Creek in 1909.
Reference
- Smith, Simon J. (c. 1960) Toadvine In Its Heyday. self-published - via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections