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Cedar Grove:
Palatial Canebrake Plantation

Most of the time there are at least two ways to get from one town to another. A comfortable blacktop highway laid smooth by modern equipment is the quickest; or you can take an old road, a forgotten trail known only by local people.

Such a trail can start out as a paved road, leaving the small houses and businesses of town behind as it

Cedar Grove in the 1880s. The man pictured with the beard is Mims Walker, a former Confederate officer.

transforms into a narrow tree lined passage of dirt and gravel twisting and turning through open pastures and cedar woods inviting the driver to an adventure of discovery. As the car moves further, the traveler’s eye strains to see what’s past the next curve and over the next rise.

Young Will Alison, son of the current owner, demonstrates how a rod lifts from the bedpost to support mosquito netting.

Just such a road leads from the small black belt prairie town of Uniontown to the tiny hamlet of Faunsdale. This part of Alabama is known for its rolling pasture lands of black soil and the ever-present cedar tree.

Once called the “canebrake” in the old days because of the preponderance of cane, today the skinny plant is not as noticeable in the countryside as it must have been more than a century and a half ago.

Traveling west on the old trail the traveler sees a “T” coming up in the road, a place in the road where you have to make a decision, turn right or turn left. Easing the now dusty vehicle up to the intersection while wondering which choice would be best, the dilemma suddenly becomes insignificant as the traveler gazes upon one of the South’s few remaining treasures.

Across the road, at the top of the “T,” is a wide expanse of open pasture dotted by graceful old oak and cedar

trees. Setting magnificently in the center of the grand opening is an aged masterpiece of southern charm.

Much like the stars and bars of the Confederate Flag that was designed by a resident of the plantation, Cedar Grove refuses to pass into history. The house started out modestly enough.

Two Scottish brothers named McAlpin received a grant for 160 acres in 1830 and built a four room log cabin on the site. That part of the house is now the dining room, a bedroom and upstairs storage area. In 1852, Charles Walker purchased the property along with another 1800 acres and began the transformation from a pioneer log cabin into an antebellum plantation of renown. By 1860, just prior to the War Between the States, Walker had become wealthy as a canebrake planter with personal assets estimated at over $250,000. Much of these assets were in the form of slaves.

Three Confederate officers called Cedar Grove home during the days of the war, one of them being Mims Walker, son of Charles. Sometime shortly after the war Mims met Nicola Marschall, designer of the Confederate Flag, and invited him to come to Cedar Grove and paint his family’s portraits. The portraits are now in the possession of the McKee family of Faunsdale, descendants of the Walker family.

The plantation house continued to serve the family and the community for five generations. Until about 1925, a schoolhouse at the rear of the big house was used not only by the family, but also by children from the surrounding plantations. The school is thought to be the art studio of Mr. Marschall, the place where he painted the portraits.

A portrait of Mims Walker as a young Confederate officer hangs next to his uniform displayed in the McKee family farm. The portrait is by Nicola Marschall, designer of the Confederate flag.

Another unique part of the old house is the “cooler” or underground storage area that once provided a place to store milk. The 20 foot deep hole with stairway leading down into cool darkness is outside the rear of the house where a separate kitchen once stood.

Today, Thomas Alison, Jr. and his family own the house. After being vacant for a number of years and decaying into disrepair, Tommy, as he is known, bought the property in 1990 and is in the process of restoring Cedar Grove to its original beauty.