The first settler in the Wilsonville, Shelby County, Alabama was Henry W. Robertson, who brought his family from South Carolina in 1812 and settled one thousand acres. Henry was born Feb. 27, 1782, in South Carolina. The closest neighbors were in Easonville area, a few miles south of Pell City and another settlement in the Montevallo area. When Alabama became a state in 1819, a land office was opened in Tuscaloosa. Mr. Robertson and Mr. Wallace who stayed with the Robertsons while picking the land he wished to claim and other settlers rode horseback to Tuscaloosa to claim their land. The Wallace plantation house still stands four miles north of Wilsonville where Highway 76 connects with Highway 25.
Henry married Rebecca Roberts, daughter of David Montgomery Roberts and Caroline Mills, in North Carolina. Rebecca was born about 1788 in Caswell County, North Carolina. Henry W. Robertson family plantation in Shelby County, Alabama remained in the hands of the Robertson family until 1980’s. Several items from the original plantation are on display at the Shelby County Museum.
They had the following children:
Permelia Robertson was born 1802 in South Carolina and died after 1870 in Shelby County, Alabama. She married George Farr.
Teresa Robertson was born in 1816 in South Carolina.
Henry Brown Robertson was born in 1871 in Alabama.
Jane Robertson was born around 1817 in Alabama. Jane married Pleasant D. White on 18 Oct. 1842 in Shelby County, Alabama. Pleasant was a painter. Next, she married and divorced John B. Hardin. Then she married Jeptha Morgan.
James B. Robertson was born James married Mahuldy Skelton on Oct. 16, 1834, in Shelby County, Alabama.
Peter Robertson was born in Alabama
Berry Mann Robertson was born May 24, 1824, in Alabama.
William Green Robertson was born June 24, 1828, in Alabama and died on Feb. 27, 1865, in U. S. Army Hospital near Ft. Douglas, Chicago, Ill at age 36.
Marion M. Robertson was born in 1830 in Wilsonville, Shelby County, Alabama.
Henry died September 18, 1853, and is buried at the Four Mile Baptist Cemetery located on Shelby County Highway 61, 3 miles northwest of Wilsonville, in the Fourmile Community.
