Rebecca Sewell Homan and JoeBob Ray paid a visit to the WEIS Radio studios on Thursday morning to discuss the meeting of the Cherokee County Historical Society this evening, that will feature a program sure to be of interest to most everyone:

The Historical Society currently has a number of projects in the works, including something they’ve been working on for a long time now:

The Cherokee County Historical Museum is located on East Main Street in Centre; again, the meeting will get underway at 6:00pm

To hear that interview in its entirety, click the link below

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The Historical Preservation Society of Cherokee County will hold their bi-monthly meeting on Thursday (August 29th), starting at 6:00pm, at the County Historical Museum located on Main Street in Centre.

Chief Deputy Coroner Paul McDonald will serve as special guest speaker, and he’ll present a program on the colorful History of Cherokee County Sheriffs featuring a large assortment of photographs and other law enforcement memorabilia.

Light refreshments will be served.

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[Taken from the Cherokee County Historical Preservation Society website]

Mr. Paul McDonald will present the program on former Sheriffs of Cherokee County.

Brief History of the Sheriff’s Office

There have been a total of 37 sheriffs to serve Cherokee County since it was established in 1836. Some were fathers and sons and possibly grandsons.

Some served multiple terms, some only one. The first sheriff, Moses H. Hughes, was appointed in 1838. It is not known if there were any deputies at that time.

One of the longest serving and most famous sheriffs of Alabama was C.M. (Mac) Garrett. Garrett’s service from 1943-1983 was only interrupted by the service of Rusty Leath from 1955-1963. Garrett was followed by the single terms of Jack Smith and Jack Estes, who was the first of two former Alabama State Troopers to be elected sheriff in the county.

Roy Wynn was elected to three consecutive terms before retiring in 2003 and was succeeded by the term of Larry Wilson, who previously served as Wynn’s chief deputy. The current sheriff, Jeff Shaver, was elected in 2006 and is the second former Alabama State Trooper to hold the office.

If anyone has any historical information or photographs of any of the former Sheriffs, please contact Bo Jolly at 256-927-3365 to provide our office with this information.

http://www.preservingcherokeecountyalabamahistory.com/