​Another chapter has been added to Conecuh’s already unenviable criminal record, and another good citizen’s life has gone out at the hands of a heartless assassin,” mourned a front-page article in the Evergreen Courier on July 13, 1910.

Thanks to a big decision made by a small but committed group of state historians decades ago, a drive down an Alabama highway has become an education in our past. At its first meeting in 1948, the Alabama Historical Association (AHA) embarked on a plan to commemorate historic sites in the state with roadside markers. Today, a sign labeled “Ellicott’s Stone” on Highway 43 north of Mobile marks the path to the stone laid by surveyor Andrew Ellicott in 1799 to identify the U.S. border with Spain. In downtown Huntsville, a marker at the site of “The Big Spring” tells the story of the city’s birth. Every year there are new treats for the traveler. After sixty years and some seven hundred historical markers, this program continues to be a vital part of the AHA’s efforts to promote interest in and the study of Alabama’s past. 

Two decades after the double murder of St. Clair farmer Jacob Lutes and his second wife, Marcella, rocked northeast Alabama, the case again became front-page news with an alleged deathbed confession. John McLemore, the state's star witness against the three men charged with and later convicted of the horrific crime, admitted in his final hours that he and his father-in-law, Thomas Knight, actually killed the elderly couple, according to several affidavits. Whether three innocent men spent decades in prison for a crime they did not commit and whether McLemore actually confessed on his deathbed are still debated in the hills and hollows of Chandler Mountain. 

Some reporters dubbed her “The Giggling Granny.” Others in the media gave her the nickname “The Jolly Widow.” Her given name was Nancy Hazle, and she was probably Alabama's most prolific female serial killer. History knows her as Nannie Doss.