“The Weeping Enigma” Statue in Old Memphis Cemetery Re-Erected to Preserve History

BY DONNA BAIN

Staff Writer

Once a bustling town on the Tombigbee River, Memphis, Alabama, was founded by James Williamson Wallis in 1845. Memphis once had a steamboat port, eight stores, saloons, hotels, casinos, a race-track, and was a port along the river used to ship cotton from the port of Memphis to Mobile. The town began to decline after the railroad came through Aliceville in the early 1900s, and shipping by steamboats was replaced by shipping by rail.