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History in
a Pecan Shell
William J. Hamlett is credited with filling out the application for
a post office in 1881. The reason or source of the name supposedly
comes from the white (alba) sand on a nearby mountain (Mont). The
areas’s previous post office had been located several miles north
of present Montalba where the Beaver Valley Primitive Baptist Church
(and cemetery) had been established (later to become Holly Springs.
Both Beaver Valley and then Montalba prospered due to the location
alongside the Palestine
to Athens road. It
was reported that a Confederate foundry nearby manufactured guns and
ammunition for “the Lost Cause.”
The population hit a low of fifty residents in 1925 and then increased
during the first years of the Great Depression to 300. In the late
1970 there were still several businesses and three churches. In the
mid 1960s there were 200 people reported living here, but it declined
to 110 in the mid 1970s and that number continues to be used to the
present census (2000). |
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