The New International Encyclopædia/Selma

SEL′MA. The county-seat of Dallas County, Ala., 50 miles west of Montgomery; on the Alabama River, which is navigable to this point all the year, and on the Southern, the Western of Alabama, the Louisville and Nashville, and the Birmingham, Selma and New Orleans railroads (Map: Alabama, B 3). It has Dallas Academy, a public library, and the Alabama Baptist Colored University, opened in 1878. Noteworthy are the court house, Young Men's Christian Association building, and the Alabama River bridge. Selma is the centre of a section engaged in cotton-growing, farming, and cattle-raising, and has considerable industrial importance. Repair shops of the Southern Railway, cotton mills and cotton gins, a large grist mill, and manufactories of cottonseed oil, engines and boilers, machinery, wagons, bricks, and boxes are among the leading establishments. The government, under the revised charter of 1900, is vested in a mayor and a unicameral council. Selma was settled in 1823. During the Civil War it was an important military depot for the Confederate army. On April 2, 1865, after a sharp engagement, the garrison surrendered to a Federal army under General J. H. Wilson. Population, 1890, 7622; 1900, 8713.