In this connection, the name of Major Miles W. Abernethy deserves to be presented among those who wrought in contribution to the erection of our commonwealth. A citizen of Calhoun County, he was a native of North Carolina, where he was born on July 22, 1807. He was thirty-two years old when he came from Lincoln County, that of his birth in the Old North State, and settled in Alabama. Choosing as his home Jacksonville, where he located as a merchant in 1839, he at once became an interested sharer in the stirring times of that period. Alabama had now come to giant statehood through the throes of initial struggle, and had, through her distinguished sons, won an enviable place in the councils of the nation. Besides, the internal improvement and vastness of the resources of the state had given it a place among the commercial factors of the nation. The reputation of the state reaching Major Abernethy, served to lure him thither in the maturity of his years, and he quietly and yet actively entered on his career as a merchant at Jacksonville. Fixed in character, matured in judgment, affable of manner, cultured, and possessed of a breadth of vision much above the ordinary, he was not long in winning his way to the confidence and esteem of the people among whom he settled. Three years after reaching the state, he was chosen from the county, then called Benton, to represent his constituency in the lower branch of the state legislature, where he served with quiet and efficient ability for a period of years. The monotonous routine of legislative work did not at first impress him, and he retired after the expiration of a term or two, and resumed merchandising and planting. However, one of his type of intelligence and of general interest, could not be indifferent to the current affairs of a state forging forward in development, and now a genuine factor in affairs national. In 1885 he was again summoned to public life by being chosen to represent his district in the state senate. His previous experience and intervening and undiminished interest in public matters, had afforded him an increased stock of qualification, and he returned to the functions of publicity with greater force than before. Cautious, prudent, conservative and regarding the public good with a disinterestedness wholly devoid of future consideration of self, the counsel of Major Abernethy was in constant demand concerning the issues pending before the general assembly. An ardent Democrat, and a disciple of the Calhoun school, Major Abernethy was intent on the change of the name of the county of his residence from that of Benton, to that of Calhoun, which name it now bears. He was one of the committee of three appointed by the legislature to receive the new capitol building at Montgomery, when the location was changed from Tuscaloosa.