PERSON OF THE 19TH CENTURY:

He came out of the mountains of east Tennessee in either 1804 or 1805, moving southwest along a path that would become Winchester Road, drawn by the noble dream of the American pioneer or the greed of the speculator, depending on the historic spin you favor. However you color it, his motive was a simple four-letter word: land.

Person of the decade:

Col. LeRoy Pope was a hard-hearted "Shylock" interested only in adding to his personal wealth, according to The Democrat, a newspaper of early Huntsville.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

The area of present-day North Alabama in the curve of the Hogohegee (Tennessee) River where Chickasaws and Cherokees came to hunt was, surveyor Zachariah Cox declared, "an unredeemed paradise."

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

John Williams Walker overcame tuberculosis and being an orphan to lead the 1819 state constitutional convention and become Alabama's first U.S. senator.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Huntsville and Madison County were growing during the decade of the 1810s. The county had a population of 4,699 in the 1810 census and by 1820 it had grown to 17,481.

Local - Other key events
Gobal - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

If you were sick or injured in 1820s Huntsville, you were well-advised to make your way to Dr. Thomas Fearn's office near the square or, in later years, up the brick walkway at the left side of the big house at 517 Franklin to the door of the office Fearn created in his home.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Cotton was king, of course, in Huntsville during the 1820s. But the king needed a better way to get around.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Clement Comer Clay arrived in the frontier town of Huntsville in 1811 with two horses, a manservant and saddlebags filled with law books.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

In Huntsville City Schools, 322 children claim American Indian blood. They represent 41 tribes, but 250 are Cherokee.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

No one, perhaps, had more influence on the look of mid-19th century Huntsville than George Steele.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

From the time John Hunt settled there in 1805, Big Spring has been at the center of Huntsville, at least in the figurative sense. But it wasn't until 1843 that the town actually owned the spring that provided the community's water for 150 years.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

When Clement Claiborne Clay of Huntsville died in 1882, the truth about whether he participated in a plot to assassinate the president of the United States seems to have died with him.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Imagine being born in Huntsville, living in Huntsville, dying in Huntsville and never having the chance to visit another town. The Memphis and Charleston Railroad changed that in the 1850s.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Though die-hard secessionists were in the minority in Madison County, the man who approved firing on Fort Sumter - beginning the Civil War - was a Huntsvillian.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Although the Civil War was undoubtedly the biggest event for Madison County in the 1860s - or any other county in the country - it was the Union capture of Huntsville in 1862 that touched residents most.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Born a slave, sold on an auction block, held in bondage as a field hand and orphaned while still young, William Hooper Councill remained illiterate until he was 17 years old.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

After the Civil War, education underwent the most dramatic changes in Reconstruction-era Alabama.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Technically, they were "damn Yankees" who crossed the Mason-Dixon line after the Civil War to seek a fortune in the South.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

What do you get when you combine a legendary bank robber, a Confederate war hero and a stolen money bag?

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Like many areas of the South, Huntsville struggled with trying to move from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

The 1890s ushered in major changes for Huntsville with the ideals of the Old South giving way to a rising tide of industrialization.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

PERSON OF THE 20TH CENTURY:

I don't know if the ghost of Dr. Wernher von Braun dwells in the places that meant so much to him in Huntsville, or if his shade yet haunts the offices, laboratories and test stands of Marshall Space Flight Center.

Person of the decade:

Huntsville's best-known daughter of 1902 didn't waste any time leaving her home state when she came of age, but more than 100 years later, her larger-than-life legacy still endears her to the city of her birth.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Perhaps the Wright brothers stole William Lafayette Quick's thunder when they flew at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. After all, the bicycle builders' biplane got off the ground five years before the Madison County sawmill operator's monoplane did.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Just a few months into his new job as the first health officer in Madison County history, Dr. Carl Grote Sr. was already issuing a public statement.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Hundreds and hundreds dead and not a church funeral anywhere in Huntsville.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Dr. Joseph Fanning Drake has been lauded as the builder and savior of Alabama A&M University.

More - Drake still making history
Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

During the 1920s, the Chamber of Commerce called Huntsville the "biggest town on Earth for its size."

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Reese Thomas Amis was more than just a newspaper editor in Depression-era Huntsville. He was also a civic leader and a strong advocate for education who helped establish the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

The most significant event to affect Huntsville and the surrounding region during the 1930s played a key role in breaking the strangling grip of the Great Depression: the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the hope it offered people living here.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

He was born in a modest tenant farmhouse in the tiny Mount Tabor community, just east of Hartselle in Morgan County. It was five days before Christmas in 1899. His parents named him John Jackson Sparkman.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

In the latter years of the 19th century and throughout the 1920s and into the '30s, Huntsville was recognized across the South as primarily a cotton mill town.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

On thousands of black-and-white TV screens, most set inside massive cabinets, many stretching to the heavens with a set of "rabbit ears" antennae, the popular show "This Is Your Life" enters living rooms and dens across the country.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Peenemuende is a small, quiet German village, resting on a peninsula jutting into the Baltic Sea. It's been primarily a fishing town, except for a brief, notorious role in military history.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

When Dr. Wernher von Braun came to Huntsville in the 1950s, the people he met knew only that he was one of those German rocket scientists brought here after World War II to help the Army build missiles.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

More than four decades ago, the Space Age began with rumbles, rattles and rolling smoke in Huntsville when massive rockets were tested and the 1960s became the decade of space exploration.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

When Dr. Wernher von Braun came to Hunts-ville in the 1950s, the people he met knew only that he was one of those German rocket scientists brought here after World War II to help the Army build missiles.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

The rash of tornadoes in the United States on April 3, 1974 - called the Super Tornado Outbreak - was the most extensive than any previously recorded outbreak in terms of the total number, damage and the length of the path.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

Often in movies in which a character is sent back in time, he uses his foreknowledge to profit mightily by investing at the beginning in Nike or Apple or Microsoft.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Twenty years after Milton Cummings and Joe Moquin realized their vision for a technology research park, the adjacent land was fast becoming a crossroads, with property owners considering seeking to rezone it so they could build apartments on the site.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

At 64, Mark Smith considers himself as fearless as ever. "Somebody who likes to takes risks closes his eyes to danger," he says. "Maybe you shouldn't do that, but I have."

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Just after noon on Oct. 25, 1991 - a warm, cloudy day in Huntsville - some politicians are standing on slabs of concrete above Memorial Parkway.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world

Person of the decade:

You might say Jim Hudson's entrepreneurial drive is in his genes. His father attempted numerous business startups before establishing a successful Huntsville foundry.

Others - Honorable mentions

Event of the decade:

Huntsville founder John Hunt wouldn't recognize his old front yard if he came back to Huntsville today. All around Big Spring downtown - where Hunt built his cabin in the spring of 1805 - construction is flourishing.

Local - Other key events
Global - Meanwhile, in the rest of the world