I've written about Hartselle in a previous post and covered a few of its historical highlights. Famed author William Bradford Huie was a native and is buried there. Other notable figures include John Sparkman, a U.S. congressman, senator and vice-presidential candidate in 1952, and Steve Woodward, who spent seven years as a Major League baseball pitcher.
Hartselle is also famous for an event that took place in the town on March 15, 1926--perhaps the most spectacular bank robbery in state history. Let's investigate.
Just after midnight on that Monday morning as many as eight men appeared in town and headed for the telephone exchange. There they cut three cables that tied Hartselle to the rest of the world via telephone and telegraph. Then they proceeded to the Bank of Hartselle. Along the way the gang kidnapped several locals who were awake at that hour and tied them up in the back of the bank. These men included J.B. Huie, the train station agent; Oscar Williams, who was waiting for a train; Les Williams, the police officer on duty, and Ernest Mittlwede, cashier of another bank heading home from a date.
The robbers used six sticks of dynamite to open the safe, and after four hours left town with more than $14,000 in cash, gold and silver. No one was ever arrested for the crime. In its article about the robbery, the Decatur Daily reported the presence of two "high-powered" cars in Hartselle on Saturday, one driven by a woman and the other containing two men. Around 6 a.m. Monday Birmingham police found an abandoned vehicle containing empty money bags and numerous checks. The car had been stolen Sunday night from a city resident.
Hartselle had a population of just over 2000 in 1926. Blogger Michele Jackson has written that authorities at the time in other small towns noted similarities between this robbery and one in Center, Alabama, on April 7 and another in Tennessee on April 10. Hartselle itself has kept memory of the crime alive; a reenactment took place in 2019. An historical marker can be seen at the end of this post; the building that housed the bank still stands and was a boutique called Bella Reese as of 2015.
The article below appeared in the Tuscaloosa News on March 15, 1926. A 2020 article by Jackson can be read here. See also an Associated Press story, "Shocking, unsolved 1926 bank robbery still provokes interest" that appeared in the Birmingham News on March 18, 2000.
According to the 1920 census via Ancestry.com, William Bradford Huie's father was John B. Huie. That census gives John's occupation as telephone operator for the railroad.
Source: Hartselle Enquirer
