Leeds, Alabama
Leeds is a tricounty municipality located in Jefferson, St. Clair, and Shelby Counties in the State of Alabama; it is an eastern suburb of Birmingham. As of the 2020 census, its population was 12,324. Leeds was founded in 1877, during the final years of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. It housed the workers and their families of Lehigh, a Portland cement manufacturing plant. History History The War of 1812, geography, geology, and three cultures shaped the history of Leeds. Lying at the crossroads of ancient Native American paths in the center of Alabama, Leeds drew European settlers and their African-American slaves to a land of fertile growing seasons and rich sources of coal and mineral ore. The early settlers built churches and schools with many remaining in Cedar Grove, Oak Ridge, Ohanafeefee, and Mt. Pleasant. The principal survey of Leeds was entered into Jefferson County Map Book 10, page 21, in 1908. The settlement, dating to 1818 and incorporating on April 27, 1887 as "Leeds", has existed along the banks of the Little Cahaba River; beside an historic stagecoach route; and along two large railroads for the greater part of American history. James Hamilton, a Scottish-Irish American veteran of the