European Americans set up an active trading post in Abbeville in Alabama Territory early in 1819.

The first settler gateway to the wiregrass region was at Franklin, located fourteen miles west of Abbeville.

An entire block of Kirkland Street, the major portion of the business district, was destroyed.

The nearby courthouse was almost lost but was saved through the efforts of the "bucket brigade" firefighters, who kept pouring water on the flat roof.

During the week of June 28, 1906, a mechanic named Ward was arrested and charged with arson and starting the fire.

Brick buildings were erected to replace the wooden structures that had been lost in the fire.

[citation needed] In February 1937, Wes Johnson, an 18-year-old African-American man, was accused of attacking a white woman and was arrested.

He was abducted from the Henry County jail by a mob of 100 white men and lynched: shot and hanged to death.

[7] It has been suggested by local historians that Johnson and the white woman were engaged in a consensual sexual relationship, and the accusation of assault was merely a manufactured pretext for the lynching.

[9] In 1937 the Alabama Attorney General filed an impeachment against the Henry County sheriff for his failure to protect Johnson.

An appeal was heard by the Alabama Supreme Court, which overturned the impeachment in June 1937.

The Alabama Attorney General openly declared that Johnson was innocent of the charges against him.

Although the men admitted the rape to authorities, two grand juries subsequently declined to indict them.

[11][12] From a historic point of view, "the Recy Taylor case brought the building blocks of the Montgomery bus boycott together a decade earlier" than that event.

The damage at the Abbeville High School was deemed too costly to repair and was rebuilt in a new location.

AL-10 runs from west to east through the center of town as Washington Street, and leads east 13 mi (21 km) to the Georgia state line near Fort Gaines and northwest 17 mi (27 km) to Blue Springs.

The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters.

[14] As of the 2020 United States census, there were 2,358 people, 1,029 households, and 604 families residing in the city.