Other scholars suggest the Creek word atigi, meaning "border," as the source of the name Autauga.

Losing business and residents to the new county seat, the town of Washington dwindled until it was completely deserted by the late 1830s.

Pratt financially backed the recruitment at his factory of men for the Prattville Dragoons, a fighting unit for the Confederacy.

Pratt was able to secure payment of debts from Northern accounts soon after the war, lessening the disabling effects of the Reconstruction period in the county.

Immediately after emancipation in early 1863, Charles Atwood, a freedman who had formerly been enslaved by Daniel Pratt, bought a house in the center of Prattville.

It was exceptional for an African American to become so economically successful and prominent, and to own land in an Alabama city in this period.

The county seat was newly designated as Prattville, which was the population center of the redefined jurisdiction.

In 1906, a new and larger courthouse was erected a block north; it was designed in a modified Richardsonian Romanesque style.

[5][1] The county is mostly located in the Gulf Coastal Plain region, with a few rolling hills and forests due to its close proximity to the fall line of the eastern United States.

[6] The county has a prevailing humid subtropical climate dominated by its location in the Southern Plains ecological sub-region of the United States.

The current Commissioners are:[22] Like much of the Southern U.S., Autauga County was historically a Democratic stronghold, voting for the party's presidential nominee in every election between 1880 and 1960.

The last Democrat to win the county in a presidential election is Jimmy Carter, who won it by a plurality in 1976.

Law enforcement agencies are the Autauga County Sheriffs Office and the Prattville Police Department.

[23] East Memorial Christian Academy is located in an unincorporated area of the county, near Prattville.