Hoover Society Said Pope's Director Brian Murphy Said What?

 

In her article for the Encyclopedia of Alabama, Carolyn M. Barske of the University of North Alabama calls Pope's Tavern Museum an inn and stagecoach stop. For those who don't know, coaching inns were popular until the advent of rail travel in the 1840s. Yes, they usually had a tap room on premises. Did our local (now) museum? We have no proof one way or the other, but it certainly wouldn't have been odd in the era Pope's was built. How about the name Pope? That was a colloquial name given the edifice and later adopted by the City of Florence over a century later in honor of LeRoy Pope, one of two men who supported the advent of a coaching inn for Florence.

In April of this year, Pope's was the scene of the Alabama Historical Association's annual conference. The Hoover chapter has written up its adventures in our fair city...albeit with a few mistakes. In case anyone doesn't know, the Rosenbaum Home isn't in Muscle Shoals.

Report on Annual Conference

While at the conference, Hoover's two representatives encountered anti-Brian Murphy protesters:

That evening, we went to Pope’s Tavern for the opening reception. We immediately saw two men across the street with signs that said Brian Murphy is a snake in the grass! We found out that Brian Murphy is the director of the museum—more on that later.

At the first concurrent session, I learned from Brian Murphy That Pope’s Tavern was never owned by anyone named Pope and was never a tavern! Hence the protesters were resisting changing that story which was first put forth by a newspaper man in the 1960s, probably to encourage preservation of the structure which does date from the 1830s.

Strange. We always thought many didn't like Brian Murphy because, among other things, he used performance art to ridicule taxpaying citizens of Florence: