Most people traveling along U.S. 98 probably breeze through the little town of Lillian with little more than a passing thought, but Curry Weber isn't like most people. The audio engineer and archaeologist moved to this community on Perdido Bay nine years ago, and he's determined to find out as much as possible about its past.

While many of his neighbors might be able to talk in some detail about the turn-of-the-century turpentine industry that flourished there, or maybe the once-bustling sawmills across the bay, he is fascinated with a more elusive history that dates back farther. On rare time off from his day job, his night job, and his many duties as a busy dad, you might find him looking for revealing clues near the water's edge along a surprisingly high bluff on Lillian's southeastern quadrant.

"When the American infantry forces took Mobile from Spain during April of 1813, one of the first things they did was establish a stockade fort here," he says. "It was there only for a few months before the Spanish came across it and burned it because the American troops had recently been called back to Mobile."

He is also intrigued by the location of a trading post that was in the area a century earlier. 

"I've only seen a few brief mentions of it," he says. "It was in the early 1700s, when the French were in Mobile and the Spanish were in Pensacola. At that time, the Perdido River was essentially the border between territories claimed by France and Spain."

The husband and father of four has always been curious, which is something that seems to have been passed down through the generations in his family. 

"History and music have always been my two passions," he says. "My grandmother and grandfather on my dad's side were big history buffs, and my grandmother was always reading and was just very interested in anything you would put in front of her." 

Curry grew up in Louisiana and lived in Memphis for 17 years after getting a degree in recording arts from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla. He worked for two world-famous recording facilities, Sun Studio and Ardent Studios, before making the move to coastal Alabama. He and his wife, Laura, moved to Orange Beach in 2016 and soon settled in Lillian to continue raising Noah, Annie, Olivia, and Katie.

"My dad's side of the family was from Mobile, and in the '60s they got a place on Little Lagoon," Curry says. "Ever since I can remember, we visited that place a lot in the summers." 

As a full-time resident, he has more opportunities to explore not just his family's roots, but those of the community he now calls home. One catalyst for his growing interest was something he came across while researching for an archaeological project off Fort Morgan Road. As a volunteer, Curry was part of the team that unearthed and documented an ancient canal, built by Native Americans, that locals had talked about for years but had never formally studied. 

"When I was doing research for the prehistoric canal, there was a map and some papers from the national archives that talked about Pancho's Ferry, which turned out to be a ferry operated by Francisco Suarez, one of the first settlers in the area," Curry says."Looking at the location on the map, I realized it was about a mile from my house."

Though Curry continues to work part-time with music, mostly running sound for bands, his work and interest in the canal project led directly to his other professional endeavor. While doing research at the public library in Foley, he met Jon Glass, who is now Curry's employer with the cultural resources management firm All Phases Archaeology. 

"At the time, which was about five years ago, the small company based in Mobile was shorthanded," he says. "They were behind on a big project, and he asked me to come help at the lab, so I started washing artifacts, which is something I was doing with the girls at home anyway, except now I was getting paid for it." 

Lately, his work has taken him on the road to projects in places like Wiggins and Vicksburg, both in Mississippi. In his spare time, he can turn his attention to his own community.

On a windshield tour of Lillian, he points out various landmarks, including the probable site of the first post office, which was established in 1884 by a postmaster who sweetly named the new location for his daughter.

"And this is where the Perdido Bay Hotel used to be," Curry says as we ease along Barclay Avenue, named for the developer who sold the first lots. "The grounds went all the way down to the water, and there were sidewalks and lights. The kind of Roaring '20s things you think of, like fine dining, big bands, and dances, were happening right here."

A few blocks to the south, on the other side of the highway, we see-saw along the uneven bluff as he calls out points of interest in and around the modern-day Spanish Cove neighborhood. The Suarez and Resmondo ancestral homes were in this area much earlier, as evidenced by the old Spanish cemetery with its faded gravestones dating to the 1800s. Standing nearby are many of the more than a thousand pecan trees planted in 1909 by oilman Harry Haines Willock, who died in 1940.

When the tide is out, Curry likes to do some serious beach combing, sometimes accompanied by his daughter Katie, to look for more clues about the past. To someone with a trained eye, discarded pieces of ceramics and glass can tell valuable stories.

"I'm pretty sure this is where the old fort was," he says, gesturing toward a parcel of land sloping eastward toward Florida. "There's a gentleman who lives near here who gave me his artifact collection, and it includes several artillery and infantry uniform buttons from the War of 1812."

Curry's curiosity about Lillian's history could help him uncover some historical revelations, but he also knows that many details may be hiding in plain sight. Occasionally, he runs into people who have old family heirlooms or photographs that help to shed new light on little-known aspects of Lillian's heritage. 

"A lot of times, with old pictures and photo albums, the younger generations sometimes just don't care, and then they just disappear, gone forever, unless someone has the wherewithal to donate it to a college or museum," he says. "There's not a whole lot of Lillian photos out there, not that I've seen, but a lot of times they're in people's possession. That's one of the main reasons I created the Facebook group, which is Historic Lillian, AL. That's where people can go to post pictures and stories."

He's done a lot of writing himself on the site, and it's led to his meeting other historians and even descendants of the earliest settlers. He loves it when people reach out to him with stories, artifacts, and family photos.

"There are so many stories here waiting to be told, and that is what keeps me going,” he says. “Reading and studying about the colorful people and these fascinating but little-known events that happened in your own backyard and, if you're lucky, holding some of that history in your hand, that is as close as we can get to the past without having an actual time machine.”