Henry C. Sanford (1808-1888) was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and businessman who settled in Cherokee County around 1850 and served in the Alabama House of Representatives. In the lead-up to the outbreak of the Civil War, he was a Unionist candidate during the Secession Convention of 1861 and Constitutional Convention of 1865. During Reconstruction, he won re-election to the Alabama Senate as a self-described "radical" Republican.
