Early Writings

“We traveled for about 15 miles per day over roads not well opened and frequently had to cut timber out of the road to fill up excavations. And camping by the side of swollen streams to await patiently for them to subside. We occasionally passed through or near [Native American] villages and my father being well up in the Cherokee tongue was hospitably welcomed and entertained. After we got out of Oglethorpe County [Georgia], we saw no more white people until we came to what is now Murfreesboro [TN] on [the] Duck River, where we found a few white settlers [and] a grist mill in course of erection. We had left Georgia about the first of March and it was now near the first of April. My father had for many years desired to go to the great bend of the Tennessee, so tarrying on [the] Duck River just long enough to lay on a month’s supply of bread and salt, he turned southward and traveled steadily for about a week. And one fine spring evening, we came to [the] Elk River. The stream was clear and the adjoining land fertile, and near at hand was a bold clear stream pouring its swift waters into the main stream. We skirted along this stream for near two miles northward, when we came to a low limestone ridge from which the stream rose in the form of a fine bold spray gushing from the face of the rock. Here we rested for the night; our tents were erected near the spring and when I arose [the] next morning a little after sunrise, the [African Americans] were dressing a fine venison my father had shot, and a large rattlesnake was suspended from the limb of a spreading beech tree near the camp. The day was devoted to an exploration of the country and everyone pronounced it a goodly land, and on the third morning the sound of the maul and ax, the crash of the falling timber arose the echoes[?] over the walls of a log cabin began to arise the ridge pole and pieces were put on board river from the heart of white oak covered it, from small logs split in the middle floored it. A chimney was built of split sticks and the white family moved in. The [African Americans] at first slept under the trees, the weather very warm and pleasant. Night was hideous with the wailing of whipperwills, hooting of owls and screaming of wildcats and howling of wolves. In the morning day was heralded by the song of mocking birds and thrush, the cawing of crows and the gobbling of wild turkeys in the tall tree tops, all nature was animated and the forests and streams seemed dense and populated by beast and bird, flesh and fowl, everything except man. Our family was alone and for months we had no visitors. This region did not appear to have been intruded on even by the [Native Americans]. The [Native Americans] had no traces of settlement in the neighborhood. We had dropped into the midst of an immense hunting ground with no one to molest or make afraid. We lived from the forest and with an occasional pilgrimage to Murfreesboro the year was passed by our family in a state of complete isolation from the world. A large corn patch had been cleared up, and corn was planted in holes with a hoe among the stumps and roots, and bread was raised in more than sufficient quantity for the coming season. The Indian corn on these fresh virgin lands grew to a height of twelve or thirteen feet, and produced two or three dozen ears per stalk.

We were a mile from Elk River and the little creek on whose banks we settled still bears the name bestowed upon it by my father. We had been located here for a year and were in the midst of plenty. We had no sickness. During the year we had made enough corn for bread. We had made two hominy mortars by burning holes in the ends of two large hickory blocks and we worked the pestles with sweeps and in this way obtained very good bread. The wood furnished an endless variety of treats(?), and when winter came we started a sugar camp in the hills where the sugar maple stood thickest and made a considerable quantity of sugar and molasses. We had to bring salt from Nashville. And at the close of the year, a road was blazed out all the way, and as there was no other wide blazed road, no frontiersman could mistake the way. This was an agreeable experience after the solitude of the preceding year, and among the number were some of our own relatives who followed our footsteps from Georgia who received a warm welcome. But in a year or two, old hunters began to tell of a country still further south down toward the great Tennessee River. They reported this country to be of unexampled fertility, well watered by many streams flowing south, clear and sparkling as the Elk River itself, and one or two adventurous hunters reported that they followed these streams southward until they had all merged into the one strong, clear and rapid little river that they called Flint, and when they came to the junction of the two larger streams they found a well derived(?) path leading from it through thickets and canebreaks toward the mountains that could be seen in the distance. As night approached, they had reached the foot of the mountain and encamped near a spring. Next morning they ascended the mountain which was covered in leaf timber and from a cliff looked down on a vast swampy sequin(?) with water gleaming in the distance. They treaded southward ascending as they went until just before reaching the mountain summit they came to a spring in a dark mountain gorge with waters of icy coldness, and skirting the mountain top they followed a sinuous mountain ridge covered with a heavy growth of cedar that shut from their view the surrounding country as they descended. Presently the cedar gave place to a magnificent oak and poplar growth and they knew they were at the mountain’s base, yet they found swamps and marshes on either side, and on the north side was a long dark ravine at the foot of almost perpendicular cliff and presently a round knoll covered with oak and cedar and rising some thirty or forty feet above the general level and skirting round its western side they stood on a perpendicular cliff of limestone from the foot of which issued a large stream of water that spread over the swampy country below.

Soon there was considerable inquiry concerning the new and wonderful region to which our hunters had penetrated, and my father began to talk of moving further south. We had been living on Elk River now for three or four years, and the settlements were gradually extending southward over from the new land just purchased from the [Native Americans] in Mississippi territory. My father and his boys and [African Americans] had cleared and cultivated some twenty acres mostly in corn and pumpkins, though we had a little flax patch and my mother had a flax wheel or two which was generally kept in motion. By this time a mill fall was built on Elk near the mouth of the little creek on which my father settled. At the time of which I speak, the creek was carried in a race to the highbank of the creek, and its waters projected against and over a hot wheel. The building was a mere shed to protect the works and grist from the weather. The works were crude in character, and the stones had been quarried from the adjacent mountains on highlands, but still crude though it was in character, yet it supplied the neighborhood.

Occasionally were seen the pack of horses of settlers from beyond the line in Mississippi Territory, and they attracted so much attention from our little community as a traveler from the Antipodes would now command. These tall, stalwart men in buckskin clothing were enthusiastic in the praise of the new country beyond the state line, and while a large number of settlers were pouring into the Elk River country, a considerable number of old pioneers were going further south. One reason for immigration was that Tennessee was a state and was extending its “larate” [sic] over its new settlements when in 1806-7 the [Native Americans] relinquished the vast triangle to the United States the base of which extended from the highlands and headwaters of Elk to the mouth of Elk River and whose apex was 100 miles southward on Chickasaw Island in Tennessee River. There was a heavy migration southward and a little tavern began to spring up at Winchester. Many of the pioneers had spent the larger portion of their lives on the frontiers of civilization, and laws and regulations of settled communities was somewhat irksome. While they were naturally peaceable and orderly, yet habit had made them fond of old pioneer law that usually had been potent for the preservation of order in their communities, and when law was extended over them, generally declined appointments involving administration of the laws and held themselves aloof from the courts. Then by traveling a dozen milesm they could pass beyond the jurisdiction of state authority, [and] it did not take long for many of them to cross over the state line.

By this time a road had been blazed out from the old town of Winchester through the heavy forests to the state line near New Market, and this formed part of the great highway westward through Alabama and Mississippi to Natchez – the then capital of Mississippi territory. The reasons that somewhat retarded emigration induced my father to emigrate further south. The Chickasaws had generally been very friendly to the settlers but the settlers hated the Cherokees and their hatred was fully reciprocated. About this time the air was full of rumors of a general [Native American] war, and my father who had fought the Cherokees for some twelve or fifteen years felt the old war fire reviving and came down to Alabama in order to be in view of the battle, should hostilities actually commence. So in the Spring of the year 1870 [sic.. perhaps 1820], he sold his improvement on Elk river and came southward down the newly cut road until he struck Flint River at old Brownsboro where there was a considerable colony of old friends who had preceded him, and who at that time formed the extreme southern settlement in the county east of the mountains. At this time a considerable village was forming at Huntsville’s Big Spring known as the town of Twickingham, and my father settled on a high hill north of Brownsboro. A horse path leading from Brownsboro to Huntsville had been made on the south boundary of the section lines from Flint River to Huntsville. The lands had been surveyed the year before and the settlers could follow the newly blazed section to the mountain from which to Huntsville a road was blazed out nearby on the line of the present Belle Fort road, but many years passed before a wagon road was opened.

All the people who lived on Flint drove wagons to town [and] went up the river to the old Winchester road, crossing the river to the factory then known as Woods Mill. On the west side of the river they skirted round the mountain through the open woods through the Mastin farm and round by the Green Bottom Inn just opened by John Connolly, a famous sportsman and prominent man in his day. Horton’s mill above the three forks and Brown’s mill half a mile west of old Brownsboro had not been built and our grinding was done at Huntsville at a mill put up west of town by John and William Bedlum. I being one of the younger boys officiated as a mill boy at first accompanied by an older brother or a[n African American] man or boy, but as I grew older I frequently made the trip alone. Men now living in this country can have but little conception of the richness and beauty of the region between Brownsboro and Huntsville. With the exception of the mountain spur now known as Cedar Ridge and then covered with a thick grove of stately cedars, it was one continued grove of magnificent poplar interspersed in the lowland with oak, walnut and hickory. It was a case of the survival of the fittest for there was little or no undergrowth and the forest titans had reserved so much space for light and ventilation, they were not frustrated by storms. Wagons could be easily driven anywhere over the woods, and in riding through the beautiful open forest, a door on the sun could be seen for a quarter of a mile away through the forest avenues. Roads then were not so necessary as at present when the undergrowth prevents driving and frequently riding through the forests.

The mountain was rather difficult especially on the eastern side. The path wound among low jagged cliffs of limestone and it took experienced steering at some points to prevent our meal bags from coming in rude contact with the sharp rocks looming up on each side of the trail. At this time little impression had been made on the unbroken forest east of the mountain, there was a house on the Nichols spring near cedar ridge and some two or three along the base of Monte Sano near the cool sparkling springs on the south side of the Moore plantation. From Huntsville to the Mountaintop was one unbroken forest with small clearnings made south of the road one by Moses Vincount at Underwoods and another near the old Calhoun quarters. There was a few struggling log cabins on the path from Steels corner out as far as the Fleming place, and several new houses among the trees from Holmes street down Green street towards the pike from Steels Corner the road wound round a large pond where the water stayed all summer and which was full of green briars, old stumps and logs to where the ground began to rise into a considerable knoll where the courthouse stands. Here stood at that time a little frame building used as a courthouse and another north of it for a jail which in a year or two were replaced by brick buildings which were a source of wonder to the young natives. In the crowd was generally some older person who could put up rocks for unfortunate boys who were dragged off by the rocks or saplings or needles and thread also were forthcoming for repairs in case of damage.

We generally started at sunrise or before and reached our destination in two or three hours and as we tarried until all had obtained their grist, we reached home near night fall; thus we managed to spend the greater part of the day in town, and no exposition of the present civilized period ever delighted our souls as did the wonders of the now and growing little city. We wandered round the spring cliff and waded in the wide and sluggish waters in the swamp below. Somebody had started a tanyard just below the spring at the foot of the hill and making of leather was a new revelation to us. Then came the brickyard and bricklaying and the carpenters and masons at work, and there was also a cotton gin run by Dr. Moore and a distillary above the mill run by James Clemons; as evening approached we set out in time to reach home before night fall and turning around the cedar ridge and circling round the point we would frequently hear the scream of the catamounts that infested rough and honey combed rocks covering the upper ridge and listened to many blood curdling stories of adventurous hunters, who had encountered wild beast in their wild and difficult lairs up in the black cedar groves.”

From The History of Madison County, Alabama by Thomas Jones Taylor, pp. 120-126