FRONTIER TUSCALOOSA- "Gittin' By On What We Had!"
by Robert Register

THIS IS WHERE OUR STORY BEGINS... 

from the Tuesday, May 4, 1819 issue of the MOBILE GAZETTE & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER:
AN ACT in behalf of the Connecticut Asylum for teaching the Deaf and Dumb
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there be granted to the Connecticut Asylum, for the education and instruction of deaf and dumb persons, a township of land, or tracts of land equal there to be, located under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, in tracts of not less that four entire sections each, in any of the unlocated lands of the United States, to which the Indian title has been extinguished, which land shall be and forever remain to the use of said Asylum, for the education and instruction of the deaf and dumb persons, or if said Asylum shall sell land, which they are authorized, the money arising from such sale shall be and remain forever to the same use
H. Clay,
Speaker of the House of Representatives
JAS. Barbour,
President of the Senate, pro tempore.
March 3, 1819-Approved,
JAMES MONROE.

When we review the progress of most endeavors, we usually find that the first years are always the toughest. So it was with Tuscaloosa. The story of the modern city of Tuscaloosa begins in 1816 when Indian title to this land was completely extinguished by the Treaty of the Choctaw Trading House signed on October 4, 1816 .

All of this good land for growing cotton lay vacant and enterprising heads of households from the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia poured into West Alabama to prospect for the most fertile land from which to make their fortunes. For five years, from 1816 until 1821, progress in this remote back country was nil and the rowdy frontier town that haphazardly rose on top of River Hill faced continuous problems produced by a lack of land ownership and adequate transportation.

Every person who settled in Tuscaloosa was a "squatter" and many factors complicated the land situation, making it impossible for anyone to own land within the town's boundaries. Before any public land in West Alabama was offered for sale, the land that contains Tuscaloosa's original city had been reserved from entry. By an act of Congress which formed Alabama Territory ( called "Mobile Territory" in the original legislation) on March 3, 1817, all of the land that is now north of 15th Street between Queen City Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard was reserved for a town site. The earliest settlers in Tuscaloosa could not buy the land they lived on until it was surveyed. Even if they had the money to pay cash, our earliest pioneers could not obtain titles for the land they claimed. The town's survey did not occur until the spring of 1821. In the absence of property lines and titles, the frontier town with a population of between 600 and 800 sprang up in a climate free of almost any governmental authority.

William R. Smith, in his REMINISCENCES... , describes the rustic settlement of his childhood:
"...the place presented nothing as a village but a rude cluster of log huts, heterogeneously arranged, with little regard with regularity as to streets. My own very dim recollections open here in 1821. Even then there was scarcely a plank or brick in the village. It was full of shrubby little oak and pine saplings, and literally swarming with the native Indians. Here the red men resorted to trade and to drink, and here they came to exhibit their skill at their favorite sport of ball playing."

This form of field hockey appears to have been the predecessor of the Crimson Tide's present proud Saturday afternoon football tradition. An early Greene County newspaper includes this advertisement:

UNUSUAL ATTRACTION!!!!

INDIAN BALL-PLAY

By a special appointment made by a party at the Choctaws

A grand DANCE and BALL-PLAY,

will take place on Saturday next, in the vicinity of this place, on which occasion

50 OR 60 INDIANS

all choice players

will attend on that day!

The Captain of the party makes the following requests,which it is hoped, will be observed by the citizens and those who may attend, not to give gratuitously, or sell, to any of the Players or Indians of the nation, who may accompany him,

ANY SPIRITOUS LIQUORS

In their old age, many of Alabama's earliest settlers fondly recalled these spectacular athletic contests. General Thomas Woodward described the excitement of a Creek ball play in 1825:

"The old man(the Chief) then turned to his people, and said to them,... that every man must do his best-show himself a man, and should one get hurt he must retire without complaining, and by no means show anything like ill humor. The speech ended, about two hundred stripped to the buff, paired themselves off and went at it. It was a ball play sure enough, and I would travel further to see such a show that I would to see any other performed by man, and willingly pay high for it, at that!"

George Catlin's Tul-Lock-Chish-ko, in Ball-Player's Dress

With such a large and idle illiterate population of American men passing through town on exploratory trips to the newly opened wilderness, Tuscaloosa was the frequent destination of professional gamblers. In a letter to his wife, Clarissa, William Ely expresses his disgust at Tuscaloosa's favorite vices:

"...they dissipate their time and money and would their morals if they had any, without enjoyment, in lounging about taverns, stores, tipling and gambling houses, or making and attending horse races, cockfights, called chicken fights,shooting at a mark, hunting or fighting.

Notwithstanding such are their habits, I think them a very avaricious people. Money is their god and cotton is the idol of their devotions."

To say the least, Mr. Ely did not have a taste for frontier living. A successful businessman, this 53-year old Connecticut native was in Alabama because he had devoted his life to charity and philanthropy. Indian title in West Alabama had been extinguished and Ely came here to locate and sell public lands donated by Congress to the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. From its formation in 1815 until 1819, the asylum was supported by charity but in 1819, the U.S. government gave its support to this institution, the first of its type in our nation.

In 1819, Congress gave the institution an entire township, thirty-six square miles of public land. Ely came to Alabama because land was about to go on the market and he was authorized to buy thirty-six square miles of his choice in Alabama and then sell it to the highest bidder. Despite his highly critical letters about Tuscaloosa, he liked the area and considered it to be "a very healthy place." In fact he liked it so much that he bought four-&-one-half square miles of land that spread out south of 15th Street and west of Martin Luther King Boulevard. In a letter to his wife dated "Tuscaloosa, 2nd June, 1821," Ely bragged that, "The population now may be from 6 to 800 souls, not one of whom, except a few to whom I sold land since I came here, have any title to the land they live on."

Tuscaloosans did not appreciate being hemmed in by a Connecticut Yankee, no matter how noble his cause may have been. He wrote to his boss, James H. Wells, Treasurer for the asylum about his fears in Tuscaloosa:

"My health is not very good, tho I am able to attend to business, but the constant care and anxiety I experience, both on account of my business and the hazard to myself, and the property in my custody among such a barbarous people, many of whom are incensed against me, and the confinement I find it prudent to subscribe to, never going out here unarmed; pray severely on my health and spirits and tender me quite unhappy."

William Ely knew the muddy streets of Tuscaloosa were filled with men who would love to give his Yankee ass a royal butt kicking.

It was not as if Tuscaloosa was populated with the criminally insane. These squatters were making a living in the wilderness without the support of any governmental agency. They lived here in spite of the government's laws and the government didn't have the guts to send troops to the Falls of the Black Warrior to burn their cabins and send these men of the forest packing.

Thomas Perkins Abernathy gave a great description of these citizens, "...the people of early Alabama farmed their patches of cotton and corn, lived a hardy, rugged life close to nature, were friendly toward their neighbors and hospitable toward strangers, made an honest living for themselves and their families, attended to their own business most of the time and only rarely had leisure to celebrate."

After crossing the Warrior River at Tuscaloosa on a flatboat in 1821, William Gilmore Simms commented on the people living in the surrounding area, "Like the people in all counties who live in remote interior situations and see few strangers who can teach anything, these people had a hundred questions to ask and as many remarks to make upon the answers. They were a hardy, frank, plain-spoken, unequivocal set who would share their hoecake and bacon, or take a fling or dash of fisticuffs with you according to the several positions of friend or foe which you might think proper to take. Among all the people of this soil good humor is almost the only rule which will enable the stranger to get along safely."

One leisure activity that lured our rustic predecessors was the barbeque. The folks who attended these congregations were greeted by neat rows of liquor bottles each handsomely adorned with a paper label which named the political candidate who furnished the rum and whiskey.

These fellows loved to horse around and they weren't blood thirsty, but they loved to get drunk and fight. William Ely, the cultured businessman from Hartford, Connecticut, did not appreciate Tuscaloosa's fondness for this "hardy form of sport":

"The highest and lowest classes in society, the one considering themselves above, and the other below the influence of public opinion, are much addicted to excessive drinking. And to have a reputation of being a brave, daring character, with property, whether with or without talents, learning or any other requisites for an office, will enable a candidate more surely to command the votes of the electors than all other requisite qualifications without it. And I am told that one of the representatives from this town actually fought himself into the legislature last year."

The center of the frontier town of Tuscaloosa is debatable but this author believes it was right across the street from where I now type this essay on the north side of the 2600 and 2700 blocks of University Boulevard. The late Matt Clinton states, "The first burial ground in what is now Tuscaloosa was the hillside at the northern end of 27th Avenue near 4th Street. Close to that spot were built the first Baptist and Methodist churches. The cemetery was north of the churches. The cemetery was north of the churches. It was destroyed when the cut of the L&N Railroad was made."

Simms says that, "The town was little more than hewn out of the woods. Piles of brick and timber crowded the main [street], indeed the only street in the place, and denoted the rawness and poverty of the region in all things which could please the eye and minister to the taste of the traveler. But it had other resources in my sight. The very incompleteness and rude want of finish indicated the fermenting character of life."

In his biographical information on Captain James H. Dearing, Mr. Clinton wrote:

"He [Dearing] came to Tuscaloosa on an exploratory trip during the first year of the town's existence, 1816. He stayed in a little 'shanty of a hotel' kept by Joshua Halbert [this hotel was located near the site of the old water tower, on the southwest corner at the intersection of 4th Street and 27th Avenue]."

William Ely describes the tavern where he stayed as Lewin's Hotel and he states that this log structure was located across the street from a log cabin used as a Methodist Church. Matt Clinton used early records to determine the location of the first jail and he found that the jail was next to Lewin's and that both were located in the middle of what is now Greensboro Avenue between the old 1st National Bank building and the BAMA Theater. Both the jail and Lewin's had to be demolished in 1821 before the town lots could be sold and the streets opened.

Ely describes Tuscaloosa as a "...town which contains twenty stores and little groceries or hucksters shops..." Written records on Tuscaloosa from between 1816 and 1821 are scant so William Ely's fifteen letters from Alabama are important documents. Acquired by the University of Alabama before 1950, these documents are a tangible witness to Tuscaloosa's earliest days. To sit in the Ganrud Reading Room at Special Collections and to hold and to read a fabulously detailed letter penned in one of Tuscaloosa's log taverns in 1821 is a profoundly moving experience.

When reading Ely, one main thing needs to be kept in mind. William Ely was accustomed to the finer things in life and he was miserable in Frontier Tuscaloosa. He complained to his wife that he was indeed "a stranger in a strange land," and was sick of his journey from the very beginning. A year before his letter from Lewen's Hotel, he wrote this on April 20, 1820:

"I am weary with traveling over mountains, thro' swamps and mud and living in the middle of piles of logs with no other windows than the large spaces between them (there not being a pane of glass to 5000 people in the country), of living on hog and corn with a few racoon, oh , how I long to return to a civilized and moral world." However, one year later, in 1821, Ely did discover panes of glass in some Tuscaloosa cabins and wrote that, "I have traveled about 240 miles south of the Tennessee River and except at this place [Tuscaloosa] have not seen a pane of glass in any house and I do not think there are as many panes of glass, as houses, in this place...They all live in dirty, small sod and mud cabins, or in those of a more mean construction, and are generally almost destitute of all the comforts and conveniences of life. Bacon, corn bread, or greasy hot half baked biscuits, about as often without, as with vegetables, with water, buttermilk and sour milk, constitute, with tea and coffee, for those that buy them, their general diet..."

Mr. Ely's inspection of his tavern's kitchen convinced him that Tuscaloosa did not meet New England's public health standards. He complained to his wife:

"The kitchen!! Oh the kitchen!!!! The filthiest place you can conceive of being occupied for cooking, is small, but contains two beds, in which and on the floor, from six to ten negroes of both sexes and various ages all unmarried sleep promiscuously."

Ely says that "The Methodist house is across the street from where I live- about three weeks since, under the pulpit, which is a coarse square box raised about two feet from the floor, a great old sow introduced to the light six or seven fine pigs. Whether the floor was even swept after it before the next meeting I could not tell as I could not discover that any dirt was missing and two or three times since when the people have assembled there the old sow with her pigs placed herself at the door and claimed and disputed for the right of possession and a person was obliged to go out several times and beat her away from the door."

Tuscaloosa's pioneer women did not escape Ely's poison pen: "I am told the females, ladies I should have said, have almost no taste or inclination for reading, mental accomplishments not being sought after by the other sex, are neglected by the females and their whole attention is directed to tricking off their persons in the best manner for catching a man to take care of, and support them, their courtships if they deserve the name, are generally very short, and on the part of the female at an early age, and there is generally very little of either sentiment or prudence in the connection between the sexes."

Ely was highly amused at the married ladies attempt at "high society." He wrote,"A coach with two or three servants, driving up, with three or four ladies, dressed in their crepes, cambricks, silks, laces, leghorns, lace veils, white or coloured kids, to one of these cabins, the ladies jumping out into the mud and clamboring, perhaps, over a dirty rail fence, and walking, sometimes over shoes in mud, to get to it, and then stooping to enter the door (as few of them are high enough to permit a man to enter without stooping), is a perfect burlesque on show and parade, on good sense and propriety."

In the summer of 1821, Ely left Tuscaloosa and never returned. During that summer, frontier Tuscaloosa and its shabby cabins and eight-hundred squatters came to an end. The Cotton Plant
  became the first steamboat to ever dock at Tuscaloosa. With Colonel John McKee opening a federal land office in town, men without capital were at the mercy of the men with the money. Many of the squatters moved into the back country. Abernathy describes them:

"Men of this class, being improvident by nature, did not come to seek wealth but merely to gain a subsistence or to enjoy the freedom of the forest. They built their simple cabins and planted their crops of corn between trees which they killed by girdling. Their greatest immediate problem was to live until the first crop was made, and here there was much difficulty."

Four years later, in December of 1825, Tuscaloosa was made the capitol of Alabama and the little town at the Falls of the Black Warrior began to reap the fruits of its destiny.

The frontier and its people had vanished.

That rugged way of life would never return.

ALABAMA PIONEERS website link to the story of Ely's 1821 visit to the Falls of the Black Warrior  http://alabamapioneers.com/land-was-purchased-in-1821-to-extend-tuscaloosas-city-limits/

Tuscaloosa shipping news from 1819 and 1820 issues of the MOBILE GAZETTE & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER:

March 15, 1819
For the Falls of the Black Warrior
THE elegant Barge FREELOVE, 75 tons, D. Swing, master, is now ready to receive freight and will be dispatched immediately- apply on board or to
Henry D. Merritt

April 23, 1819
SHIP NEWS
Port of Mobile- CLEARED
Keel Boat Saucy Jack, Taylor (master), Tuscaloosa

November 8, 1819
SHIP NEWS
Port of Mobile- CLEARED
Keel Boat President, Files (master), Tuscaloosa

March 1, 1820
SHIP NEWS
Port of Mobile- CLEARED
Keel-Boat, Inferior, Daniel (master), Tuscaloosa

 from the Wednesday, September 8, 1819 issue of the MOBILE GAZETTE & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER:

To Boat-Builders
A PERSON capable of undertaking the building of a small Steam-Boat, partly on the plan of a keel-boat; to be commenced immediately at the falls of the Black Warrior, will be certain to final employment by applying to
J.H. DEARING & Co.
St. Stephens, Sept. 8-3t.



"As stated, the present site of Tuscaloosa, being at the Falls of the Warrior, or head of navigation, had been reserved from entry and sale by the General Government. The fine expanse west of the city had been included in a grant to the Hartford Deal and Dumb Asylum. Seeing its advantageous location, a company composed of Marr, Perkins, Lewin, and others, purchased it. They knew it would one day be a city, or at any rate a valuable suburb, whenever the United States should throw open to buyers the reserved section. They proceeded to lay off the village of Newtown, selling alternate lots to purchasers, burdened with the condition that they should build upon them in a specified time. As our people had but just whipped the British and expelled the Indians, they were in no mood to listen to conditions, so they petitioned the General Government to lay off the present site of Tuscaloosa in lots and sell them without reserve. Much against the interests of the Newtownites, this was done by the Governmental Surveyor, Coffee, in 1821.

"Hence arose a jealous rivalry between the two factions, that was protracted for many years.

Newtown had a court-house, a jail, and a ferry. It had a hotel, a steam mill, a cigar factory, a market-house and numerous stores, offices and dwellings. As population, however, like everything else movable, takes the Hue of least resistance, it naturally distributed away from monopoly and restriction. It spread along the bluff between the present Broad and Spring streets, where they could overlook, beyond the Warrior, the expanse later known as 'New Kentuck,' and where it could draw its supplies of water from the bold and sparkling springs that gurgled in the grassy coves below.

In time Newtown began to pale its 'ineffectual fires' before the rising sun of Tuscaloosa. Her abandoned tenements were either torn down or wheeled into the rival village, until finally, in 1827, she was deprived, by the popular vote, of the court-house and jail, so that, to use the expressive language of another, 'when Newtown was visited by the tornado, in 1842, it found little to destroy.; " http://genealogytrails.com/ala/tuscaloosa/history2.html

History of Tuscaloosa County Alabama

Source: Northern Alabama - Historical and Biographical by Smith & De Land, Birmingham, Ala 1888 - Transcribed by Veneta McKinney

genealogytrails.com

 from the Wednesday, July 21, 1819 issue of the MOBILE GAZETTE & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER:

from the TUSCALOOSA REPUBLICAN OF JULY 1,
   By a gentleman recently returned from the Tombeckbe we are informed, that Gen. Jackson has written to Meshuleetubbee, head chief of one of the three great divisions of the Choctaw nation, thro' the interpreter, Peachland, requesting to meet him at a time and place specified (when or where our informant did not learn) to hold a conference on the subject of the sale of part of their nation to the United States. When our informant left there, Meshuleetubbee and Peachland were on a tour through the District, to consult the other chiefs and head men on the subject: and the opinion was almost universal among the whites in the neighborhood, that the District will be ceded to the United States, either by sale or in exchange for lands on the Arkansaw- though not immediately.

We learn from another source, that a deputation of the Choctaw nation has visited the country on the Arkansaw, with a view to such an exchange, and made a very favorable report, both of the country and the quality of game. In consequence of which a great number of the Choctaws have expressed a willingness to exchange with the U.S. on the same terms as those granted to the Cherokees. The District embraces the Military Crossing of the Beckbe, where it has lately been determined, the great federal road from Nashville to New Orleans shall cross that river.

Mr. Meigs- Agent for the Cherokee Nation, has given public notice on the intruders on the Cherokee lands, that unless they remove off the said lands by the first of July, he shall apply to Gen. Jackson to remove them by military force. These intruders were ordered to leave the nation before the season of planting, and many did then remove; and proceeded to plant their crops- they therefore deserve the less commiseration.

 from the Friday, April 23, 1819 issue of the MOBILE GAZETTE & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER:

PROPOSALS
BY THOMAS M. DAVENPORT
(Late Editor of the ANTI-MONARCHIST, at Cambridge, South Carolina)
for publishing by subscription a weekly news-paper at Tuscaloosa (falls Black Warrior)
TO BE ENTITLED THE TUSCALOOSA REPUBLICAN

On making this proposition to the citizens of the Alabama Territory, a decent respect for their opinions requires that I should state the objects to be persued by the Republican & the principles by which it will be governed.

The citizens of this Territory must necessarily meet here, generally speaking, as strangers to each other. Emigrating from different and distant sections of the Union; accustomed to different and in many cases, opposite modes of State government; weded to opposite and conflicting prejudices, and bringing with them a great diversity of manners, customs and habits, they must particularly require some medium of public information, by which they may learn the views and opinions of each other respecting public measures, and public men; and through which each may communicate his own. This free and frequent interchange of sentiment cannot fail to be highly beneficial to the community; to promote concord, strengthen the bonds of union, and bring the citizens to think and act in unison, like brethren of the same family. Such a medium will be found in a widely-circulating News Paper: and no other is so well adapted to these desirable purposes.

From the rapid increase in population, it is evident this Territory must shortly be admitted into the Union, and assume the dignified title of one of the United States. A necessary consequence of which will be, the formation of a constitution-the most important task, of a civil nature, that a state ever has to perform, and for the proper execution of which a collection of all the knowledge and wisdom of the State will be the requisite.

It will be the primary object of the Republican to collect and disseminate the most useful information on this subject, whenever it may be required,and on State polity generally, as connected with the wellfare of Alabama.

The Republican will possess every possible facility of obtaining the earliest and most current information on public affairs, which will be promptly communicated to the public. It will contain, besides the latest foreign intelligence, an account of every important transaction of the general Government-a correct synopsis of the proceedings of Congress, with the votes and most interesting speeches of individual members, particularly of those from this Territory: LAWS for the Territorial government, appointments to office, &c. with every other information which may conduce to the prosperity of the Alabama Territory, and of the American Republic.

Well written essays, in prose or verse, calculated to promote Religion, Morality, Agriculture, Manufactures, the liberal Arts and Sciences, Political or General Knowledge, will be gratefully received and gratuitously published; but the Editor reserves to himself the privilege of rejecting any communications which he may deem indecorous, or otherwise unworthy a place in his columns.

In canvassing the official conduct of public officers, due respect will be always paid to veracity, candor and decorum; and private character will be held sacred.

The glorious and honorable termination of the late War, aided by the good sense of the people of the United States, having consigned to oblivion all party distinctions and animosities, the Editor scarecely deems it necessary to say, that his political creed is that of the Republican school. Having established and conducted, through the late war, a public Journal, under the title Anti-Monarchist, on principles corresponding with the title, he conceives himself warranted in the assertion that, his political principles are such as no friend to the liberties, independence and prosperity of the United States ever was, or ever will be, ashamed to avow.

CONDITIONS

The Republican will be published once a week, on a Royal sheet at $4 per annum, payable in advance.

Niles' Weekly Register ~ Saturday, July 19, 1817

Mississippi and Alabama. 
Nashville, June 10. — We are gratified in being able to state that the division of this territory made by the last congress is very generally approved of by the people. The election for the convention to frame a state constitution took place in the western part last week, where in most cases gentlemen of respectable talents were expected to be elected. It is anticipated it will not be very long before the people of the eastern section will also be permitted to elect a convention. It will settle faster than any new country ever did. Gen. Coffee is now surveying one hundred townships adjoining Madison county, lying on both sides of the Muscle Shoals, which is believed to be the flower of the Alabama territory, and has recently been laid off into three counties. All west of Madison county, north of Tennessee river, and south of the state of Tennessee is made one county, and is called Elk county, the seat of justice for which is at Fort Hampton. All south of Tennessee river, east of the Chickasaw boundary line, north of the highlands that divide the waters of the Tennessee from the waters of the Mobile, and west of the Cherokee boundary line, is made another county, called Blount county, the seat of justice of which is at Milton's Bluff All south of Blount county, to the east of Tombigbee river, to the north of Clark county, and west of the highlands that divide the waters of the Alabama from the waters of the Tombigbee, is made another county, called Sevier county, the seat of justice of which is at the falls of the Black Warrior.* These counties are settling very fast, and by the time the land can be sold, will contain a dense population.It is expected the sale of those lands will come on at Huntsville, in Nov. next, and they will sell higher per acre than any public land ever offered by the United States. It is supposed the hundred townships now surveying will produce nine millions of dollars, when sold; but from the short time al lowed by law, to keep the office open, it is apprehended that only a small part can be exposed to sale this fall. The consequence of which will be that many who are now vesting their funds in scrip, expecting to purchase lands, will be disappointed in their calculations; as they will probably have to wait until another law is passed to continue the sales.

* This is the highest point of navigation of the waters of Mobile, is surrounded by good laud, and, is only 70 miles from Huntsville, of course we may soon expect to see. a large thriving town at this place.

Thomas Chase Hagood's Ph.D. thesis, FRONTIER: MAKING HISTORY IN TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA  https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/hagood_thomas-chase_201105_phd.pdf