Robertson's Early Settlers of Montgomery County, A1abama, a rare little volume which should be an ordinary item in the family collections of most Montgomerians, but which few possess, gives a short sketch of ten lines about the town of Augusta, and therein we are led to believe that when Montgomery came into being, Augusta and Fort Jackson towns ceased to exist, as their citizens all moved into the new town. I have just lately enjoyed the rare privilege of learning more of Augusta. Volume I of Montgomery's original newspaper, The Montgomery Republican, is just now coming under my eye (after all these years) and I learn that Augusta was a right considerable town at one time and, with all, was the head of navigation on the Tallapoosa River.
Apparently some Georgians must have stopped by the side of the
road and founded a village sometime after 1816, calling it
Augusta for the principal town of their State. Augusta, Ala., was
located on the Tallapoosa River at what older Montgomerians know
as Ware's Ferry. It occupied the site of the old Indian village
of Sawonagi, a Shawnee town settled in the Creek Country on the
Indian trail from the Atlantic to the French post at the junction
of the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers. The location was,
incidentally, a crossroads of two paths which went from the
Okmulgee in Georgia to the Tombigbee in the Mississippi
Territory, and from Pensacola to Tuckabatchee in the Creek
Country. The town of Sawonagi was no great village, but it did
enjoy the distinction (if such is a distinction) of being at one
time the residence of the parents of Tecumseh.
One of the earliest mail
routes in the Gulf County and before there were legally appointed
postmasters, went from Fort Mitchell on the Chattahoochee by
Augusta to Fort Jackson, thence south to Claiborne and to Saint
Stephens. The Indian towns of Kulumi, Mukalasi, Ikanhutki and
Fusihatchee, were located all within a mile or two of the place
and indicate a concentration of early population in this central
Tallapoosa Country. There are Indian mounds at all these places
and much evidence of aboriginal culture has been turned out here
in recent years.
Newspaper Advertisements
Advertisements in The Montgomery Republican enabled one to
develop an interesting story of the place. For example, G. Clark
opened the Augusta Academy, an English school at the place on the
19th of February, 1821. The purpose of the school was "to improve
the minds, manners and morals of his pupils." The fees were $5
per subject per quarter of eleven weeks; for the high branches of
study (the $5 studies being reading, writing and arithmetic) he
charged $6 per subject. I do not find any early advertisements of
goods sold at the place, though there was more than one merchant,
and Augusta had a doctor, a grog shop, a commission man, and
Robertson says there was a tavern where the stage changed horses;
also a blacksniith shop or two. Robert Mitchell and Company, 
sometimes
referred to as Major Robert Mitchell, was, I venture to say, the
leading mercantile establishment. This firm advertised that the
steamboat Yankee" would leave that place on or about March
27, with freight for Mobile and Blakeley. In May of that year,
Major Robert Mitchell and J. Battelle (the owner of The
Republican) were advertising that the Yankee would
leave from Montgomery with a load of freight for Blakeley. I
would infer from this that the water was too low for the boat to
get up stream as far as Augusta and that the cotton was hauled
into Montgomery and loaded here.
This inference is probably sustained by a news
notice which says that the Yankee departed from Montgomery
on May 26 with 200 bales of cotton and other freight "principally
from Augusta."
Meigs and Mitchell
An interesting connection with this firm of Robert Mitchell and
Company is an advertisement dated the 19th of May, stating the
dissolution of the firm of Meigs and Mitchell, saying that this
establishment was dissolved on the 18th of May, 1820. The notice
was published on the 19th of May, 1821, and I think there is a
typographical error. I am satisfied that "Robert Mitchell and
Company" of March, 1821, was Joseph H. Meigs and Robert Mitchell.
Incidentally, Joseph H. Meigs is the man for whom the town of
Mount Meigs was named. The Mitchell family, who settled quite
early from Georgia on the north side of the Tallapoosa west of
Chubahatchee Creek and adjacent to the Indian town of
Huithlewalli and whose descendants (some distance removed) are
still here at Montgomery, may be the same Georgia family of
Robert, but whether he is of the direct blood I am not able to
say.
Uncalled For Letters
Walter R. Ross, Postmaster at Augusta, advertised a list of
unclaimed letters remaining in that office under date of December
31, 1821. On March 10, 1821, a notice signed by the
administrators of the estate of Isaac Ross Sr., Isaac Ross,
Junior, and W. R. Ross, asked for the submission of claims
against Mr. Ross. Those advertisements led me to investigate an
old family tradition which always held that Walter Ross was the
original Postmaster at Fort Jackson. I find that this is in
error. The U. S. Postal Guide shows Isaac Ross,
Jr.,postmaster at Fort Jackson until he was succeeded by Reuben
Jordan in 1821. An uncalled for letter at the Post Office of
Augusta was one for Dr. Moses Andrew who, in 1821, was the editor
of the Montgomery Republican, and a short time later, the
ferry boat owner on the Tallapoosa River. Not long after this
date the ferry over the Tallapoosa which has been known locally
in recent years as Ware's Ferry and Dave Johnson's Ferry and
still later as Johnson's Bridge, was so far as can be established
by the records, that same crossing owned by Dr. Andrew after he
left Montgomery at the time he gave up the editorship of our
first newspaper. Another letter was for W. D. Aldred and others
were for William Armstrong; James Fears; Thomas Grubbs; Charles
W. Seawright;
Chelsea Johnson; Peame Kirkland; William Pavey;
William Stedman and Josiah Underwood. The quarter beginning April
7, 1821, showing letters remaining in the postoffice at Augusta
and advertised by Mr. Ross, Postmaster, include one for
William Barnett; Mrs. Eliza Ann Butts; Elijah Croxton; William
Chandler; William Earnest; Dr. Frank Fay; Wilson Goodwin; John
and Stephen Fordman; William Haggerty; John R. Hogan; Mrs. Ann
Harshaw, and several others. These names suggest several of the
early Montgomery County families living not far from that point,
and letters were probably addressed to them there hoping that
they would reach them through that office. The Barnett mentioned
was the stepfather of Governor William Wyatt Bibb, and William
Haggerty was the father of Abel and Squire or Spire Haggerty, who
settled the hill just north of the Tallapoosa River, now well
known by that name and the property adjacent to Ben Fitzpatrick.
One would assume that Dr. Frank Fay must have been of the family
who later settled some miles west at Mr. Duncan's "Violet
Hill" plantation at our Grandview. I don't know how close kin
Wilson Goodwin was to those Goodwins and the Lucases and
Dreysprings who later lived near Augusta and many of whom are
buried in the cemetery there along with Walter Ross' family.
Isaac Ross, Sr., who had a short service in the American Revolution and whose grave stone is at Fort Jackson, was buried alongside some of Marchand's French soldiers. His grave has been marked in recent years by the DAR. Mr. Ross' original settlement, so tradition says, was at the Sulphur Spring, now designated as Harrogate Springs, where the late John Crommelin lived for many years. The Treaty of Fort Jackson, signed August 27, 1814, by which Creek Indians ceded much of their claim to Alabama, was signed at the Ross settlement site. Early settlers in the country here claimed that General [Andrew] Jackson, Col. Hawkins and other commissioners, Col. Arthur Hayne, among them, lived up out of the swamp, there at the Sulphur Spring for health's sake.
Dr. Thomas Brown
An advertisement dated February 10, 1821, in the
Republican, announces that Dr. Thomas Brown "has removed
to the town of Augusta in this county where he attends to the
practice of medicine." Dr. Brown's dust is in the popularly
known "Oliver Cemetery," (though it should be "Brown Cemetery")
about five miles out on the Ware's Ferry Road near the old
Ledyard property. In that small "half-acre" are some Mitchells,
some Woods, as well as the family of Dr. Brown. On Dr. Brown's
father's gravestone a lengthy inscription recites his
Revolutionary War experience. This old veteran was from Culpepper
County, Virginia, and was at King's Mountain with John Sevier and
at Yorktown when Lord Cornwallis surrendered. He died at Augusta
on January 9, 1827, of fever.
One of the "society" notices in the Republican is a
statement bearing date of March 24, 1821, announcing the marriage
at Augusta on the 15th of last month (February 13), of Captain
James Hayes, who is found later living at Claiborne, to Miss
Susan Fitts. An interesting advertisement of March 17, is one of
those illustrative kind which shows an hosteler holding the reins
of a horse,
and his announcement that the stallion, "Farmer", will stand
until June 10 next, on Wednesday and Thursday each week, at
Augusta town. On Fridays and Saturdays he was at Evansville. If
you don't know the location of Evansville, I will tell you that
it was the tavern site which we today know as Milly's Creek. Mr.
Evans, by the way, was one of Milly's husbands. I think he was
the last one of the trio. Her tollgate was near the Dr. Handy's
residence on Mt. Meigs road a short distance west of Waugh. After
the cutting of the Federal Road in 1805, Milly, widow of a
British soldier who died at Cusseta with smallpox after he
deserted the British Army to escape going back to England in
1783, settled as a neighbor to [Abram] Mordecai whose trading
post was further west and towards "Meigs' Store", and the
Government permitted her to maintain a tavern and toll gate
across Noocoocecheppo Creek, (Bear Range Creek) known to us today
as Milly's Creek. The description of "Farmer" was that he was a
descendant of the celebrated "Eclipse". He was eight years old,
of a brown color and 5 feet 5 inches high. He belonged to H.
Young and Murry, a firm of stablemen at Montgomery.
Under death notices dated July 23, 1821, is that of Dr. Frank Fay, who died at Augusta on the 24th of May last, in the 28th year of his age. This notice says that he was a native of Vermont but for the last three years an inhabitant of the Southern States. There follows half a column of a memorial obituary. Among other things, he had acquired by his own unaided exertions, a knowledge of almost every branch of classical and scientific study usually taught in American colleges. He was an early victim of disease himself, long suffering under a severe pulmonary complaint. "He came South from the cold regions of Vermont to the genial influence of the milder climate of Georgia and Alabama. Scarcely four months previous to his death, he united himself to one of the most amiable of her sex. Short was the enjoyment of the most perfect connubial happiness. The exertion consequent upon the removal from Georgia to this country during the Spring floods, and unusual exposure during the late freshet of the Tallapoosa, which twice force him to abandon his house, gave rise to a violent affection of the heart and excessive irritability of the stomach, which for two weeks continued to exhaust his bodily powers and threaten termination of his existence." Ending the memorial which recites that his afflicted companion, forsaken and forlorn, sick and among strangers, is gradually wasting away her life, consoled only by the hope of joining him once more in those realms where grief and sorrow never come:
"Misfortune's child from childhood up,
His earthly course is early run;
Sorrow has filled her bitter cup
And yielded up her darling son."
Illustrative Cuts
A display advertisement in the August 18, 1821 issue is "New
Goods at Augusta." This ad recites that "just received by the
boat, Yankee, Captain Crawford, from Mobile, and for sale
by the subscribers, Mitchell and Company," then is set out a list
including 100 barrels of Superior Rye Whiskey; 10 barrels of
Apple Brandy; 5 barrels of Cognac Brandy; 5 casks of Wine; 25
boxes of No. I Chocolate; 15 boxes of No. 2; 5 boxes of Spanish
Segars, and alum; Liverpool salt; Carolina hoes; 20 barrels of
New Orleans Sugar and a variety of other things.
Reuben Fitts, undoubtedly of the same family of the lady who married Captain Hayes, mentioned above, lost his pocketbook at Augusta on the 14th of July. He first advertised for it on the 25th of August and offered a suitable reward, by "the subscriber, who resides within one mile of the town of Augusta." Mr. Fitts' pocketbook was of red morocco and it contained several notes, "and a number of other papers too numerous to mention." One of his notes was drawn in favor of Jordan Webb for $71 and signed by John Hansford; another one was signed by William Shipp.
Fields and Pinkston (this latter name quite old in that locality) advertised valuable town lots to be auctioned Saturday the 15th of September, in the town of Augusta. They offered accommodating terms. Thomas S. Woodward, brigadier general, Headquarters 7th Brigade Alabama Militia, by notice dated September 2, 1822 ordered the regiments of the brigade convene at their respective muster places and on designated dates, and one of these places was Augusta town, the parade to be held on the 16th of October. By command of this order the commissioned officers of these regiments were required to assemble two days preceding the date of the parade at the respective muster grounds, in this case Augusta, for the purpose of being drilled by the brigade major who was John A. Cotton.
Camp Meeting
Under the head of new advertisements, the Rev. Moses Andrew
calls a camp meeting to be held the 3, 4, 5, and 6th of October
next, (the advertisement dated September 13, 1822) on the road
leading from the town of Montgomery to Augusta, 7 miles from
Montgomery and 4 miles from Augusta, near Mr. Robert's cabin.
Preachers of the Methodist denominations throughout the State
were solicitously invited, "as the harvest here is great and the
laborers few and feeble." It was at first intended that the
meeting be held on the 10th of October but Superior Court of
Montgomery County was called for that date, therefore they
thought best to hold it a week ahead of that time. The campers
were told that they could rely on finding the greatest abundance
of water and an ample supply of timber for building tents. Mr.
Robert's cabin was out where we now find Montgomery Shooting Club
Lake. But I must close this paper. However, the above proves to
my mind that Augusta had not ceased to exist nor faded from the
picture for several years after Montgomery came into being, and
too, the U. S. Postal Guide shows they had a postoffice after
1825. Andrew Baxter succeeded Mr. Ross as postmaster in 1822,
when Walter Ross became Sheriff of Montgomery County, and Andrew
Baxter served until about 1826 when the office of postmaster was
abolished.
