The introduction to “Creeks and Southerners” by Andrew K. Frank (2005) tells of Andrew Brissert, who in 1783 got in trouble with the Spanish authorities in Pensacola. He and his wife had come to buy some food supplies and sell two African American slaves. He was arrested for being “dressed and painted as an Indian” and suspected of being a spy.

The thing was, he was an Indian. He was born in England, spoke English, and except for his paint and dress acted like an Englishman, but he was also a Creek. His Creek family back in Fushatchee (150 miles to the north-northeast of Pensacola) objected to his arrest and threatened to retaliate if he wasn’t returned to his home. Eventually the Spaniards gave in.

If the Creeks claimed that Brissert was one of their own, the Spaniards were in no position to disagree. Race, culture, and language, they reluctantly conceded, had deceived them.”

There were many other people like Brissert.

“In villages in what is now Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, many of the ealry American newcomers recognized their newly obtained Creek obligations even as they held what appeared to be European American economic and social practices. They held and sold African slaves and participated in the annual Green Corn Ceremony. They herded cattle and fenced their lands, while they partook of the ritual black drink and painted their skin. They held positions in Europrean trading firms, even as they catered to the interests of their wives’ clans. They spoke English, Spanish, or French wihle also interpreting it into Muskogee, Alabama, and Hitchiti. Their behavior and appearances defied simple identification.

googlemap

After reading about Brissert, I looked through my photos to see if in April 2006 I had taken any of Fushatchee. Amos Wright’s book, “Historic Indian Towns in Alabama, 1540-1838,” gives several historical references to several locations for the town. One location that has been the subject of archaeological work is on the north bank of the Tallapoosa River, near the mouth of Chubbehatchee Creek.

In checking my maps from that ride, I saw that I had even made a note of it on the day I rode to Tuckabatchee. I didn’t ride down to the mouth of the creek. My maps didn’t show that there was a route to that location, though now I see that DeLorme shows some sort of road. It could very well be a lane on private property. I contented myself to take photos near where County Road 4 crosses the creek, a couple of miles from the Tallapoosa.

The location of the above photo of a bare chimney is probably the closest I got to the village site as the crow flies.

It’s not too far from the Mitchell Creek Grocery. County Road 4 continues along to the right of the store, and in a larger version of this photo you can see where the land drops down to the creek bottom on this side of the horizon.

Why does it say Mitchell Creek rather than Chubbehatchee Creek? And why is the road to the left of the store called Mitchell Creek Road? So far I haven’t been able to find a Mitchell Creek on any of my maps. Was it just another name for Chubbehatchee Creek? Another case of dual identify, if you will? (Of course, identity means more than just the name for something, but that’s often part of it. Andrew Brissert, who very likely knew this location before the store and road were built here, may very well have had a Creek name to go with his English name, but Frank’s book doesn’t mention it.)

I certainly didn’t know about the Andrew Brissert story when I rode here on April 3, 2006, but I must have known something of Fushatchee that I have since forgotten. I recall riding up out of the valley and then realizing almost too late that I had better stop to at least get a photo looking back at it.

Here is the map from the Florida DOT site that Ken Steinhoff recommended. If you click on the above map fragment, it should take you to the PDF file at the DOT site from which it was taken.

I’ve circled the site of the Negro Fort in red. It’s about 27 miles by road from East Point, which is across the bay from Apalachicola. If you go by crow, it’s about 15 miles straight north of Apalachicola.

Fort Gadsen used to be right here, along the near shore of the Apalachicola River. The Negro Fort, so called, was an earlier fort that had been located a strong stone’s throw back from the river.

The link in the above paragraph is to a Wikipedia from which I got most of the information for this post. It looks like I’ve returned all the books I had on this subject to the library, so I don’t have handy all the details I’d like.

However, one detail that’s not in Wikipedia is one that I remembered while taking my photos. I was hunched down close to the edge of the river, concentrating on a search for better camera angles, when Myra mentioned alligators.

Alligators? Were there alligators this far north? Then I remembered having read that the defenders in the Negro fort had had very little in the way of provisions, and had been reduced to eating alligators. So after that, I didn’t focus so single-mindedly on camera angles.

And how is this place connected with Black Hawk? There are a couple of connections.

The first is because of its connection with the Creek War, a civil war which later morphed into a part of the War of 1812. Tecumseh’s and Tenskwatawa’s message of religious revival and united resistance to the Americans did much to touch off the Creek War here in the south, and also influenced Black Hawk and some of the Sauk and Fox people on the upper Mississippi. The Black Hawk war of 1832, 20 years later, can be thought of as a late-developing outcome of the message of revival and resistance.

Here in Florida, which was Spanish territory at the time of the War of 1812, the British tried to organize and support the Indian resistance to the United States. A number of black slaves also escaped to the surrounding area — perhaps 300 of them at the time the British abandoned the place in 1815. Perhaps 800 more slaves heard of the fort and fled to this area.

In 1815 the war with England was over, but a place of refuge for black slaves was seen as a threat to the southern states. In early 1816 an American force was sent up the river onto Spanish territory to destroy it. There was an exchange of cannon fire, and then a red-hot shot fired from the boats on the river hit the powder magazine, blowing up the fort with a noise that was heard a hundred miles away, and killing 90 percent of the defenders. The survivors who were not executed were returned to slavery.

The other connection to Black Hawk is Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines. He was the person ordered by Andrew Jackson to destroy the fort, though I don’t think he was here for the cannon fight. Gaines was later in charge of the Western Military District when the Black Hawk conflict arose. In 1831, a year before the Black Hawk war, there was a lesser conflict during which Gaines met with Black Hawk several times to get him to move from his home in present-day Rock Island to the west side of the Mississippi, and then marched against him with sufficient strength to force the issue without having to resort to violence.

The end was a famous scene in which Black Hawk signed an agreement to stay on the west side of the river. Lieutenant George McCall, who read the agreement of capitulation to Black Hawk, later wrote to his father that when Black Hawk came forward to make his X on the treaty, he “made a large, bold cross with a force which rendered that pen forever unfit for further use.”

Black Hawk broke the agreement the following spring — in small part because he thought the Americans hadn’t kept their part of the agrement, either.

Franklin County was what I picked to look at. That’s the only Florida county where my bicycle wheels have ever touched the ground. It’s also the only Florida county where I’ve ever stayed overnight, and one of very few I’ve visited.

Here’s how it came about. In 2005 I got the idea of doing a bicycle ride from Vincennes, Indiana to the Montgomery, Alabama area. I wanted to see the places that Ned Cobb/Nate Shaw of “All God’s Dangers” had told about. I especially wanted to go there when I came to realize that this is where Tecumseh had gone on his famous recruiting mission in 1811. And the story of Tecumseh is connected to the story of Black Hawk, as Patrick J. Jung has explained so well.

When I mentioned this idea to Myra, she pointed out that I still hadn’t ever taken her anyplace where there are palm trees. I had long said I had never committed any crime bad enough to be sent to Florida, but sometimes it’s necessary to make attitude adjustments. I spent some Google time verifying that we could find palm trees in the Florida panhandle, and suggested the Apalachicola area. We could extend our trip that far. Myra agreed with that idea.

As a bonus, there is a historic site nearby (in Franklin County) that is part of the story of the War of 1812 and the Creek Wars. It’s one end of a chain of events that was touched off by Tecumseh’s visit.

(I like to find connections to the Black Hawk story wherever I go. I still haven’t figured out exactly how to connect it to a future bicycle tour in Russia, but I’ve been working on it. My best bet would be something connected to the War of 1812 and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. The problem is, most of the military conflicts took place south or southwest of Moscow, and the tours hosted by the Russian Cycle Touring Club are in the area to the northeast of Moscow. Like I say, I’m working on it.)

Back to Florida. We did the Alabama trip in late March/early April 2006. We didn’t have enough time for me to ride all the way to Florida, so I finished the tour after spending several days in Nate Shaw country, and then put the bike on the car for a trip to Florida.

Myra got to visit some palm trees just outside the place where we stayed. And I found that at least this part of Florida wasn’t bad at all. It was a good place to visit. It has somewhat of a quiet, small town flavor (though that is changing).

Here is a clue as to how the area will be changing. It is probably a lot different already, two years later.

The weather was cool, but we spent a good part of our one full day in Florida sitting on the beach on St. George Island. And I took a break from all the relaxation to ride my bike to the west end of the island and back to bring my mileage up to my goal of 720 for the two-week vacation.

I see I still haven’t gotten around to that Florida DOT map for Franklin County. But there are already about as many image files as I dare put in one blog entry, so I’ll save that for next time.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/07/14/florida-dot-maps-almost/feed/ 2 http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/17/peter-weaver-and-burnetts-reserve/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/17/peter-weaver-and-burnetts-reserve/#comments Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:51:12 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/17/peter-weaver-and-burnetts-reserve/

This is another photo from the cemetery where Peter H. Weaver and his wife, Martha, are buried. Peter’s gravestone is the one with the flag honoring his service in the War of 1812.

The cemetery isn’t one that gets a lot of traffic. There was no road to it — just a mowed space between two fields on which to reach it. But the place seemed well cared for.

(This map image from the 1878 atlas of Wayne Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, is provided by www.historicmapworks.com. You can click on the map to go to the page containing the original image.) It’s several miles west-southwest of West Lafayette.

Sandford Cox had referred to Weaver buying land next to the Burnett Reserve, on the south edge of Wea Prairie. But on this map fragment, it sure looks more like the west edge than the south edge to me. (I’ve used blue to highlight what I take to be the designation for the prairie edge.)

The Burnett Reserve is the area that’s not square with the world, and sure enough, Weaver’s home is just off the north edge. (I’ve drawn a violet-colored oval around the area that contains the house and the cemetery.)

I’ve been trying to learn more about the Burnett Reserve, but so far am not even sure which treaty created it. A recent news article by a Mark A. Smith refers to Abraham Burnett receiving three sections of land in the 1826 treaty, but it’s referring to reserves towards the northeast part of the county, not the west end where this is. In the 1826 treaty the word “section” seems not to mean a square mile — this reserve alone contains four square-mile sections, plus parts of two more.

In maps of Tippecanoe and Carroll counties, I find at least four places identified as Burnett reserves. So I obviously have a lot more to learn about it. Part of the explanation seems to be that other Burnett’s than Abraham (or Abram) received reserves. I’m not sure which Burnett owned this one. (Some information about Abram Burnett can be found in a web site created by descendents.)

One can see from the map that Peter Weaver or his son Patrick Henry Weaver ended up owning a part of this particular Burnett Reserve. And in looking at other maps, I see suggestions that at least one of the other large property owners with a different surname is from the Burnett family, too.

Another minor mystery is the Peter Weaver entries in the GLO land patent database. Weaver was the original buyer of the quarter-section in section 12 that I’ve shaded in yellow. He also bought a little over 5 acres in section 10, according to the database. But there is a problem with that. There are no five acres in section 10. There is only a tiny sliver of land in what would have been section 10 if there had been no Burnett Reserve. It looks like it’s not even one acre’s worth. The land in section 11, where Weaver’s house is located was bought from the government by someone else. That doesn’t necessarily contradict any of the stories about it, though. But the problem with section 10 remains. I’ve checked the scanned images of the certificates themselves for transcription errors, and didn’t find any. One interesting point (well, interesting to me) is that Weaver as well as the buyer of Section 11 are identified as being from Wabash County, Indiana. The stories I’ve read so far about Peter Weaver have him coming from Wayne County. But maybe there was some sort of Wabash County interlude before he came to Tippecanoe County.

Those are some of the types of details I fuss about.

A look at modern maps of suggests there are some potential bike rides if I want to add to my collection of photos where old treaty lines have left marks on the landscapes. These marks are in the form of roads that follow the borders of some of these reserves. We’re hoping to spend a few days in Tippecanoe County this summer, maybe very soon. Another thing I’d also like to do is follow the edge of Wea Prairie to see if it’s still marked by changes in vegetation. Often such transitions are still visible.

More from September 14, 2006.

The last history stop of the afternoon was Peter Weaver’s home. Weaver was one of the earliest settlers in Tippecanoe County. Sandford C. Cox told about him as a militia officer (”Early Settlers”, pages 35-36):

…the manner of conducting a militia muster, held by Capt. P. H. W., on the south side of Wea prairie, in early times. The Captain was a stout built, muscular man, who stood six feet four in his boots, and weighed over two hundred pounds. When dressed in his uniform — a blue hunting shirt, fastened with a wide red sash, with epaulettes on each shoulder, his large sword fastened by his thigh, and tall plume waving in the wind–he looked like another William Wallace, or Roderick Dhu, unsheathing his claymore in defence of his country. His company consisted of about seventy men, who had reluctantly turned out to muster, to avoid paying a fine, some with guns, some with sticks, and others carrying corn stalks. The captain, who had been but recently elected, understood his business better than his men supposed he did. He intended to give them a thorough drilling, and show them that he understood the manoeuvers of the military art as well as he did farming and fox hunting–the latter of which was one of his favorite amusements. After forming a hollow square, marching and countermarching, and putting them through several other evolutions, according to Scott’s tactics, he commanded his men to ‘form a line.’ They partially complied, but the line was crooked. He took his sword and passed it along in front of his men, straightening the line. By the time he passed from one end of the line to the other, on casting his eye back he discovered the line presented a zig-zag and unmilitary appearance–some of the men were leaning on their guns, some on their sticks, a yard in advance of the line, and others as far in the rear. The captain’s dander rose. He threw his cocked hat, feather and all, on the ground, took off his red sash and hunting shirt, and threw them with his sword upon his hat. He then rolled up his sleeves, and shouted with the voice of a stentor: “Gentlemen! form a line, and keep it, or I will thrash the whole company!” Instantly the whole line was as straight as an arrow. The captain was satisfied, put on his clothes again, and never had any more trouble in drilling his company.

It isn’t clear whether Cox observed this incident himself. I presume it wasn’t a militia muster during the Black Hawk war in 1832, because Weaver is listed in Carrie Loftus’s roster, not as a captain, but as a private in a company of rangers.

He did have previous military experience though, having served as an officer in the War of 1812. So the fact that he would have been drilling a militia company is not surprising. This is just one of several such stories where someone with previous experience attempted to drill a bunch of farmers.

I would like to learn more about his War of 1812 experience. A genweb web page, quoting from a 1909 county history, says he had seen the Wabash valley during his service in that war, and had been impressed with it. I’ve started to collect stories of men who settled in parts of Indiana (or elsewhere) that they had first seen while on a campaign during the War of 1812. This one makes three such stories, anyway.

This is the house that Weaver built, now a private residence.

Weaver’s grave is in a cemetery not far to the north of his house. It’s interesting that on the gravestone (and in one of the county histories), his age at death is given as 96. Cox in his book says Weaver was over a hundred. (The book was published in 1860). But the historical marker, presumably using documentary evidence, says he was 89. These discrepancies make me wonder if there is a story here.

After leaving the Weaver house, I tried staying on county roads so as to avoid travel on state route 25, which I thought might be a busy one. But the pavement soon gave way and the only choices I could find were gravel, such as the above. These roads were pleasant enough, but it was not fast going on the gravel. After a few miles of it I decided I better give up my fun and take highway 25. The state highway turned out to be not too bad, but if I had more time I would have stayed on gravel.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/16/peter-h-weaver/feed/ 3 http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/15/illinois-indiana-boundary-and-tippecanoe-battlefield/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/15/illinois-indiana-boundary-and-tippecanoe-battlefield/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:43:25 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/15/illinois-indiana-boundary-and-tippecanoe-battlefield/

These photos are from the time in September 2006 when I made a stop at Granville. We had camped at Prophetstown State Park. It was while trying to find the campground the day before, riding back and forth to figure out where to turn, that I rode across the above railroad crossing (wet with rain) and went down. My helmet made a loud cracking sound as it hit the rail or whatever it was that it hit, but it didn’t seem that I hit it hard. I picked myself up, checked my bike, put the chain back on the chainring, and rode off, quite pleased with myself that the fall hadn’t bothered me any more than it would have when I was a kid. Later, after setting up camp, I decided my ribs were stiff and sore after all. Six weeks later I quit complaining about it — whatever went wrong had healed.

This photo is from the morning after, just after leaving the park.

I headed to the Tippecanoe battlefield, which is very close by, to get some photos. This was my 3rd or 4th visit to the place.

The battleground was donated to the state of Indiana in 1836 by John Tipton, one of the militia soldiers who had been in the battle. Tipton was later a well-known Indiana politician. The editor of his published papers points out that this battlefield site seemed to have some sentimental value to him throughout his life. This was in contrast to the matter-of-fact, unsentimental approach he had to just about everything else in his life. In 1908, long after Tipton was dead, the monument shown in the photo was erected.

In 1821, just ten years after the Tippecanoe Battle, Tipton had been a member of the commission that surveyed the Indiana-Illinois boundary. On the way back home, he came to the site where the battle had taken place ten years earlier. Here is part of his journal in which he described it (from the Tipton Papers, volume 1, pages 274-275):

took Breckfast & at 11 set out to view the ground where the Battle of Tippecannoe was fought the place wher the Town stood is on the NW side of wabash the River Run from N to S 2 mile below the mouth of Tippicannoe River on a second Bank or high ground Between the emminance on which the Town stood an the River is a Bottom of 50 yds Bredth the site high & Beautifull extending Back half mile near one mile NW of this is the Battle ground in a small grove of Timber surround by a narrow prairie through which on the N runs a small creek called Little Tippicannoe. on arriveing at the B[attle] ground my feeling is easier concieved than described the graves (8 in no) seem to have been opened. one quarter of a mile before we arrive here we began to find humon Bones on the B ground the Bones of men and horses lie Bleching together whither our men or Indians it is unknown no marble monument make the spot where the heroes lie who fell for thier country but they will live in memmory of the frends of Liberty.

The spelling and capitalization in the transcription are as in the original. Given how he struggled with it, it was interesting to read the following in one of Tipton’s letters to his son, Spear. (From the Tipton Papers, volume 2, page 619, dated 4-Jun-1832):

I have others to provide for as well as you and a wildly extended corrispondence will divert you from your studies and take money from me without a corrisponding benifit. I want you to write once or twice a month to me take pains to write your lines straight and arrange the letters in suitable form with capitals in proper places writeing is mechanical and can be acquired with care.

I once had the idea of following that 1821 survey route, taking with me Tipton’s journal and the surveyor’s field notes, and comparing the country now to how it looked then. I kept putting that tour off and had forgotten that it was even on my someday-to-do list until I was reminded of it while looking up the above information.

Thanks to Roger Kramer’s blog, I learned of another one that’s very new, but looks like it has potential: Dan on Bike. Dan lives, rides, and takes photos in one of my favorite areas for riding, Tippecanoe County, Indiana. His area is a good place for settlement era history in general, and Black Hawk war scare history in particular.

A few days ago Dan posted a great photo taken from the Granville bridge. I looked through my photos for one of my own, but don’t seem to have any of the bridge. I have some from Granville itself, though. I’ve been there twice. The first time was in January 2002 when I did some weekend riding in order to get in shape for surgery, as I put it at the time. In September 2006 I took the above photo of the historical marker where Granville used to be.

In 2006 it seemed there were more houses in the Granville area than I remembered from 2002, when the area seemed somewhat desolate. And now it looks like it’s going to become a subdivision.

I presume the Granville cemetery will be left undeveloped, though. In 2002 I was able to wander among the gravestones. In September 2006 it was thick with prairie vegetation. The cemetery is being preserved as a prairie remnant.

I somehow have in my head a story told by Sandford C. Cox of how in the late 1820s, when he was a teenager, he lost a leg in a tree-felling accident, then ran away from home (in Montgomery County, to the south) and managed to cross the Wabash River here where Granville later came to be. Cox became a schoolteacher and newspaper man, and wrote a series of articles that in 1860 were published as “Recollections of the Early Settlement of the Wabash Valley.” Tonight I looked through my copy of his book (it has been reprinted in 1970 and again in 2007) but could not find that story. So either my search image is no good, or it was somewhere else that I read it, or I completely imagined it.

The above photo is looking west toward the Wabash River valley. The Granville bridge is to the north, well out of the photo on the right. From Granville I was headed south, but first took some back roads along the edge of the river valley.

I rode about 88 miles that day. It was already mid-afternoon by the time I got to Granville, and there were 65 miles (and one more history stop) yet to go.

The day before I had taken a fall in the rain on a railroad track, near the Tippecanoe battlefield, and cracked a rib, though I didn’t yet realize it on the day of this ride. The first few days it didn’t bother me at all during the day when I was riding, but trying to sleep on it got to be more of a problem each evening until this tour was over.

(More from April 6, 2006).

I hung around Dadeville (known as Beaufort in Theodore Rosengarten’s book) for a while, looking for anything that might have been connected to Nate Shaw’s (Ned Cobb’s) trial there in 1932 (or 33?) when he was put on trial for his part in the shootout at his neighbor’s place. I didn’t even have to look, though. This courthouse was right at the center of town, as it is in many county seats throughout the U.S. From the style of construction, it looks as though it could have been the one that was here at the time of the trial, but I haven’t found out for sure.

Nate Shaw (Ned Cobb) spent 5 months in jail here while waiting for his trial. Here is some of what he had to say about the trial itself:

I couldn’t tell who was in the courtroom and who wasn’t. I didn’t even see if Mr. Watson come to my trial. But I do know this: they wouldn’t allow Mr. Horace Tucker in there. He tried to come in the buildin but they made him go on out again, get away from there. He’d been known–he took Leroy Roberts, after Leroy was shot down, he picked Leroy up and carried him home. So they didn’t allow him in the courtroom; they didn’t want the public to know that some of their color took any stock in helpin the niggers out.

Well, my brother Peter come, he was there, and TJ. My wife was there, some of my uncles and aunts, and my cousins too.

The backside of the courthouse has these words on it: “Equal justice to all people.”

Here’s more of what Nate (Ned) said about the trial:

Trial didn’t last but one day. Started one mornin in May and it was over when they took a notion some hour before dark; quit it and left the thing open. And the next day, mornin, didn’t have nothin to do but put the sentence on me. Jury come in to the courtroom first thing in the mornin and pronounced me guilty. They’d separated me from teh other boys when it come to the trial, but we all stood up there together at the sentencin–me, Leroy Roberts, Ches Todd, Wat Smith. And they tried Sam Todd and Willy Turpin, but they was tried after we was put in prison. Them officers took down a bunch of names at Virgil Jones’ house that mornin, but there’s numbers of em didn’t meet that trial–

Judge Bolin called me up to the stand and gived me twelve to fifteen years in the state penitentiary on good behavior.

The quotes are from pages 336 and 339 of Rosengarten’s book, “All God’s Dangers.”

More from April 6, 2006. Nate Shaw used to haul logs and then lumber with his mules, though not on this very road.

The lumber industry went into a decline after the country got logged over, but is now important again. It’s now being conducted on a more sustainable basis. Here’s a web page about the timber industry in Alabama, titled: “Historical Review of Sawmills in Alabama, Focusing on the Consolidation of Sawmills and the Effects on Employment.”

Nate Shaw’s lumber hauling was done further south, where my bike ride was going to end up this day. This photo was taken at Dadeville, the seat of Tallapoosa County. The one below was taken further south, maybe a couple of miles from where he lived the last years of his life.

Here is some of what he told about it (from pages 173-4 of Rosengarten’s book):

Mr. Ed Pike soon put me to haulin logs. Knowin that I had a good pair of mules that could swing it, it was ‘Nate, I want you to haul logs.’ Hauled logs to the mills two or three days, boss man Ed Pike told me, ‘Soon as you catch em up good with logs, go on to haulin lumber.’ They had a yard of lumber with about two hundred and fifty thousand feet, right southeast of my house on the creek.

By “the creek” I presume he means the creek near where I took the above photo, though a few miles further upstream. More about that creek another time.

…Hauled lumber on my wagon up from the creek and out from under them mountains and all and stocked it on top of the hills where the trucks could pick it up. … White men drivin them big GMC trucks would pick up them loads of lumber where I left em on the road, done carried em out from under the hills where the sawmills was and hauled it up and out of places them trucks couldn’t successfully pull. Them big GMC trucks, had two of em –good God, you might meet em on the road with a load of lumber, looked like a house comin.

The roads here are now wide enough that I didn’t mind meeting the trucks myself, but not so wide that I wasn’t wary about them coming up from behind. I can’t say they were a problem, though. At one place in Tennessee I had gotten off the road for a bit when the log-hauling trucks got too thick and the evening light too dim. I don’t recall any uncomfortable encounters with lumber trucks in Alabama.

This old house was on Hwy 49, between Horseshoe Bend park and Dadesville. It’s further north than the places where Nate Shaw lived. I’m not sure if cotton was grown up here or if there had been sharecroppers here, but it reminded me of what Nate Shaw had told about the houses provided to tenants by landlords:

Mr. Curtis soon got the house done. Just a old plantation-style house, built for colored folks, no special care took of how it was built. But it’d keep you out the rain, it’d keep you out the cold; just a old common-built house, board cabin…. They wanted all colored people on their places and they built the house accordin to the man and because it was a nigger they just put up something to take care of him. And the white man would cut his britches off if the nigger fooled around in that house too much. Whenever a white man built a house for a colored man he just run it up right quick like a box. No seal in that house; just box it up with lumber, didn’t never box it up with a tin roof. They’d put doors to the house and sometimes they’d stick a glass window in it, but mostly a wood window. Didn’t put you behind no painted wood and glass, just built a house for you to move in then go to work.

So, Mr. Curtis built me a cheap house with wood windows and put a chimney to it. (All God’s Dangers, p.102)

A house put up on stones like this one, where the air could blow underneath, would get mighty cold here in Michigan. But this one may have been better in its day than the ones Nate Shaw told about. It has a tin roof and glass windows. I don’t know how it compared in size.

I kept my eye out for old sharecropper-type houses from the early 20th century, but I didn’t really expect to see any. They wouldn’t have lasted, most likely.