This past Friday marked the 200th anniversary of the separation of the Mississippi Territory into Mississippi and Alabama, and it was 200 years ago this fall that the first house was built on the site that became Columbus. This afternoon at 2 p.m. today at MUW’s Nissan Auditorium, there will be a free public program that tells of those events of 200 years ago. Historians from Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi will present a fascinating view of the events leading to the formation of the states of Mississippi and Alabama and of the confusion over where the state line would be located. That confusion led to the belief that all land east of the Tombigbee was in Alabama.
The founding of Columbus involved a series of settlements and events stretching from 1798 to 1821. The Mississippi Territory was created in 1798, and in 1804 Georgia released its claims to what is now northern Mississippi and Alabama to the Mississippi Territory. In 1812, that part of West Florida, west of the Perdido, was annexed by the Mississippi Territory, and the territory then encompassed all the area that now includes both Mississippi and Alabama.
The Mississippi Territory had been petitioning Congress to be admitted as a state since before the War of 1812, but it was not until 1817 that admission to the Union was approved. The territory, however, was split in half on March 3, 1817, with Mississippi being the western half and Alabama the eastern half. Alabama did not become a state until 1819, and the actual state line survey was not completed until late 1820.
The first Anglo-American settlements in northeast Mississippi occurred at Cotton Gin Port on the Tombigbee (near present day Amory) after the location of a government cotton gin there for the Chickasaw Indians in 1801. The first Anglo-American settlement associated with what became Columbus was John Pitchlynn’s 1810 residence at Plymouth Bluff, four miles north of present day downtown. At the outbreak of the Creek Indian War in 1813, a palisaded log blockhouse, later named Fort Smith, was constructed at Pitchlynn’s.
In 1816, after the conclusion of the War of !812 and the Creek Indian War, the Choctaws and Chickasaws ceded all of their claims to lands east of the Tombigbee River to the United States. The dividing line between the Choctaws and Chickasaws was a few miles north of present day Columbus, which was in the Choctaw cession. Also in 1816, Congress approved Andrew Jackson’s request to construct a military road from Nashville to New Orleans.
The Military Road’s survey was completed in early September 1817, and the location of its Tombigbee River crossing was set at a point about four miles south of John Pitchlynn’s house. Within a few weeks, a log house had been constructed at that site, which in 1819 was organized as the Town of Columbus.
In an 1848 history of Columbus, Oscar Keeler wrote: “In the latter part of the year 1817, Thomas Thomas, a man who had been driven out by the agent as an intruder in the Chickasaw nation, built a small split log hut upon the ground now known as the residence of C.D. Warren Esq.” Warren’s house stood at the present day northeast corner of Third Street South and College Street, about where the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau office is now located.
Anglo-American families began moving into the newly opened land east of the Tombigbee River in 1817. The new state line had not been surveyed, and the common belief was that the line would run along either the Tombigbee River or the St. Stephens Trace (it ran north and south a little east of present day Highway 45 between Columbus and Meridian). That belief placed both Columbus and Cotton Gin Port in Alabama. In February 1818, Marion County, Alabama, was formed from the north western part of Tuscaloosa County. Cotton Gin Port was chosen as the county seat. On December 6, 1819, the county seat of Marion County was moved to the house of Henry Greer to place it closer to the rapidly growing town of Columbus. Greer’s house was located at the present site of Columbus Air Force Base. A settlement known as Hamilton quickly arose just across the Buttahatchie River from Greer’s house.
Among the first settlers at the site of Columbus was Silas McBee (he represented Marion County in the Alabama Legislature in 1819). Silas’ son, Vardy McBee, probably built the Cedars on Military Road just north of the original Columbus settlement in 1818. It is the oldest surviving house in Lowndes County. In 1819, McBee suggested the name of Columbus for the new settlement. That first cabin built in 1817 was occupied by Spirus Roach by 1819. Because of his long pointed nose, the neighboring Indians called him “possum” and the town “Possum’s Town.” The oldest surviving house in the original Columbus town limits is Ole Homestead on College Street. The first official reference to the Town of Columbus was in a December 1819 Alabama legislative act.
The survey of the state line was completed in late 1820 and on Jan. 3, 1821, Mississippi Gov. George Poindexter announced that “a considerable population on the waters of the Tombigbee formerly attached to Alabama fall within the limits of this state (Mississippi).” On Feb. 9, 1821, the Mississippi Legislature responded by creating Monroe County out of what had been the western part of Marion County, Alabama. The legislature also quickly legitimized all marriages preformed in Monroe County under color of Alabama law. The next day, Feb. 10, the legislature chartered the Town of Columbus, Mississippi.
The program at MUW, “Borderline Confusion: Cultures and Conflict in the Making of Mississippi and Alabama,” is free and open to the public. Phillip Carroll Morgan will address “Old Culture in the South: American Indians of Mississippi and Alabama.” Clay Williams will discuss “The Creek War and the Split of the Mississippi Territory.” Jack D. Elliott Jr. will speak on “The Upper Tombigbee River and the Birth of the State of Mississippi” and Mike Bunn will address “More or Less Arbitrary: The Location of the Alabama-Mississippi Border.”
It is sponsored by the Billups-Garth Foundation; the MUW Department of History, Political Science and Geography; Alabama Bicentennial Commission; Mississippi Humanties Council; Mississippi Development Authority; Alabama Heritage; and the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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