Last week marked 206 years since Samuel Edmondson, riding “hellbent for leather,” passed this way spreading a warning of death and destruction.
Edmondson was on a 500-mile ride through Indian territory seeking the aid of Andrew Jackson. On Aug. 30, 1813, Creek Indians had attacked and burned Fort Mims in the Tensaw area north of Mobile, killing more than 250 men, women and children. The next day Edmondson was dispatched from the fort at St. Stephens (across the Tombigbee from present day Jackson, Alabama) to Nashville to appeal to Gen. Andrew Jackson to bring the Tennessee Militia to the aid of the Tombigbee settlements and save them from destruction by the Creeks.
The horror of the opening of the Creek Indian War phase of the War of 1812 at Fort Mims that August day is best shown in a letter written by Mississippi Territorial Judge Harry Toulmin a few days after the destruction of the fort: “The dreadful catastrophe, which we have been some time anticipating, has at length taken place. The Indians have broken in upon us, in numbers and fury unexampled. Our settlement is overrun, and our country, I fear, is on the eve of being depopulated.”
It was in that atmosphere, a day after the Fort Mims massacre, that George Gaines, Choctaw Indian Factor (of the Choctaw trading house) at St. Stephens, knew he had to send to Andrew Jackson and Tennessee Gov. William Blount a plea for help. However, they were 500 miles away in Nashville. In 1813, east Mississippi and west Alabama were still Indian Territory.
Running north and south on the west side of the Tombigbee (roughly the route of present day Highway 45) was a road known as the St Stephens Trace. It connected the Chickasaw villages on the Natchez Trace (present-day Tupelo) with the St. Stephens settlement and Mobile. A scattering of Euro-Americans, mixed bloods, free Blacks and Indians lived at intervals of half a day to a days ride apart along the road.
In the best American tradition, Gaines asked for a volunteer to ride express to Nashville and get help. He then turned and looking at Samuel Edmondson said, “If I could induce a cheerful man to go as express to Nashville, Tennessee, I have a fine horse ready and can manage by writing to persons I know on the path to have a fresh horse ready for him every day.” Edmondson agreed to go.
Gaines recalled Edmondson’s ride in an 1872 newspaper article: “Mrs. Gaines said that she would prepare provisions for him. I immediately sat down and wrote letters to Gen. Jackson and Gov. Blount, communicating the massacre of Fort Mims and the defenseless condition of our frontier, appealing to Gen. Jackson to march down with his brigade of mounted men and save the Tombigbee settlement. … I wrote a letter to Charles Juzon (he lived near Lauderdale Springs) and William Starnes at Oknoxubee (near Macon); John Pitchlynn, mouth of Oktibbeha; George James, residing at or near the present Egypt (M. & O. R. A.); Jim Brown, Natchez road; George Colbert, chief of the Chickasaws, Colberts’ Ferry and others beyond the Tennessee River requesting them on the arrival of Mr. Edmondson to furnish him with their best horse and take care of the horse he would leave until his return from Nashville, then bring or send me their bills for payment. (Each of the persons named was in the habit of visiting the trading house for supplies of salt, coffee, sugar, etc.) This task occupied me nearly all night. In the morning, Mr. Edmondson, with provisions, a well-filled purse, etc., etc., set out for Nashville.”
In an 1834 Congressional report on a claim for service during the Creek War it was stated Edmondson “… went express to convey an order from Gen. Gaines to Nashville … (traveling) alone through the wilderness, and through the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, and the route he then traveled to Nashville was about 500 miles; and he performed the entire journey in about 12 days.”
Edmondson, traveling an average of over 40 miles a day on horseback, arrived in Nashville and delivered the letters to Gov. Blount and Jackson. Gaines described the reaction when his letter was read: “Jackson rose up from the perusal and walked rapidly across the floor saying, ‘By the eternal, these people must be saved.'” The Tennessee militia was called out and on Oct. 3. Jackson led 2,500 Tennessee volunteers into Indian territory and into the hearts of the people of the South.
In 1818, Edmondson was appointed captain in the Alabama Militia. Sometime after 1820 he moved to Lowndes County, settling about eight miles southeast of Columbus near the Pickensville Road (Highway 69). By 1850, Edmondson was living with his daughter, Mrs. James Halbert, at the Halbert home (between Highway 69 and New Hope.) He died at there in 1869.
After 1869, Edmondson disappears from history to the extent we do not even know where he was buried. Historic records and accounts give three different cemeteries having his unmarked grave. They are all located in same area of southeastern Lowndes County and are the Ellis, Brownlee and Murrah’s Chapel cemeteries. To add more confusion, in 1926 the Bernard Romans Chapter of the DAR decided to place a historic marker at the site of Edmondson’s unmarked grave in the “cemetery of Murrah’s Chapel.” However, without any recorded explanation the marker was placed in the nearby Brownlee Cemetery.
Edmondson’s 500-mile ride to Nashville 206 years ago is now little remembered. William Love summed it up in 1903 when he said, “Had this ride occurred in New England, instead of Mississippi Territory, doubtless some Longfellow would have made it as memorable as that of Paul Revere.”
Though it takes nothing away from Edmondson’s ride, there is another seldom told side to this story. The Massachusetts Spy or Worcester Gazette of Oct. 13, 1813, carried an article on the Fort Mims massacre. Following that article is one detailing the history of the treatment of the Creek Indians by the United States. In its review of what has happened the paper said: “The Indian savages have no gazettes to trump their story — to paint their wrongs or to advocate justice in their behalf — and they must be extirpated, and, without remorse, the lands of their fathers will be given to aliens. This appears to be their doom for the strong arm of the nation in treaty with them is nerved for the execution! But candid, men acquainted with the subject, do not hesitate to say. They are a people under all their provocations — ‘more sinned against than sinning.'”
And Samuel Edmondson, hero of the Creek War of 1813, named his two sons Tecumseh, after the Shawnee Indian who fought against the United States in 1812, and Powhatan, after the Virginia Indian chief who was father of Pocahontas.
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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