Jackson Andrew
Jackson Dockets a Receipt "for the use of a boate from Meltons Bluff to the mouth of Cypress" - Jackson Used Those Boats to Transport Cotton & Corn Grown at His Alabama Plantation

Manuscript Document, one page, 8” x 3.5”. [Melton’s Bluff, Alabama], February 17, 1819. Two ink blots do not affect legibility. Five-word docket by Jackson on verso. On laid paper. Fine condition.

The document in full:
“Recd of Wm. W. Crawford twenty Dollars in full for the use of a boate from Meltons Bluff to the mouth of Cypress.” Signed “Buddy W. Wheeler.” On verso, darkly penned by Andrew Jackson: “No 5 / Wheelers - / -Boat- / $20.” The word “Recept” has been written in another hand.

Tensions in the South between the frontier settlers and the Creek Indians began in Revolutionary times. The Continental Congress received numerous reports on skirmishes between settlers and the Creeks. On August 30, 1813, Creek Indians massacred several hundred pioneers at Fort Mims, near Tensaw, in south Alabama, Mississippi Territory. Col. Andrew Jackson marched into Alabama with the Tennessee militiamen to fight what is now known as the Creek Indian War. The Cherokee joined in the fight. In October, Jackson dispatched Col. John Coffee, one of his wife’s nephews, and 800 men to hunt for a war party of Creeks. Once of Coffee’s men was Davy Crockett. They crossed the Tennessee River and traveled to the head of Elk River Shoals. In his report to Jackson, Coffee wrote, in part, “I proceeded to cross the river at the upper end of the shoals, all my efforts failed to produce a pilot. I took with me one of John Melton’s sons...”

The Cherokees had established a large village at what became known as Melton’s Bluff. In 1780, John Melton, an Irishman, married a Cherokee woman and established a cotton plantation at Melton’s Bluff. As a result of the 1806 Cotton Gin Treaty, the Cherokee received one of Mississippi Territory’s first cotton gins and other concessions for ceding land north of the Tennessee River to the United States.

On January 3, 1818, in a letter published in her ‘Letters from Alabama” (Washington: 1830), Anne Newport Royall wrote, “Of General Jackson, I shall say nothing till I see him, which pleasure I expect at Melton's Bluff, head of the Muscle Shoals, where I shall be in a few days...”

On January 14, 1818, Mrs. Royall told of her stay in Melton’s Bluff. In part, “Melton’s Bluff is a town, and takes its name from a person by the name of John Melton, a white man, deceased two years since, at an advanced age ... You have heard that this country consists of table and bottom land, also, of the Bluffs. These Bluffs happen where there is no bottom land, but the table land running up to the river forms a high precipice, called a Bluff. This is the case at Melton’s Bluff, the highest I have seen. Here is a very large plantation of cotton and maize, worked by about sixty slaves, and owned by General Jackson, who bought the interest of old Melton...” After John Melton died in 1816, Jackson purchased his plantation and his slaves from his son. Royal continued, “I can sit in my room and see the whole plantation; the boats gliding down the river...”

Jackson used those boats to transport cotton and corn grown at his plantation which was located on the south bank of the Tennessee River near Florence, Alabama. William W. Crawford was employed by Jackson. In 1821, the State of Tennessee passed an act “To authorize William Crawford and company of Franklin County, to build a Mill and other water works on the Tennessee River and for other purpose.”

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