Alabama and Mississippi Connections

Description

Mrs. Jacobson, who has previously written genealogical accounts of Massachusetts Bay, Long Island (New York), and Detroit (Michigan), here turns her attention to settlement along the Alabama-Mississippi frontier in the early nineteenth century. As evidenced by the title of the work, the focus is upon families who settled along the Tombigbee River, an area which today occupies all or part of the Alabama counties of Marion, Fayette, Lamar, Tuscaloosa, Greene, Pickens, and Sumter; and the Mississippi counties of Lee, Itawamba, Monroe, Webster, Clay, Choctaw, Oktibbeha, Lowndes, Winston, and Noxubee. Aided by a variety of maps depicting settlement patterns, the book commences with a history of settlement in the Mississippi Territory. Here Mrs. Jacobson zeroes in on the founding of each of the seventeen counties comprising the Tombigbee River area, with references to the region’s indigenous Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Cherokees; the phases of French, Spanish and British settlement; and the consolidation of the region under U.S. control following the War of 1812. Doubtless of greatest interest to researchers will be the author’s genealogical and biographical essays on the following families of the region: Adair, Bagwell, Blaikie/Blackie, Blaylock/Blailock, Bolton, Carson, Duke, Gamble/Gammill, Goachy, Holland, Lampkin, Lavender, Lincecum, Mangum, Meek/Meeks, Pitchlynn, Richey, Sellers, Starnes, Stevens, Walser, and Weeks. Rounding out the volume are several appendices (including an abridged copy of the Choctaw Treaty of 1816), a lengthy bibliography, and a name/subject index with 3,500 entries.