Hubby drove around Decatur, stopping to let me out to take pictures. There were several War Memorials at the Morgan County Courthouse.
Confederate Memorial |
War Memorials at Morgan County Courthouse |
Old State Bank |
Hood’s Middle Tennessee Campaign and The Battle for Decatur “A Hard Nut To Crack” — The Battle for Decatur — Following the fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood, Commander of the Army of Tennessee, began a series of maneuvers against the Union line of supply running from Atlanta through Northwest Georgia, North Alabama, and into Nashville. Hood crossed the Chattahoochee River in late September and marched north. Unable to gain any advantage in Northwest Georgia, Hood turned to cross the Tennessee River at Guntersville. However, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry could not join forces with Hood if he crossed there. Union gunboats were also active around Guntersville. Furthermore, the damaged Memphis and Charleston Railroad ran from Confederate supply depots in North Mississippi to Decatur. By early October, Hood considered crossing the Tennessee River at Decatur, and on October 9, he ordered the railroad be repaired to that place. Accordingly, the Army of Tennessee detoured for Decatur. Hood’s army arrived outside Decatur on October 26, and for three days the small Union garrison defended the crossing with determination. Hood soon discovered that Decatur was “a hard nut to crack.” On the morning of October 30, his army marched through Courtland for Florence / Tuscumbia |
Decatur and The Civil War in North Alabama “A Hard Nut To Crack” — The Battle For Decatur — Decatur had close to 800 residents in 1860, not many more than the 606 persons counted in the 1850 census. Included in the 1860 census were 267 white males, 206 white females, three free blacks including two males and one female, and 130 slaves of which 56 were males and 74 were females. The town changed hands during the Civil War at least eight times, because of its strategic importance astride the junction of two railroads, and its location on the Tennessee River. Jefferson Davis passed through twice, once on his way to the inauguration as the Confederacy’s first and only President, and again on his way home after release from prison in 1867. Confederate Generals Albert Sidney Johnston, P.G.T. Beauregard, John Bell Hood, and Nathan Bedford Forrest also fought or gathered their troops here. Future U. S. president James Garfield visited here as a Colonel, along with Union Generals such as William T. Sherman, James B. McPherson, Robert S. Granger, James B. Steedman, and Grenville M. Dodge. Both Confederate and Union regiments drawn from the surrounding countryside were organized at Decatur and fought in the major battles of the war. |
What is left of the train tracks in Historic Decatur |
Simp McGhee Restaurant |
Nathan Bedford Forest (1821-1877) With no formal military training, Nathan Bedford Forrest became one of the leading cavalry figures of the Civil War. |
Miniature Cannon |
Spiders in Cooks Natural Science Museum |
Rocks inside the Cooks Natural Science Museum |
Decatur Train Depot This is not the original site of the train depot. The original depot, during the Civil War, sat down by the river. This depot was built in 1929. |
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens Born near this site on 12 September 1913 to Henry Cleveland and Emma (Fitzgerald) Owens, who were sharecroppers and the offspring of freed slaves, Jesse was destined to attain immortality in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. Although he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, at age 9, his early years here in Lawrence County, Alabama, helped mold his noble character. After high school, he enrolled at Ohio State where on 25 May 1935 at a Big Ten Conference meet, he broke and tied various world track and field records, thus beginning the legend. He married Minnie Ruth Solomon on 10 August 1935. In August 1936, he achieved greatness, setting and tying several world records while winning four gold medals. Adolph Hitler, because of his racial views, stormed out of the arena refusing to present Jesse with his medals. He returned to the U.S. to a hero's welcome and a ticker tape parade. Due to the prevalent racism of the time, however, he was able to obtain financial security only in later years. Four U.S. presidents honored him. Although he died on 31 March 1980 in Tucson, Arizona, his memory will endure the ages. |
Statue of Jesse Owens |
Streight's Raid On 26 Apr 1863, a Union raiding party of 1500 including the 51st and 73rd IN, 3rd OH, 18th IL, and local men from two companies of the 1st AL Calvary left Tuscumbia for Russellville. Led by Col. Abel Streight, their objective was to cut Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's railroad supply lines at Rome, GA. As a diversion, Gen. G.M. Dodge with some 8,000 Union troops moved into northern Lawrence County to occupy the attention of Gen. Nathan B. Forrest. While Dodge distracted Forrest, Streight marched from Russellville to Mt. Hope on 27 Apr. As Dodge retreated toward Corinth, MS, Forrest was informed of Streight's movements. The next day, Streight confiscated some 200 mules and horses before arriving in Moulton after sunset. Leaving Moulton at 1:00 a.m. on 29 Apr, the raiders rode along this old road. At the same time, Forrest began to pursue Streight. The next morning at Day's Gap, Forrest engaged and fought to the mountaintop where Streight laid an ambush. Losing some 40 men in this ambush, Moulton native Col. Phillip Roddy of the 4th AL was ordered to Decatur. After a series of skirmishes, facing dwindling supplies, and believing his forces outnumbered, Streight surrendered to Forrest's 500 men on 3 May 1863, in Cherokee County, AL a few miles from Rome, GA. |
Creek Indian Removal Black Warriors' Path played a critical role as a route for Creek Removal. On December 19, 1835, some 511 Creek emigrants passed along the path through present-day Oakville Indian Mounds Park. In September 1836, a group of Creeks left Tallassee in a wagon train of 45 wagons, 500 ponies, and 2,000 Indians. This contingent followed along Black Warriors' Path and passed through the present-day Oakville Indian Mounds Park on September 23, 1836. It's ironic that the route used by General John Coffee's army and Davy Crockett, to defeat the Creeks, was one of the same routes used in Creek Removal. Alabama remains the home of many Creek Indians today. |
Cherokee Indian Removal In the early 1800's Cherokees of this area were under the leadership of Doublehead and Tahlonteskee. After Doublehead's assassination in 1807, Tahlonteskee notified President Jefferson that he and his people were ready to move west. In 1808 Tahlonteskee and 1,130 followers moved to present-day Dardanelle, Arkansas. That band became known as Cherokees West and later the Old Settlers. The Blue-Water Town Creek Village was the final Alabama home of both Cherokee leaders, Doublehead is supposedly buried in Butler Cemetery on Blue Water Creek in Lauderdale County. Alabama remains the home to many Cherokees today. |
Oakville Indian Mound Rising 27 feet high, this is the largest woodland mound in Alabama, with a base covering 1.8 acres and a flat top of over one acre. Built by prehistoric Copena Indians, the mound is 2,000 years old and constructed from earth probably carrying one basket at a time from the Oakville pond area, 300 yards to the east. The Copena, named for their use of copper and Galena, were prolific mound builders, as shown by the remains of over 20 mounds in the surrounding area. They were primarily farmers and hunter-gatherers who engaged in ritual burials, with the dead often encased in a putty mixture of clay, ash, and crushed shells. They were great traders in conch shells, marble, greenstone, copper, and Galena, all of which were found as mortuary offerings during the 1924 Smithsonian excavation of the Alexander Mound four miles to the southwest. Although the Oakville mound has never been excavated, it was the center of the Copena society of the Moulton Valley and was used for ceremonial, religious, social, and cultural purposes. |
Cherokee Council House Museum The Oakville Indian Mounds Museum is based on a seven-sided Cherokee council house. This type of council house was used during the cooler months and an open-sided rectangular pavilion during warmer weather. The descriptions used for the museum's construction came from Lt. Henry Timberlake, who visited the Cherokee capitol at Chota in 1761, and William Bartram who visited Crowe in 1765. Timberlake's description: "The townhouse, in which are transacted all public business and diversions, is raised with wood, and covered over with earth and has all the appearance of a small mountain at a little distance. It is built in the form of a sugar loaf, and large enough to contain 500 persons, but extremely dark, having besides the door, which is narrow that but one at a time can pass, and that after much winding and turning, but one small aperture to let the smoke out, which is so ill contrived, that most of it settle in the ancient amphitheater, the seats being raised one above another, leaving an area in the middle in the center of which stands the fire: the seats of the head warriors are nearest it." The seven sides represent the matrilineal clans of the Cherokee: Wild Potato, Long Hair, Paint, Wolf, Deer, Bird, and Blue. |
Multi-Cultural Indian Events Welcome
The Oakville Ceremonial Woodland Mound is the largest Indian mound at Oakville covering some 1.5 acres of land and rising some 27 feet high. Believed to be a cultural center during the Woodland Period of North Alabama, the Oakville Ceremonial Woodland Mound is the largest in the State of Alabama.
The mound is estimated to have been built during the Woodland Period which covered a period from 1,000 B.C. to 1,000 A.D. The mound was made by one basket full of dirt at a time.
Stone spades were used to dig the soil from borrow pits and transfer by baskets to the mound site.
The probable burrow pit was the depression that now contains Oakville Pond, the body of water northeast of the mound.
The only known modifications to the Oakville Ceremonial Woodland Mound are from cutting off of a lower portion of the sides to provide more area farming. In addition, the top of the mound has been repeatedly plowed which has caused the top edge of the mound to get steeper and probably flatter.
The steps on the side of the mound were placed in an old roadbed leading to the top of the mound.
The Oakville area was considered a religious center and social complex of the Middle Woodland Indian people with outlying villages and farms. Additional Copena mounds located nearby support the complex social center theory.
The Copena people lived during this period from 1,000 B.C. to 1,000 A.D. Their society did not extend much farther south than the Warrior Mountains that can be seen to the south of the Ceremonial Mound or north to the Hogohogee (Tennessee) River or “River of Cherokees”.
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Indian Mound |
Saunders~ Hall~ Goode Mansion in need of being restored |
Our last stop was at the Saunders~ Hall~ Goode Mansion in Lawrence County.
Hubby and I had a great day visiting the sites of Morgan County, Alabama
Hubby and I had a great day visiting the sites of Morgan County, Alabama