Found a record of probate from 1858 for Nathaniel Simmon's Last Will and Testament, following his death, age 51, in June 1857. Processed in 1858 in Macon County Court of Probate before Judge Lewis Alexander by attorney Phillip Lightfoot. Both Lightfoot and Martha W. Simmons shown as Executors. It's in several sections, and parts are difficult to read. Am currently transcribing what I found and will post geneologically relevant info here when done.
Am discovering daily that a little book entitled "The Federal Road through Georgia, the Creek Nation, and Alabama, 1806-1836" by Southerland and Brown, U of A Press, 1989, is invaluable to understanding the social history of Macon County. Its unfortunate that most of the physical road across Alabama is "lost" to history. The road's sections in Macon County, so vital to its early history, could readily become a centerpiece of Alabama's "whole history" of Native American(s), European, and African peoples. Without that section of road, and the one to the east in Russell County, much of central and southwest Alabama may have developed in a different direction.
Two other books I've read in past 30 days have helped add to a better understanding of social-economic-cultural developments during the early (pre-1866) and later history of Macon County:
(1) "A Lawyer's Journey: The Morris Dees Story" by Dees and Fiffer, American Bar Association, 2001, which touches on western Macon County near Shorter, and eastern Montgomery County near Mt. Meigs and their common border, Line Creek, among other places; and,
(2) "Carolina Planters on the Alabama Frontier" by Pattillo, New South Books, 2011, which focuses on several counties in Alabama along the Tallapoosa and Alabama rivers. It includes very detailed and well documented histories of his early family in Tallapoosa County, and cross-river activities in Macon County.
Last year I obtained from a Nashville library a copy of a biographical sketch of an ancestor in a related line, the Handey line from Virginia. His unusual name - Armistead Thomson Mason Handey - or A. T. M. Handey - made it easier to research in the census records up to a certain point in time. The booklet, entitled "A. T. M. Handey: The Life and Times of a Ninethenth Century Church Planter and Pastor in Central Alabama" by Burton, Pintlala Baptist Church, 2004, filled in the missing years. Some several years earlier I had held in my hands and read his pastoral diary, at that time in the special collections at Samford University, Birmingham, but since moved to a Baptist museum collection in Nashville. His angst over a variety of issues was evident. His church situation was "challenging", his family life was painful due to the loss of several children, and the planter world around him was changing in the late 1850's and then collapsing in the Civil War. Afterwards he suffered great depressions and later lived out his life between his home and Bryce Mental Institution at Tuscaloosa where he died and is buried in a well-marked gravesite. It was good to discover his whole story, even though it ended sadly, and to learn more about a young Baptist preacher from a Virginia family who came to the Alabama frontier soon after the Creek Cession of 1832, and for himself to be both a preacher and a slaveowner. He was the epitome of the "contradiction" in being both.
The journey continues....
Am discovering daily that a little book entitled "The Federal Road through Georgia, the Creek Nation, and Alabama, 1806-1836" by Southerland and Brown, U of A Press, 1989, is invaluable to understanding the social history of Macon County. Its unfortunate that most of the physical road across Alabama is "lost" to history. The road's sections in Macon County, so vital to its early history, could readily become a centerpiece of Alabama's "whole history" of Native American(s), European, and African peoples. Without that section of road, and the one to the east in Russell County, much of central and southwest Alabama may have developed in a different direction.
Two other books I've read in past 30 days have helped add to a better understanding of social-economic-cultural developments during the early (pre-1866) and later history of Macon County:
(1) "A Lawyer's Journey: The Morris Dees Story" by Dees and Fiffer, American Bar Association, 2001, which touches on western Macon County near Shorter, and eastern Montgomery County near Mt. Meigs and their common border, Line Creek, among other places; and,
(2) "Carolina Planters on the Alabama Frontier" by Pattillo, New South Books, 2011, which focuses on several counties in Alabama along the Tallapoosa and Alabama rivers. It includes very detailed and well documented histories of his early family in Tallapoosa County, and cross-river activities in Macon County.
Last year I obtained from a Nashville library a copy of a biographical sketch of an ancestor in a related line, the Handey line from Virginia. His unusual name - Armistead Thomson Mason Handey - or A. T. M. Handey - made it easier to research in the census records up to a certain point in time. The booklet, entitled "A. T. M. Handey: The Life and Times of a Ninethenth Century Church Planter and Pastor in Central Alabama" by Burton, Pintlala Baptist Church, 2004, filled in the missing years. Some several years earlier I had held in my hands and read his pastoral diary, at that time in the special collections at Samford University, Birmingham, but since moved to a Baptist museum collection in Nashville. His angst over a variety of issues was evident. His church situation was "challenging", his family life was painful due to the loss of several children, and the planter world around him was changing in the late 1850's and then collapsing in the Civil War. Afterwards he suffered great depressions and later lived out his life between his home and Bryce Mental Institution at Tuscaloosa where he died and is buried in a well-marked gravesite. It was good to discover his whole story, even though it ended sadly, and to learn more about a young Baptist preacher from a Virginia family who came to the Alabama frontier soon after the Creek Cession of 1832, and for himself to be both a preacher and a slaveowner. He was the epitome of the "contradiction" in being both.
The journey continues....