In the spring of 1816, they met on the “Cumberland Mountain.” William Rountree traveled towards Huntsville, having recently purchased slaves in North Carolina. Sally Rountree fled from Huntsville to her family’s home in South Carolina.

As the actual Cumberland Mountains stretch downwards from south-central West Virginia, hug the Big Sandy River that separates the Bluegrass from the Old Dominion, and finally file down into foothills in northeastern Tennessee – the Rountrees likely ran into each other not too far from modern day Knoxville.

Neither expected to see the other as they crossed the Carolinas, but fate does things like that.

William Rountree spoke to Sally and asked his wife why she crossed these mountains. “He learned to his astonishment,” that Sally Rountree intended to leave him. William’s 1822 divorce petition claimed that she did so without cause, possibly for the hell of it. Now, we have plenty of examples where a spouse left another due to flights of whimsy or prolonged affections for a previous lover. These seemingly unprompted desertions usually occurred during the first few years of marriage.

The Rountrees wed in 1793. They ran into each on “Cumberland Mountain” in 1816.

Unless Sally Rountree woke up after 23 years of marriage and realized that some far away South Carolina might be better than here, it appears that William’s petition might lack for facts.

Luckily, Sally sued him right back. Through her suit we encounter some far more likely causes of the Rountree separation.

Two years previous to this serendipitous meeting on the mountain, in 1814, Sally’s mother died in South Carolina. She immediately set out for her father’s house “and there remained for seven or eight weeks.” It never occurred to Sally Rountree that leaving her husband alone in Madison county might not be prudent. For although she left for only two months William Rountree managed to get into some mischief.

Upon her return she found her husband “severely afflicted with a disease… and it being of a contagious nature it was communicated to [Sally Rountree] on her first reception in the home of her family.”

Apparently William Rountree found himself among spinsters during her absence and “a complaint called the pock or clap,” found itself among William Rountree.

He denied everything, claiming “he had no criminal familiarity,” with various prostitutes. She believed him, for a time, but found it difficult to do so while laid low by “the pock.” Eventually the local doctor, a man named Higginbotham, came to tend her illness; he inspected her in a process that left Sally Rountree “indecently exposed,” and eventually suggested that “she ought to be bled and take a dose of salts.” A treatment program that Sally Rountree refused. Her reticence either stemmed from some belief in William’s denial of his whoredom or her awareness of the mortality so often associated with Heroic medicine.

Her condition steadily improved. In contrast, William Rountree’s web of lies slowly collapsed. The rumors and gossip of the town quickly reached her and assuming that “she was not bound by civil or moral law to live with a man of such base conduct,” fled from their shared home when the opportunity arose – which is how she ran into her husband on “Cumberland Mountain.”

She told him she was leaving.

Three years later William Rountree found himself suddenly responsible for an “infant child of his son,” who had been delivered unto him by a young woman. No mention is made of why William Rountree’s son could not help care for this child, or the exact nature of the anonymous young woman’s relationship with the junior Rountree. All we know is that William Rountree, a rich nineteenth-century man, had no idea how to care for an infant.

He reached out to one of the only women he knew.

Sally Rountree arrived back at his home under a few conditions. Firstly, William must no longer frequent prostitutes. Secondly, he must provide her with an alimony totaling one-half his estate as “a compensation for her silence.” Thirdly, they would live apart but still present themselves as husband and wife.

William Rountree quickly fell back into his whoring ways and nosy neighbors spread the news of their estrangement. Disgusted by her husband’s lascivious nature Sally Rountree demanded her full alimony and left for the home of one of her many local son-in-laws. Prior to her departure she selected a “nearly grown” enslaved girl named Visney, a bed, a saddle horn, and some other furniture to take with her. William Rountree also agreed to pay her five hundred dollars in three installments, either for her maintenance or silence – depending on which suit you find more credible.

Temporarily sated, she absconded to the far reaches of Madison county, yet when William Rountree failed to make more payments she threatened to sue for divorce. So he did it first. As we can see she quickly counter-sued and William dropped his original petition when Sally threatened to reveal his penchant for paid sex.

However, the judge eventually made a decision during Sally Rountree’s case. She had left for South Carolina, she had no witnesses as to William’s infidelity, and she currently resided elsewhere – having even received money and furniture from her husband as a form of support.

On May 17, 1824, William Rountree received his original divorce from Sally, during her petition of divorce from him. He needed pay her no more money, as the judge ruled all the previous gifts sufficient alimony, and he now exercised all the rights of a single man.

It sucked to be Sally Rountree.

Part 4: Sometimes people lie and that makes me sad. 

Part 1: Our Little Drama

Part 2: “We had a little excitement around here today.”

Part 3: “What did he mean taking it away?”

This update, unlike all previous ones, will eschew the humorous narrative format and instead focus briefly on the process of doing history. However, before we get underway, something must be freely admitted and totally understood.

So I’m an idiot.

I had seen brief mentions of an Alabama Supreme Court case that dealt with our aforementioned meteorite. Instead of confirming these suspicions with a simple phone call to the state supreme court’s office, I said to myself “you fool, you half-witted dogman, you demi-librarian, fly to Montgomery and mount the Goat Hill. Surely they will have what you need.”

So I did. I traveled to Montgomery during real trucker hours, fueled by one-half of gasoline and the other of Red Bull, and found short shelter at the Red Roof Inn off Zelda Ave. After spending fifty real American dollars to sleep for four hours; your unfortunate, and stupid, narrator rolled into the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

What a splendid building they made there. The outside is all arches and faux-Grecian charm. Visitors park across the street from the Archives; next to the Alabama Cattleman’s Association – proud home of the Mooseum. Geology buffs might mention that the whole thing rests atop an ancient barrier island full of bones, particularly those of the Alabama state fossil: Basilosaurus cetoides or “King Lizard Like a Whale.”

Once inside you’ll find that the corridors are lined with old imperial busts of Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and other famous Alabamians. Propaganda commemorating the deeds of this state’s Boy Scouts during The Great War hangs off the walls like fine art. A display case in the gift shop contains electoral highlights from the long and strange career of George C. Wallace. It is an enthralling and nuanced place.

When you come to the door of the archives an elderly man greets you. He asks if you’re already a registered researcher. If you are not then you will register. If you are then you will produce a small blue card that allows you to access the great stores of knowledge inside. He will then ask you for a quarter.

“I do not have a quarter,” I said after producing my official researcher card.

“That’s fine.” He gestured at the tray full of quarters, “just return it when you’re done.” I took the quarter and used it to open a locker. Inside went my backpack and camera case. I had a notebook and little else to record my findings.

“I, uh, I’m looking for a Supreme Court case.” I stammered at the bright and beautiful sages which guarded all the ancestral documents.

“Oh, which one you looking for?” Replied the learned ones.

“Guy v. Hodges, took place around 1954 or 1955.”

“Well, what’s the case number?”

“I don’t have that.”

They just stared at me. Finally one stood up and said “I’ll just go look down in the stacks.” The minutes dragged on and finally the keeper of pages returned.

“We don’t have that. I’d suggest calling the Supreme Court office. They’re very helpful people.”

So I did.

They informed me that contrary to exaggerated newspaper accounts no supreme court case ever originated in the state of Alabama following Ann Hodges’ impact with a meteorite.

I stood outside and felt nothing but defeat.

And that’s what it’s like to do history when you’re dumb.

p.s. Shout out to Brian York, the circuit court clerk for Talladega county. He found the original case from 1954 but it only declared Birdie Guy’s intent to sue the Hodges, apparently the publicity from the suit convinced Guy to settle out of court, which included the Hodges purchasing the meteorite from her for about five hundred dollars and eventually donating it to the Alabama Museum of Natural History after briefly using it as a doorstop.

 

 

Part 3: “What did he mean taking it away?”

Part 1: Our Little Drama

Part 2: “We had a little excitement around here today.”

Hewlett Hodges raged. The tree surgeon saw his injured wife and sagging roof. He heard the reports of the Air Force carting off the perpetrator like it was some kind of celebrity. Oh lord, Hewlett Hodges raged.

He hadn’t even seen the rock yet and it was already reorganizing his whole world.

For instance, instead of eating dinner or heading to the Comet Drive-In across the street for a late night film, Hewlett Hodges found himself berating the chief of police. W.D. Ashcraft lamely presented a receipt signed by Air Force personnel stating that they would return the meteorite when they finished their examination. Hodges pointed out that Ashcraft never possessed the authority to turn it over.

Hodges didn’t even want to start with the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Ed J. Howard, the once and future mayor of Sylacauga, contacted the state geologist, Dr. Walter B. Jones, the moment that George Swindel realized a meteorite hit Ann. Mayor Howard promised the stone to Dr. Jones and his salivating Tuscaloosa cronies; Hodges may have paused during his tirade against Ashcraft to ponder whether the geologists were already picking out display cases.

Hewlett Hodges understood trees. He knew them well. In the first day this had moved far beyond trees. The Hodges’ found themselves embroiled in the things that trees made: newspapers, courthouses, receipts, and laws.

They needed a lawyer. They got a Talladega man named Huel Love.

Headstrong, confident, and local – Love promised to bring suit against whatever entity currently possessed their meteorite. Be that the Air Force or the police chief or the University of Alabama.

If someone wanted the damn thing they’d have to buy it. And preferably soon, while the nation still gawked at Ann’s misfortune. Newspapers as far afield as Reading, Pennsylvania gladly reported on the insomnia caused by her injuries. The Smithsonian offered to appraise it. The University of New Mexico desperately wanted it. The California Institute of Technology sent Ann Hodges a telegram just to ask if the meteorite was badly damaged. A museum in Evansville, Indiana offered them five thousand dollars, up front, for the rock.

The entire English speaking world knew about Ann Hodges and her meteorite.

So when the Air Force returned it to her on December 2, 1954, they triggered a bidding war. One that the Hodges intended to win.

Yet nobody accounted for Birdie Guy. For although the meteorite hit Ann Hodges, it did so on Guy’s property. They rented their house from an elderly widow and now she intended to make that stone hers.

Birdie Guy filed suit during the second week of December, 1954.

citations:

“Meteor Hits Alabama Woman.” The Tuscaloosa News (Tuscaloosa, AL), December 1, 1954.

“Meteorite Is Studied By Air Force.” Daytona Beach Morning Journal (Daytona Beach, FL), December 2, 1954.

“Alabama Woman to Receive Meteorite Which Bruised Her.” Reading Eagle (Reading, PA), December 2, 1954.

“Offers Received For Meteorite.” Spokane Daily Chronicle (Spokane, WA), December, 4, 1954.

“Battle For Meteorite.” The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, NSW), December 13, 1954.

“Alabama Woman Who Was Struck By Meteorite Now Has to Cope With Suit for Possession of It.” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), December 22, 1954.

“Who Owns The Star That Fell On Alabama?” Sarasota Journal (Sarasota, FL), December 22, 1954.

“Suit is Filed on Tail of Meteorite.” Prescott Evening Courier (Prescott, AZ), December 22, 1954.

Part 2: “We had a little excitement around here today.”

Part 1: Our Little Drama

Hewlett Hodges, the tree surgeon, arrived home from work around six p.m. He walked into his house and immediately noticed the hole in the roof. Ann Hodges greeted him. She smiled at her husband and with practiced understatement said “We had a little excitement around here today.” 

As Alonzo Arnold watched the heavens explode a cadre of ROTC cadets marched across the University of Alabama campus. Cadet Donald Loveless gazed at his watch. It read 12:45pm. November 30, 1954, was a dull day. Then something like “a Roman Candle falling to Earth” barreled across the sky above Tuscaloosa.

By this time people from Atlanta to Mississippi knew something was on fire and the Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, deployed search and rescue helicopters to identify what they assumed to be a “missing plane reported to have exploded.” Their search quickly drew them towards Sylacauga.

A man stood at the bottom of a marble quarry, 125 feet down. He surveyed groundwater and right now he engaged himself in measuring the cleanliness of Sylacauga’s water supply. The man stared at the ground for a living, he’d noticed neither the fire roaming the skies above Alabama nor the great noise that accompanied it. A head appeared over the rim of the quarry and a voice echoed down.

“George Swindel?”

The man looked up at the distant figure that called his name.

“Yeah?” his reply echoed up from the quarry floor.

“It’s me, Chief Ashcraft, the mayor needs to see you.”

George Swindel rode with W.D. Ashcraft towards town. Ashcroft said something about a stone that nobody could identify and Swindel sighed, someone found “just another “unusual” piece of rock,” he thought to himself. Of course they immediately needed him to identify it. Such is the life of the geologist.

The pulled into the B.B. Comer Memorial School. A helicopter rested nearby with “US Air Force” emblazoned upon it in white. This was no normal “unusual” rock.

Two Air Force personnel waited inside. They pulled George Swindel into a classroom and asked him to identify the stone. He gazed at the thing; seven inches long and five inches wide, 8.5 pounds, and coated in “a satiny, black” substance about a millimeter thick. George Swindel chipped off a piece and doused it with some hydrochloric acid he kept in his satchel. There was no effervescence. Desperate for an answer he whipped out his copy of Kemp’s A Handbook of Rocks. After several minutes he looked up.

“Gentlemen, this is a..”

 

citations:

“Meteor Hits Alabama Woman.” The Tuscaloosa News (Tuscaloosa, AL), December 1, 1954.

Swindel, George W. and Walter B. Jones “The Sylacauga, Talladega County, Alabama, Aerolite: A Recent Meteoritic Fall that Injured a Human Being,” Meteoritics: The Journal of the Meteoritical Society and the Institute of Meteoritics of the University of New Mexico 1, no. 2 (1954): 125-132.

Part 1: Our Little Drama

Alonzo Arnold blew things up for a living.

He worked at an explosive ordnance plant in Childersburg, Talladega county, Alabama. The plant, like most parts of the state, had answered the call during the great charnel of the second war and it pumped out such death and smoke for America. Asbestos lined the walls of the plant and arsenic sank into the ground. At its peak the great plant produced forty million pounds of trinitrotoluene, and other explosives that made man into many, every thirty days.

The great plant dredged up the depths of the Coosa River to find deuterium, that heaviest of water, and sent their meager bits to a place called White Sands for a project called Manhattan. All this tearing and rending of Earth took its toll on Childersburg, Talladega county, Alabama, and in 1985; an unimaginable year to Alonzo Arnold, it would be declared a thing called Superfund. Which sounds charming until you learn the definition.

Alonzo Arnold blew things up for a living and right now some leftover stocks of trinitrotoluene needed to be destroyed. He set the TNT very gently on the ground and readied the timer. A long whip of burning rope lay ready. It sizzled and cracked as Alonzo Arnold retreated to a safe distance. His mind wandered and he looked away from the impending and familiar boom of something as mundane as TNT.

The greatest crack he ever heard shattered the heavens. An unforgiving cacophony of rock and ice screeched through the atmosphere and exploded as it hit the sky. Alonzo Arnold stared at his stockpile of munitions. They rested sweetly upon the ground as the flaming coil snaked slowly forward. Unexploded. Inert. Mostly stable. Then he looked towards the horizon.

A great black cloud traveled towards the northeast.

Alonzo Arnold recognized a mushroom cloud. For a moment, squatting in that field, he must have thought it was the end of the world.

 

On March 19, 1820, John Wood lay in wait.

Camouflaged and patient he concealed himself behind the trees or a barn, the court documents are not specific, and most of all, he waited.

Up the road walked a man named Major. Listed in the court record as an enslaved person, the property of one John Simmons, we have no real record of Major. We know he was a full grown man but not his true age. We know he was enslaved but not his duties nor how many other people shared that status with him on John Simmons’ property. We know little but we do know this.

On March 19, John Wood waited for him “with malice aforethought.”

Unlike previous assaults on enslaved people this was premeditated. John Wood did not simply attack Major in a fit of rage nor did he see the man alone and decide to take advantage of the situation. From his willingness to wait we can infer some things. John and Major either possessed some prior grievance with each other or John Wood wished to lash out at John Simmons, Major often took this particular path, and John Wood knew the man well enough to time his movements accordingly.

Up came Major and John Wood leapt up to meet him. He brandished “a certain wooden stick which he the said John Wood in his right hand then and there held,” and with this stick he stabbed forward. It caught Major in his right eye, which John Wood “did strike and put out,” maiming the man and injuring him greatly.

The court found him guilty of assault and fined him twenty five dollars.

citation:

The State of Alabama v. John Wood, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 63-64 (1821).

 

 

Long distance travel used to be a grueling and expensive process. Prior to our modern highways and various conveniences people made the trek into the southeast on foot, in carriages, and by boat. Although this seems like an understood fact, the modern reader may not truly grasp the misery of travel through Alabama prior to the advent of pavement.

From the many travelogues written by people passing through the state it is generally understood that few southerners, much less other Americans, found much pleasure in the early infrastructure. Travel proved so difficult that the first recorded bars in Alabama history described conditions along the Federal Road in Baldwin county:

This road is not passable

Not even jackassable.

So when you travel

Take your own gravel.

While the Virginia lawyer James D. Davidson complained of mud, cold, and danger; summarizing his entire 1836 trip through the state with “Home! Sweet home! Alabama! O how I would bless thee, were I once clear of thy domains.”

So imagine for a brief moment that you are one of these people. The entirety of your possessions strapped to a mule or towed behind you in a hogshead barrel that until a month ago stored tobacco. There has been sickness, misery, and corn cooked on the cold, cold ground. Your only company – panthers screaming in the distance.

Yet a light hovers in the distance. Ahead of you is rough food, a bed, and a fire shielded from the whipping wind. Now ask yourself, how much would you pay for these small comforts?

Prices for basic goods soared with the influx of travelers. Anyone with a cabin and a bit of business sense started taking in boarders. Madison county officials saw the potential for disaster, or profit, and in an attempt to control this unregulated market forced anyone operating a tavern or inn to acquire a license.* Many complied with these new laws but some people found it strange that they might own a cabin and provide the necessities and now be forced to pay the county for the privilege of performing their previous jobs.

So they to themselves, “come on, nobody is going to enforce that law,” and it’s true. Nobody enforced that law, until they did.

In June of 1822, the county cracked down on unlicensed inns. Two men eventually stood accused of the crime. Although an inane and harmless act the prosecution pursued it with the language and vigor of larger crimes. Earnest Benoit and Robert French apparently supplied many travelers with “corn fodder meat and bread and other victuals,” which prompted the county to shut down their operations.

It appears that Robert French might have operated a larger and more successful inn than Benoit, because prosecutor Joseph Eastland characterized his actions as occurring “for his own filthy lucre and gain,” whereas Benoit simply “failed to obtain a license.” Had French been selling liquor or running a casino then he would have been tried for those offenses. So we can reasonably say that he was just really good at operating a proto-hotel.

Benoit received a one cent fine while the county demanded a dollar from French. No other prosecution of unlicensed inns occurred during 1823.

*It’s not like there was a regulatory board. They just wanted that sweet, sweet tavern money.

citation:

Harvey H. Jackson, Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Alabama (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 46.

Henry deLeon Southerland Jr and Jerry Elijah Brown, The Federal Road through Georgia, the Creek Nation, and Alabama, 1806-1836 (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1990), 66.

The State of Alabama v. Earnest Benoit, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 212-213 (1823).

The State of Alabama v. Robert French, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 229 (1823).

 

 

The early 1820’s were a difficult time to be Valentine G. Pruit. He lived as a yeoman farmer during the consolidation of plantation style agriculture in Madison county, so he saw mansions being built and a local aristocracy rising, yet felt no part of that surplus. Instead, like so many poor and middling white men of his time, Valentine Pruit knew mostly violence.

However, unlike some other settlers, Valentine knew violence not as a victim but as a participant.

The man liked to fight. As such, Pruit entered the local record in spectacular pugilistic fashion.

December 12, 1822, saw Pruit run afoul of a man named Wiley Lewis. Now, Wiley Lewis served as a constable for Madison county and was thus a man you did not wish to anger. Unless you’re Valentine G. Pruit, then you do what you want. It appears that Lewis came to Pruit with the purpose of arresting or otherwise chastising him. The argument quickly grew into a rumble and the rumble settled into the natural rhythms of Valentine beating Wiley Lewis with “his hands and feet.” Eventually Valentine grew tired of this mundane assault and spied a nearby club. He whacked Lewis about the face and head until the man bled profusely and then left him there in the dirt.

He plead not guilty to all charges against him. The jurors seemed poised to throw every book at him but it quickly emerged that Wiley Lewis did not come to harass Valentine G. Pruit in his official duties as a constable. Lewis instead attempted to use his position as a constable to bully the man, which did not go well for Lewis. The court still fined Pruit fifty dollars and ordered that he “be in the custody of the Sheriff” until he paid but Pruit avoided a harsher penalty thanks to Lewis’s miscalculation.

Of course, a man like Pruit does not appear briefly and then fade away. No – he just keeps fighting.

For some unknown reason he wound up entangled with Robert Woody. April 12, 1823, began with two yeomen disagreeing and ended with “a great terror to all the good citizens” as Pruit and Woody squared up and boxed. The record indicates that they fought “in a public place” so either the middle of town or inside of a business of some sort.* It seems likely that Pruit instigated, and subsequently won, the fight as the court never indicted Robert Woody for his part in the affray and fined Pruit a further twenty dollars.

This Valentine’s Day try to remember the man who had no love for anybody.

citation:

The State of Alabama v. Valentine G. Pruit, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 199-200 (1823).

The State of Alabama v. Valentine G. Pruit, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 230-231 (1823).

*Personally hope it was a business just so they might have smashed a table.

 

The Royalist Faction ruled Madison county, and much of Alabama, with near impunity from the time of the first federal land sales in 1809 until the election of Israel Pickens as governor in 1821.* They hailed from the Broad River in Georgia by way of the rough and tumble sections of Virginia. Their original leader, George Mathews, signed the infamous Yazoo Act during his tenure as governor. Their avarice shaped the 19th century southeast and their names served as bywords for the frontier aristocracy that developed in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas prior to the civil war.

Not rich enough to join the planter elite of South Carolina or Tidewater Virginia, they still proved far too blue of blood for the average yeoman from North Carolina and Tennessee. As Anglos in between classes they searched for a land to make their own. They almost found it, and just as quickly lost it, in the Mississippi Territory.

One man led the charge against their overreach – a controversial figure who formed a counterbalance to the Georgia boys – Gabriel Moore. Originally a lawyer and small planter, Moore eventually headed the ‘North Carolina faction’ a group that came to dominate Alabama politics following the fallout from Royalist actions. However, this is not the story of schemes and laws and machinations in back rooms. This is simply the tale of Moore’s fight for life.

People attacked him, like a lot. Prior to his taking the governorship Moore suffered multiple violent encounters with men who disagreed with him politically or simply disliked his argumentative nature. From Moore’s arrival in 1811 to early statehood in 1820, he came close to death at least three times.**

In early April of 1811, no exact date being recorded, Robert Farish found Gabriel Moore by himself. Listed as a laborer of the county it seems strange that Farish might find fault with the attorney Gabriel Moore. However, Moore recently entered the political scene, leading the charge to restore Twickenham’s original name to Huntsville – in direct defiance of Leroy Pope, the local leader of the Royalist faction. Also, Robert Farish made no appearance in the 1809 “squatter census” of Madison county. Although this is inconclusive it appears possible that Farish possessed some attachment to the Royalist faction and attacked Moore out of frustration.***

Either way, Farish received a fifteen dollar fine for his actions.

Things calmed down for Moore until October 11, 1815, when Nicholas Spring, a landowner and yeoman, attacked him. Spring’s assault seemed more likely as result of politics, as he proved not only able to own land but also afford a lawyer to contest the case and avoid arrest for a lengthy period of time. Spring felt cocky enough to send “Williams & Minor” to represent him before Obadiah Jones, stating that since he had yet to be arrested he could not be prosecuted and that a hundred dollar fine levied upon him for the “trespass, assault, and battery” of Gabriel Moore meant nothing.^

Unfortunately for Nicholas Spring the fine stuck.

The most obviously political assaults came in 1820. The Royalists seemed poised to cement their control over Alabama after the ascension of Thomas Bibb as governor following the death of his older brother, William Wyatt Bibb.^^ Tensions were high in Madison county and debates quickly morphed into fist fights. In fact a future US senator and Supreme Court justice from Huntsville, John McKinley, got attacked in 1820, when a man named Stokely D. Hutchings beat him on the head with “one Hickory stick.”^^^

Suffice to say that 1820 was a passionate year.

As such, Gabriel Moore got into an argument with a man named William H. Winter on October 7, 1820. Their differences soon boiled over into a brawl and Winter felt the need to draw a pistol. So there stood Winter, with the loaded pistol “in his right hand… maliciously leveled” against Gabriel Moore. The pistol either misfired or Winter suddenly changed his mind, because instead of just straight up murdering Moore he turned the gun around and began to viciously pistol whip the future governor until he was almost dead.

The jury did not equivocate. By this time Moore had risen from local rabble rouser to the President of the State Senate and candidate for the national congress. Moore was now respected and admired from the southern border of Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico. The jurors quickly doomed William H. Winter to six months incarceration and a rash of fines.

Moore continued to make enemies – later in life accidentally being seated on the same stagecoach as his nemesis, Clement Comer Clay, which resulted in both men staring at each other in enraged silence for the entirety of the 170 mile journey – but he never again faced as many physical dangers as those early years spent in opposition to the Broad River faction.

Ironically, Moore fell from national favor when he turned from his rough-and-tumble Jackson-loving beginnings and allied himself with John C. Calhoun, the consummate South Carolina planter and politician, during the early 1830’s. Public outcry shot through the state at this abrupt about face and the people of Madison county clamored for his resignation until he left the Senate in 1836. Effectively unelectable in Alabama after questioning the directives of Jackson, Moore fled from the state, ultimately settling in the Republic of Texas, where he finally died in 1844.

citations:

The Territory v. Robert Farish, Minute Book of Madison County Mississippi Territory of the Superior Court in Law and Equity, 1811-1819. p. 5/3-6/4 (1811).

The Territory v. Nicholas Spring, Minute Book of Madison County Mississippi Territory of the Superior Court in Law and Equity, 1811-1819. p. 176/142-178/144 (1816).

The State of Alabama v. William H. Winter, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 45-46 (1820).

The State of Alabama v. Stokely D. Hutchings, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 47-48 (1820).

*I’m referencing the Broad River Faction, for those that can’t pick up on context clues. Also, Israel Pickens was a political ally of Gabriel Moore and started the 19th century trend of important Alabama politicians dying in Cuba. He perished at Matanzas in 1827, followed 26 years later by the death of Vice President of the United States, William Rufus King, in Havana in 1853. Also, seeing as we’re talking about early Alabama governor trivia – let’s not forget that John Murphy, the fourth governor of the state and later member of the House of Representatives, carried on an affair with the wife of South Carolina politician James Blair. Blair’s discovery of their affections resulted in his suicide on April 1, 1834.

**Of course, this being a frontier, other north Alabama politicians also felt the near brush of the eternal, so we’ll probably get to examine those as well, provided my coffee remains strong and my cigarettes don’t run out.

***Complete conjecture on my part. It might be just as likely that Farish was from Tennessee and just hated Moore’s face. A position supported by the fact that Littleberry Adams served on the deciding jury.

^The Minor part of Williams & Minor is a big deal. Henry Minor served as the Madison county prosecutor for about four years previous to this case. Spring found the meanest lawyer in the country to represent him.

^^You can see why people called them the Royalists.

^^^Even more fun fact – McKinley and Moore later faced off in a Senate race which centered around how much either man loved Andrew Jackson. Moore squeaked by, claiming that McKinley only loved Andrew Jackson because it was cool, and both men died hating each other.

We previously encountered Rodah Barnett in cahoots with several other spinsters; who all lived and worked in early Madison county. Although most of the women quickly faded from history, a few later reappeared “pasing and repasing along the public streets and common highways,” in a desperate bid to ply their wares. As Rodah Barnett eschewed this form of business, it was erroneously assumed by the staff of Huntsvillain that she found a new calling in life.

However, in early September of 1821, a little over a year after being acquitted on all previous charges of “whoredom” and “keeping a bawdy house” Rodah Barnett again stood before a jury. The charges against her seemed familiar. Joseph Eastland, the same state prosecutor that previously indicted Rodah, Mary King, Mary Baker, the Wilson sisters, Barbary, Elizabeth, and Ann, now once again placed Rodah Barnett in his sights.

The state of Alabama claimed that on April 1, 1821, “and on divers others days and times,” Rodah Barnett reopened and operated her brothel. It seemed that Rodah’s reopening attracted the same caliber of customer as her previous exploits.

Joseph Eastland painted her as a sinners’ magnet, entertaining “divers evil disposed person as well as men as women and whores… in the knight as in the day.” As usual the presence of an active brothel caused all sorts of calamity as the various prositutes procured by Barnett engaged in “dreadful filthy and lewd ofenses.” The “good citizens” of Madison county found the most distressing aspects of the brothel to be the sex workers lack of “manners, conversation, state, and obedience,” to various social norms.

Taken all together it seemed a pretty normal condemnation of local prostitution. Yet a single line stood out above all others. We’ve already acknowledged that women came to the brothel, although it seems uncertain as to whether or not they engaged the sex workers. Even then the possible rumors of sapphic acts failed to perplex Joseph Eastland and his contemporaries as much as people assembling “at unlawful times.” One of the only groups of people subject to an actual enforced curfew, and thus the only ones capable of congregating at unlawful times, were free blacks and enslaved people.

Due to later specific bans on enslaved people selling produce, hiring out their own time, or renting land for their own homes – we have an idea that they possessed some small levels of economic autonomy in early Madison county. Seeing as that autonomy occasionally consisted of them purchasing moonshine or attending Fourth of July celebrations; it should come as no surprise that they might be found at a brothel or that officials chose to couch their presence in terms of euphemisms instead of direct mention of a practice that undermined the racial caste system of 19th century Alabama.

Due to this possible flagrant breech of the contemporary social contract – Rodah Barnett had to be stopped. She survived the first indictment but a second jury found her guilty of keeping a brothel, though not of prostitution, before the state shut down her franchise and fined her one cent.

citation:

The State of Alabama v. Rodah Barnett, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 93-94 (1821).