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From the DILLARD ANNUAL, Volume 5; January, 1998, pages 4-8.

Dillards and Johnsons, Early Alabama Pioneers,

By Hugh S. Johnson

Copyright © 1998 by Hugh S. Johnson.

I can't think of a more delightful spot than Dillard, Ga. today. I'm honored to be a part of this family reunion.

I would like to share a little background on the events leading up to my presence here today. During the past couple of years, I have had occasion to sell some timber. To accomplish those sales to my best advantage, I called upon Barnard Malcolm Dillard (who we fondly call "Chick") to help me. He and Mrs. Dillard were residing in my hometown of Fairburn at the time, and Chick is known as the best professional timber man anywhere. During the course of our business relationship, I probably bored Chick to tears with stories about my family in their early days in Alabama. I also told him that in doing some genealogical research certain Dillard names kept cropping up.

When Chick asked me to come up here to share some of this information with you, I replied that everyone here would have vastly more knowledge about the Dillards than I have. Chick replied, "yes, that's true, but come on up anyway." I believe he invited me because he just likes to hear a flatland version of history occasionally. Anyway, here goes.

I have focused upon happenings in early Alabama because that's where both my maternal and paternal ancestors wound up. I have also found that some Dillards were also key players in this early Alabama scenario.

The first territory in Alabama was acquired about 1814 following the Creek Indian Wars at which time the military strength of the Creek Nation was broken by United States troops under General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on the Talapoosa River in Talapoosa County, Alabama. The Federal Government maintains a military park at this site today.

Immigration into Alabama started soon after the Creek Indian War, and the Dillard family was apparently represented in Alabama very early by a female member. The Rev. George E. Brewer, in his 1832 History of Coosa County, Alabama, which I found in


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the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery, writes as follows:

"Among the earliest settlers of Coosa County, one of its public spirited men was Capt. Reuben Jordan. If not himself born in Virginia, his family were Virginians claiming descent from Pocahontas, the Princess of the Powhatans, the savior of Capt. John Smith.

In 1818 Reuben moved from South Carolina to Montgomery County below Wetumpka bringing his wife, a Miss Dillard with the children, the Negroes and a good many Negroes of his uncle Elmore Jordan for whom he was to make a crop preparatory to the future coming of his uncle to Alabama.

By his first wife, Miss Dillard, he had five children: John A., James A., Lucinda P., Mary E., and Pocahontas. John A. Became a prominent physician in Alabama and moved to Texas before the Civil War where he added to his medical reputation. He left a son and two daughters."

One year after the Jordans moved to the state, Alabama became a part of the Union but its geographic configuration was nothing like it is today since most of the Eastern part of Alabama was still in the possession of the Creek Indians.

In 1832 at Cusseta (now in Chambers County directly west of West Point, Georgia) negotiations were entered into with the Creeks to cede to the United States all of their land East of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in present day Oklahoma.

Time does not permit me to go into all of the fighting and treachery which took place on both sides leading up to this point. Suffice it to say that the native American naturalistic way of life was doomed from the outset when it was confronted and finally engulfed by the structured economy and technology of the European immigrants to these shores.

The final act leading to the removal of the Creek Indians to the West was accomplished in 1832 by their chiefs at Washington in the presence of the following Georgians and Alabamians: William R. King, C.C. Clay, John Tipton, William Wilkins, Samuel Bell, John Crowell, and John Hunt Broadnax. A daughter of John H. Broadnax, Rebecca, is my Great, great, great grandmother.

This Washington Treaty of 1832 gave to Alabama all of that part embraced in the counties of Coosa, Talladega, Calhoun, Etowah, Cleburne, Tallapoosa, Randolph, Chambers, Lee, Russell, Barbour, Bullock, Macon, and Clay. This was a new Alabama with its present geographic configuration.

After the final Treaty of Removal in 1832 the Federal Government provided for a survey of all of the newly acquired Alabama lands dividing the lands into townships and ranges. Each township and range has 36 sections. Each section is one mile square.


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Under this treaty, each Indian head of household was granted by the Federal Government about 300 acres which they were free to sell. The land not granted to the Indians was sold at public auction at the land office in the district in which the lands were located, with the notable exception of special military reserves set aside for military land bounties and salt works given to the State. All public land acquired under the Treaty of 1832 was sold at public auction.

Ruth Royal Crump the present historian of Chambers County, Alabama has diligently copied every original land sales transaction which took place in Chambers County. She has published these transactions in a book entitled, The Original Tract Book for Chambers County.

This book lists the following transactions involving persons named Dillard:

In Township 21, Range 25, Sections 29 and 35, George W. Dillard purchased at auction in 1836 478 acres and in the same year Samuel Morrell and Lorenzo D. Dillard purchased 40 Acres.

In Township 22, Range 25, Sections 28, 31, and 33, Lorenzo D. Dillard and a person known variously as Samuel Morrell and Lemuel Morrell purchased together 238 acres in 1838.

Additionally, Lorenzo D. Dillard was awarded a grant of 39.66 1/2 acres from the Federal Government for his service as a private soldier in Capt. Young's Company of Alabama Volunteers in the Florida War against the Seminoles. This was in 1852.

In 1840 George W. Dillard purchased from E-Far-Emarthle or E-Molly (a Creek Chief) 320 acres.

Nathaniel Dillard in December of 1834 purchased 160 acres in Township 23 North; Range 26 East, Section 23. This makes him one of the earliest purchasers.

I was interested to find that adjoining the land of Nathaniel, Robert, James S., John, Jabez, and William Johnson purchased altogether about 1000 acres between 1834 and 1839. James S. Johnson Was my great, great grandfather. The lands of Nathaniel Dillard and the Johnsons was situated around Macedonia Baptist Church about four miles North of Lafayette, Alabama. I recently visited this community. The church is still active and it's still beautiful land.

When the Johnsons and the Dillards purchased this land the Indians were still present. In 1836 there was an Indian uprising.

Governor George R. Gilmer, who was Governor of Georgia during this era in his book entitled Some Sketches of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia published in 1855, describes


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this uprising in Alabama when he and his wife visited relatives there in 1836:

"In 1836 I left home in Lexington, Oglethorpe County for Alabama. During my absence I was nominated by the States-Rights Party as a candidate for elector of the President and Vice President of the United States. As we traveled from Columbus, Georgia toward Montgomery through the Creek Indians we found them in the greatest excitement on account of the near approach of the time for their removal from the country they occupied to the territories provided for them beyond the Mississippi and also by the great frauds practiced by the whites in purchasing the reservations secured to them by the terms of the Treaty between the Government and the Tribe. They were ready for murder and preparing for war. We found them drinking and carousing at every stage coach station on the road. A few miles beyond the village of Tuskegee we passed late in the evening three Indian males standing by the side of the road in a deep hollow and near a swamp with rifles in their hands. I saw from their look that the devil was in them. I requested my wife not to look back or show any concern, then we drove as fast as possible. That night a family of white people living close by were murdered by the Indians. Another group of travelers by stage out of Montgomery were fired upon. They cut the horses from the stages and fled on their bare backs. The Indians burnt the stages and the baggage they did not want."

If it sounds like the wild west - it was!

Moving forward in time, my great, great grandfather, James S. Johnson, didn't remain in Alabama very long before selling out and moving to Texas. Quite a few settlers in Chambers County did likewise about this time. In addition to the Indian uprising in 1836, farm prices crashed in 1837.

But things began to improve. Governor Gilmer writes about the lure of Texas in his book. He writes:

"one of my Georgia relatives couldn't resist the temptations of the rich lands in Alabama where he acquired a large tract of land of the greatest fertility, and made money beyond example. His land increased in value until he was offered $10 an acre for it. He heard that land of equal value and production could be purchased in Texas for $.25 per acre. He left his home and family to search for land in Texas then inhabited by Spaniards and Indians and was the receptacle of all sorts of robbers and cutthroats. This money madness was so contagious in Alabama that I overheard my carriage driver offering to bet another driver $40,000."

James A. Michener writes further about this Texas mania in his book The Eagle and the Raven. He writes: "Davy Crockett a Tennessee Whig, after serving three terms in the National Congress refused to kowtow to the dictates of his fellow Tennessean President Andrew Jackson a Democrat. His fiery independence cost him his seat in Congress. Upon returning home he told the voters "You may all go to hell, I'm going to Texas." And like


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others of that time who had experienced defeat, he lit out for wild adventures then available in "Texas", abandoning his family."

Crockett was killed along with 185 others (mostly from the southern states) in the Alamo. This happened in 1836.

My great, great grandfather, James S. Johnson, and his wife Elizabeth Ann and Thomas Johnson didn't remain long in Texas. While fighting with the armed forces of the Republic of Texas, he was seriously injured. With their two sons, Joseph Jerimiah and Thomas Layfayette, they returned to Coosa County Alabama and settled near my grandmother's people who by this time were operating a rather large slave generated cotton operation in Coosa County, near a community named Equality.

Moving quite a bit further ahead in time to the War between the Union and the Confederacy, my great grandfather, Joseph Jerimiah, was 22 years old. In 1862 he enlisted in the 53rd Alabama Partisan Rangers, a cavalry unit of the Confederate Army. He served until wounded and captured in November of 1864 near Sandersville, Georgia where General Joseph Wheeler and his meager cavalry forces were pitted against Sherman's 160,000 plus army marching to the sea. My great grandfather spent the last year of the war in the notorious camp for Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Maryland. He survived and returned to Alabama.

During the war and after the war my great grandfather cherished the friendship of three boys who served with him in the 53rd Alabama. They were: Louis Allen, Jim Davidson, and Henry Dillard. This information was supplied to me by my great aunt.

I have tried to get more information about them from the Confederate military files of the Alabama Department of Archives but have so far been unsuccessful since the muster rolls for the 53rd Alabama are missing.

The story goes that Louis Allen was mortally wounded at the Battle of Brices' Cross Road in northern Mississippi. Before dying he made my great grandfather promise that he would name his first son for him. Well, his first son was a daughter and they named her Lou Allen Johnson. I am told also that he remained in contact with Davidson and Henry Dillard throughout his life. If anyone can shed any further light on Henry Dillard, I wish you would.

In summary and in closing, the journeys of our families are amazingly parallel. I take great pride in knowing that families like ours have made a substantial contribution toward making this the great country that it is.

I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to learn more about the Dillards I have mentioned this morning. If you can help me, please do. I greatly appreciate this opportunity to meet each one of you and share in this great reunion.


Copyright © 1998 by Hugh S. Johnson.

End of: "Dillards and Johnsons, Early Alabama Pioneers," By Hugh S. Johnson,
DILLARD ANNUAL, Vol. 5; Jan., 1998, pages 4-8


The DILLARD ANNUAL - © - is a non-profit journal of Dillard family history published annually by the Dillard Family Association beginning January 1, 1992. All individual articles are the property of each writer. John M. Dillard, compiling editor, Post Office Box 91, Greenville, South Carolina, 29602. E-mail John M. Dillard at: [email protected].

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