Thanks for your comments. I have been collecting historical references to the McGrews on
the Tombigbee for an article and found quite a few that include George Brewer's
family, too. I believe that his daughter married Sterling Cato.
Sue
THE CREEK WAR OF 1813 AND 1814, by H. S. Halbert and T. H. Ball, Chicago, Illinois:Donohue
& Henneberry, Montgomery, Alabama,White, Woodruff & Fowler,1895.
McGrew's Fort was in the corner of section one, township seven, range one west, about
three miles north of Fort St. Stephens, in Clarke county, five miles north and eighteen
west from Fort Madison. It is claimed that the area here enclosed with palisades was about
two acres. Some of the posts were remaining in 1879, and around the fort locality was an
old field. Here two brothers, William McGrew and John McGrew, British royalists then,
refugees, probably, from the Atlantic coast, made an early settlement near the Tombigbee
River. McGrew's Reserve, an old Spanish grant, is still a landmark in Clarke county.
These brothers left the reputation of having been exemplary men, and of having become good
Americans. How many families were in this fort is not known. (My note: William was
John's son, not his brother.)
Fort Madison contained not quite an acre of ground, having been, as will be seen from the
cut, sixty yards square. A trench three feet in depth was dug around the outside and
bodies of pine trees cut about fifteen feet in length were placed perpendicularly in the
trench side by side, making thus a wall of pine wood twelve feet in height. Port holes
were cut at convenient distances so as to enable the inmates to look out, and in case of
an attack to fire upon the besiegers. In about the same way ALL these stockades of 1813
were constructed. They were lighted at night by means of the abundant pitch pine placed
upon scaffolds, covered with earth, erected for the purpose.
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A GLANCE INTO THE GREAT SOUTH-EAST OR CLARKE CO. AL by Rev. T. H. Ball, Grove Hill AL,
1882, page 531. " Benjamin DeLoach...was an inmate of McGrew's Fort with Darling
Peevy, Joseph Mott, Jonah Mott, Wm. Mott, the McGrews, Callers, Scarboroughs, Whites,
Pughs, Rutledges, Trawicks, the Hicks, and Webb families, Matthew Brewer, Richard Odum,
and a number of others whose descendants are living in this county. "
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ALABAMA HISTORICAL MARKER - Milepost #52 on AL State Hwy. #43 at the rest area between
Sunflower and Wagerville: "The Tombigbee Settlements- (Sometimes called the 14th
Colony) This area on the west side of the lower Tombigbee as far north as Sinta Bogue
Creek opened to pursuant to a treaty by the British with the Choctaw Nation at the Indian
Congress held in Mobile in 1785. The Treaty was negotiated by George Johnstone, British
governor of West Florida. The settlement that followed became the beginning of Alabama.
Some of the earliest settlers holding British or Spanish grants or American certificates
prior to the year 1800 were Thomas Bassett, John Baker, Thomas Bates, Nathan Blackwell,
Francis Boykin, George Brewer, James Caller, John Callier, Peter Dunn, Young Gaines, Dr.
John Chastang, Daniel Johnson, Ann Lawrence, John Johnson, Thomas Malone, John McGrew,
William McGrew, Capt. John McIntosh, Tandy Walker, Sampson Mouger, Cornelius Rain, Eugene
Sullivan, Thomas Sullivan, and Solomon Wheat.