Further tracing of old records shows that he caught it all around. November 1st, 1826, I find that James Madison appointed one Dabney Morris his agent to handle “all his lands in Alabama, all lots in Florence, also eight shares of stock in Cypress Land Company.” On August 22, 1826, is an agreement in which James Madison extends the time of payment of a judgment he held against one Bedford amounting to $4,680.96. And, worst of all, Dabney Morris laid down on him, for later a record shows that Morris’ notes to Madison went to protest, to satisfy which the said Morris turned over land to said Madison to the tune of $24,866—a small fortune in those days (in money, not in land) when money was worth nearly double what it now is. In the slang language of to-day, they evidently “did enough to Jimmy.”
But Old Hickory paid for his. It is not recorded that he lost a cent. Old Hickory was born holding on. He never turned loose.
And to show what things cost in those days: On October 20, 1819, Thomas Childress and W. W. Warner, who had been appointed to sell the effects and settle up the estate of a deceased pioneer, report the sale of the following: Twelve negro slaves, $4,200; five head of horses, $225 ($45 each—ye gods! Evidently they were not Hals); twenty-three head of cattle, $165 (that was before the beef trust); twenty-nine head of hogs, $86.50; five beds and furniture, $100; two spinning wheels, $2; two rifle guns, $22; ‘one pare saddle bags,’ $1; and five ‘setting chairs,’ $2.50 (‘setting chairs’—this was evidently the beginning of the incubator idea). Just below it John W. Byrne sells a nineteen-year-old negro to James Hickman for $460, whom he guarantees to be “sound, healthy, clear of any disorder whatever.” And land sales—some of it fetched fifty dollars per acre. That was before it was cleared, too.
It can now be bought for $10 to $25 an acre, and will raise two crops in one year!
If there was any faith for their belief nearly a century ago, what a chance now for the man who invests in Florence or in Lauderdale land!
Some months ago I found a rare old book which has afforded me a great deal of pleasure as well as information. It is called “Letters from Alabama,” by Anne Royal, whom it seems was a most eccentric old woman, afflicted with a mania for writing down everything she saw or heard (and remarkably well she did it) on a trip by stage and horseback which she made for the purpose of seeing the new country. She left Washington November, 1817, and reached Melton’s Bluff, on the Tennessee River, about New Year. Her description of men and things in the new country is the most interesting I have ever read, and the most accurate. As Melton’s Bluff, as she called the place, is not far from Florence (I think it was afterwards called Marathon), I will give some of her descriptions of the new country as it looked then, six months before Florence was laid out into town lots:
“You have heard that this country consists of table and bottom land, also of the bluffs. These bluffs happen where there is no bottom land, but the tableland running up to the river forms a high precipice, called a bluff. This is the case at Melton’s Bluff, the highest I have seen. Here is a very large plantation of cotton and maize, worked by about sixty slaves, owned by General Jackson, who bought the interests of old Melton.
“No language can convey an idea of the beauties of Melton’s Bluff. It is said to be the handsomest spot in the world, off the seaboard, and rich as it is beautiful. I can sit in my room and see the whole plantation; the boats gilding down the river, and the opposite shore, one mile distant. The ducks, geese and swan, playing at the same time on the bosom of the stream, with a full view of the many islands. It is, after all, the great height of the site that pleases.
“I took a walk with some ladies to-day over the plantation, as we wished to have a nearer view of those snowy fields which so sedulously present themselves to our view, together with orchards, gin houses, gardens, Melton’s mansion, and a considerable negro town.