First Settlers of Jackson County, Florida

Campbellton Baptist Church, Florida's oldest Baptist church
in continuous operation, dates from before the War Between
the States and stands near the Spring Creek settlement site.

The first American settlers of Jackson County arrived pushed down from Georgia and Alabama before 1820. 

The following is excerpted from my book:  The History Of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years.

The smoke had barely cleared from the First Seminole War when the first settlers began to make their way back to the rich lands they had explored with Andrew Jackson in 1818. It was a risky proposition at best. The area that would become Jackson County was still Spanish territory at the time and there was the possibility of violent confrontation with Native American warriors still angered over their losses in the war.

Despite such dangers, however, several dozen frontier families had appeared in the area by 1820. Their initial settlements were along Spring Creek in the Campbellton area, on the Ekanachatte site at Neal’s Landing and along the Apalachicola River south of the Native American towns of Tomatley and Choconicla.

Based on these locations, it appears that the first settlers probably took advantage of fields that had already been cleared by Native Americans. The Chacato village of San Antonio had been located in the area of the Spring Creek settlement and its old fields had been resettled by a party of Creeks from Pucknawhitla by 1778. These fields were undoubtedly still clear of heavy timber in 1820 and it would have been relatively easy for the first settlers to clear away any second growth and underbrush and begin farming.

A section of the old Pensacola-St. Augustine Road can still be
seen between Malone and Campbellton. It connected the Spring
Creek settlement with the Irwin's Mill Creek settlements on the
Chattahoochee River.

The same was true at the Ekanachatte site, which had been abandoned for less than two years. Extensive fields had been cleared over the fifty year history of the village and these were now literally “open for the taking.” In addition, Irwin’s Mill Creek flowed year round and provided sufficient force to turn the wheels of watermills, a fact that eventually led to its modern name.

Some of the names of these first settlers are recognizable in Jackson County today. The Spring Creek settlement, for example, included John Williams, James Falk, William T. Nelson, Abraham Philips, Benjamin Hamilton, Owen Williams, Micajah Cadwell, Joseph Parrot, John Ward, Nathan A. Ward, William Philips, James Ward, Andrew Farmer, Robert Thomas, John Hays, Samuel C. Fowler, Nathaniel Hudson, Wilie Blount, Moses Brantley, Robert Thompson, Guthrie Moore, Stephen Daniel, John Gwinn, John Jones, Allaway Roach, Henry Moses, Joel Porter, Simeon Cook, James C. Roach, John Smith and Presley Scurlock.[i]

Their farms stretched from Holmes Creek on the west across the present site of Campbellton and then down Spring Creek to its junction with the headwaters of the Chipola River. To the south their lands extended about as far down as today’s Waddell’s Mill Pond, while to the north other settlements extended across the Alabama line.

None of these farms were the large plantations for which Jackson County later became known. The largest had around 40 acres in cultivation, but the average settler farmed less than 15 acres. It was a start, though, and qualified each of them to later claim 640 acres after Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States in 1821.[ii]

1823 map of the Jackson County area.

The settlement at Irwin’s Mill Creek, then called “Conchatty Hatchy” or “Red Ground Creek,” included Joseph Brown, William Brown, Joseph Brooks, William Chamblis, James Irwin, Adam Kimbrough, William McDonald, William H. Pyke, George Sharp and Allis Wood.

Down on the Apalachicola, meanwhile, were Charles Barnes, Adam Hunter, John H. King and Reuben Littleton. These men all lived along the stretch of the river between Tomatley and Ocheesee Bluff, where Thomas and Stephen Richards had settled.

Other settlers known to have been in Jackson County prior to 1821 included James Dennard, Jonathan Hagan, John Hopson, Hugh Robertson, Joshua Scurlock and Robert Sullivan, all of whom settled along the upper Chipola east of the Spring Creek settlement, and William Pyles who staked a claim at Blue Spring.[iii]

Blue Springs (or Jackson Blue Springs) was a landmark for
early settlers and Native American residents alike.

Despite the tensions that must surely have existed, incidents between the early settlers and the Native Americans still living in Jackson County seem to have been rare. Econchattimico had assembled a group of several hundred followers at Tocktoethla, but following the destruction of Ekanachatte did all he could to preserve peace with the whites. 

So too did Mulatto King, who assumed permanent leadership of both Tomatley and Choconicla following the death of Yellow Hair. The villages grew considerably following the war due to the arrival of refugees from the destroyed town of Attapulgas in what is now Decatur County, Georgia. Mulatto King welcomed these displaced individuals and allowed them to settle on lands adjacent to his villages.

In truth, the Native Americans living in Jackson County between 1819 and 1821 probably lived much better than their white counterparts. While the early white settlers were struggling to build crude log cabins and clear fields, many of the Native Americans – particularly those of Tomatley – enjoyed a prosperity that they had spent years developing. 

Claims later filed by many of these people indicate that they owned cabins, houses, mills, orchards and fields. A woman named Polly Walker, for example, reported that she owned a dwelling house, two cabins and an orchard of 32 fruit trees. Joe Riley owned a house and improvements valued at $1,150, a substantial amount for the time. Econchattimico reestablished himself at Tocktoethla by clearing 73 acres of land and building a cabin, corn crib, shed, three log cabins, a summer house and two mills. His fields were surrounded by fences built using 14,280 rails.[iv]

---

 [i] Claims to Land in West Florida, December 10, 1824, American State Papers, Public Lands, Volume 4, pp. 61-63 (Hereafter ASP Public Lands).

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] List of Claims of Appalachicola Indians who have emigrated West of the Mississippi River, November 11, 1838, Bureau of Indian Affairs, M234, Roll 290, Frame 299.

#93 Irwin's Mill Creek (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Irwin's Mill Creek in Jackson County, Florida

Irwin's Mill Creek, a beautiful clear-water stream, is #93 on our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida.  Please click here to see previous installments on the list.

Once called the Ekanachattehatchee or "Red Ground Creek," Irwin's Mill Creek is fed by small springs just north of the Alabama state line. It flows to the southeast through Alabama's Chattahoochee State Park and across the line into the northeast corner of Jackson County. It flows into the Chattahoochee River just north of the State Highway 2 bridge into Georgia. The nearest landing is at Neal's Landing Park.

Irwin's Mill Creek

The creek is an ecological treasure. Very few spring-fed streams flow into the Chattahoochee River and Lake Seminole, but Irwin's Mill Creek looks more like one of the beautiful spring runs that feed the Chipola River than it does one of the sloughs and backwaters of Lake Seminole. It winds through a stunning floodplain swamp and at most times of the year is so clear that the bottom is clearly visible.

Historically, it flows through one of the most significant spots in Jackson County. The famed Money Pond, which supposedly holds the treasure of the pirate and adventurer William Augustus Bowles ("Billy Bowlegs"), is near and the creek forms the northern limits of the 18th century Creek Indian town of Ekanachatte ("Red Ground"). Please click here for more on the Money Pond.

Irwin's Mill Creek

Even before the late 1700s and the time of Bowles and Ekanachatte, the creek was a major landmark.The Spanish first pushed west from Mission San Luis (present-day Tallahassee) during the 1600 to bring the Christian faith to the Chacato (or Chatot) Indians. This tribe lived between the Chipola River and Holmes Creek in western Jackson County, northeastern Washington County and southwestern Houston County, Alabama. They were closely allied with a neighboring tribe that the Spanish called the Chisca but which many researchers believe were the ancestors of the modern Yuchi.

Irwin's Mill Creek

The Yuchi today are considered by the U.S. Government to be part of the Creek or Muscogee Nation, but historically they were an independent people. They have their own language, customs, ceremonial practices and traditions. They helped incite the Chacato people to rebel against and drive out the Franciscan missionaries, an act that brought the wrath of the Spanish military down on both groups.

When the Spanish first arrived, it appears that the Chisca or Yuchi lived in a village along the banks of Irwin's Mill Creek. The fled west into Walton and Okaloosa Counties after the Chacato rebellion, but for nearly one century afterward the site of their village on Irwin's Mill Creek was known as the Chiscatalofa Old Fields. The word "Chiscatalofa" literally means Chisca Town.  A village by that name remained associated with the Lower Creeks until their removal on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, but the original Chiscatalofa was in the northeast corner of Jackson County.

Irwin's Mill Creek

When the Red Ground Creeks arrived to establish Ekanachatte in the 1760s, they settled on the Chiscatalofa Old Fields since they were easier to clear for farming than the surrounding old grown forests.

After Ekanachatte was destroyed in 1818 and while Florida was still a Spanish colony, American settlers began to drift into the vicinity and settle on the abandoned fields of the village. Among those who established farms along what they called the "Conchatty Hatchy" were Joseph Brown, William Brown, Joseph Brooks, William Chamblis, James Irwin, Adam Kimbrough, William McDonald, William H. Pyke, George Sharp and Allis Wood.

James Irwin, one of these settlers who arrived in 1819-1820, built a dam and watermill on the creek where it crosses from Alabama into Florida. The dam and ruins of the mill still survive and represent the oldest American structural remains in Jackson County.

From that time until today, the stream has been known as Irwin's Mill Creek and it is one of the 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida.

Irwin's Mill Creek was Key Area for Early Settlers

By Dale Cox


Irwin’s Mill Creek – When American settlers began drifting across the Florida line into what would become Jackson County in the years following the First Seminole War, one of the areas that immediately attracted their attention was the rich country along the south side of Irwin’s Mill Creek.

Then called Red Ground Creek, this beautiful spring-fed stream rose in the southeast corner of Alabama and flowed down across the border into the northeast corner of Jackson County. Florida was then still Spanish territory and would remain so until 1821, but to these early settlers, the opportunity offered by the high quality land was more than worth the risk of moving into a foreign country.

Several factors attracted early settlers to the area as they began to drift across the line in around 1819. First was the availability of good, clean water. Second, the creek flowed with enough force to power a watermill, one of the few industries essential to life in the early 19th century. Third, the land along the creek was very rich and ideal for farming the types of crops then popular (corn, sugar cane, cotton). Finally, the heavy forests that grew naturally across much of the region had already been cleared away.

For at least fifty years, the area of Jackson County from Irwin’s Mill Creek down to Neal’s Landing on the Chattahoochee River had been the site of the important Creek Indian village of Ekanachatte or “Red Ground.” Established before the American Revolution, this rather spread out town had been supported by fields and pastures along both the river and creek. Ekanachatte had been destroyed on March 13, 1818, during the First Seminole War and its inhabitants had relocated downriver to a new site about ten miles north of present-day Sneads.

The fields and cleared areas were empty when white settlers began to arrive, providing an excellent opportunity for them to build homes and start farming immediately without the back breaking labor of felling old growth trees to clear land.

By 1821, when Florida was ceded to the United States by Spain, Irwin’s Mill Creek had become one of the three largest early settlements in Jackson County. The others were in the Spring Creek area near Campbellton and along the Apalachicola River below Sneads.

Given the opportunity to file claims for land they had occupied while Florida was still a Spanish colony, ten Jackson County residents did so based on farms they had established along the creek between 1819 and 1821. They were Joseph Brooks, Joseph Brown, William Brown, William Chamblis, James Irwin, Adam Kimbrough, William McDonald, William H. Pyke, George Sharp and Allis Wood.

The presence of so many heads of household indicates that the Irwin’s Mill Creek settlement probably had a total population of at least 50 or 60 people.

James Irwin, one of these early settlers, built the mill that provided the creek the name by which it is known today. The ruins of his mill can still be seen and are thought to be the only surviving remains of a structure built in Jackson County while Florida was still Spanish territory.

Note: You can learn more about early settlements in The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years. The book is available online at http://www.amazon.com/, where you can also find the second volume in the set, The History of Jackson County, Florida: The War Between the States.

Irwin's Mill Creek - Northeast Jackson County

This image, taken just a few yards across the Alabama line from Jackson County, shows Irwin's Mill Creek, a clear and cold stream that flows into the northeast corner of Jackson County not far from Neal's Landing.

This stream was an important water resource to early settlers, who dammed it to provide power for a watermill built by Col. Joseph Irwin during the 1820s.

The exact construction date of the mill is not clear. Col. Irwin and his partner, Farish Carter, acquired 160 acres on the creek from the Federal government on September 1, 1827, but this is not necessarily the date they settled there. Early settlers often "squatted" on land before actually filing for ownership of the property.

The mill served residents of Jackson County for more than one hundred years and remained an important landmark and industry well into the 20th century. Untold thousands of bushels of corn were ground on its stones.

The mill itself no longer stands, but its foundations remain and can be seen in the distance by looking downstream from the dam at Chattahoochee State Park just across the Alabama line. They are believed to be the oldest standing structural remains in Jackson County.