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East Lauderdale News (Rogersville, AL)
Number 217 - December 24, 1980

Polly Allen, heroine of Blue Water Creek

By Colonel William L. McDonald

The foothills of the Appalachians in Northern Albama attracted hearty settlers. They had to be to survive. Their women were no exception.

One of North Alabama's most celebrated was "Bonnie Kate" Sevier, widow of the first Governor of Tennessee. She lived out the last years of her life at her brother's home at Russelville, in Franklin County, Alabama, where she died and was buried. Later, they moved her body to Knoxville in the mountains of Tennessee, to be placed alongside the remains of her husband, the old warrior of Revolutionary fame, Colonel John Sevier. Legend and ballad attest to this tall and gracious lady's adventure at the frontier fort that became a part of our history.

History left no song about the bravery of another North Alabamian, the winsome and tiny wisp of a woman known as Polly Allen of Blue Water Creek in Laurdrdale County. Her cabinn was deep in the wilderness, miles from civilization. The soldiers couldn't tell about it for fear of being court-martialed, and there were no other witnesses included toward singing lovely ballads.

Her nearest neighbors were Indians living in a village several miles south of her little farm. If, indeed, they knew of her cunning manuever on that eventful occasion they would not have thought it extra-ordinary. This to them was a matter in the order of survival. Yet, the marvel of this young mother's saga was to be handed down in the family from father to son and from mother to daughter.

The authenticity of her reamrkable story is evidenced by its inclusion in the historic address at the celebration of America's Centenial on July 4, 1876, by the early Lauderale County Historia, Colonel and Reverend and Judge William Basil Wood, of Florence, Alabama.

Polly Allen was born Mary Barnest of Edgecomb County (continued on page 3A)

(continued from page 1A) North Carolina. Her father, Joseph Barnes, served during the American Revolution as a soldier in a SOth Carolina Regiment. While a young girl she moved with her family to Tennessee, and settled at Sumner County, where she met and married Henry Davis Allen.

Henry Davis Allen was born in 1782, and was also a native of Edgecombe County, North Carolina. His father Rhody Allen, born in 1742, moved to the Tarheel state from the colony of Maryland.

Henry and Polly Allen, along with other members of Henry's family, moved first, in 1804, to Maury County, Tennessee. They were not there long before they began to hear the exciting tales about the wilds of the Tennessee RIver located in the Appalachian foothills less than a hundred miles to the South.

The place carried a romantic sounding name -- Muscle Shoals. It was in the Mississippi Territory. Later it was carved out as part of the State of Alabama.

This alluring place offered an abundance of fruit, nuts, game, free-flowing streams filled with all kinds of fish, well-drained and fertile bottom lans, and multitudes of hills and virgin forest.

But these were Indian lands, jealously watched over by the Chickasaws and Cherokees. These peopple would have no white squatters in their teritory. They insisted so strongly in appeal to Washington, that the crafty old Indiana Agent, Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs, sent two companies of U.S. Cavalry and authorized the construction of Fort Hampton near Elk River to burn out and drive away the white intruders.

But wild beasts, mad Indians, and well-drilled riders of trained army horses did not scare the likes of Henry and Polly and the other members of Henry's determined clan. Sixty-severn-year-old Rhody, Henry's father, was the grand patriarch. The Revernd Rhodam Allen, Mathodist Circuit Rider, and William Maxey, a brother-in-law, were the other members of this pioneer entourage. They crossed the line and made for themselves temporary houses of animal hides stretched over poles that were cut from the forest and braced solidly (missing part of the paragraph) imately 236 feet square.

It was here in 1811, that the orders were read to the dismounted horse soldiersr standing ridigly at attention. The patience of old Meigs, the Indian Agent at Hiwassee, had been worn thin by all the unsuccessful attempts by the troops to persuade the unwanted whites to leave. Therefore, he had dispatched stern orders to Colonel Smyth to burn homes, fences, and fields. This would leave the squatters no choice but to go back to Tennessee from whence they had come.

The sordid mission of the cavalry to burn out helpless victims was long an tedious and cruel for the men and their beasts. The horses had to swim Elk RIver due to high water. One by one the cabins alongside the Elk were burned and they moved on to the Shoals and Blue Water Creeks.

Arriving at Blue Water on the third day, they set fire to the Hermin cabine early in the morning. By noon they had reached the Allen farm which was upstream from the Hermin (missing remainder of paragraph)

Some historians even go so far as to speculate that Captain Allen could have been a motivating favor in Jackson's decision to cave the winding Natcheze Trace at Duck River and to allow parts of the old Doubhead Trace that cut his t ?p to South Alabama by some 200 miles.

There is no doubt that Captain ALlen knew more about these old Indiana trails than anyone else in the army. He had followed these roads into the wilderness many times.

The main stem of Tubblehead's Trace ran from near Columbia, Tennessee to the mouth of Blue Water Creek in Albama. At about the Tennessee line there was another branch of the trail that veered off westerly to cross the Tennesee River at the mouth of Cypress Creek. The U.S. Government later improved this military road and gave the name Jackson Highway to became a major north and south throughfare ???? Tennessee and Alabama.

Family records tell that Rhody Allen, his son the Reverend Rhodam Allen and son-in-law Willim Maxey, organized a wagon train and went to Jefferson County, Illinois, along with 41 people who established a settlement.

But Henry and Polly Allen came back to Blue Water Creek in Alabama after the Indian Treaty of 1816. Land records show that by 1818, they were legally in possession of the tract of land they had originally cleared and attempted to possess by means of the ancient code of the Anglo-Saxons, appropriately called "Squatters Rights".

The memory of these early pioneers is marked by a quaint and picturesque park located a few miles west of Lexington, Alabama on State Highway 64 at the Blue Water Creek crossing. It overlooks the family cemetery and the site of the cabin that was saved from the de (missing remainder of this part)

law, were the other members of this pioneer entourage. They crossed the line and made for themselves temporary houses of animal hides stretched over poles that werecut from the forest and braced solidly in the earth.

Colonel Meig's file list about 39 families of these squatters on Indian lands in the year 1809. In the same list he showed 18 or 19 families who held legal leases from Chief Doublehead and his agent John Chisholm. Only those who held valid Indian documents were recognized as having a right to be the in territory.

William Bermin, in a letter written, April 19, 1884, recalled that his family was among the squatters. He also claimed to be the first white child born in Lauderdale County, and gave his date of birth as March 11, 1810.

Winters in the Tennessee River Valley can be unsually cold because of the high moisture level that chills the very marrow of a man's bones. It's awfully hard to describe to one without experience how cold it can actually be when one weathers the worst with no more protection than is offered by a thin net on a bare-earth floor.

Needless to say, Henry Davis Allen was soon erecting a new temporary dwelling, this time made with bark from the forest. Meanwhile, he continued construction of a log cabin that was to become their more permanent dwelling.

Picturing the primitive conditions of life in Lauderdale County in those early days of the 19th century would be almost impossible to develp after these many years. However, we have a few clues.

Will Hermin wrote that because of the scarcity of gunpowder..a basic necessity in any frontierland...they would chase deer into the Tennessee River then club the poor creature to death once it was in the water. Hand-me-down stories tell of wolves eating bread at the back door of the Allen cabin. Privations and danger were constant companions of these early people.

Fort Hampton, located about a mile back from the bank of Elk River and near the junction of two early roads, didn't look like the typical wilderness forticiation. It had no defensive earth works, high walls, or portholes. Its troops were there, not to defend, but rather to drive out the white man. Constructed by Colonel Alexander Smyth in 1810, there were 32 log buildings lined up in a military rectangle measuring about ???(remainder missing).

Arriving at Blue Water on the third day, they set fire to the Hermin cabin early in the morning. By noon they had reached the Allen farm which was upstream from the Hermin place.

For the ordinary woman this appearnace of the dreaded cavalry would have been a dark hour. Pulling up in front of her door, and learning of her husband's absence, they read Meigg's orders to the lady of the house as she stood silently before them with a baby in her arms and small children at her side.

But Polly Allen was by no measure of common rank. Neither was this small woman lacking in the ability to quickly size up what needed to be done even under the most difficult of situations.

The officer in charge could scarecely believe what was happening. This one in distress was not wringing her hands or crying as expected. Rather, Polly was offering to cook a hot meal for the soldiers who had come to burn her home and all her earthly possessions. The alert little lady had sensed that these soldiers were tired and hungry. They had been on the move for days and had eaten only hardtacks and jerked venisen since leaving the fort. They were more than willing to dismount and wait while their gracious hostess prepared what has apprpriately been described as a most delightful feast in the wilderness.

Military men are sometimes called upon to do the most unpleasant of tasks. For the soldier duty in its ultimate snese is to do or die. Probably no trooper that day had ever faced a more difficult job than was their's to do. Carrying out their resonsibility to the powers that be, they set fire to the Allen cabin and rode away. But history is quick to record that no sooner had they disappeared from sight when two broke ranks, returned to extinguish the flames, and then swiftly gallopd back to rejoin their command as if nothing had happened.

We have no way of determining how long the Allens were allowed to live in their small cabin after Polly had saved it from the soldiers. But we do know that they eventually were forced to leave.

It was during this absence while living in Tennessee, that Henry Davis Allen volunteered for service in Andrew jackson's Army, made a name of himself and was discharged in 1816 with the rank of Captain following the Battle of New Orleans?