Fort Stoddert Historical Marker at Mount Vernon. |
Fort Stoddert near Mount Vernon is a place that I've heard
about and read about many times in my life, and despite living just a short
drive from this historic place for most of my life, I couldn’t honestly say
that I’d ever been there before. I put a visit to this place on my “bucket
list” a few years ago, and finally visited Fort Stoddert for the first time on Saturday afternoon.
For those of you unfamiliar with Fort Stoddert, it was an
old fort located on the Mobile River near the modern-day town of Mount Vernon
in Mobile County, Ala. It was located near the confluence of the Alabama and
Tombigbee rivers and was the western end of the Old Federal Road.
If you go to Mount Vernon today, you’ll find a historical
marker about Fort Stoddert near the intersection of Old Highway 43 and Military
Road. That marker reads as follows – “FORT STODDERT – 1799 – Site three miles
east. Border fort and port of entry into the United States while the 31st
parallel was the southern border. Aaron Burr was held prisoner here after
capture near McIntosh in 1807.”
If you take Military Road east from this marker, you’ll
eventually find yourself on a dead end road that ends at a boat landing at the
Mobile River. My feeling is that this is as close as you can get to the old
fort site without trespassing on private property. While you might not be
standing on the exact site of the old fort, you’re very close and can get an
idea of the old fort’s surroundings.
Throughout Mount Vernon, you’ll find a number of historical
signs that make up the Mount Vernon Historical Trail. As you leave the boat
landing, traveling west back toward U.S. Highway 43, be sure to turn down Old
Military Road East. Just a short distance down this road, on the east side,
you’ll find a detailed historical sign that tells a lot more about Fort
Stoddert’s history. What follows is the complete text from that marker.
“Early in 1799 a joint U.S.-Spanish survey commission had
determined the international boundary to be a few miles south of this spot, at
31 Degrees N Longitude. (A marker known as the Ellicott Stone still stands on
the old boundary line, just east of US Highway 43 near the Alabama Power
Company generating plant in the community of Bucks.) Because the relocated line
lay well south of the long-presumed boundary, Spanish colonial administrators
withdrew their garrison from Fuerte San Esteban, which became St. Stephens. To
assert American claims to this region, Congress created the Mississippi
Territory and ordered the U.S. Army to establish posts along the new boundary
for the protection of settlers and for collection of customs duties from
commercial traffic on the rivers flowing to Mobile in Spanish West Florida.
“In July 1799, two companies of the 2nd Regiment U.S.
Infantry, commanded by Capt. Bartholomew Schaumburgh marched from Natchez and
established Fort Stoddert, named for first Secretary of the Navy Benjamin
Stoddert, at Ward’s Bluff on the Mobile River. The stockade fort had
blockhouses in two of the four bastions, mounted with ordnance; soldier’s
barracks and officers’ quarters formed the curtain walls.
“Although no battles were ever fought at Fort Stoddert, the
post had an interesting and colorful history. Ephraim Kirby served briefly here
as federal judge in 1804. Upon Kirby’s death, Judge Harry Toulmin succeeded him
on the bench and assumed the role of first postmaster in January 1805. In
February 1807, Capt. Edmund P. Gaines and a detachment of mounted riflemen
arrested former Vice President Aaron Burr on the road north of the fort and
escorted him to Washington, D.C. for trial on charges of treason.
“Early in 1811, John Hood and Samuel Miller carried a
printing press overland from Chattanooga to the Alabama River, then downstream
to Fort Stoddert, with the intention of publishing a newspaper in Mobile. The
city, however, remained under Spanish rule, so they printed The Mobile
Centinel, the first newspaper published in what would become the state of
Alabama, at Fort Stoddert from May 23, 1811 to June 6, 1812.
“On Nov. 30, 1811, Capt. Matthew Arbuckle of the 3rd
Regiment U.S. Infantry commanded a road construction party from Fort Stoddert
that met a construction party working from the east to open the Federal Road to
Georgia. Amid the War of 1812, an expedition launched from Fort Stoddert seized
Mobile from Spain on April 13, 1813. In early September, Fort Stoddert and
Mount Vernon Cantonment sheltered thousands of refugees displaced from the
Tombigbee and Tensaw settlements by the destruction of Fort Mimms at the
beginning of the Creek War.
“During the war, Fort Stoddert served as military
headquarters for General Ferdinand Claiborne’s Mississippi Territorial
Volunteers and for regular U.S. Army troops operating on the Gulf Coast. By the
end of 1814, Fort Stoddert no longer functioned as a military post, although
the name continued to be applied to the civilian community (later called
Florida, then Mount Vernon) that had grown up around the fort.”
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