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| Bull Slough Bride near Brooklyn. |
(In 1982, The Evergreen Courant newspaper published a
six-part series called "A History of Brooklyn," which was originally
written by the late R.G. (Bob) Kendall Jr. The second installment in the
series, which you'll find reprinted below, was originally published in the
April 8, 1982 edition of The Courant. Other installments of the article can be
found in the April 1, April 15, April 22, April 29 and May 6 editions of The
Courant from 1982. I posted 'Part I' last Sunday and plan to post the other installments on this blog in the coming
weeks, so if you enjoy reading Parts I and II, keep you eyes open for the next installment next Sunday. Without further ado, here's Part II.)
“A History of Brooklyn: Part II” by the late R.G. (Bob)
Kendall Jr.
Over the next 30 years, most of the land in south central
and southeast Alabama was granted through this office. It was closed and moved
to Elba on April 1, 1854. The best known administrator and receiver of the land
office was Armistead D. Cary. He served between 1833 and 1850, fulfilling the
duties of Circuit Clerk at the same time. He was elected Probate Judge upon
creation of the office in 1850 and served until disqualified in 1863. His close
connection with the Brooklyn community came through the marriage of his son,
Orlando, to Abigail Turk Johnston, widow of Civil War casualty Newton E.
Johnston. The Orlando Cary home was in Brooklyn and he sired a large family
connection.
Having founded their businesses and cleared the land, crops
began to be planted and cultivated, and transportation was necessary to get the
produce out to market. For the Brooklyn area this was mainly Pensacola,
connected to the area by the Sepulga, Conecuh and Escambia rivers, and in turn
the settlers brought their supplies back from Pensacola. The first successful
attempt to navigate the Sepulga River, which fed into the Conecuh River and by
connection to Pensacola via the Escambia, was by George Stoner.
“Riley’s History” tells us that a great many other attempts,
some of them successful, followed Stoner’s attempt, and the navigation was
conducted by use of keel boats, which were poled downstream, that is, they ran
down on the current and the poles kept them off the bank. The empty boats were
poled back upstream, which was very laborious in making headway against the
current without the benefit of sails or mechanical means of propulsion. After
these boats came into the Pensacola area, they entered Pensacola Bay at the
mouth of the Escambia at an area that is known as Ferry Pass. They were
registered into the Customs House, which made it possible for their cargoes to
be sold in the Port of Pensacola.
About 1818 a settlement sprang up about 11 miles south of
Brooklyn near the confluence of the Conecuh River and the Sepulga River.
Malachi Etheridge came into the area from North Carolina in 1818 and he was
joined by several other families, among them the family of Thomas Mendenhall,
who had settled earlier in the Belleville area of Conecuh County. Mendenhall
was a master mechanic whose talents were very helpful to the early settlers in
solving many of their mechanical problems. He made chisels, augers, cotton
cards, spinning wheels and gins. He constructed and operated what was probably
the first sawmill in Alabama in the McGowin Bridge area.
Near Brooklyn, that is, about three or four miles to the
west, just north of the present Castleberry-Brooklyn Road, is a cave known as
Sanders Cave. It is a large natural limestone cavern and known in the earlier
days as Turk’s Cave because it was located on the land of the Turk family. The
Birmingham News on Mon., Aug. 28, 1967, tells us the following story:
“Three highwaymen stood on top of an Alabama hill one day in
about 1811. Then one by one, the cautiously lowered themselves through an
opening into a large cavern below the hill’s surface. After packing their gear,
the robbers split $27,000 in gold three ways. They climbed out of the cave.
Then they rode off in separate ways.
“That cave is in South Alabama, about three miles northwest
of historic Brooklyn in Conecuh County. In the early 1800s, while Brooklyn was
being settled and Thomas Jefferson was president, a highwayman named Joseph T.
Hare, along with two others, set up a robber’s den in the naturally formed
limestone cavern. From the cave, which Hare himself called ‘an eligible brigand’s
residence,’ the robbers waylaid travelers carrying gold along the two roads
that joined at Burnt Corn, Wolf Trail and the Federal Road, built in 1805.
“After he left the cave, Hare did what most Alabamians do
now, he headed south to Florida for a vacation. But finally on Sept. 10, 1818,
he was caught, tried and hung in Baltimore with more than 1,500 persons
watching.
“Hare was not the first Alabamian to use the cave. Indians
let the smoke of their campfires rise through the entrance hole in the ceiling
of the cavern. The site of an Indian burial ground is about one-fourth of a
mile away.
“After the infamous days of Hare, the cave was a relatively
placid place under the name and ownership of the Turk family.
“During the Civil War, when the Confederate army was in
desperate need of nitrate for gunpowder, soldiers extracted the guano from the
cave from the bat droppings. To facilitate the operations, they dug out the
present entrance to the cave from the side of a short, steep hill.
“Around 1900 it was bought by the Sanders family and has
gone by the name of Sanders Cave ever since.
“There is an old legend that if a person were to go far
enough into the cave, he would see daylight, but no one has ever proved it,
according to Bob Kendall, resident of Evergreen.
“Leading out from the entrance to the cavern, which is about
the size of the rotunda of Alabama’s State Capitol, are several passageways
that go back as far as a mile. Stalagtites and stalagmites hang from ceilings
and build up from the floor.
“At present the cave is owned by Orville Mack. Although
there are no public facilities, there are frequent visitors to the cavern.
Nearly everybody around Brooklyn is familiar with its story.
“Kendall remembers exploring the cave as a young boy, using
blazing pine knots to peer down passageways. His ’67 counterpart carries a
shiny, red flashlight bought at the corner drugstore – not as romantic, but
less air pollution.”
(To be continued)
(If you missed it last Sunday and would like to go back
and read Part I of Kendall’s “History of Brooklyn,” visit http://leepeacock2010.blogspot.com/2014/04/part-i-of-rg-bob-kendall-jrs-history-of.html.)
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