'Capt. Smith's Bear Story' took place at Lower Peach Tree around 1830

I love it when readers share old ghost stories, folk tales and local legends with me, and Hubert Champion sent me a humorous item this week that really cracked me up.

Hubert, a native of Selma who now lives in Autauga County, is the fourth great-grandson of early Wilcox County settler, John Champion. In 1846, several newspapers across Alabama published a tale called “Capt. Smith’s Bear Story,” and John Champion was one of the main characters in that supposedly true tale. The best available version of this story appeared in the Sept. 19, 1846 edition of The Alabama Beacon newspaper in Greensboro, in a column they called “The Humorist.”

The tale begins about the year 1830 when a man known as “Capt. Smith” settled in Wilcox County’s Lower Peach Tree community. There, he planted a few acres of corn, cotton, potatoes and a small family garden. As the story goes, he lived a short distance from John Champion, who was in his early 40s.

“My nearest neighbor (John Champion), being better off than the rest of us, had a nice gang of hogs,” Capt. Smith said. “And, feeling a little above his neighbors on account of his wealth, and being a rather overbearing man, too, was not particular whether his stock broke into other people’s fields or not.”

Capt. Smith said that his crop was too small to feed his family and Champion’s hogs too, so he complained to Champion about the hog situation several times, but Champion would never do anything about it. Not long after that, Smith paid a visit to an old neighbor named Erasmus Culpepper, who knew an old-timey trick to fix the hog problem.

Culpepper told him that “if a foot, or even a piece of bearskin was thrown down in a place where hogs (trespass) that they would never show their snouts there again. I went home and got the skin of a bear which I had killed some time before, and having supplied myself with some corn, I went out and saw about 20 fine year-olds munching away in my field. I ‘tolled them up,’ and catching a good runner, sewed him up in the bear skin, and then turned him loose, when he ran after the rest, who flew from the supposed bear.”

The last that was seen of those hogs was at Bassett’s Creek, which was nearly 40 miles from Smith’s house, “only two being alive, one running from the one sewed up in the skin, and he trying to catch the other – the rest were found dead in the road, having literally run themselves to death. It is needless to add that John Champion’s hogs stayed at home after that.”

Close examination of this story reveals some aspects that can be verified. Thanks to Hubert’s research, we know that John Champion was a real man. In fact, John Champion died around the age of 64 in January 1852 at his residence near Choctaw Corner. His obituary was published in The Grove Hill Herald the following week, and he was described as an “old and highly respectable citizen,” who was “an honest, upright man, beloved and respected by all who knew him.”

Also, many of you will be familiar with Bassett’s Creek, which originates in Clarke County and flows into the Tombigbee River. Sources say that Bassett’s Creek, which was likely named after early settler Thomas Bassett, originates near Thomasville and empties into the Tombigbee River south of Jackson. As the crow flies, Bassett’s Creek is mostly southwest of Lower Peach Tree.

However, information about who “Capt. Smith” and Erasmus Culpepper were remains a mystery. One is also left to wonder if it’s true that a hog will avoid areas that have been “treated” with a bearskin. If anyone in the reading audience knows, please let me know.

In the end, I really appreciate Hubert Champion taking the time to share this story with me. I enjoy hearing these old tales as well as local legends, ghost stories and old folk tales. If anyone in the reading audience has anything along those lines that they would like to share, please don’t hesitate to do so.