More details arise about final resting place of Lt. Joseph M. Wilcox

Map showing location of Wilcox Bar on Alabama River.

An old newspaper article published in 1934 seems to put to rest the question over the final resting place of Wilcox County namesake, Lt. Joseph M. Wilcox.

Many readers will know that Wilcox was a U.S. Army officer who was killed by hostile Indians on Jan. 15, 1814. Most reliable sources say that he was tomahawked to death near where Pursley Creek flows into the Alabama River. Wilcox County was later named in his honor.

Almost all sources say that Wilcox was buried at Fort Claiborne in Monroe County, but a handful of sources say he was exhumed and reburied in the Camden Cemetery, where he has a headstone today. Sources have recently come to light that indicate that Wilcox isn’t buried at Claiborne or Camden, but remains in an unmarked grave to this day.

The Feb. 22, 1934 edition of The Wilcox Progressive Era published an article by local historian Alice Foster, whose research was based on the writings of Judge Zoroaster Selman Cook of Camden, who died in 1893. Foster wrote that while Lt. Wilcox was traveling down the river, he was shot from ambush, somewhere between Prairie Bluff and Bridgeport. The soldiers who were with him “rowed with all possible speed” until dark and then stopped on an island below Blacks Bluff, where they buried the dead officer.

Foster said this island or bar became known as Wilcox Bar. She said the burial took place at night, without the aid of lights, because the burial party didn’t want to be seen by hostile Indians. They also didn’t want the Indians to dig up Wilcox and mutilate his body. Later, one of the soldiers – Isaac Sheffield – stopped at the bar to see the grave during a return trip to Fort Claiborne from Fort Dale in present-day Butler County.

In April 1816, L.W. “Berry” Mason and another man came up the river in a dugout canoe, looking for a place to settle. He picked a spot on the west side of the river, opposite of Wilcox Bar. Soon after this, Wilcox’s grave was pointed out to him by older settlers. Foster wrote that Mason frequently visited Wilcox Bar to look for turtle eggs and saw the grave many times, it being visible for many years.

Frank Johnson, an “old captain (who) came down the river on a flat boat in 1816,” also had the grave pointed out to him at Wilcox Bar. Years later, Johnson and Mason both pointed out Wilcox’s grave to Judge Cook during a trip on the river in Johnson’s steamboat. “A few bushes marked the place,” Cook said, noting that “the Bar or island had been so worn away by high waters that the upper end, the location of the grave” was submerged.

Foster wrapped up her article by letting people know that “these facts, it seems, should settle the point beyond any reasonable doubt as to the burial place of Lt. Joseph M. Wilcox.”

With that said, I suppose it is possible, but unlikely, that Wilcox’s remains were recovered at some point after 1934 and were reburied in the Camden Cemetery. If anyone has any proof of this, please let me know. If not, the question over his final resting place seems to be settled, barring any proof otherwise.