Thomas Simpson Woodward

Thomas Simpson Woodward (1797-1859) served in the War of 1812 and the Second Seminole War. After his military service, Woodward moved from Georgia to east central Alabama, where he settled and named the area Tuskegee. In 1859, he compiled and published a collection of his letters in Woodward’s Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee Indians. Later historians have turned to the book for its depiction of the early settlement of the state and its detailed account of Woodward’s extensive dealings with the Native Americans of the area.

Woodward was born in Elbert County, Georgia, in 1794. His ancestors came from England to the American Colony of Maryland in the 1600s; some later settled in Virginia. A grandfather served in the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War; he died in action at Dutchman’s Creek in South Carolina on May 12, 1779. After, Woodward’s father then joined the struggle at a young age. He died when Thomas was three. Raised by his mother alone, Woodward received a basic education and eventually followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the military. From July 1812 to May 1814, Woodward served in the U.S. Army as a Georgia Volunteer during the War of 1812 and the associated Creek War 1813-14. He spent his service in Georgia, present-day Alabama (then part of the Mississippi Territory), and present-day Florida, fighting against Native American tribes, in particular the Red Stick Creeks. (The Red Sticks were a faction of the Creek Nation opposing U.S. expansion and thus allied with the British during the war.) Other tribes of the Southeast, including the Choctaws and the Cherokees, fought alongside U.S. forces. By serving with members of various tribes, Woodward developed strong relationships with some of them, and after leaving the army, he lived with Native people for a time. Woodward personally knew Red Stick leader Peter McQueen, Big Warrior (Tustanagee Thluco), William Weatherford, Little Prince (Tastanaki Hopayi), William McIntosh, Indian agent John Crowell, and others of note. At one point, he fell in love with the daughter of a Cherokee chief, but her father ultimately forbade the marriage.

In 1815, Woodward rejoined the Army and later served in the First Seminole War (1817-18), this time as a major. The war started as a border conflict along the Georgia-Spanish Florida boundary. The dispute involved U.S. forces under Gen. Andrew Jackson, the Seminole tribe, and other Native tribes. After Jackson’s successful invasion into Spanish Florida, the Spanish monarchy eventually agreed to the Adams-Onís Treaty, which gave the United States control of Florida. Woodward led a group of allied Creek warriors during the conflict.

Around the conclusion of the war, Woodward moved to the Alabama Territory. His previous military experience led to his election as brigadier general of the Alabama Militia in 1820. In that same year, Woodward married Sarah Ann DuBose in Dallas County on August 3, 1820. The couple would later have three children. He would be a member of the party that welcomed the Marquis de LaFayette at Fort Mitchell in 1825 on his tour of the United States and escorted LaFayette to Montgomery at the request of Gov. Israel Pickens.

After living near Montgomery for a few years, Woodward acquired property in Macon County around 1833. He soon became one of the first landowners, alongside a man named James Dent, in an area he named Tuskegee, after the Creek village Tuskigi at the mouth of the Coosa River. Woodward built his house near the present-day junction of Columbus and Union Springs Road. While living in Tuskegee, Woodward received an appointment as the locating agent to assist with the forced removal of Native Americans in Alabama to their newly created reservations in present-day Oklahoma. He also became a notable land speculator and enslaver.

In 1841, Woodward and his family left Alabama and moved to the Arkansas Territory near Camden. There, Woodward continued his land speculation and at one point tried to use his enslaved laborers to dig a canal that would divert the river away from Camden to his land, where he hoped to establish a new town. In 1853, Woodward moved again, this time to Winn Parish, Louisiana. He accumulated more than 30,000 acres of land in Louisiana and enslaved some 400 people.

While living in Louisiana, Woodward wrote several letters to his friend Edward Hanrick, then a resident of Montgomery. Hanrick showed some of these letters to Johnson Jones Hooper, a prominent writer and publisher, believing he would find Woodward’s recounting of the early history of the state and his knowledge of the Creeks interesting. Hooper published some of these letters in his paper, the Montgomery Mail, where they attracted significant attention. Soon, other friends of Woodward had these letters published in Columbus, Georgia, and Union Springs, Bullock County. Eventually, Hanrick suggested to Woodward the idea of publishing his letters in a compiled volume. After some initial hesitation because of his lack of formal education was reflected in his writing, Woodward agreed, and Hooper published the letters as Woodward’s Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee Indians in 1859. Woodward also wrote to historian Albert James Pickett to express his disagreement with Pickett’s account of the Canoe Fight. Woodward had known several of the battle’s key participants, including Gen. Samuel Dale, Col. Jeremiah Austill, James Smith, and a free African American known as Caesar. Woodward would go on to write additional letters in which he critiqued other aspects of Pickett’s versions of events. Modern historians reference both authors carefully as their works contain inaccuracies and relied on memory and secondhand accounts.

Woodward died on December 24, 1859, or 1861 (sources differ), in Wheeling, Louisiana. Before his death, Woodward began constructing a brick-and-mortar tomb for himself and his family. Over time, the tomb fell into disrepair, and vandals destroyed much of it while looking for supposed treasure. Despite efforts by the local mayor of Montgomery, Louisiana and a local historian to restore the tomb and turn it into a tourist attraction, it remains largely destroyed. A marble marker with Woodward’s name stands in Montgomery Cemetery in Montgomery, Louisiana.