, showing
Indigenous settlements and a fort or
blockhouse north of
Melton's Bluff on
Elk River (Boston Public Library G3865 1795 .R87) Jackson had long been interested in the agricultural and economic prospects of Alabama. A captain in his army during the War of 1812 recorded his observations of Jackson in his journal shortly before the 1814 capture of Mobile: Jackson's first plantation along the
Muscle Shoals of the
Tennessee River in what is now
Alabama, United States was at a location called
Melton's Bluff in what is today
Lawrence County. On September 20, 1816, Jackson concluded the
Treaty of the Chickasaw Council House, in which the
Chickasaw people () ceded large sections of
middle Tennessee and northern Alabama to the U.S. government. The land was at that time considered part of the
Mississippi Territory;
Alabama Territory would be separated in 1817. Andrew Jackson bought a plantation there "situated at the head of
Elk River Shoals on the south bank of the Tennessee". Jackson and his longtime business partner
John Hutchings bought Melton's Bluff on November 22, 1816. Jackson called it the
Muscle Shoals plantation. The transaction paperwork is preserved in the Jackson papers at the
Library of Congress and includes the deed to Melton's Bluff from David Melton, as well as bills of sale from Eliza Melton to Andrew Jackson and his business partner John Hutchings for an enslaved woman named, Jenny, and a bill of sale from Nancy Melton for her farm and an enslaved man named Jame. The
Cotton Gin Treaty of 1805–06 with the
Cherokee people (, ), signed at
Washington, D.C., had set aside two special reserves of land at the Muscle Shoals, one on the south side of the Tennessee River called
Doublehead's land, and another six square miles north of the river beginning at Spring Creek reserved to co-owners Moses Melton and Charles Hicks. In 1816 a letter to president
James Monroe suggested federal forces would be used to remove Indigenous residents named Melton and Hicks from the property. Andrew Jackson, as a major general of the Southern Division of the
United States Army, was among those responsible for the removal. He wrote
George Washington Campbell on December 22, 1816, that he had received "the order for the removal of all intruders from the land ceded by the Chickasaws lying north of the T... I am anxious before I enter upon the execution of the order to be advised, whether the tenants of [Charles] Hicks & [David and Betsy] Melton are to be removed from that reservation, and I hope you have ere this recd. my letter on that subject and has obtained the Presidents instruction for me thereon." According to the editors of
The Papers of Andrew Jackson, on December 28, "George Graham (soldier)|[George] Graham directed that the Melton-Hicks reservees retained only an '
Indian title' and ordered removal of 'all persons found upon those reservations in contravention of the right of the United States, whether with or without the consent of the reservees'." Per the editors of
The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Jackson "never obtained more than an Indian title to the Melton's Bluff plantation". (This was illegal; no one was supposed to buy land directly from Indigenous people; it was supposed to be a function of the federal government negotiating with the tribes as
sovereign nations, and then the government had the authority to resell it to individuals.) The opening of the Muscle Shoals to White settlement was an eager time for Jackson. According to historian Gordon T. Chappell, "Among those particularly interested in the land of this area was Andrew Jackson, who at the time was engaged in laying out plans for a
military road through that part of the region near the present site of
Florence, Alabama. He and the surveyor general were scheduled to meet on May 25, 1817, 'to make a small view of the country'. Jackson's interest was so whetted by the fine land of the Tennessee Valley that he consulted the surveyor general on several occasions regarding the choice sites". In June 1817 Andrew Jackson wrote to his wife
Rachel Jackson from
Huntsville, "I was at the Bluff Two days & nights, Major Hutchings deserves a Meddlehe has the finest Prospect of a good crop I ever saw, his
cotton far excells any crop I have seen, & I think we may calculate, on, from Eighty, to Ninety Baleshe will be in, perhaps before I return he has a bad cough, I have urged him to come in & apply proper remedies for it". Cherokee title to Melton's and Doublehead's reserves was extinguished on July 8, 1817 by the
Jackson–McMinn Treaty. In August 1817 Jackson wrote John Coffee about prospects for developing and marketing a new town in the newly ceded land. To Jackson's eye, "Double heads place on the north side, the head of the shoals, or Meltons Bluff on the south, with the site below the mouth of
Flint on the south side are the only places, that I could suppose would be proper sites for Towns, and some of those only, that ever can be expected to grow into any beneficial size". Jackson wrote to Coffee from Melton's Bluff in September 1816 reporting much sickness in the vicinity, expressing concern over the health of Hutchings, and asking him to tell Stockley D. Hutchings to send a new
overseer. According to travel writer
Anne Royall, who spent several days at Melton's Bluff two years later, Jackson "had heard of the sickness of which his overseer had died, and of several of his slaves being confined at the same time.—Mrs. Mitchell, and her husband, (the merchant before mentioned) were lying, not able to rise, one in one bed, and the other opposite in another. She related to me, that the General and his suite would take the water buckets and go to the river for water; heat it over the fire, and take the sick in their arms, and placing their feet in the warm water, would thus support them, until they were sufficiently bathed, and then bear them back to their bed again. After this the General would administer medicine with his own hands. Thus he went the whole night, and never ceased till he had administered the necessary wants to all, both black and white, and consoling them with the most soothing language." Simultaneously Jackson was commanding that the surveyor general for the area bring him specific
township and range maps for the region, specifically the ones for the land near Coldwater Creek and Spring Creek. Hutchings, who was one of dozens of cousins on Jackson's wife's side of the family, and was called "Jackey" by the family, died on November 20, 1817. It is unknown if Hutchings died of the plague that killed the slaves and the overseer, or from a distinct, preexisting illness. An extravagant grave marker was commissioned for Hutchings, which was rediscovered in the 1920s in an overgrown thicket about northeast of
Athens, Alabama. Like nearby
Bainbridge, Alabama, which was a townlet promoted by his nephew
Captain Jack Donelson, Marathon came to little. The
United States Congress provided for a mail route to hamlets in the area on May 13, 1820, from
Mooresville "by Melton's Bluff,
Courtland, Bainbridge, and Big Spring to
Russellville. Alas! Melton's Bluff and Bainbridge were 'mushroom' towns and Big Spring soon became
Tuscumbia to honor the
Chickasaw warrior,
Tashka ambi. Melton's Bluff site lost the main mail route in less than two years for after May 8, 1822, the post rider went by
Triana, Mooresville,
Athens, East-port, Bainbridge and to the Big Spring". Jackson and Coffee were also involved in developing the trading-post settlement of
York's Bluff, which languished for decades but eventually re-emerged to posterity in the 1880s as
Sheffield, Alabama. Jackson sold the remaining fragments of Melton's Bluff land in 1827. == Evans Spring plantation ==