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Until 1806, rivers and Indian trails were the only means of communication in the Alabama region, but in that year Congress provided for the construction of the first two roads. One was to connect Nashville, Tennessee, with Natchez upon the Mississippi, crossing the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. It was known as the "Natchez Trace" and came to be a highway of no little importance in the western country. The other was to follow the route from Athens, Georgia, to New Orleans, passing through the settlement on the Tombigbee. It came to be known as the "Federal Road" and along it thousands of settlers later found their way to Alabama.

Now, a man coming: into Alabama from the piedmont region of Georgia would have the choice of two routes. He could go by the Federal Road into the Alabama-Tombigbee basin or he could take a road which passed from Augusta to Athens, crossed the Tennessee River where Chattanooga now stands, and led on to Nashville. The highway crossed the road from Knoxville to Huntsville and gave access to the fertile Tennessee Valley region. The Georgia men who helped to settle Madison County in 1809 took this route.

That the Southwest was to become a cotton kingdom was foreshadowed by the early history of Madison County. When the old tobacco-growing districts of the Southern seaboard began to overflow into the piedmont region, a number of Virginia immigrants established the town of Petersburg where the Broad River flows into the Savannah, in Elbert County, Georgia. Here tobacco warehouses were erected and a brisk business ensued. But it did not last long. When the invention of the cotton gin made short staple cotton available for commercial purposes, this crop supplanted tobacco as the principal product of the piedmont region in Georgia and South Carolina. Tobacco warehouses were no longer necessary and Petersburg was abandoned. Its inhabitants were the chief founders of the town of Huntsville. In the small triangle which was the Madison County of that day, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand acres of land were sold between 1809 and 1812.

As to who was the first white man to settle in Madison county is yet a mooted question, but circumstances lead to the belief that "Old Man Ditto" was living among the Indians as a trader at "Ditto's Landing,
"(Cherokee-Old-Fields or Whitesburg) some years before Huntsville was located. That John Hunt was the first white man to build his hut on the banks of the "Big Spring," is historically settled. Hunt's cabin was situated on the slope of the blufif overlooking the spring, at the point which is now the southwest corner of the intersection of Bank street and Oak avenue, on the property occupied by the residence of Mr. Frank Murphy. Incidents and circumstances attending Hunt's journey to the Big Spring confirm the belief that there were white settlers in Madison county, north of Huntsville, before the arrival of Hunt.

Judge Taylor, in his letters dealing with early life in Madison county, tells us that Joseph and Isaac Criner, accompanied by Stephen McBroom, explored the northern part of the county in 1804 and built a hut on the banks of a stream, which is now known as Mountain Fork of Flint river. Isaac Criner was personally known to Judge Taylor, and in his letters he gives us Mr. Criner's narrative of the events of those early days in his own words. In substance Mr. Criner says: In the early part of 1805- he and Joseph, his brother, came to Mountain Fork and built a cabin for Joseph's family, then one for himself. Shortly after the erection of these cabins, John Hunt and a man named Bean came to their cabins and spent the night, continuing their journey the next morning.

Hunt and Bean came from the north of what is now New Market, along a trail, which is now the Winchester, Tennessee, road. They had heard of the "Big Spring," and of the abundance of big game in its vicinity. In a few weeks Bean returned and stated that he was going back to what is now Bean creek, near Salem, Tennessee, but that Hunt was going to locate at the "Big Spring," and would return and bring his family later. Mr. Criner also tells us that in 1805 several families came into the county from north of New Market, along the same course traversed by Hunt; among whom were the Walkers, Davises, McBrooms and Reeses.

These early settlers got word back to their former friends and neighbors of the unusual fertility of the soil, the beauty of the country, and of the wonderful "Big Spring," and in 1806, large numbers of home-seekers began to come into the county from Middle and East Tennessee, and Georgia. These pioneers were of the types usually found on unsettled frontiers, "the advance guard of civilization," known as "squatters." They were a very thrifty lot, and at the Government land sales in 1809 many were able to buy the tracts upon which they had "squatted" and made their homes. As a whole they were an honest, law-abiding people, modest in their desires and customs, living peaceably without law or government for some years.

Between the years 1805 to 1809 wealthy and cultured slave owners came into the county in large numbers from North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. Soon this class outnumbered the pioneers ; these later settlers bought large tracts of land at the sales in 1809. In coming into the county, the settlers from North Carolina and Virginia moved along the then western boarder of civilized customs and cultivated lands into West Georgia and Middle Tennessee, till they reached the Tennessee river, which they crossed near the Georgia line.

The life of these pioneers was very primitive ; they drew solely on the resources of the surrounding wilderness for their necessities and comforts. Their houses seldom had a piece of iron about them. The floors were of dirt, and in rare instances this was covered with puncheon. Even the hinges of their doors were of wood. The walls of the houses being built of logs.

Instead of fastening the covering upon roofs, with nails, lengthy poles were placed across the boards, and weighted down at the ends. Owing to the scarcity of adequate tools and hardware supplies, the houses were necessarily very small, one-room structures. The small huts served to house families, which, in many instances, were greatly out of proportion to their size, for be it remembered, in those days families were large and in this particular settlement legend records that they were unusually large.

As families increased in size, and necessity demanded, rooms were added to the family hut—but without increasing its exterior dimensions—by the simple process of stringing up another buckskin curtain, which served to partition off the new room. The erstwhile "feather-tick," upon the bed was not one of the luxuries of which these early settlers could boast, at all events, the entire family could not; for the younger children were bedded upon pallets, and as the family continued to increase in numbers, the larger boys slept in the barn loft, and legend has it, even under trees and most anywhere. History in its record of customs and usages, which prevailed in those early days, suggests the existence of a milder climate then, than now.

The prevailing table-ware was constructed of hewn wooden utensils, though some of the wealthy settlers possessed pewter ware.

For some time these pioneers lived a life of freedom from tilling of the soil, subsisting the while in sumptuous complacency upon the abundant provisions of nature. However, after a time they realized the unusual fertility of the soil, and then clearing of land was commenced, and corn was planted.

There being no grist mills at which their corn could be ground into meal, resort was had to the age-old custom, in
primitive quarters, of using a crude mortar and pestle, made by hollowing out a hard stump in which they pounded the corn into meal. Little or no wheat was planted, and they lived for a time without flour; however, when the population grew, flour was shipped in from the trading station at Ditto's Landing (Whitcsburg).

During the first years of the settlement all supplies received from the outside world were transported in by pack mules from the settlements further north; later, practically all supplies were shipped from these settlements further north, down the Tennessee river, and put off at Ditto's Landing, about ten miles southof the settlement, and from there hauled in by wagons. At this landing on the Tennessee an Indian trading station was operated by John Ditto, who lived there among the Indians of this territory, without white associates for some years before the settlers came into the north part of the county.

In due time, the cultivation of cotton was begun, and shortly thereafter the cotton spinning wheel came into very general use in the settlement. The yarn made therewith superseded in some measure buckskin, which was still in very general use as a substitute for cloth; the principle article of clothing being dressed buckskin. Prior to the arrival of cotton and the cotton spinning wheel, buckskin was used almost exclusively as bedspreads, ropes, sewing threads or thongs, as well as for many other and varied purposes. For a time, at any rate, the advent of the cotton spinning wheel, locally, did not supersede the use of buckskin as an article of dress, for cotton cloth remained a scarce and seemingly very precious article, as calico cost 50 cents a yard. As a consequence only a few young ladies of the wealthiest families could afford to disport themselves along the paths of the settlement clad in a calico dress, colored by boiling with different kinds of native barks, and shod with buckskin moccasins. Some few of the wealthier inhabitants could boast flax spinning wheels, with which clothes, table and bed linen were made in limited quantities for home use.

Things which we have learned to consider as every day necessities, such as lamps, were, with these early inhabitants only "medical" necessities, being used exclusively in cases of sickness. Gun-powder, the chief instrumentality for protection and subsistence, was made by the settlers themselves.

In summing up and taking a survey of the apparent hardships undergone by the early settlers, who traveled here from homes and communities furnishing more of the ease and luxury of the times, and far greater security of life; we naturally inquire, why did they abandon such homes and communities, and why, again, on such abandonment, did they choose this particular spot, the then furthermost settlement from civilization, and many miles away from their former friends and neighbors? In answer to these queries, we can only surmise. But, it is not wondrous strange that these people should have been possessed of the spirit of the times; that pioneer spirit which was so predominant. Having once gotten upon their way, it is still less to be wondered at, that they should have halted in their journey and builded their huts around the wonderful "Big Spring." about which Hunt had spread the news when he returned to his home for his family. Truly, this new Eden must have offered manv and unprecedented inducements. Though surrounded by Indians, they were never molested. The climate was healthful and mild; the surrounding country was well supplied with waterways; the streams abounded with red-horse, salmon and trout; the forest with bronze turkeys, flocks of pigeon, and red and gray squirrels ; and quail could be bagged by herding and driving them into nets; deer and bear frequented the river bottoms, and wild duck were plentiful. Truly to them, it must have seemed that nature had provided this spot with an unlimited wealth of resources.

References:—Judge Taylor's History of Madison Coniity: Brewer's Alabama: Huntsville Directory, 1859; Northern Alabama: kindness of many older citizens; newspaper files and clippings.