Frontiersman Samuel Dale of Alabama

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dale

Samuel Dale (1772 – May 24, 1841), known as the "Daniel Boone of Alabama", was an American frontiersman, trader, miller, hunter, scout, courier, soldier, spy, army officer, and politician, who fought under General Andrew Jackson, in the Creek War, later, becoming a brigadier general in the U.S. Army, and an advocate for Alabama statehood.

Samuel Dale was born in 1772, in Rockbridge County, Virginia to Scotch-Irish parents, from Pennsylvania. As a boy, both he and his parents moved, many times, with westward border expansion, most notably in 1775 and 1783. With the death of his parents in December 1792, he was responsible for the welfare of eight younger children. From 1793–96 he served as a United States Government scout. He abandoned work as a trader between Savannah, Georgia and the border settlements and as a mill owner-operator to guide immigrants into Mississippi, over Native American lands.

Dale was present, in 1811, when Tecumseh enlisted local Alabama Native Americans to fight against Americans, during his campaign to establish a pan-Indian confederacy. Dale was involved in, many of, these confrontations, particularly in 1814, when he served as a courier bringing documents to Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, from Georgia in just eight days.

"General Dale, as a scout, a pilot to the emigrants who blazed the first path through the Creek Nation, from Georgia to Tombigby, with arms in there hands, and subsequently, as a spy among the Spaniards, at Pensacola, and as a partisan officer, during the most sanguinary epochs of the late war(1813 First Creek War - Red Stick War), present at every butchery, remarkable for "hair-breadth 'scapes," for caution and coolness in desperate emergencies, for exhibitions of gigantic personal strength and great moral courage, his story is studded over with spirit-stirring incidents, unsurpassed by any thing in legend or history. His celebrated 'canoe fight,' where, in the Alabama river, he, with Smith and Jeremiah Austill, fought nine warriors, with clubbed rifles, killed them all, and rowed to shore, would be thought fabulous, if it had not been witnessed by many soldiers, standing upon the banks, who could render them no assistance. Some years before, he was attacked by two warriors, who shouted their war-whoop, as he was kneeling down to drink, and rushed upon him with their tomahawks. He knifed them both, and, though bleeding from five wounds, he retraced their trail nine miles, crept stealthily to their camp, brained three sleeping warriors and cut the thongs of a female prisoner, who lay by their side. While in this act, however, a fourth sprang upon him, from behind a log. Taken at such a disadvantage, and exhausted by the loss of blood, he sank under the serpent-grasp of the savage, who, with a yell of triumph, drew his knife, and, in a few moments, would have closed the contest. At that instant, however, the woman drove a tomahawk deep into the head of the Indian, and thus preserved the life of her deliverer." - From "History of Alabama, and incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the earliest period, Volume II" by Albert James Pickett, 1851

Dale was elected to the first Alabama General Assembly in 1817, serving until 1829. As a legislator and distinguished veteran brigadier general, he and four other men received the visiting Marquis de Lafayette of France into Alabama. A decade later, he was accidentally injured and was not able to carry out the illegal (against a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court) forced relocation of the local Choctaw-speaking Indians the complete distance from Alabama and Mississippi to their assigned territories in Oklahoma. General Dale was the first elected member of the Mississippi House of Representatives to come from Lauderdale County, Mississippi. He next visited Washington, D.C., to request compensation for the supplies that were bought for his troops. He was disappointed when he received no recognition from the Federal Government.[citation needed]

Dale died on May 24, 1841, in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, and was buried there near Daleville, which was named in his honor. Dale County, Alabama is also named for him.[1]

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2460

Samuel Dale (1772-1841) was a scout, frontiersmen, soldier, and public servant who played an important role in carving the state of Alabama out of the Mississippi Territory. His frontier exploits, particularly those involving his participation in the Creek War of 1813-1814, earned him hero status among early Alabamians and the nickname the "Daniel Boone of Alabama."

Dale was born in 1772 in Rockbridge County, Virginia, where his Scots-Irish parents Samuel and Mary O'Brian Dale had recently moved from Pennsylvania. The family's early years were spent moving Samuel Dale (1772-1841) was a frontiersman who became Samuel Dalesouthwest with the frontier, before they finally settled on a farm in Greensborough, Georgia, in 1783. Both of Dale's parents died in 1792, leaving him, at the age of 20, in charge of his seven orphaned brothers and sisters. He was able to support his family despite incessant raids by Creek Indians and in 1793 joined a cavalry troop fighting the raiding Creeks. After the troop disbanded in 1796, Dale went to Savannah, Georgia, where he established a wagoning business engaged in the transportation of goods. He operated this business in the winter and returned to his farm in the spring to help his brothers with planting.

The business prospered enough that Dale could invest in a trip to trade among the Creeks in 1799. Soon thereafter, in response to the increasing migration of settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas into the Mississippi Territory, Dale contracted to bring families into the territory by wagon and then return to Savannah with Indian trade goods. Because of his experience in trade with the Indians of the region, in 1803 Dale was appointed as a guide for federal forces mapping a road through the Cherokee nation in northwest Georgia. In 1811, Dale accompanied U.S. Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins to the annual grand council of the Creeks at Tuckabatchee on the Tallapoosa River in present-day Elmore County. While there, he witnessed Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh's famous speech to the assembled Creeks urging them to join a pan-Indian confederation and resist white expansion.

In July 1813, Dale was wounded in the first engagement of the Creek War during the Battle of Burnt Corn when his militia unit ambushed Creek warriors returning from Pensacola, then in Spanish West Florida, where they had purchased gunpowder and supplies from the Spanish. After the battle, Dale went to Fort Madison in Clarke County to recuperate and to help defend the women and children there seeking protection from Creek war parties. On November 12, 1813, Dale was involved in a storied skirmish of the Creek War, known simply as the "Canoe Fight." On a reconnaissance mission, Dale, Jeremiah Austill, James Smith, and a free black man named Caesar were separated from their main force when they came upon a party of Creeks paddling down the Alabama River in present-day Monroe County. Dale's party, although outnumbered, killed all of the Indians remaining in the canoe to the cheers of their fellow militiamen viewing the action from the opposite bank of the river.

Just a few weeks after this encounter, Dale accompanied General Ferdinand Claiborne's federal troops to attack a large number of Creeks who had gathered at Econochaca, or the "Holy Ground," located on the Alabama River in present-day Lowndes County. During this engagement, Dale witnessed William Weatherford escape capture by leaping with his horse into the river from atop a 15-foot bluff. Like the Canoe Fight, Weatherford's escape and Dale's participation in these events achieved mythic status among Alabamians.

After the Creek War, Dale farmed for awhile near Fort Claiborne, Monroe County. In late December 1814, Dale was dispatched to delivered a message to General Jackson and arrived just as the Battle of New Orleans was commencing on January 8, 1815, and was reportedly awestruck by the spectacle of open field warfare. Dale returned to an area now known as Dale's Ferry on the Alabama River in Monroe County to engage in merchandising and farming.

A marble statue of Samuel Dale, pioneer and General Sam Dale MonumentMuch of the rest of Dale's life was devoted to public service. Soon after the War of 1812, he was elected a delegate at a convention seeking a division of the Mississippi Territory. While serving in the territorial legislature in 1817, Gov. William Wyatt Bibb commissioned Dale as a colonel in the Alabama militia. He later became a member of the first general assembly of the Alabama Territory and served in the state's legislature from 1819 to 1820 and again from 1824 to 1828. In 1821, he was appointed a commissioner to establish a public road from Tuscaloosa to Pensacola and then on to Blakeley in Baldwin County and Fort Claiborne. The Alabama legislature later bestowed upon him the rank of brigadier general and a lifetime pension for his service. In 1831, Dale was appointed to help remove the Choctaw Indians to their treaty-mandated territory on the Arkansas and Red rivers but was unable to make the journey because of severe injuries he sustained when his horse fell early in the trip.

Dale spent most of his remaining years in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, where he became that county's first representative in the Mississippi legislature in 1836. He traveled to the nation's capital, where he visited with President Andrew Jackson and other leading political figures of the time, including John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Thomas Benton. Samuel Dale died on May 24, 1841, and was buried near Daleville, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, which was named for him. There is no evidence that Dale ever married or had any children. In Alabama, Dale County is likewise named in his honor.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Mar 31 2020, 18:38:25 UTC

US Army Brigadier General. He was a scout, frontiersmen, soldier and a public servant who played an important role in the Mississippi Territory. As a scout during the first Creek Indian War in 1793, he joined a cavalry troop fighting the raiding Creeks. After the troop disbanded in 1796, he established a wagon business which engaged in the transportation of goods. The business prospered enough to increase migration of settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas into the Mississippi Territory. In July 1813, another Creek War broke out and Dale went to Fort Madison to help defend the fort and fight Creek war parties. After the Creek War, he farmed for awhile near Fort Claiborne, Monroe County when he was dispatched to deliver a message to General Jackson and arrived just as the Battle of New Orleans began. In the War of 1812, he served as an officer in the US Army, was bestowed the rank Brigadier General and received a lifetime pension for his service. After the war, he was elected a delegate of the Mississippi Territory and was a member of the first general assembly of the Alabama Territory, (1819-20, 1824-28). He spent most of his remaining years in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, where he became that county's first representative in the Mississippi Legislature in 1836.