Find A Grave Memorial# 47214119

The 1850 US Census; Choctaw CO, AL “age 35 b GA, wife Mary J. Ewing age 30. Her tombstone in Comanche Co., Texas is “Sarah Ewing b. 1820”

1850 Census gives children as: Samuel, age 8, TN; WAD, age 6, b MS; Sarah J., age 5, b MS; Martha A., age 4, b MS; Mary C., age 2, b. AL; James L., 5 mos, b. AL; 139

EWIN, W.A.D., 35, M, Planter, GA,# 164
Mary D, 28, F, AL
Jas L, 10, M, AL
Samuel T., 8, M, TN
W.A.D., 6, M, MS
Sarah D., 5, F, MS
Martha A., 4, F, MS
Mary C., 2, F, AL

1870 Choctaw CO, AL, Butler P. O.
Ewing, WM, 58 b. TN
Mary, 48 b. AL
James, 28 b. AL
Martha, 18 b. MS
Mary C. 15 b. MS
Alexander, 15 b. MS
Saphronia, 10 b. MS
Joseph, 8 b. MS
Julius, 6 b. MS

William Allen David Ewing and Mary Jane “Sarah” Lucy Ewing

William Allen David Ewing was a pioneer in the truest sense—leading the way for several families to move from Alabama to Texas just as his own ancestors had moved from Ireland to America in the mid eighteenth century. Born in Georgia in 1811, where his family had moved from Tennessee, William Allen David Ewing, Jr., was the youngest child of William Allen David Ewing, Sr. and Charity Dysert Woods Ewing.

On April 3, 1838, William married Mary J. Lucy in Marengo CO, AL. Little is known of Sarah Lucy Ewing other than that her family farmed in the Tom Bigbee Valley in Alabama. Known children of Wm. Allen David Ewing and Mary J. “Sarah” were: Samuel T. Ewing, 1842; Wm. Allen D., III, 1844; Sarah J., 1845; Martha A., 1846, Mary Catherine “Molly” Charity, 1848; James L., 1850; Joseph; Alexander N., 1852; Safronia, 1854; Julius Eugene, 1866.

For several years Captain Ewing moved his family around from Alabama to Tennessee and Mississippi .(These moves are documented at present primarily by the birth places of his children as shown on subsequent censuses.) He fought in the Choctaw Wars with the Alabama Militia where he earned the title of Captain. After the Civil War, William A. began looking for a new home for himself and his family. “Captain Ewing prepared his business affairs to search for new homes for his family and his married daughters still living in Alabama.1

So Captain Ewing, his wife and three children set out from Alabama to find new homes in Texas. They traveled to New Orleans by train. There he fitted out a wagon with needed household supplies preparing for the overland journey to Waco, then to Comanche CO, Texas. He left three of his younger children in Alabama. Alexander Ewing, age 23, was appointed guardian of James L., Joseph and Jules. Two married daughters remained in Alabama.2 He left many of his household goods and farming tools. Capt. Ewing’s plan was for his four sons to come with the married daughters as soon as a place for them could be readied.” Arriving in Texas in 1874, he located excellent land in Comanche County suitable for farming at a good price. He bought several half sections “locating them on streams of living water with post oak trees in profusion. Like other pioneers from the old south he looked for black land, wood, and water.”3

He purchased several hundred acres and built a house. Communicating with his older children and the Luker family in Alabama, he gave detailed instructions for their impending caravan from Alabama.

Moving to Texas with their father were: Mary Charity “Molly” Ewing who married Benjamin Franklin Luker and Saphronia Ewing. Sarah Ewing remained in Alabama to follow with her husband John W. Luker in 1875. Alexander and Jules followed their father to Texas at a later date.

“Your Grandfather Ewing was simple in his life. He was thrifty and pretty well off for a pioneer. He gave the site for a church, and we buried him there with that in mind, but the settlement built up in the other direction, and the neighbors wanted the church nearer the center of the neighborhood.* So after your grandpa’s death, I gave the land on the hillside north of our farm.” 3

“ Aunt Mollie had many times told Lula the story of Grandsire Ewing’s death from exposure when he made a long trip in the winter to pay a debt. He had gone in a wagon to Waco with his son Alec to pay a lumber bill. Contracting pneumonia on the way back. Grandsire died, and Uncle Alec drove home with the body. Grandsire was the first to be buried in the Ewing graveyard.”4

William Ewing died intestate in Texas


*Note: William A. D. Ewing and Sarah Ewing are buried in the Luker Cemetery between Gustine and Proctor. It is my hypothesis that this reference was to the Baggett Creek Missionary Baptist Church built further to the east.

1 Bradley, Willo M. and Edith Lucille Robinson, Family Trails: Ancestral and Contemporary, Stephenville Printing Co., 1978
2 Ibid., pp. 95-97.
3 Luker, Julia., The Yeoman’s Daughter, Exposition Press - New York – 1953
4 Ibid, p.

Find A Grave Memorial# 47214145

Creek War of 1836
Indian Lands and Removal
As the Native American Indian was gradually relocated westward, and their lands of Georgia were being distributed by the Lottery System, most tribes settled west of the Chattahoochee River in Alabama on a Reserve there.
The Indians from the Alabama side were not allowed to stay over night in Georgia, but frequently came into Columbus during the day seeking food, especially in years when their own harvest was bad. They were also afflicted with an outbreak of smallpox. Generally their behavior was friendly and harmless, but when they visited private homes, some families were frightened.
In 1829, the Georgia Legislature passed an act requiring the Alabama Indians to have permits to cross the river and enter Georgia. In July of that year, the U.S. President Andrew Jackson stationed 1,000 men at Fort Mitchell (AL) for the protection of frontier settlers.
Especially contributing to the unrest at this time period was some land "scams" perpetrated on the Indians.
"According to the treaty, every chief of a town was entitled to a section (640 acres) of land, and every head of a family, married or unmarried, waa half section (320 acres). The first duty of the Government was to send a "Locating Agent" through the country, whose duty it was to "locate" the Indains, beginning with the chiefs, and afterwards all his people, on their respective lots. These locations were made as much to suit the convenience of the natives as possible....Each received a certificate from the Government Agent, which certificate alone was necessary to authorize him to sell his land lawfully, so that the purchaser could secure a patent for the same from the office at Washington".
"After all the Indians were located, there still remained a large surplus of lands, for which the Government paid the stipulated amount of money in cash to the Indian, according to the treaty. This surplus land became what is known as "public land", property of the Government, and was put into the market at $1.25 per acre."
The concept of certificates was totally foreign to the Native American, and in many cases were lost or forgotten. Swindlers (white men working with renegade Indians) took advantage of the situation by posing as the Indian, persuading the Agent to take their word and ratify a sale. (This is spelled out in detail in the Resource book below)
The Native Americans who were thus swindled out of their land became hostile and determined to obtain justice in their own way....the seed for the Wars of 1836.
This is probably the Indian War that WAD Ewing was involved in and earned the title “captain”

In the 1820s and 30s, the Black Belt identified a strip of rich, dark, cotton-growing dirt drawing immigrants primarily from Georgia and the Carolinas in an epidemic of "Alabama Fever." Following the forced removal of Native Americans, the Black Belt emerged as the core of a rapidly expanding plantation area. Geologically, the region lies within the Gulf South's Coastal Plain in a crescent some twenty to twenty-five miles wide that stretches from eastern, south-central Alabama into northwestern Mississippi. The unusually fertile Black Belt (or Prairies) soil is produced by the weathering of an exposed limestone base known as the Selma Chalk, the remnant of an ancient ocean floor.
Half of Alabama's enslaved population was concentrated within ten Black Belt counties where the exploitation of their labor made this one of the richest regions in the antebellum United States. During the "flush times," Black Belt commerce on the Alabama, Black Warrior, and Tombigbee rivers transformed towns such as Montgomery, Selma, Demopolis, and Tuscaloosa and boosted the Gulf Coast port of Mobile.
Article
The Black Belt, Emory Univ., Allen Tullos, April 19, 2004
The Black Belt
Allen Tullos
EMORY UNIVERSITY
ARTICLE
PUBLISHED APRIL 19, 2004