"When we stop to think about our ancestors as they came to this county, from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, we must realize how much they wanted to establish a home. They had left their homes to come to this new country, not knowing what hardships they might have to endure. The journey was long, and only a few miles could be covered in one day. People were walking, riding horseback, in buggies, carriages, wagons, and many of them pulling their belongings along in hogsheads. Fire making was not a simple task, as matches had not been invented. Fires had to be started by rubbing sticks on each other or by striking flint with iron. Supper was a very simple meal; cornbread made of meal, salt, and water. It was called an ashcake; it was cooked in the ashes, and called a johnnycake if cooked on a hot stone in front of the fire. As these people camped at night they sat around the campfire and sang, played the banjo, and told stories. Those who had covered wagons were well off, but those who did not tried to stop at night where they would be sheltered by an overhanging rock or perhaps a cave. If any members of the party died along the way, they were buried by the side of the road with only a few rocks to mark the grave. Yet, in spite of all the hardships, struggle, danger, our ancestors wanted to come to this new country.

At a time when we are all interested in the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, this is a good time to talk about the Tombigbee River and its contribution to the growth of Pickens County. Steeped in history, tradition, and romance, this great waterway extends the length of Alabama and Pickens County, touching parts in Mississippi, is the dominant contributor to the exciting and colorful history of our region. Prior to the formation of the county, the earliest settlers came and settled on the Tombigbee. Early land grants show that these pioneers received grants on springs that emptied into the river, mainly Coalfire and Big Creek. It was to the Tombigbee that Josiah Tilley came in eighteen seventeen and settled at what is now called Tilley's Bluff. This was two years prior to Alabama becoming a state, and three years before the formation of Pickens County. Tilley had a more decided taste for backwoods life than for the refinement of civilization, and soon made friends with the Indians. He was a friend of Chief Mashulatiba, from Mashulaville, just west of Macon, Mississippi, and he made frequent visits to the Indian village. When the Indians moved west, Tilley, having lost his first wife by death, married an Indian squaw, and went west with the tribe. Here he lived until he died. He owned the first boat landing in Pickens County.

These early settlers suffered the usual privations of pioneers. They lived in crude log cabins with dirt floors, cooked on open fires, and had little furniture. Some brought a few treasured pieces from home, that is, from the old colonies, but most of the furniture was made from split saplings. The few pieces they did bring to this country are our most valuable antiques today.

These early settlers were squatters; the lands were not brought into the market until four years after Tilley came here. This was in eighteen twenty-one. In eighteen nineteen Alabama passed laws to protect its people from land frauds, but many land sharks beat many pioneers out of the land they had settled upon and improved.

After growing a crop of corn, they had no way to grind it into meal, so they resorted to the pestle and mortar. Men working in the forest and fields listened for the pounding for it meant that dinner was ready. In eighteen eighteen the settlers on the Tombigbee were so dependent upon corn that it was selling for at least four dollars per bushel. Daniel Chalmers contrived a water-powered pestle which pounded out most of the meal for the settlers around Pickensville. In eighteen nineteen Henry Anderson built a water-powered mill on Big Creek near Pickensville, and in a few years nearly every stream in the county was put to work by man in some laborsaving capacity. These pioneers won the battle against disease, Indian attack, poor communication, and loneliness. They wrote back to their kin in Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia, and encouraged them to come to this way. By way of pony express it took days for a letter to reach its destination. The earliest mail was merely addressed to Pickens, Alabama and to no town for an address at all. After the formation of the county, and especially after the Indians moved out, there was an influx of immigrants equal to the gold-rush going to California. Those who came in from the west followed Indian trails or roads that had been cut out by the armies of 1812. The trails were marked by three notches.

The population in eighteen and twenty-two was approximately five thousand people, and in eighteen sixty-nine had reached nineteen thousand, with nine thousand of those being whites and ten thousand being black. The paths that led into this part of the country remained paths until 1812 when they were expanded into wagon roads. It was necessary at that time to get a passport to get through the Creek Nation coming to the Tombigbee River. Others came down the Tennessee River into north Alabama, and then by land into Jefferson County, Blount County, Tuscaloosa, Bibb, and the surrounding counties, where they usually made a crop of corn before coming to the Tombigbee region. Some came down the Natchez Trace in east Mississippi. They left the Trace just west of Aberdeen, at that time called Cotton Gin Port, and made their way to the Tombigbee. From this point they moved their wagons, carts, families, and stock along the winding riverbanks or built rafts and moved down the river, looking for a suitable place to settle.

In some letters James Nance wrote back to his father, which we talked about previously, he told about many other things that he had found here. He said the Presbyterian missionaries had been sent here to preach to the Indians. He told about an Indian asking a missionary, who sent you here, and he replied, the Good Lord. And the Indian replied, let Him take you from our midst. He told of hearing from a Mr. Lee who had settled one hundred and thirty miles south of Pickensville, and that they had had their new baby and had named it Nancy Lee, for Mrs. Lee. He said he wished that his brother Simon could come and get some of the cane that was twenty feet long so that he could make him some fishing poles out of it.

Pickett's History of Alabama tells us that both DeSoto and Bienville came through our county. Bienville, at the head of five hundred soldiers paddled along the winding Tombigbee as he went to battle the Chickasaws above Cotton Gin Port. Traveling in crude boats they made their way as far as that point, and after several fights with this race of Indians, he was defeated, and in disgrace he silently retreated back down the Tombigbee, past what would later be Pickensville, Memphis, Fairfield, and Vienna."