9
Arrival in Alabama


T
he early pioneers were not foolish people who uprooted their families and plunged blindly into the wilderness.  They gathered information, scouted the new territory and planned a route to the new country, as any sensible people would do.  They also banded together in groups for mutual support and protection.  

From the records, it is known that Stephen McCraw, clerk at the Bush River Church, sent his son, Abner Gary McCraw, to Perry County in 1818 with the family slaves to prepare a home in the unpopulated forest for the family.   Charles Crow moved to Perry County in 1819 and re-corded his land purchase in the county tract book on April 7, 1819.  Ste-phen McCraw recorded his claim twenty-one days earlier.   There is lit-tle doubt that these two families came to Alabama about the same time and were accompanied by other families from the Bush River Church and community.

Charles Crow, Stephen McCraw, William Greer, Noah Haggard, Abra-ham Summer, Thomas Summer, Levi Martin, Joseph Prestridge, Provi-dence McAdams, Thomas Lowe, John Walters, Joseph Persons, and Robert Sturdivant, all future members of the Ocmulgee Church, bought land in 1819 and 1820 in the immediate vicinity of site where the church located.  

Charles' land consisted of 158.4 acres, located one mile directly south of the church site, and Stephen McCraw acquired 475 acres adjacent to Charles.  William Greer secured title to 813 acres directly north of Charles, and it is upon land originally belonging to William Greer that the Ocmulgee Church now stands.  Other pioneers such as John Persons, James Prestridge, Daniel H. Norwood, Claiborne Callicate, Jesse T. Butler, Samuel New and John Waugh moved into the Oakmulgee Creek area at the same time, but the heads of household were not church mem-bers.  

There was a second wave of settlers in the 1830's who took up unclaimed land along the Oakmulgee and westward to the Cahaba River.  These second decade settlers included Elias George, George Hopper, James D. Johnson, Leonard Butler, Solomon Smith, William and Jerman Fike, William G. Gary, William Henry, Samuel Kelly and John D. Walters.  

The original settlers and their children bought unclaimed lands in the 1820's and 1830's to expand their land holdings and, in the case of the children, establish their own families.  Charles' son, Elijah Palmer Crow, married Fedelia West on December 3, 1828 and purchased 79.7 acres of land a half a mile south of his father in 1832.  Abner G. McCraw purchased 240 acres northwest of the church site in 1825 and 1831 and another 240 acres due west of the Crow family in 1833 and 1834.  Charles' daughter, Jane F., and her husband, Abraham W. Jack-son, secured 123.6 acres about three-fourths of a mile west of Charles in 1831 and 1834.  By 1855, almost all of the region's land passed from the government to private ownership. 

These lands were purchased from the United States Land Office at Ca-haba in Dallas County.   Prior to 1814, the land that Charles would oc-cupy and build a home upon was Indian land ceded to the National gov-ernment by treaty in that year.  When Crow arrived in the Oakmulgee Creek area, the land was a wilderness without roads, cleared fields, houses, sources of commerce and little associated with what one would call civilization.  He and his neighbors were pioneers in the truest sense that carved a community out of the lands along the Oakmulgee.