Establishing a New Home in Natchez District, Luisiana – 1790 (pages 103-110)
(page 103, par. 3, lines 4-5) James Willing (1750-1801) was a younger brother in a Philadelphia-based trading family. Willing obtained a commission as colonel from the Continental Congress to raise a force at Fort Pitt, then float down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. His mission was to surprise the weak British garrison at Natchez, despoil Loyalist sympathizers in the region, and secure the Middle Delta for the United States. By the time of his arrival at Natchez on the river gunboat USS Rattletrap on February 19, 1778, Willing’s core expeditionary force of fifty hands has swelled to a couple of hundred. Included were Western adventurers, frontiersmen, and rowdies who were more than happy to enlist in the hopes of booty. Perhaps some wanted to carve out their own parcels of land from confiscated Loyalist British plantations.
On arrival at Natchez, Willing elicited resentment from the inhabitants, who numbered all of several hundred Caucasians in the entire district. The invader had lived as a merchant trader in Natchez for a year and knew most of his victims personally. Aggrieved Loyalists understandably described Willing’s enlistees as over-mountain dregs, criminals, and opportunists. Willing’s American desperados succeeded in laying waste to several plantations in the area.
Local Loyalists were able to rally and, after a small but sharp skirmish, forced the invaders to depart. Willing withdrew down river, taking as prizes Loyalist slaves his followers hoped to sell for cash in New Orleans. The Spanish were not yet ready to openly support the Americans, despite Oliver Pollock’s previous covert shipments of gunpowder intended for the Americans’ Western campaigns. Willing’s sympathizers in New Orleans – trader Andrew Pollock and Governor Bérnardo de Gálvez himself – found the American ragtag armed visitors an embarrassment. After several months’ residence in New Orleans, the Spanish governor put him on a boat and sent him back to Philadelphia. See: Haynes, Robert V. The Natchez District and the American Revolution, p. 56; DuVal, Kathleen. Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, pp. 93-94, 122, 141.
(page 104, par. 1, lines 1-2) Yazoo Land Company Lyman C. Draper summarized: “The proposed settlement at the Walnut Hills, at the mouth of the Yazoo, under the auspices of the famous Yazoo Company, composed mostly of prominent South Carolina and Georgia gentlemen. Dr. John O’Fallon, who subsequently married a sister of General George Rogers Clark, located at Louisville, KY, as the agent and active partner in that region and endeavored to enlist General Clark as the military leader of the enterprise; but the general declined the command, and Colonel John Holder, a noted Kentucky pioneer and Indian fighter, was chosen in his place. But nothing was accomplished. The original grant was obtained by bribery, fraud, and corruption, from the Georgia Legislature; and a subsequent legislature repudiated the transaction, and ordered all the documents and records connected with it to be burned in the public square.” Forman and Draper, Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi 1888, footnotes on pp. 52-53.
A recent biography on Clark includes his role in this misadventure: Carstens, Kenneth C, and Nancy Son Carstens, eds. The Life of George Rogers Clark, 1752–1818. Earlier works, including his own writings, focus on Clark’s success earlier in his career of his conquest in 1778 of the British at Fort Vincennes: Clark, George Rogers, and Milo Milton Quaife, The conquest of the Illinois: Nester, William R. “I Glory in War“; and James, James Alton. The Life of George Rogers Clark.
(page 105, par. 5) “The affright soon subsided” Forman and Draper, Ibid, p. 52.
(page 105, par. 6) logged into the Port of Natchez Kinnard, Lawrence. “Spain in the Mississippi Valley” Annual Report of the American Historical Society for the Year 1945, Vol. III (Part 2), pp. 351-353, as transcribed from Archivo General de Indias, Papeles Procedentes de Cuba , Seville, Spain, PC legajo 16.
(page 107, par. 2, line 1) work gang of his strongest adult male slaves My identification of this work crew is conjectural. These were the most highly valued, presumably most physically able, young adult men resident on Forman plantations in 1795, having emigrated with the rest as adults in 1790. See Appendix II for the complete listing.
(page 107, par. 4, line 13) “was found in the woods, dead” Forman and Draper, Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi 1888, p. 43. Samuel S. Forman wrote without further explanation, “I believe the old sailor, while on board, was a little deranged.” Forman did not venture an opinion on whether foul play was involved in his former employee’s demise. The sailor was evidently Frederick Wishant, of whom I can discover nothing further.
(page 108, par. 2, line 1) On recalling his arrival in Natchez In addition to Ezekiel getting down to business on Samuel S.’s arrival with the tobacco shipment from Kentucky, there was a notable social aspect involving the small world of businessmen, planters, and traders who ventured from the East. “Uncle Forman had been acquainted with Mr. Bayard, in Philadelphia, and their meeting in a distant and foreign country was very gratifying” Bayard had been one of the six flatboat captains including Samiel S., who together had convoyed from Louisville. Bayard and the others were proceeding to New Orleans, so their stay in Natchez was brief. Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 55.
(page 109, par. 4, lines 4-5) Ezekiel also presented a letter of introduction from the well-connected James Wilkinson who assured Spanish Governor Gayoso that the Forman’s intention to obtain the free land grant and to settle as Spanish provincial citizens “proves a decided preference for your bounty & your Government” Riffel, Judy. “James Wilkinson to Manuel Gayoso Recommending Ezekiel Forman” Mississippi River Routes, 2013, Vol. 21 (1): pp. 23-25. The original letter dated Feb 22, 1790 was posted from Lexington, Kentucky. Wilkinson’s recommendation would have reinforced the land grant Ezekiel was carrying, and asserted undeserving recognition from the Spanish for dispatching the kind of large, well-supplied settler party that the Spanish desired. As cited by Riffel, the source ms is in: Archivo General de Indias, Papeles Procedentes de Cuba, legajo 216B, folio 452 in English; and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, LA. Riffel offers the full text.
It is the earliest evidence of Wilkinson’s encouragement of the Forman immigrants to Spanish West Florida, shows how he could insert himself into the Formans’ interactions with the Spanish. Almost two decades later, one Forman-associated individual appeared to have been sympathetic to the wily Wilkinson’s intrigues in favor of the latter’s personal aggrandizing and Spanish interests. Benajah Osman, by then a successful plantation owner in his own right and re-naturalized as a U.S. citizen of the United States Mississippi Territory, was involved in posting bail for Aaron Burr, and entertaining the disgraced intriguer, then on trial of treason, at Osman’s plantation Windy Hill. The wily Wilkinson had secretly encouraged Burr in his schemes for an independent country in the West, but then made sure Burr was arrested and tried for treason.